Decapitation

[Mister Negative]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I agree with malloyd: This is less about "too much game balance making it too hard to realistically decapitate people" and more about "too much Rule of Cool making it too easy to unrealistically dismember people." I stand by the rule that decapitation is what happens when you fail a HT roll not to die after receiving potentially lethal damage to the neck. I might argue, though, that dismemberment would be more realistic if it occurred only if your limb took something like full HP or even 2×HP injury, you rolled immediately to determine how long the crippling will last, and the HT roll failed.

TL; DR: Body parts popping off – be they arms, legs, or heads – is probably realistic only after a single, potentially lethal injury (say, 2×HP, which is enough to force a HT roll not to die) and a failed HT roll, that being the same HT roll not to be crippled or not to die.

Good to know! I have been doing something like this in the past, and will be doing it in my upcoming campaign. I always felt the automatic severing for limbs was a bit too harsh. I use the HT rolls along with the amount of damage to the limb to see how badly mangled it is.

I particularly wanted to use a less 'brutal' severing system for my upcoming game, where I wanted to de-emphasize combat, and encourage exploration with no or partial armor on. The normal risks (where severing is automatic at a certain point) just seemed too dangerous for my players.

Now, I use the same kind of threshold for limb removal as for death. Death is automatic at -5x HP. Severing (or destruction) is automatic at 6X the hp needed to cripple the limb. Otherwise, you make rolls (you may make a bunch at once if someone axes your finger!).

[Plane]

Originally Posted by FeiLin

is the only way to decapitate that (B399) "the GM may rule that anyone killed by a cutting blow to the neck is decapitated"?

Good thing it's not an obligation!

1) be 10 HP human
2) telekinetic psi uses Testicle Grab for 19 damage to reduce you to -9 HP
3) a SM-4 ST3 falcon uses it's Sharp Claws to inflict 1 cutting to your neck, you suffer 1 HP
4) having dropped to -1x HP you make a HT check to survive and fail by 3 points, so you bypass Mortal Wounds and drop dead
5) falcon decapitated you!

The GM is free to limit this to realistic kills-by-cutting-blows situations, like requiring a certain amount of injury to be inflicted specifically to the neck for it to happen.

I actually like the idea of limiting damage to the "neck" to 1/3 HP which Supers uses for Mental Crippling (S127) that results in "Choking".

Originally Posted by FeiLin

If anyone takes HPx2 points of damage, there's an HT roll for death at -1xHT required, so if that fails it will lead to decapitation.

more "may" than "will"

MA138 "Death from a cutting attack means partial or complete decapitation."

A vague term like "partial" could come in any manner of degrees, so in theory any cutting attack to the neck (even 1 HP worth by a falcon or house cat) could be "partial decapitation". It's basically no-teeth meaningless unless it's full decapitaiton or you establish a degree of partial like "half decapitated" or perhaps 9/10 decapitated like "Nearly Headless Nick" in the HP books.

Originally Posted by FeiLin

is the neck (including spine) that much more durable than a leg

The spine has DR 3 in the torso and MA137 when talking about the 1 in 6 chance of hitting spine (on crushing attacks to neck from rear) doesn't mention that DR changing.

The crippling threshold for the spine (even when targeting it via the neck in a Neck Snap or Throws From Locks from Head Lock) is full HP, twice the 1/2 HP threshold for limbs.

Applying the standard rules for limbs (double the damage needed to cripple destroys: severs if from cutting) here doesn't seem untoward. Surpassing double HP for a 10 HP human would be 21 injury, and as far as I know the spine (even if in the neck) uses standard injury multipliers, so a cutting attack would need 21 penetrating damage to cause 21 injury to the spine, not benefitting from the +50% cutting normally gets against necks.

Against DR 3 that means you would need 24 basic damage from the cutting attack, which would be pretty hard to do in a single blow. Or maybe even 27 if GM says you need to penetrate spine DR again "on the way out" after severing the cord (as in Overpenetration) ? Merely 24-26 could just mean that you severed the spinal cord (squishy stuff inside vertebrae) but lacked the carrythrough to penetrate the verebral DR 3 again on the way out, so that remains attached and you'd only made them a nearly-headless PARAplegic by cutting their spine below-the-arms from the rear.

that's -8 for the torso, (let's say an extra -7 atop the -1 to target the abdomen?) so tacking on -7 to the -5 to hit the neck sounds like it ought to be -12, super-hard to intentionally make someone a QUADRIplegic. That's tricky enough it shouldn't cause any game balance issues.

