[House Rule][Martial Arts] Separated Vitals.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by aesir23

What would be the effect of injury to lymph nodes?

Well, first, there's no one place you'll find lymph nodes - ie you don't have one "lymph nodes" location. They're distributed in many places in your body. It's a heavily redundant system. The lymph nodes (plural, distributed) are a major part of your immune system, but the lymphatic system also is critically important as your "second circulatory system" - your blood feeds your tissues, but the interstitial fluid outside your veins also feeds your tissues, and is where ~2.9 gallons of the water in your body is lurking. And your lymphatic system is what keeps the interstitial fluid circulating.

This, and a notable portion of the other organs, is a big part of why it's -3 to hit the Vitals hit location even though your body seems pretty packed with them. The Vitals hit location is not "the organs" hit location. Most of the internal organs are not going to have a significant combat-time effect, and with the GURPS healing rules, long-term effects are going to be negligible, or difficult to determine based just on a damage roll.

Having a lymph node removed can result in trivial (in game terms) effects - a penalty to HT checks against a small group of diseases in the related area that is so small it probably isn't even -1 - or it can be severe, causing major circulatory problems in a limb.


Another reason why "vitals" are -3 to hit, by the way, is that the rib cage and pelvic girdle are designed to shelter your Vitals (as in the organs that will get you killed the fastest).


Your organ list is also missing the womb, which is ~the size of the bladder, relatively near the surface of the abdomen, and a potential site of major bleeding.

Which actually brings me to another point - you've got no veins/arteries in your list of torso bits, and that should definitely in a detailed list of "torso bits".