Realistic Hard to Kill/Subdue

[Stormcrow]

Hard to Kill and Hard to Subdue both say that realistic games should limit these traits to one or two levels. Just for comparison, back in the days of the third edition, Hard to Kill in the revised Basic Set appendix said it was purely a cinematic advantage, while Compendium I says what the fourth edition says about limiting it to one or two levels.

My question is this: Are these traits, even at just one level, completely unrealistic in a completely realistic campaign? Or is there some realism in being able to stay on your feet beyond what your overall Health would indicate?

Realistic <-> Cinematic is a spectrum, so would Hard to Kill and Hard to Subdue levels just be inching away from Realistic toward Cinematic, but if you stay within two levels, you'd kind of have to squint to see that it's not realistic?

[Anthony]

Real people do not generally have enough near-fatal injuries to make it possible to distinguish having an advantage from just being lucky, so it's really hard to say what realistic means.

[JulianLW]

I think Hard to Kill is realistic at a couple of levels. Audie Murphy probably had it. Or he had Ridiculous Luck.

I had a student a few years ago who was shot six times on three different occasions, including taking a shot to the back of the head. He *may have just had very high HT, but he did NOT, apparently, have any of the skills that normally go with high HT.

I also once knew a guy who was obviously in basically terrible health. But he made half a dozen serious suicide attempts over the course of about a decade and survived every time. He survived hanging himself. He survived gassing himself to sleep with CO - he woke up hours after the car ran out of gas. And this was NOT an otherwise lucky guy. He definitely has Unluckiness and Alcoholism. But I'm pretty sure he is also Hard to Kill.

[ericthered]

Statistically, I have no problem with someone who's resistance to bleeding to death does not line up with their resistance to disease or ability to excersise for long periods of time.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Statistically, I have no problem with someone who's resistance to bleeding to death does not like up with their resistance to disease or ability to excersise for long periods of time.

A good way of looking at it, thanks.

[Shuckster]

If you really wanted you could modify Hard to kill so that rolls caused by damage done to the vitals don't gain the bonus

As for hard to subdue you could modify it with "Blunt force trauma only" so that the resistance to drugs and poisons does not gain the bonus

[Donny Brook]

Hard to Subdue probably has more anecdotal cases available to compare. Certainly some professional boxers or MMA fighters develop reputations for it, so I think some levels of it are realistic enough.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Real people do not generally have enough near-fatal injuries to make it possible to distinguish having an advantage from just being lucky, so it's really hard to say what realistic means.

I've got knowledge of one person who might have had HtK and quite possibly more than 2 levels.

It starts with a very serious car accident. Massive compound fracture of the femur, a ruptured diaphram and a bruised heart. I make it 2 crit fails on HT rolls but they survived. Recovery was neither quick or easy so there's nothing that looks like a hgih HT and Fit or very Fit are pretty much out of the question. A month in ICU, years of recovery and multiple surgeries but they didn't die.

Many years later they were limping intot the fitness center and had a heart attack and broke their hip when they fell down. Another long and difficult recovery. Again you see the multiple crit fails on HT rolls except for survival rolls.

After that they slipped in the tub and broke their neck and just lay there for multiple hours. 6 weeks in a halo that time. Later they broke their arm doing physical therapy. Sure doesn't look like a high HT score to me. Not Luck either unless it's soem Aspected to "Survival rolls Only" build mixed with some sort of Cursed.

Finally their spouse drove them to the emergency room where they were told that there was nothing to do but transfer the patient to hospice. They wouldn't even survive a trip back to their own home. One week later hospice was about to send them home whan the end finally came.

What I get out of this is that Gurps' "universal" HT score is probably nothing but a gameable abstraction. Most people have aerobic fitness, ressistance to disease and toxins and resitance to shock and even death at similar levels because most people have most of these things at around 10.

If you want to vary these things independently (and by more than a point or two) it's probably perfectly realistic. It's just finicky detail.

[Phil Masters]

The whole GURPS injury/unconsciousness/death system is of course a simplified abstraction for game purposes, which makes it a little tricky to say what is or isn't "realistic". If HT 10 and 5 levels of Hard to Subdue is unrealistic, what does that make HT 15? It gives you the exact same resistance to being rendered unconscious. Of course, you can say that somebody with strictly average HT for other purposes shouldn't be that hard to beat insensible, but then, what does the GURPS HT stat actually represent?

Hard to Kill is slightly different in that it gives you that distinct chance of being rendered temporarily insensible in a seemingly deathlike state, and the idea of someone being significantly prone to having that happen to them is a bit cinematic. (Okay, it's a classic slasher movie villain trait.) But again, really, what is realistic or not? You get all sorts of weird stories from battlefields and hospitals.

I guess that my personal answer to this, as an occasional GM, is that if someone wants to take either of these advantages to any given level in any given game, I'm not so obsessed with "realism" that I'd veto it. It may be "unrealistic" in some sense, but it's strictly within the bounds of the un-realism that GURPS accepts, even at its most "realistic", for the sake of a good story.

(In practice, I think that the only character I know in any game who's actually taken either at all is my Transhuman Space PC, who got KtK 1 included in his Boosted Heart biomod. Which I thought was cool and in character. By and large, players prefer buying stuff for their characters that prevents them from having to worry about this subject too often, including high HT, which is just too damn useful in every way.)

[Arcanjo7Sagi]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

The whole GURPS injury/unconsciousness/death system is of course a simplified abstraction for game purposes, which makes it a little tricky to say what is or isn't "realistic". If HT 10 and 5 levels of Hard to Subdue is unrealistic, what does that make HT 15?

At least as far I remember, I think the way the standard rules works, any effective HT above 13 or 14 would sound unrealistic. Someone with effective HT 15+ could run for maybe days before get really tired, because you will be successful 94% of the time or more.

If we had rules with penalties in the rolls according to time or effort, it might be easier to justify high HT.

Just look at DX or IQ/Per. You have penalties for missed sleep, distractions, bad terrain, etc. I think HT should have more of this kind a situational penalties.