[Plane]

Originally Posted by seasalt

Trying to bite someone's leg is probably a terrible idea in a street fight. I'm going to assume this is coming up as a result of some creature like a dog or wolf who is actually adapted for biting the legs.

I'm trying to puzzle out (in terms of GURPS stats) if they actually are...

Originally Posted by seasalt

But even then, they usually don't bite and hold unless they can pin the prey down or it is greatly weakened. Because if they do bite and hold, they're opening themselves up to a nasty counterattack.

yeah though that could depend on the target and how you are oriented to your foe

ultimately if you are able to keep a bit foot airborne, if the other foot was used to kick the dog, the prey would fall down, so at that point it might be worth risking getting kicked when you're guaranteed a posture change that prevents the prey from running away, especially if it's something like a wolf pack bringing down a deer or a lion pack bringing down a gazelle.

Originally Posted by seasalt

Note that when a large dog bites a criminal or intruder, it is very common for the dog to get badly hurt or killed as the person starts stomping on its head with their free leg

If the bitten leg is bearing weight (foot is planted) then yeah you could throw a kick.

If however the bitten leg has it's foot held airborne by the dog pulling at it, if you couldn't set that foot down, you'd have to do something like a jump kick or drop kick, which risks falling down into a lying posture, to land that kick.

Originally Posted by seasalt

or hitting it with an improvised club. And this is untrained thieves and fighting back.

Even without an improvised club you could also just throw a punch.

Dogs are pretty low to the ground so I don't know if some measure of this MA99 rule might come into play when throwing punches:

Punches and attacks with close-combat weapons (reach C) against enemies who are lying down require the attacker to stoop into a near-crouch, which gives -2 to hit.

I think a standing dog would have their head higher than a lying human though, so there's probably not a -2 to hit, but I could see maybe doing a -1.

MA99 doesn't seem to actually deal with standing punchers targeting low hit locations. Obviously a foot planted on the ground is at a height comparable to a lying foe (possibly even lower?) and ought to at least also require the -2 DX stoop to hit too.

You could make adjustments for raised legs of course - a knee or shin or foot of a chambered leg (lifted off ground) should be easier to reach (don't need to crouch) compared to a planted leg.

(the thigh conversely might be harder to hit with straight thrust attacks, you might need to use swing or wrapshot since the thigh is behind the shin)

Going from the idea that punching and hand-parrying have similar reach considerations, we can take into account that the Low-Line Parries optional rule adopted for realism, that MA124 applies it "to parry an attack on his legs or feet if using a hand or a reach C weapon."

If it is -2 to parry (effectively -4 to combat skill or untrained DX) to place your hand in the path of an attack on your "leg" (this would include upper thigh superior to the knee) a mere -2 to skill to hit lower-than-thigh enemies (any part of a Lying Foe, or the Foot of a Standing Foe) seems overly generous.

I was actually thinking a cascade of -1 for standing foes to rapidly crouch deeply enough to punch various lower body locations: assuming -0 to hit the chest (ribcage), you could do -1 to punch the abdomen (Instant Armor 15 says Groin/Vitals/Pelvis are sub-locations, so -1 for them too, in addition to the usual -3 penalty, -4 total) -2 for thighs, -3 for knees, -4 for shins, -5 for feet

You then modify this basic -5 to punch a planted foot (a lower crouch requirement) if the foot is lifted to perform kicks or Leg Parry, depending on the height of the target they were kicking or Leg Parrying.

For example: if my foe just kicked his steel-toed boot into my ally's shin, his steel-toed boot is now at shin-height so I could punch it at -4 to hit instead of the usual -5, meaning I only need to deal with -8 to hit instead of the usual -9 to hit

though it might be smarter to punch him in the shin (-2 to hit, like the thigh) since summing with the modified -3 to hit (reduced from the usual -4) would only be a total of -5 to hit (plus the shin is unarmored, the steel-toe show has DR 2 or something)

- -

back to dogs though, the torso of a dog is probably at knee height so it should be -3 to hit most parts of them, maybe -4 to hit their knees (instead of -3) and the usual -5 to hit feet (feet are always equivalent to lying)

-2 to punch lying foes while remaining standing sounds just way too easy, most people will drop to a kneeling or crawling position to do that! Something like -5 better suits the athleticism needed to do that while being able to bounce back to a standing posture easily.