Targeting spine from front isn't even legal, but if it is the "neck meat" could count like cover DR before damage hits the "vertebra DR" (important consideraiton for stuff like Corrosive Attack or if you buy Ablative Spine-Only DR)

Cover DR from normal torsos is full HP (the max dmg you can take to torso if using bleeding rules) and "max dmg" is usually "dmg to cripple" so if dmg to cripple neck (choking) is 1/3 then 1/3 HP as cover DR before hitting vertebrae sounds right. Plus an extra -2 for "partial cover", otherwise you might think you're targeting spine from front but end up going wide and it just overshoots past it through the peripheral meat.

1/3 HP is conveniently 3 HP for HP 10 so that's just another +3 to add to the required Basic Damage calculated previously... a round 30 points, which is 3xHP basic damage, enough to cause TWO death checks if we weren't interacting with stuff like spine DR.

The spine clearly has flesh over it's bone (just like the skull) so in both situations I wouldn't think it unrealistic to give something like 0.1 HP for "thin layer of skin that covers skull/spine" as being that "last thread of flesh" which might still hold on even if you barely tie the double-DR total on both entry/exit

If someone manages to pass the HT rolls to avoid death, the blood loss will probable finish them off unless they're zombies w/ No Blood in which case making it possible to decapitate a monster but leave them salvageable sounds right.

B54's "Extra Heads" policy of capping injury you can suffer from single attack to neck at 2xHP (divided by 1) sounds pretty reasonable. Your brain or your heart might in theory survive immediate death from such a huge wound, but 2xHP is always enough to force at least one death check for non-Unkillable creatures.

If a creature manages to avoid dying from blood loss (let's say a flaming sword cauterizes the neck wound so the head and torso avoid bleeding out) there should be other logical ramifications that result from decapitation such as the brain suffocating since the lungs cannot deliver oxygen to it. You should require "Doesn't Breathe" to avoid suffocation in the short term.

In the long term you would also need "Doesn't Eat or Drink" since you don't have a digestive system connected to your brain to fuel it.

Originally Posted by Kromm

dismemberment would be more realistic if it occurred only if your limb took something like full HP or even 2×HP injury,
you rolled immediately to determine how long the crippling will last,
and the HT roll failed.

TL; DR: Body parts popping off – be they arms, legs, or heads – is probably realistic only after a single, potentially lethal injury (say, 2×HP, which is enough to force a HT roll not to die) and a failed HT roll, that being the same HT roll not to be crippled or not to die.

If the HT to avoid death and HT to avoid permanent crippling were the same that would seem like it's impossible to survive the loss of a limb though...

I though "if your arm is cut off you'll probably die" was meant to be covered by MA138's Severe Bleeding rules.

I guess if GM wasn't using the bleeding rules it would make sense to double the usual injury thresholds though, I think that's what Low-Tech does when introducing caps for impaling attacks to torso (1xHP w/ bleeding, 2xHP without)

for S127 if appropriating 1/3 HP threshold to cripple neck (cause choke, think punching guy in adam's apple: makes sense)...

that'd be 4/3 HP instead of 2/3 HP to destroy the neck (not the spine inside it!)

for MA137 that'd be 4xHP to destroy/sever spine (enough to cause 3 death checks)

MA138's "major wounds" table for neck doesn't result in choking that's why I like the idea of causing choking when you inflict more than 1/3 injury to the neck.

S127 doesn't establish a duration for Choking if you cripple the neck, "ends when the lost FP are regained" could be a pretty long time... 10 minutes of choking is (B428) suffering Suffocation (B436) which is 1 FP per second. This seems just as "potentially fatal" as the coma or heart attack from the skull or vitals.

One issue about severing spines is that it doesn't particularly deal with the distinction of "the edge of my blade is making contact with the midpoint of a vertabrae (need to chop through the bone) vs "the edge of my blade is hitting the edges where two vertabrae make contact" (there's actually a small gap: you're cutting through the ligaments holding the intervertabral disc in place to avoid herniation) where the latter should be easier.

That's an issue with limbs too, sorta: should possibly be a bit easier to sever an arm if you can aim your blade at a shoulder/hip (attachment to upper chest or pelvis) or elbow/knee (midpoint of limb) connecting shin/thigh or forearm/arm.

Targeting joints at extra -3 (MA137) doesn't make it easier to dismember limbs (still need twice that to cripple) so it can't be THAT easy... but maybe the spine DR could be considered to have chinks to represent how there are indeed gaps in vertebrae which allow easier access to the spinal cord where softer-than-bone ligaments are the only barrier?

