Forehead Cuts

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Since the vast majority of punches are crushing damage, they won't be targeting the eye directly anyway.

Now that I think about it, that makes no sense. As of now, I'm house ruling that the eye can be targeted with crushing attacks.

Crushing attacks to the eye: 2 points to cripple the eye (with temporary crippling representing an eye swollen shut.) Any damage beyond that is applied to Face (rather than the brain as in impaling attacks).

Originally Posted by Varyon

For punches, you're talking a pretty low-probability event, so by the time one is likely to happen, the target is almost certainly unconscious - if not dead - from all those Skull hits.

They're low probability with gloves on (not to mention the Vaseline fighters rub on their faces to reduce friction.) Cuts are A LOT more common with bare-knuckles (as can be seen from the early days of UFC) but knockouts are much, much rarer.*

I like the idea that 1 in 6 of crushing attacks to the skull cause bleeding that could leak into the eyes.



*You can't punch someone's head hard enough to give them a concussion without seriously hurting your hand. The majority of bare-knuckle boxing knockouts (from the London Prize-fight days) were from body blows (solar plexus).

[Anders]

There's the Eye Rake maneuver in MA. 72. I'd probably make it one of the entries on the Critical Head Hits table.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by aesir23

Now that I think about it, that makes no sense. As of now, I'm house ruling that the eye can be targeted with crushing attacks.
...

Well I get the impression it's more about not giving punches access to that x4 brain multiplier (the eye has some oddities as a hit location anyway), than saying you can't punch someone's eye at all.

Punching eyes are kind of limited in effect because a lot of the eye is behind the orbit. So most eye attacks are gouges and rakes (so Pi) i.e. you have to get you fingers/thumb in there*.

So personally I think pretty much all locations are variable targets for pretty much all Pi, Imp, Cr, Cut & Imp. But would likely recognise some practical differences. For example I like the way MA allows Cr attack to target Vitals.

Originally Posted by aesir23

....

Crushing attacks to the eye: 2 points to cripple the eye (with temporary crippling representing an eye swollen shut.) Any damage beyond that is applied to Face (rather than the brain as in impaling attacks).

....

Something like that for example!

There' also a pretty clear game balance effect at work a times, thr although lower damage than sw get's a reward for being more often able to target the vitals**. But realistically you can target some of the things that GURPS calls vital organs with cutting attacks.

Originally Posted by aesir23

....
*You can't punch someone's head hard enough to give them a concussion without seriously hurting your hand. The majority of bare-knuckle boxing knockouts (from the London Prize-fight days) were from body blows (solar plexus).

Erm I assure you that is not the case! (but yes I take your general point)



*which get into the question of when is a blunt attack crushing and when is it piecing, when it's small? etc, etc

**see also various tropes regarding fighting styles and types of weapons

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by aesir23

They're low probability with gloves on (not to mention the Vaseline fighters rub on their faces to reduce friction.) Cuts are A LOT more common with bare-knuckles (as can be seen from the early days of UFC) but knockouts are much, much rarer.*

Low probability per hit, not per fight - but GURPS fights are often over in so few hits this rarely matters. As for the asterisked bit, with Harsh Realism for Unarmed Fighters (MA124), you risk taking damage when punching the skull, but the minimum amount of damage needed to actually harm your hand (5 damage becomes 1 HP injury to your hand) will cause 12 HP of injury to the target, which will most likely render him unconscious (it's at least a Major Wound to the Skull, for -10 to the knockdown check, which will almost certainly knock the target down and has a really good chance of knocking him out). Out of the roughly 12 or so hits (see below) needed to cause this effect, an ST 12 boxer (1d+1, assuming he has Boxing high enough for the full damage bonus) is quite likely to have incapacitated or killed his target already. There's a better chance of it happening before the battle's over if he's using Defensive Attacks (good for both a Parry bonus and reduced chance of hurting yourself), for 1d-1, but it's still not great. Even if he purposefully lowers his damage to 1d-2 (negating the chance of rolling too high and hurting himself), each hit has a 1/3 chance of doing nothing, a 1/3 chance of doing no injury but risking the bleeding, a 1/6 chance of injuring his target for 4 HP and risking the bleeding, and a 1/6 chance of injuring his target for 8 HP - a Major Wound - and risking the bleeding. Out of 12 effective hits (that is, ignoring those 1/3 that fall into the "does nothing" range, meaning around 18 actual hits), you'd have roughly 6 that did nothing but chance the bleeding, 3 that seriously wounded the target (if the target has HP 12 or lower, he's now struggling to maintain consciousness each round), and 3 that dealt major wounds, each of which would have a rather high chance of knocking the target out. Combined total of all wounds is 36 HP, dropping the target to -26 HP and (likely) 2 death checks. At this point, there's still only a 65% chance the target is bleeding into his eye.

Originally Posted by aesir23

I like the idea that 1 in 6 of crushing attacks to the skull cause bleeding that could leak into the eyes.

Note this is meant to be with crushing weapons. A fist should be lower - I'd eyeball it as a roll of 2 or 3 on 2d (1/12, half as likely as with a weapon). Optionally, some crushing weapons might use the same check as cutting weapons - this would be appropriate for maces (but not round maces), as well as weapons with spikes that aren't long enough to justify impaling (or piercing) damage. If you let fists get the same rate as crushing weapons, you'll be more likely to see some bleeding into the eyes.

Of course, the probabilities for bleeding into the eyes are something I basically just came up with out of thin air. I've no clue how realistic they actually are.