Punching someone into a "Fine Red Mist"

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by malloyd

All the -10xHP limit was originally for was to create a distinction between "mostly dead" and "all dead" for purposes of resurrection magic. Trying to stretch it to totally vaporized as always been nonsense.

And is not supported by the rules:

Originally Posted by Basic Set, p. 419

200 points of arrow wounds leave a messy but recognizable corpse; 200 points of fire injury leaves nothing but an unrecognizable lump of charcoal.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by johndallman

And is not supported by the rules:

Just before that, it states "Total bodily destruction, if this makes sense given the source of damage." A large-scale crushing attack can certainly turn a target to jelly, it's just that filling them full of holes (the arrow example) wouldn't. I'm suggesting that -10xHP resulting in total destruction from any damage source - including explosion, conflagration, having the spaceship you're in suddenly accelerate, being swatted or stepped on by Godzille, etc - shouldn't be in play unless calculating the target's HP as if it were Homogenous. Having 110 points of burning Injury reduce a person to a pile of ash or lump of charcoal is similarly problematic to having 110 points of impaling Injury from multiple arrows turn them into a pile of giblets. Having 440 points of Injury to reach these points makes more sense (but note causing 440 points of Injury to a Homogenous target with an impaling attack calls for 880 points of damage, as Impaling has a x0.5 WM against Homogenous targets). It's not strictly realistic - I suspect you may be able to reduce a target to ash with less burning damage, and may need more impaling damage to turn a corpse into a pile of giblets - but is fairly gameable and is at least more realistic than doing so needing slightly less than twice the damage required to guarantee a kill.

What this means for resurrection is up to the GM, of course. Maybe you do need outright total bodily destruction to prevent it. Maybe severely breaking the corpse (-5xHP Homogenous) works. Maybe rendering the corpse incapable of functioning if reanimated (-5xHP Unliving, equal to -11xHP Living) works. Or maybe you just get penalties the worse shape the corpse is in - above -1xHP Living (that is, target was killed by some sort of "save or die" effect - heart attack, certain poisons, etc - and the body is quite intact) is at +2, above -5xHP Living is at +0, above -5xHP Unliving is at -2, above -5xHP Homogenous is -5, above -10xHP Homogenous is -10, and at -10xHP Homogenous or below it's impossible (or maybe -20).

[Lovewyrm]

Maybe it's just 'seat of consciousness damage' that (always) results in a de-facto new character to be made.
Either your brain or equivalent is completely and utterly wrecked.
Or your body is so detroyed that you'd need a head/brain transplant to continue working.
Which kind of, on a meta level, is playing a new character, even if it's the same character as a clone.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by JulianLW

Yeah. That is not normal at all - hence the extensive writeup in a medical journal.

A fall from 300 feet will normally turn someone to pulp, since they'll probably be going much faster than 80 mph when they land (i.e. no intermediate impact to slow the fall, as with this lady). I think she ended up rolling 8d for damage and got well under the average.

A normal HP 10 person getting hit by a 100 mph Mack truck is going to take 10d crushing damage according to RAW (collision with a "hard" object - unless you want to call it a Slam by the truck, in which case the damage will be much higher). That's going to be an average of 35 damage - not enough to go to -10xHP. And yet, in real life, that kind of collision would cause enough damage to pretty completely destroy the body. Would there be a corpse left to resurrect? Possibly. In real life, however, getting hit by a Mack truck at 100 mph is almost certain to obliterate a human body.

You can also find internet reports - far more common than reports of people surviving 200 foot falls - of truckers hitting deer in the road at moderate highway speeds - and how it completely obliterates their bodies.

A ~330-foot fall will (ignoring air resistance) give you about 100 mph collision velocity with the ground. That doesn't obliterate bodies, and nor do 100 mpg collisions on motorways. They kill people, and make a mess of their internals, and people do survive them from time to time.

