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Old 01-23-2012, 08:48 AM   #1
JCurwen3
 
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Default IT:No Vitals (Except the heart)?

The heart is a more specific part of the vitals, listed in two places as being at -5 to hit because it's a smaller area (Horror, p. 30 and MH3: The Enemy, p. 10).

And Martial Arts, p. 137 makes an exception to allow for crushing attacks to target the vitals, mentioning the kidneys from the back and the solar plexus from the front (both abdominal vitals, at x1 wounding but shock causes a knockdown roll, at -5 if a major wound), and the implication is that this won't work for just any vital (it seems it's there to allow for kidney punches and the like).

If you use the more detailed hit location rules in Low-Tech which split the Torso into Chest and Abdomen hit locations, then it seems reasonable to rule that the random chance on a strike to the Abdomen to hit the vitals (1 on 1d) would only apply to the abdominal vitals (so never the heart - that would only make sense on a Chest strike), so using these more detailed rules your chances of hitting the heart randomly are also reduced.

So, given those considerations, what should the limitation reasonably be for Partial, Vitals, Except the heart for IT: No Vitals?

Bio-Tech, p. 172 gives a value of -60% for Partial, Vitals Groin only, and on p. 175 (Auxiliary Heart) it gives a -40% for Only to prevent first heart attack, if either of those helps as a rough gauge.
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Old 01-23-2012, 10:55 AM   #2
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Default Re: IT:No Vitals (Except the heart)?

I would be more inclined to call it IT: No Vitals and Vulnerability: That Spot On My Torso (IIRC it's Horror or Fantasy that has a note about converting to-hit penalties to frequency of attack)... unless the intention is to keep the character vulnerable to heart-attacks.
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Old 01-23-2012, 11:42 AM   #3
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Default Re: IT:No Vitals (Except the heart)?

OTTOMH, I'd guess it to be a Quirk if it is a known weakness.
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Old 01-23-2012, 03:33 PM   #4
JCurwen3
 
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Default Re: IT:No Vitals (Except the heart)?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
I would be more inclined to call it IT: No Vitals and Vulnerability: That Spot On My Torso (IIRC it's Horror or Fantasy that has a note about converting to-hit penalties to frequency of attack)... unless the intention is to keep the character vulnerable to heart-attacks.
I couldn't find that section on converting to-hit penalties, but on the other hand, I think I worked out a reasonable way to do it for Vulnerability.

Limited Defenses (p. B46) is a limitation applicable to DR and others, and is used to determine categories for Vulnerability - and if you do a little math you see it's priced identically to IT:DR (namely, [-50] for x2, [-75] for x3, [-100] for x4) if you wanted to be "Vulnerable to Everything", and then you apply the Limited Defenses category limitation and you get the listed Vulnerability costs per category. And DR has the limitation Partial which is -10% per -1 to hit. The heart is -5 to hit, so that's -50%, which puts it halfway between a Common and an Occasional, or we can just apply the limitation directly to the Vulnerability (Everything) value.

But we're not done there yet, if we're going the Vulnerability route; we need to add this to the limitation for Limited, tbb + imp + pi, -20% to simulate the x2 wounding modifier for imp, pi, as well as tight-beam burning attacks (total limitation -70%) and one for Limited, imp + pi, -30% (they're two Common categories, but not quite enough for Very Common together) to simulate the x3 wounding modifier for imp and pi attacks (total limitation -80%). The first level of Vulnerability (x2) that applies to imp, pi, and tbb comes with a -70% limitation, which makes it [-15], and the second level (for x3 for imp and pi) is at the value of Rare. So the total value of a Vulnerability that would replicate the normal wounding modifiers for the heart would be (-50 *0.3) [-15] + (-25 * 0.2) [-5]. Clearly that's not right, because then having IT:No Vitals but with the extra (otherwise perfectly normal and in fact with less coverage) Vulnerability to cover the imp and pi x3 wounding mod and the x2 tbb wounding mod would be a net disadvantage of [-15]. And you wouldn't have to worry about heart attacks.

On the other hand, all of this has shown me three things: (1) advantages that remove normal wounding modifiers should never be coupled with Vulnerability to bring some of those wounding modifiers back, (2) some of these IT are ridiculously cheap for what they give you if you were buying them as limited IT:DR, and (3), I found the way to do it:

IT: No Vitals is a sort of defense, it seems reasonable to borrow the Partial limitation from DR (as in Bio-Tech). There, Groin only is listed as -60%. I'm not sure how that was calculated, but the Groin is normally at -3, and the heart is at -5 to hit, so that Partial is -20% higher, for a "No Heart" of -80% or [1] (a perk) and a "No Vitals But the Heart" of -20% or [4] (which means it's the equivalent of a quirk for characters with No Vitals, as someone else suggested).
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