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Old 12-31-2020, 02:02 PM   #1
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default detaching bionic leg to use as club instead of just kicking with it

There's a character who does this in the new Duck Tales (I won't mention who as it's a bit of a spoiler: happens in season 2 episode 7) when using it to smack a monster in it's eyes (normally not possible with blunt weapons but it's high SM with eyes larger than entire character so I think we could make an exception)

Aside from "my skill with a club exceeds my skill with brawling" as an explanation (which I'm not sure would be correct in this example) I'm wondering if going high-crunch Martial Arts / Technical Grappling explanations we could explain why someone would make this choice.

By removing your leg you suffer as Lame: Missing Leg so this is a huge deal. B141 says "Without your crutches or peg leg, you cannot stand" but since IRL there are people who can balance on one leg, I'm going to interpret that as "cannot use Change Posture to stand UP" rather than "cannot remain standing". IE if you use a crutch to stand you can remain standing.

"Using crutches or a peg leg, you can stand up and walk" also means you could only jump on one leg (ie hopscotch) and there should probably be some kind of DX roll to avoid falling down after one-legged hops: I figure assume that jumps are done 2-legged so the -6 to DX would apply.

In the case of this battle, the character is holding an improvised staff which I think would function like a crutch because even though it's not in contact with the ground, the monster is grappling the weapon and trying to pull it upward, so it would serve as a brace to maintain balance: there's little weight on the duck's one leg because she's basically trying to sink down and use her weight to pull the weapon down and away from the creature who is trying to steal+eat it.

I imagine this functions something like Injury Tolerance: Independent Body Parts (1 leg only) as I've seen for I think Kromm's writeup on "bionic arm as 0pt feature" except with the added benefit that you can opt to voluntarily detach the limb without causing damage to it. Which might be something like Shapeshifting (requires DX roll) which changes your template to include Crushing Attack (reach 1, gadget) and Missing Leg.

Aside from that though: a reach 1 club isn't better reach than a leg since you can kick at reach 1 as well.

In terms of striking at a tall foe directly above though: common sense is that you can actually reach/punch further ovehead than you are able to kick. This is best understood when using a lying/crawling position taking up 2 hexes: the reach 1 of kicks is in respect to the hex the lower body occupies, so you have equal (not better) reach than punches for things which are 1 hex from upper body and 2 hexes from lower body.

This would apply if standing too, which i think is the point: detaching the leg allows you to use it's reach 1 length starting from the upper body "stacked hex" rather than the lower body's hex.

If this were "a leg attached to the shoulder socket" you already have a height advantage in respect to "a leg attached to the hip socket" but when you're wielding the leg via an arm, the total reach would actually be extended by the arm's length too.

That makes me wonder: should the reach 1 of a leg if wielded by an arm possibly give reach 2?

Weapons much shorter than legs (like knives) gain reach 1 for merit of tacking on a bit extra to a punch's reach C, they clearly would be reach C as well if they were just a knife mounted on the torso.

I guess another issue might be access to swing damage, though being able to use swing-crushing to target an eye is even more edge-territory than using thrust-crushing: it's easier to poke someone in the eye with a pool cue (tip of staff) than by swinging with the broad side of a staff. That this happens here is just I think a symptom of the huge SM of the creature and the huge (even relative to its SM) size of it's giant eyes.

We could probably have some kind of rule for being able to use crushing attacks (being assigned various equiv SV) targeting eyes. "Eye Poke" for example subs finger for fist (lowering SM of attacking part) to target a human eye, but a standard punch/fist to eye should be able to target eyes of giants (or people with just larger than normal eyes) without needing to use fingers or even tip-thrusts instead of broad-smacks.
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