Ripping Out Someone's Heart

[Kromm]

No amount of non-cinematic strength or precision is going to remove a struggling, defending enemy's heart cleanly or even crudely. But if somebody made a Pressure Secrets attack (-2) on the vitals (-3), and with the ×3 wounding multiplier managed to kill her victim, then I'd allow the killer to claim "I ripped out his heart!", if that were important to the story. I wouldn't differentiate between death by failed HT roll below -HP and death by brute force at -5×HP, or require that all the injury come from this attack, as long as this attack inflicted the killing wound. After all, in martial-arts fiction, people who do this beat the tar out of their victims before using the heart-rip as a "finishing move." I definitely wouldn't base this on an overcomplicated analysis of chest depth, bone HP, etc.; heart-ripping isn't a realistic process by any stretch, and ought to work within the "hit location, HP, and HT roll" model used for all other combat. (Also, you'll find that the rules for attacking hit locations don't bear up under analysis of this kind in general, as they're playable abstractions for living organisms, not instructions for piece-wise disassembly of modular meat machines.)