Fore-head blading and injury analysis

[Plane]

Just watched this DC scene where Nightwing explained about how to play possum and look OOC from an attack he bladed his forehead (after using Roll With Blow) so when the dust cleared he'd look dead:

https://youtu.be/PjWOKwOIfoE

He also did heartbeat-slowing (Batman taught him how) in case someone checked for a pulse.

I guess the question here is ... what set of skills would normally be used by an enemy to assess the injury of an opponent, and how could things like blading one's forehead (creating the appearance of greater injury than the lesser injury required to accomplish the view) influence whatever skill that is?

My best guess is that examining an enemy's injuries might fall under the First Aid skill, and depending on what "baseline time for a checkup" happens to be, there might be Time Spent penalties for doing a rapid assessment (ie "how much blood do I see")

Forehead-blading is also an interesting thing in GURPS terms (you can see Nightwing uses the sharp edge of his Batarang to do it) since the forehead AFAIK qualifies as the skull (2 DR) and you don't actually want 1 cutting to penetrate that DR (ie Nightwing doesn't want to lose 4 HP from a Brain injury) yet usually to cause bleeding one assumes a 1 HP injury of sorts.

So we get into that region of whether or not the skin atop the skull might have some microscopic (even fractional) HP which is lost to lacerations that would cause blood loss, and then further cutting injury's stopped by the skull?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Plane

I
My best guess is that examining an enemy's injuries might fall under the First Aid skill, ?

Nope, it's Diagnosis rather than First Aid and even Diagnosis says its' not required for obvious injuries.

Now, the Skill for doing for this sort of faking would be Acting and it's probably ina contest with Observation or plain Perception (with vision mods). If it went to actual Diagnosis and a close examionation the superficial nature of the forehead wound would probably be obvious (+3 or better bonus)

Incidentally, I had a High School English Teacher who explained all about this. What? You didn't have an English teacher who moonlighted as a professional wrestler?

[Drop Bear]

Checking for Pulse and Breathing Function 1st aid, this would help the faker pull off his game, Diagnosis to look past it to look for things like Limb Reaction Temperature differential, Glandular reaction, eye movements and pupil dilatation and stuff like balder & sphincter release.

unless you are willing to wet and Shiz yourself you are not really committed to the bit.

but this discounts Magic PSI and Super Powers. I can think of a dozen simple spells across four collages and dozens more less simple spell across up to a dozen collages that could detect the faker. for PSI five disciplines have something that could spoil the game easily, then there are Super Powers

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Nope, it's Diagnosis rather than First Aid and even Diagnosis says its' not required for obvious injuries.

I imagine the 'obvious' part is "I see blood coming from Nightwing's skull" whereas a Diagnosis roll would be discerning "he's bleeding because I cracked his skull and his brain is bleeding" vs "he's bleeding because of a laceration at the hairline"

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Now, the Skill for doing for this sort of faking would be Acting and it's probably ina contest with Observation or plain Perception (with vision mods).

I could understand Acting for the "lie really still" part, but could it be Disguise for the "blade in a convincing way" aspect?

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

If it went to actual Diagnosis and a close examionation the superficial nature of the forehead wound would probably be obvious (+3 or better bonus)

Maybe with a penalty for the length of the victim's hair? Would explain why Nightwing covets such luscious locks. Lex Luthor would probably have a harder time pulling this off since the source of the bleed would be more obvious with him.

Conversely, I don't know if Batman could easily do something like this since he normally has the laceration-resistant rubber mask protecting his forehead. It'd probably take him more time to proresu-blade since he'd need to pull back the mask temporarily to get access to the forehead.

Originally Posted by Drop Bear

unless you are willing to wet and Shiz yourself you are not really committed to the bit.

I expect Dick was willing but prob evacuated his bowels/bladder in a tactical matter before the fight.

