Ripping Out Someone's Heart

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Anthony

And overall, I'd stat this ability up as:

Perk: Fatality
When you kill someone with a blow that does at least HPx1 total injury, you may perform some over the top killing blow (defined when you buy the perk), such as ripping his still-beating heart out of his chest. Other than being potentially useful for intimidation, this has no mechanical effect. The GM may require the blow be targeted at a specific hit location, usually vitals, neck, or skull.

That looks pretty good to me too.

If you want to stat it up as an actual ability rather than a special effect, I think the Affliction (Heart Attack) route works too, stick a limitation on it to require a successful attack to the vitals inflicting a substantial amount of damage on top of that and you get the full range of possible effects - i.e. the victim might still die even if he does resist the Affliction, you killed him but didn't manage to rip out his heart.

Allowing it as an additional way of killing somebody who hasn't failed a death check or taken 6xHP damage amounts to redefining hit points only for this one attack, and isn't a good approach.

Side point: one of those traditional fatalities is punching someone in the nose and driving fragments into the brain. As far as I know this is totally mythical, but how would you do it? Best guess is something like 'Perk: you may treat a nose shot as a skull shot'.

Yeah, it's mythical, the "nose bone" this is supposed to drive into the brain doesn't even exist, that's a bit of rubbery cartilage. And your brain isn't behind the hole in your skull for your breathing apparatus anyway.

As to how to do it, I think I'd just use the mechanics for a skull hit (use the skull hit location penalty, apply the DR 2 for the skull, and use the knockdown and wounding effects for that) and let you describe it however you want. I suppose charging a perk for that is reasonable. But really if you want to target his left foot, aiming for the reflexology point for his heart as an attack on the vitals, well, as long as the to hit penalty stays the same, and you apply the DR over the location you are claiming the effects of rather than the one you are describing, it doesn't make much difference.