As for the OP's concerns, consider the descriptions of the effects on the body in the rules to be fluff, aside from the game mechanics - they are what matters. Thus, -5 x HP means "You're dead, no saves", and -10 X HP means "You're dead, so saves, and no comebacks" and that's it, the rest is colour.

[JulianLW]

Originally Posted by Rupert

A ~330-foot fall will (ignoring air resistance) give you about 100 mph collision velocity with the ground. That doesn't obliterate bodies, and nor do 100 mpg collisions on motorways. They kill people, and make a mess of their internals, and people do survive them from time to time.

As for the OP's concerns, consider the descriptions of the effects on the body in the rules to be fluff, aside from the game mechanics - they are what matters. Thus, -5 x HP means "You're dead, no saves", and -10 X HP means "You're dead, so saves, and no comebacks" and that's it, the rest is colour.

Yeah, I don't know what you guys are looking for here: disintegration rays only exist in fiction and rpgs.

In the actual world, a human body can hardly get more obliterated by a single injury than by a fall at terminal velocity (without being burned - which takes some time).

By almost all first-hand accounts, a fall at terminal velocity turns a human body into a bag of smashed bones and a jelly-like substance. (A fall at terminal velocity is just about comparable to getting hit by a Mack truck at 100 mph - unless you're actually talking about being struck in a particular hit location by a fender - or being smashed by a theoretical Hulk.)

If you don't call having all of your bones broken into smallish pieces and all the stuff inside of your skin turned into a semi-liquid pulp "obliterated," then the damage you're looking to describe doesn't exist in the actual world.

But I would call that obliterated. Any imaginary healing or resurrection spell would have to work on a bucket of liquified innards to be effective in this circumstance - a circumstance described many times by ER doctors, medical examiners, funeral directors, and, as it happens, truck drivers.

But game mechanics are necessarily an abstraction and don't really simulate actual life or death.

Nothing turns human bodies into a "fine red mist." If by obliterated you mean being turned into a "fine red mist," then that only happens in fiction or, I suppose, in extremely powerful explosions.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by JulianLW

If you don't call having all of your bones broken into smallish pieces and all the stuff inside of your skin turned into a semi-liquid pulp "obliterated," then the damage you're looking to describe doesn't exist in the actual world.

Human terminal velocity - around 120 mph if spread-eagle, around 180 mph if diving headfirst - is hardly the speed limit of what humans can reach. A quick look online gives modern passenger jets having a cruising speed of 550-600 mph. Fighter jets can go much faster - the fastest was apparently the Lockheed YF-12, which could get up to 2,275 mph. And even that's a bit slow compared to orbital velocity - the astronauts currently on the International Space Station are traveling around the world at a rate of 4.76 miles per second, or around 17,136 mph.

Of course, I think you're overstating the effect of a terminal velocity fall, at least for a human. From what I understand, the result is typically fractured bones and ruptured organs, not shattered bones and liquefied organs. Of course, in some settings, the latter may well be the typical case.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Hu

Of course, I think you're overstating the effect of a terminal velocity fall, at least for a human. From what I understand, the result is typically fractured bones and ruptured organs, not shattered bones and liquefied organs. Of course, in some settings, the latter may well be the typical case.

When the Mythbusters tested whether falling into water at terminal velocity thye put two pig carcasses into heavy duty body bags so they wouldn't make a big hazmat situation and dropped them from 600 feet. One into water and the other onto firm ground(packed earth but not stone). Then they had a trauma surgeon look at the x-rays.

The water drop resulted in injured ribs and a fractured neck. The firm ground drop resulted in not only more severely damaged ribs but a shattered pelvis and an "internal decapitation". I take the last to be an injury that completely separates the cervical spine without actually removing the head.

Then of course there would have been extnesive soft tissue damage to both but nobody opened those body bags to see. The principle seemed demonstrated clearly enough. Water bad, firm ground worse.

"Shattered pelvis" was in there so shattered bones would appear to be possible.

