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Old 07-05-2022, 07:17 PM   #1
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default should it be harder to strongly kick the face of someone who is biting your leg?

It seems like even if you could throw kicks w/ a leg that's grappled w/ a bite, you shouldn't be able to kick the face of the biter itself because the foot is always a tibia's length away from the thigh... so maybe you could kick some other part (ie if a zombie is munching on your right thigh, you could probably still stamp-kick that zombie's foot) but not the face that's biting you.

But what about the OTHER leg? Like for example, when we watch Batman using his left leg to kick a shark who is clinging onto his right thigh:

https://youtu.be/3_GiswPzVHk

He's technically able to do it, but at the weird angle you're obviously not going to be able to get the usual power of a kick. These are like "leg curl kicks" relying purely on the strength of your knee flexor muscles (hamstrings) which don't use the normal knee+hip extensors (quads+glutes) to generate power.

I don't know how hamstrung your kicks are in GURPS terms though, to accomplish the weird angle of essentially "using my left heel to kick my right thigh".

I think in 3e you needed Karate to kick in Close Combat at all (and it was -1 damage) otherwise you could only throw kicks @ reach 1... but in 4E as far as I know that restriction no longer applies and you can do full-power kicks in close combat no matter what?

But it seems like a situation like this should be penalizing your damage. Even if whatever you were trying to kick had such negligible strength that you shouldn't suffer ST or DX penalties from the angle (ie a mosquito landed on your thigh) it seems like damage and accuracy would be horrible in such a situation.

One idea I had for this would be to at least treat kicks as "Long Weapons in Close Combat" and maybe apply an extra -2 to skill when reach-1 feet are used in close combat?

If you're effectively getting -2 to DX it seems like maybe a -2 to damage could also be reasonable. Does that go too far, or not far enough?

Ultimately the damage penalty seems like it should be high enough that punching is a better option, explaining why Batman frees his hand and starts punching the shark in the face instead of continuing the pathetic low-force kicks.
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Old 07-05-2022, 10:52 PM   #2
Donny Brook
 
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Default Re: should it be harder to strongly kick the face of someone who is biting your leg?

Can you strike at all with a limb that is grappled?
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Old 07-06-2022, 02:46 AM   #3
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Default Re: should it be harder to strongly kick the face of someone who is biting your leg?

I'd say it depends. Have they bitten your leg and hung on (as Donny Brook points to with his question about grappling)? In that case, your leg would be grappled and you would not be free to attack with it. Or did they slash with their teeth and not hang on?
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Old 07-06-2022, 04:16 AM   #4
Plane
 
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Default Re: should it be harder to strongly kick the face of someone who is biting your leg?

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Originally Posted by Donny Brook View Post
Can you strike at all with a limb that is grappled?
in Basic Set no, but I think that limit might be softened in Technical Grappling because applying ST/DX penalties to a grappled limb wouldn't make much sense if the limb couldn't do anything
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Old 07-06-2022, 07:39 AM   #5
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Default Re: should it be harder to strongly kick the face of someone who is biting your leg?

Damage while being grappled should probably be reduced in most cases. For most grapples, you aren't going to have the room to manage a proper punch or kick, or even a stab or slash, even if the limb in question isn't actually grappled. IIRC, Technical Grappling gave a general reduction to ST from being grappled, and honestly that would probably be sufficient. Alternatively (or additionally), if using TG or FDG, consider allowing the grappling character to spend Control to reduce the damage of a strike by the grappled character, as an inverse of the option to use it to increase their own damage.
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Old 07-06-2022, 02:42 PM   #6
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Default Re: should it be harder to strongly kick the face of someone who is biting your leg?

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Damage while being grappled should probably be reduced in most cases. For most grapples, you aren't going to have the room to manage a proper punch or kick, or even a stab or slash, even if the limb in question isn't actually grappled. IIRC, Technical Grappling gave a general reduction to ST from being grappled, and honestly that would probably be sufficient.
Yeah the -1 to ST per 2 control is one of the TG things I love most. Also prefer deriving the DX penalty from the % of ST reduction.

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Alternatively (or additionally), if using TG or FDG, consider allowing the grappling character to spend Control to reduce the damage of a strike by the grappled character, as an inverse of the option to use it to increase their own damage.
Def an idea I like for emergencies, though not sure how much use it'd get since in a lot of cases it seems preferably to just keep CP on so you get free penalties every turn instead of a 1-shot penalty.

I think Physical Control Point spending would get more use if you allowed it to go temporarily higher than it's maximum but with those excess points fading away over time, so that there's more incentive to spend them since you'd lose them anyway.

That's one of the weird bits of TG where the maintenance of those grapples is effectively free and unfatiguing. When we merge it with Technical Grappling you only spend AP in adding or preventing the subtraction of the AP, but not in the passive hanging-on.

There's no passive mechanism of AP reduction for something like "the hobbit is dangling from the troll's arm" where the troll doesn't bother to try and shake the hobbit off (the -1 to ST is negligible because it has arm ST of 20), yet the hobbit is suspending his entire bodyweight from that troll, which shold fatigue the hobbit.

