Conditional Injury and Bleeding : crushing vs small piercing

[Plane]

Pyramid 3/120 pg 33 seems to treat crushing and small piercing as equal in terms of having no modifier to the HT roll which you make each minute to see if you lose FP.

One thing I was wondering about is how this might represent different effects.

Like for example: could the FP loss to crushing injuries represent internal bleeding (bruising, hematoma) whereas the FP loss to small-piercing could actually represents droplets escaping the body through an open wound?

Although I take no issue with them being treated equally in terms of overall trauma (repairs that need to be made) I'm wondering how we might treat them differently in terms of stuff like dehydration (the body doesn't lose fluids to internal bleeding, it can reuse them) or having blood dripping that some predator might smell and track you by.

[Varyon]

I'm pretty certain internal bleeding counts as "fluid loss" - while the fluid is still in the body, it's not really anywhere that it can be utilized. Also, do note that crushing damage doesn't necessarily mean a blunt weapon - it can just as easily mean spikes or the like that are too short to reach vital organs, and wounds from those absolutely will bleed. A spiked or flanged mace deals crushing damage in GURPS terms, but anyone who gets bashed by one is going to make a mess of the carpet.

Of course, while the article doesn't mention it, I'd suggest still using the general guidelines from B420 when it comes to bleeding - pi/cut/imp almost always bleed, burn/corr/cr usually don't. Exceptions to the latter would be for Major Wounds and for certain weapons, like spiked/flanged maces (although it might not be inappropriate to have those bleed at a lesser level than an equivalent wound made by a bullet or sword).

[namada]

fluid loss, trauma, bleeding, realistic, etc...
If you really want all of that, and want it in a better form than has ever been presented for GURPS, but is also compatible with GURPS (in a way - in that it's intended to be usable with all RPG's), try taking a look at the book Trauma. It's sort of like a super-realistic version of Rolemaster's combat charts, but actually easy to use and relatively easy to use with any RPG.

[Plane]

It's too bad we can't treat spiked maces like linked innate attacks (crushing attack + small piercing) to cover both effects. Then if we did have damage-type rules we could apply them for each component.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Plane

It's too bad we can't treat spiked maces like linked innate attacks (crushing attack + small piercing) to cover both effects. Then if we did have damage-type rules we could apply them for each component.

First off, the spikes of a spiked mace are more akin to impaling than piercing (piercing is basically "should be crushing, but goes fast enough to penetrate deeply and reach vital organs"). Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the spikes don't go deep enough (either because they aren't long enough, or because there are too many at different angles so they block each other) to reach vital organs, which is the hallmark of piercing/impaling, so they remain crushing. Granted, a hit to the Face with a spiked mace could hit an eye, likely blinding it, but really crushing attacks to the Face should be able to blind an eye anyway; work out a system to let that happen, and you can give spiked maces a slightly elevated chance of pulling it off. If you had some sort of armor (or innate DR) that blocked impaling but didn't work against crushing, the spikes would still serve just fine, as they concentrate the impact down. With DR that worked the other way around you might be able to claim reduced DR against spiked maces, but their primary wounding method remains crushing bones and the like, so it likely wouldn't make enough of a difference to be worth the headache. Of course, if the spiked mace were poisoned, you'd ignore that DR when determining if the character were poisoned (similarly, if tracking infection even a non-penetrating hit would result in an open wound).

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Varyon

crushing attacks to the Face should be able to blind an eye anyway; work out a system to let that happen, and you can give spiked maces a slightly elevated chance of pulling it off.

Aside from it being possible on the critical hit tables, I figure maybe somehow base this on the finger-poke technique (not the lethal variation which turns it to piercing, the one which keeps it crushing)