[JulianLW]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

When the Mythbusters tested whether falling into water at terminal velocity thye put two pig carcasses into heavy duty body bags so they wouldn't make a big hazmat situation and dropped them from 600 feet. One into water and the other onto firm ground(packed earth but not stone). Then they had a trauma surgeon look at the x-rays.

The water drop resulted in injured ribs and a fractured neck. The firm ground drop resulted in not only more severely damaged ribs but a shattered pelvis and an "internal decapitation". I take the last to be an injury that completely separates the cervical spine without actually removing the head.

Then of course there would have been extnesive soft tissue damage to both but nobody opened those body bags to see. The principle seemed demonstrated clearly enough. Water bad, firm ground worse.

"Shattered pelvis" was in there so shattered bones would appear to be possible.

And that body bag probably dispersed a good bit of the force as well.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Of course, I think you're overstating the effect of a terminal velocity fall, at least for a human. From what I understand, the result is typically fractured bones and ruptured organs, not shattered bones and liquefied organs. Of course, in some settings, the latter may well be the typical case.

I think most of you guys are dramatically underestimating the damage of such a fall. The actual results of injuries such as gunshots and terminal falls are almost never to be seen anywhere in public, so people's notions about the effects are inevitably distorted by depictions in movies and TV.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by JulianLW

The actual results of injuries such as gunshots and terminal falls are almost never to be seen anywhere in public, so people's notions about the effects are inevitably distorted by depictions in movies and TV.

WARNING: I'm about to recount some details of a real life suicide - don't read this if it's something you would prefer to avoid. It's not overly graphic, it's relevant, but it's also something some people would prefer not to read.

Spoiler:  

Terminal falls are extremely rare. I've seen a body after it hit the road from 10 storeys up. I didn't know how it had got there, it was in the middle of the road as my taxi rounded a corner. When myself and a staff member from a hotel attempted CPR, blood oozed from the ears. We didn't continue, as it was obviously pointless and well beyond our capacity as first aiders.

Earwitnesses (no one had seen it - I learned later from police that he had jumped from a room in the apartments I was going to be staying in for the next 6 weeks), recounted a report like a gun shot, even though it's likely none of them had ever heard one in real life. The paramedics suggested it was likely the skill cracking on impact.

Until we started compressions, there was no visible blood (not even from the back of the head) and the body appeared wholly intact so after finding no breathing or pulse, we proceeded as trained. Internally, no doubt, it was a different story. It's likely the body also hit whilst horizontal, so there weren't any obvious broken limbs etc. And that's probably a key factor - the angle at which the body hits (or is hit).

10 storeys almost always results in death, even though it's not at terminal velocity - it's travelling at about 95 km/h.

So there's no single outcome with things like this. I had far more visible blood from being hit in the mouth with a cricket ball, for example.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

"Shattered pelvis" was in there so shattered bones would appear to be possible.

Some bones being shattered is certainly possible - you'll also have that happen in high speed collisions and the like. JulianLW was insisting that in such a fall, the only possible result was that all the bones were shattered into tiny fragments, and all the internal organs would be basically liquefied.

Originally Posted by JulianLW

And that body bag probably dispersed a good bit of the force as well.

That strikes me as unlikely. There's a heavy-duty, extra large bodybag on Amazon that lists its thickness as 12 mil. A mil is apparently 0.001". If said bodybag were made of Improved Ballistic Polymer, it would provide a whopping DR 0.9 against cutting/piercing, and against the crushing involved in a fall only DR 0.36. Heck, if it were made of TL12 Energy Cloth, it would provide all of DR 2.88.

Originally Posted by JulianLW

I think most of you guys are dramatically underestimating the damage of such a fall. The actual results of injuries such as gunshots and terminal falls are almost never to be seen anywhere in public, so people's notions about the effects are inevitably distorted by depictions in movies and TV.

I believe you are dramatically overestimating the damage of such a fall.