Chinks in torso armor are usually -8 (which happens to be same penalty as targeting spine) so if you tack on a -8 to halve spine DR from 3 to 2 (maybe even 1 if rounding down for generosity?) you could allow lower-damage spinal-cord-severs (decapitation or otherwise) at the expense of needing HUGE accuracy (that's a LOT of points in Targeted Attack)

[cdru]

Originally Posted by Plane

If the HT to avoid death and HT to avoid permanent crippling were the same that would seem like it's impossible to survive the loss of a limb though...

Actual loss of HP from limb injury is capped at the threshold to cripple it, so it's easy to survive limb loss in short term

[David Johansen]

I generally allow decapitation and dismemberment at HP. It doesn't kill a lot of PCs because I don't have the NPCs attempt it.

[Anders]

Telekinetic testicle grab... hmm... does Affliction (Terrible Pain. Only on people with testicles; PK power; Malediction 1) sound about right?

[Plane]

Originally Posted by David Johansen

I generally allow decapitation and dismemberment at HP. It doesn't kill a lot of PCs because I don't have the NPCs attempt it.

MA137 looking closer....

Arteries increases injury to limbs/neck and ignores both crippling AND "damage limits" (which I assume means 'injury limits' as in how much HP you can lose when limb suffers injury)

So in theory if I target brachial artery in arm (-5 to hit) for 30 penetrating damage, the x2 wounding multiplier reduces 10 HP human to -50 and they just automatically die...

It's kinda weird that this could be more deadly than cutting off the arm which would maximally sever the brachial artery at least as good as any 'arteries' attack would...

So instead of ignoring damage limits, I think maybe arteries / dismemberment should just have the better bleeding rules (MA138) or if not using bleeding, then just double the usual wounding limit when arteries are targeted to represent that bleeding.

Maybe just ignore auto-dismember at 2x cripple and instead, damage beyond that needed to cripple hits 2 DR bone which suffers damage as if a non-Brittle Skeleton?

If we viewed the animation of limbs as characters who were Fragile (Unnatural), B136's auto-failing the HT roll at negative HP ("severs your ties with the force that animates you") could explain how limbs are destroyed ("die") without HT rolls... whereas the HT roll to avoid permanent crippling might be something like "Not Unnatural (Requires HT roll)" ?

Sort of thinking how it would work to convert Independent Body Parts into Allies, like if you were a One Arm man with an "I'm an arm" NPC who hangs out attached to your shoulder stub most of the time, or Thing Addams who hangs out on Captain Hook.

[cdru]

Originally Posted by Anders

Telekinetic testicle grab... hmm... does Affliction (Terrible Pain. Only on people with testicles; PK power; Malediction 1) sound about right?

There's the technique of Testicle Grab in Fairbairn Close Combat Systems, as well as in Technical Grappling

[Plane]

Originally Posted by cdru

There's the technique of Testicle Grab in Fairbairn Close Combat Systems, as well as in Technical Grappling

Given that the target is probably about the same size as an eyeball, I sorta like the idea of just declaring it "crippled" if >1/10 HP is inflicted to it (1 HP if you have HP 9 or less, 2 if you have HP 10-19) and "destroyed" if you inflict more (3 or 5) than twice (2 or 4) that amount.

The strange thing though, is that if your testicles get permanently destroyed, isn't that like you're getting "Injury Tolerance (No Vitals; Partial, Vitals,
Groin only, -60%) [2]" without needing to pay for it (aside from HP loss which will come back) ?

If that happens maybe there should be some kind of downside like gaining Chronic Pain even after HP is healed? Sterile is a 0pt feature so it doesn't seem like enough to pay for a 2pt immunity to further T-crushing.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Plane

The strange thing though, is that if your testicles get permanently destroyed, isn't that like you're getting "Injury Tolerance (No Vitals; Partial, Vitals,
Groin only, -60%) [2]" without needing to pay for it (aside from HP loss which will come back) ?

If that happens maybe there should be some kind of downside like gaining Chronic Pain even after HP is healed? Sterile is a 0pt feature so it doesn't seem like enough to pay for a 2pt immunity to further T-crushing.

You'd probably take 'sexless' as a 1-point quirk rather than 'sterile' asd a 0-point feature.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Plane

Good thing it's not an obligation!

1) be 10 HP human
2) telekinetic psi uses Testicle Grab for 19 damage to reduce you to -9 HP
3) a SM-4 ST3 falcon uses it's Sharp Claws to inflict 1 cutting to your neck, you suffer 1 HP
4) having dropped to -1x HP you make a HT check to survive and fail by 3 points, so you bypass Mortal Wounds and drop dead
5) falcon decapitated you!

That's about as much a problem with the HP rules in general as with the decapitation rules. Isn't there an optional rule that once you drop to 0 HP you can ignore HP loss for very small wounds?