Maybe something like 'movement is a free Break Free' in an inferior way to the actual Break Free attack (like how you get free thrust walking through DR forcefields) or how you can in theory get free collision damage w/o taking a slam simply by trying to walk through someone's hex without using Evasion (I think this came up in the sampel combat me and Eric did couple years ago)
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Old 07-07-2022, 09:01 PM   #7
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Default Re: should it be harder to strongly kick the face of someone who is biting your leg?

Trying to bite someone's leg is probably a terrible idea in a street fight. I'm going to assume this is coming up as a result of some creature like a dog or wolf who is actually adapted for biting the legs. But even then, they usually don't bite and hold unless they can pin the prey down or it is greatly weakened. Because if they do bite and hold, they're opening themselves up to a nasty counterattack. Note that when a large dog bites a criminal or intruder, it is very common for the dog to get badly hurt or killed as the person starts stomping on its head with their free leg or hitting it with an improvised club. And this is untrained thieves and fighting back.
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Old 07-08-2022, 04:30 PM   #8
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Default Re: should it be harder to strongly kick the face of someone who is biting your leg?

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Trying to bite someone's leg is probably a terrible idea in a street fight. I'm going to assume this is coming up as a result of some creature like a dog or wolf who is actually adapted for biting the legs.
I'm trying to puzzle out (in terms of GURPS stats) if they actually are...

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Originally Posted by seasalt View Post
But even then, they usually don't bite and hold unless they can pin the prey down or it is greatly weakened. Because if they do bite and hold, they're opening themselves up to a nasty counterattack.
yeah though that could depend on the target and how you are oriented to your foe

ultimately if you are able to keep a bit foot airborne, if the other foot was used to kick the dog, the prey would fall down, so at that point it might be worth risking getting kicked when you're guaranteed a posture change that prevents the prey from running away, especially if it's something like a wolf pack bringing down a deer or a lion pack bringing down a gazelle.

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Note that when a large dog bites a criminal or intruder, it is very common for the dog to get badly hurt or killed as the person starts stomping on its head with their free leg
If the bitten leg is bearing weight (foot is planted) then yeah you could throw a kick.

If however the bitten leg has it's foot held airborne by the dog pulling at it, if you couldn't set that foot down, you'd have to do something like a jump kick or drop kick, which risks falling down into a lying posture, to land that kick.

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Originally Posted by seasalt View Post
or hitting it with an improvised club. And this is untrained thieves and fighting back.
Even without an improvised club you could also just throw a punch.

Dogs are pretty low to the ground so I don't know if some measure of this MA99 rule might come into play when throwing punches:
Punches and attacks with close-combat weapons (reach C) against enemies who are lying down require the attacker to stoop into a near-crouch, which gives -2 to hit.
I think a standing dog would have their head higher than a lying human though, so there's probably not a -2 to hit, but I could see maybe doing a -1.

MA99 doesn't seem to actually deal with standing punchers targeting low hit locations. Obviously a foot planted on the ground is at a height comparable to a lying foe (possibly even lower?) and ought to at least also require the -2 DX stoop to hit too.

You could make adjustments for raised legs of course - a knee or shin or foot of a chambered leg (lifted off ground) should be easier to reach (don't need to crouch) compared to a planted leg.
(the thigh conversely might be harder to hit with straight thrust attacks, you might need to use swing or wrapshot since the thigh is behind the shin)
Going from the idea that punching and hand-parrying have similar reach considerations, we can take into account that the Low-Line Parries optional rule adopted for realism, that MA124 applies it "to parry an attack on his legs or feet if using a hand or a reach C weapon."

If it is -2 to parry (effectively -4 to combat skill or untrained DX) to place your hand in the path of an attack on your "leg" (this would include upper thigh superior to the knee) a mere -2 to skill to hit lower-than-thigh enemies (any part of a Lying Foe, or the Foot of a Standing Foe) seems overly generous.

I was actually thinking a cascade of -1 for standing foes to rapidly crouch deeply enough to punch various lower body locations: assuming -0 to hit the chest (ribcage), you could do -1 to punch the abdomen (Instant Armor 15 says Groin/Vitals/Pelvis are sub-locations, so -1 for them too, in addition to the usual -3 penalty, -4 total) -2 for thighs, -3 for knees, -4 for shins, -5 for feet

You then modify this basic -5 to punch a planted foot (a lower crouch requirement) if the foot is lifted to perform kicks or Leg Parry, depending on the height of the target they were kicking or Leg Parrying.

For example: if my foe just kicked his steel-toed boot into my ally's shin, his steel-toed boot is now at shin-height so I could punch it at -4 to hit instead of the usual -5, meaning I only need to deal with -8 to hit instead of the usual -9 to hit

though it might be smarter to punch him in the shin (-2 to hit, like the thigh) since summing with the modified -3 to hit (reduced from the usual -4) would only be a total of -5 to hit (plus the shin is unarmored, the steel-toe show has DR 2 or something)

- -

back to dogs though, the torso of a dog is probably at knee height so it should be -3 to hit most parts of them, maybe -4 to hit their knees (instead of -3) and the usual -5 to hit feet (feet are always equivalent to lying)

-2 to punch lying foes while remaining standing sounds just way too easy, most people will drop to a kneeling or crawling position to do that! Something like -5 better suits the athleticism needed to do that while being able to bounce back to a standing posture easily.
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