Originally Posted by Drop Bear

but this discounts Magic PSI and Super Powers. I can think of a dozen simple spells across four collages and dozens more less simple spell across up to a dozen collages that could detect the faker. for PSI five disciplines have something that could spoil the game easily, then there are Super Powers

True, though his heartbeat-slowing seems to have fooled the super-hearing of his foe. I expect when you can perceive time in Flash-seconds a Kryptonian might get impatient listening to heartbeats for prolonged periods of time.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Plane

I guess the question here is ... what set of skills would normally be used by an enemy to assess the injury of an opponent,

Guns, unless short on ammo, in which case, knife.

[Aldric]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Guns, unless short on ammo, in which case, knife.

The good old double tap

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Guns, unless short on ammo, in which case, knife.

so I guess a situation where you wouldn't do this is you don't want to look pathetic in front of your dad by overkilling a muggle, so you do a basic sensory sweep

[Aldric]

Disguise (B 187) mentions that, if you need to roll vs both Acting and Disguise, you only roll once and make the harder roll, and you roll once per person you're attempting to fool. Makeup could probably also be used, but as described it seems it's just a quick contest of Acting to play dead, with the wound to the head helping make it more believable (may not even be a bonus, just offset or reduce the penalties)

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Plane

Just watched this DC scene where Nightwing explained about how to play possum and look OOC from an attack he bladed his forehead (after using Roll With Blow) so when the dust cleared he'd look dead:

https://youtu.be/PjWOKwOIfoE

He also did heartbeat-slowing (Batman taught him how) in case someone checked for a pulse.

I guess the question here is ... what set of skills would normally be used by an enemy to assess the injury of an opponent, and how could things like blading one's forehead (creating the appearance of greater injury than the lesser injury required to accomplish the view) influence whatever skill that is?

My best guess is that examining an enemy's injuries might fall under the First Aid skill, and depending on what "baseline time for a checkup" happens to be, there might be Time Spent penalties for doing a rapid assessment (ie "how much blood do I see")

Forehead-blading is also an interesting thing in GURPS terms (you can see Nightwing uses the sharp edge of his Batarang to do it) since the forehead AFAIK qualifies as the skull (2 DR) and you don't actually want 1 cutting to penetrate that DR (ie Nightwing doesn't want to lose 4 HP from a Brain injury) yet usually to cause bleeding one assumes a 1 HP injury of sorts.

So we get into that region of whether or not the skin atop the skull might have some microscopic (even fractional) HP which is lost to lacerations that would cause blood loss, and then further cutting injury's stopped by the skull?

Absent a reason to be suspicious, a simple Perception check.

First Aid, particularly First Aid to workplacer/military standards, will reveal the superficiality of the injury on any successful roll.

As Nightwing specifically mentions that it's an old professional Wrestling trick that looks worse than it is, any Professional Wrestler with Stage Combat may recognize the trick (and being an old/well-known trick, a pro wrestler may not even need to roll vs. Stage Combat to know it's superficial, just having the skill may be ruled as sufficient).

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Aldric

Disguise (B 187) mentions that, if you need to roll vs both Acting and Disguise, you only roll once and make the harder roll, and you roll once per person you're attempting to fool.

That seems pretty odd, as how convincing you are at creating a fake wound on your body and how convincing you are at lying still could be entirely different skillsets.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Absent a reason to be suspicious, a simple Perception check.

First Aid, particularly First Aid to workplacer/military standards, will reveal the superficiality of the injury on any successful roll.

As Nightwing specifically mentions that it's an old professional Wrestling trick that looks worse than it is, any Professional Wrestler with Stage Combat may recognize the trick (and being an old/well-known trick, a pro wrestler may not even need to roll vs. Stage Combat to know it's superficial, just having the skill may be ruled as sufficient).

Do you think overconfidence could come into play?

I could see someone like Deathstroke being a lot more keen to check stuff like that since he's probably played possum in some situations in the past himself, whereas an arrogant Kryptonian who thinks "I can 1-hit KO any human" would just assume he succeeded.

Half damage would probably be inadequate to survive a Kryptonian punch so Nightwing prob rolled a crit success on RWB where it reduces to 1 dmg even if you got hit by a planet.