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Originally Posted by CarrionPeacock
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Maybe, I don't understand how GURPS calculates its damage (penetration on homongenous steel of xmm thick? wtf?) but 9d damage on unarmored individual is going to deal 60+ injury, instant-kill on average. I know muskets are dangerous, but that seems beyond what's reasonable.
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You might want to use the over-penetration rules from HT,
Put simply damage from Imp & Pi on the torso is capped at 1xHP, the idea being after that point the damaging object has reached the other side of the body.
This functionally stops high powered rifles from being instant HT check one hit kills.
But a couple of points:
1). if you do this you need to use the bleeding rules to represent the potential of such wounds to eventually kill you, and you use what the total injury value was without the cap to calculate the bleeding. I.e a wound from a more powerful round will bleed worse even if it blasted out the other side with plenty of damage past the threshold compared to a less powerful round that only just beat the cap.
2). There's sometimes a question over weather you apply the injury type adjustment before or after the cap. I apply it before and then apply the cap this reduces the initial injury but still means big Pi+, Pi++ and Imp wounds will bleed more. This IIRC is correct by the rules in HT, but I know some apply the cap and the injury mod (this is important for Pi++ musket balls!)
Point 2 raises questions about Pi- which can throw up some oddities but since it's not relevant for musket balls I won't go into that here!
So what does that mean for 4d+2 Pi++ muskets?
OK going with rules in campaigns vs. an unarmoured 10HP/10HT target a musket at less than 1/2D range will do on average 16pt damage which will be a 32pt injury which will put them at -22 = 2 HT death checks = 75% chance of being killed instantly (not so bad if you use mortal wounds).
OK pretty bad
vs. your DR9 wearing cuirassier
it 16-9 7pts damage, which after the Pi++ multiplier = a 14pt injury, which while not good and certainly puts them out the fight saves their life unless they eventually bleed out
This is not unrealistic full power muskets at short range went through even thick breastplates like this. But don't forget that 4d+2 Pi++ musket is at TL4 a 20lb bit of kit! (weight goes way down as they improve at TL5 etc). Cavalry getting hit by volleys of musket fire were in trouble!
What a DR9 breastplate is good for is stopping or massively reducing 2d pistols & 3d carbines and leaving the wearer still combat effective! i.e. the kind of guns opposing cavalry might be firing at you. even with the muskets that DR is having a significant effect in terms of overall injury prevented and severity of bleeding.
So how about when you apply the over-penetration rules?
Against the unarmoured target the 32pt injury is capped at 10 actual HP lost, but bleeds at -6 calculated from the 32 total . This pretty much takes the target out the fight and unless there's medical care close at hand likely still ends in eventual bleeding out and death. But at least for targets you care about after they're out of the fight there's a chance they might survive.
For the cuirassier with the DR9 breastplate the 14pt injury turns into 10* actual HP lost and bleeds at -2 calculated from the 14 total. Again pretty much takes them out he fight but gives them a bit longer to find treatment before bleeding out to -10 hp and making HT checks to stay alive
Needless to say unless you are firing TL4 muskets around the corner from a TL8 A&E unit you might still be in trouble so a lot of this might just come down to how long does it take to die from bleeding!
One last point regarding the over-penetration rules, they also introduce the optional rules for any torso hit from Pi & Imp is on a 1 in 6 actually a hit to the vitals.
*this is an oddity of applying the injury mod before the over penetration cap as the basis damage that penetrated the breastplate (7) would not be enough to reach the over penetration threshold! You can tweak this to say that the over penetration rules don't apply unless the initial damage is enough to meet them. In which case in this example the wound would be the same as under the campaign rules (14hps lost) but that itself can throw up some oddities in that some wound that don't over penetrate will do more immediate damage than ones that do!.