Realistic Human DR

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Well, the writer can "try" anyway. I think the entertainment value of fictional suffering and death gets vastly overrated.

That's a [matter] of personal taste.

For me, it works particularly well in the gritty westerns I've seen it used in, the Clint Eastwood westerns in particular, and as I sat and thought on it, the 'secret identity' hero media as well, Bruce Wayne having to create cover stories for Batman's broken limbs, Don Diego Vega struggling to not show his twisted ankle that Zorro was seen receiving, etc.

[Polydamas]

Characters working around a disability or injury can be good for stories, but "an hour after the fight you just die from internal bleeding you did not notice" or "a month after the fight you die of the infection after three weeks of bedridden agony" is usually less satisfying.

[martinl]

Realistic humans make terrible armor. The DR/lb is inferior to steel, bronze, leather, cloth, paper, and whatever they make gummi bears out of.

Unrealistic humans might be good for DR though. If you could pull a Nemean Lion on Superman the DR would be amazing.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Characters working around a disability or injury can be good for stories, but "an hour after the fight you just die from internal bleeding you did not notice" or "a month after the fight you die of the infection after three weeks of bedridden agony" is usually less satisfying.

Really detailed injury rules aren't for combat, they're for healers and rescuers. In a combat-focused game nobody cares if some NPC dies from an embolism brought on by tension pneumothorax or if they might be potentially crippled for life if a spinal fracture is mishandled, but in a game which focuses on first responders or healers that sort of detail matters.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Really detailed injury rules aren't for combat, they're for healers and rescuers. In a combat-focused game nobody cares if some NPC dies from an embolism brought on by tension pneumothorax or if they might be potentially crippled for life if a spinal fracture is mishandled, but in a game which focuses on first responders or healers that sort of detail matters.

That... is an excellent point. In a campaign with a more medical focus, distinctions beyond "wounded and treatable with first aid vs mortally wounded and requiring surgery" are going to be rather important. Do you have the tools you need for an emergency tracheotomy, or will you need to improvise some? The patient has a severe burn, how are you going to keep their fluids up while they're leaking plasma? This soldier has a severed femoral artery and spiral fracture of the femur - how are you going to keep them alive and make sure they can walk again when this is over?

And, honestly, under that light? A lot of the rules I disliked from Bio Tech for being overly harsh make a lot more sense.

[Donny Brook]

Here's a video demonstrating the effect of fat vs. bullets.

[Anthony]

Based on the blowthrough damage rules, a point of damage should something like 1/2" to 3/4" of an inch of flesh (with some variance for type of tissue), meaning a point of DR is 3-4 lb/sf (this is far worse than leather). The difference is likely water content.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Based on the blowthrough damage rules, a point of damage should something like 1/2" to 3/4" of an inch of flesh (with some variance for type of tissue), meaning a point of DR is 3-4 lb/sf (this is far worse than leather). The difference is likely water content.

I think when I did the analysis it was more like 1 point of damage corresponding to 1 inch of flesh (average human provides Cover DR of 10; average man has a chest depth of 10 inches), although corresponding to a bit more (most hits would probably have the target standing at an angle, and also 1 point of GURPS damage seems to correspond to more than an inch of ballistic gelatin penetration, despite the latter being meant to simulate the human body) would make more sense; corresponding to markedly less would mean the target should give more Cover DR than GURPS assumes. Of course, that means the DR has an even higher weight per area.

As for being worse than leather, I think it's also important to keep in mind that leather is made from skin, and I believe fat and muscle are much less resistant to penetration than skin is (I think I've seen estimates that you need to subtract something like an inch of penetration from most ballistic gelatin tests to account for the resistance of skin, but I could be misremembering - or simply misinformed - here), so naturally a composite of skin, muscle, and fat is going to provide less DR for a given weight and surface area than something made from treated skin alone.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I think when I did the analysis it was more like 1 point of damage corresponding to 1 inch of flesh (average human provides Cover DR of 10; average man has a chest depth of 10 inches)

Ten inches is a kind of high estimate for the torso as a whole (yeah, a shot through the vitals might be dealing with 10", but lots of paths through have less than that). For a GURPS normal (150 lb), total surface area is about 20 sf, torso area about 7, cross-section probably about 2.5, and torso weight about 80 lb, so that gives you an areal density averaging 32 lb/sf. The torso's density is very close to water (62 lb/cf), so that's an average of about 6".

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Varyon

That... is an excellent point. In a campaign with a more medical focus, distinctions beyond "wounded and treatable with first aid vs mortally wounded and requiring surgery" are going to be rather important. Do you have the tools you need for an emergency tracheotomy, or will you need to improvise some? The patient has a severe burn, how are you going to keep their fluids up while they're leaking plasma? This soldier has a severed femoral artery and spiral fracture of the femur - how are you going to keep them alive and make sure they can walk again when this is over?

And, honestly, under that light? A lot of the rules I disliked from Bio Tech for being overly harsh make a lot more sense.

"Medical / paramedic / rescue drama" is a valid genre of TV, it might work for tabletop games. Just need someone with the right hobby or day job to write the supplement!

OTOH, there are reasons why fantasies often start by adding better-than-our-world healing powers. And MASH, Gray's Anatomy, Flashpoint, House, etc. rarely go into detail about how to manage common injuries. Plots are built around rare conditions or problemsolving.