[Conditional Injury] Supplementary hit locations

[Kaslak]

Hi all,

I have started to work on using the Conditional Injury system together with the hit locations of all the supplements (Martial arts, low tech etc - Bruno has shared a very neat and comprehensive summary table).

I am curious if anybody did this already, and the approach followed.

While the severity thresholds convert to HP fractions easily, for each location there are interesting choices related to tracking its wounds separately as for a new location, just apply the wound as the "container" location with some extra effects, or extend the rules for the eye, in terms of, bleeding and injury accumulation, and gross effects, and last .

For instance the game can change if you consider a hit to the nose just a face hit, just adding that a Sev -4 the nose is broken, or that the nose is an independent body part with a gross effect modifier of +4 until crippled, because of bleeding and gross effects.

Bleeding modifiers for the new locations I think can be extrapolated by comparing the ones that the systems have in common

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Kaslak

For instance the game can change if you consider a hit to the nose just a face hit, just adding that a Sev -4 the nose is broken, or that the nose is an independent body part with a gross effect modifier of +4 until crippled, because of bleeding and gross effects.

To muddy the waters, some sorts of attacks "containerize" an injury to an extremity, others don't. For example, cutting damage to the nose partially or fully removes it. Crushing damage probably continues into the face and ultimately the brain.

You could create a mechanic for "overpenetration" for such hit locations. E.g., just like excess damage to the Eye with impaling goes to the Brain, excess damage to the Nose goes to the Face and ultimately the Brain.

If it's not a sure thing that excess damage continues on, just give it a chance of continuing on 1d, but apply the opposite chances from normal Face armor protections. E.g., nose armor normally protects the face on just 1 on 1d, so there's a 5 in 6 chance that excess damage from the nose goes to the Face.

Originally Posted by Kaslak

Bleeding modifiers for the new locations I think can be extrapolated by comparing the ones that the systems have in common

You can easily estimate bleeding rates based on distance from the hit location to the Vitals or the Brain. There are diagrams of gunshot wound location and estimated survival times.

If you want to get a bit more complex, estimate bleeding based on distance to a major artery or blood vessel.

In any case, the farther you get from the torso and the more you can isolate the wound the less severe the bleeding.

[Kaslak]

Hi, thanks for your inputs,

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

To muddy the waters, some sorts of attacks "containerize" an injury to an extremity, others don't. For example, cutting damage to the nose partially or fully removes it. Crushing damage probably continues into the face and ultimately the brain.

You could create a mechanic for "overpenetration" for such hit locations. E.g., just like excess damage to the Eye with impaling goes to the Brain, excess damage to the Nose goes to the Face and ultimately the Brain.

If it's not a sure thing that excess damage continues on, just give it a chance of continuing on 1d, but apply the opposite chances from normal Face armor protections. E.g., nose armor normally protects the face on just 1 on 1d, so there's a 5 in 6 chance that excess damage from the nose goes to the Face.

Something I think sometimes is overlooked is that in MA, if I recall correctly, it specifies that the cutting should be specifically angled to lop off the nose. I can imagine that if you swing sideways straight to the nose bone, with a not too strong character, a broken nose is still the likely output, while for a strong swing, potentially lethal face damage might happen. I'd say that the eye hit system, that is already in place, could be used, but I would not exclude cutting damage in general from affecting the face, basically as you suggest.

I think that in default GURPS style there is no need to track penetration to the brain - as you can kill someone with a mortal wound (Conditional Injury language) on the face, I think it is contained in the narrative that such an injury is deep and may have indirectly resulted in skull or neck damage, but I guess there is no need to track it. Other systems handle this differently and in detail, such as Trauma, but plugging it into all the details that MA already handles, by "staying Gurps-y" requires some effort.

However, what I was referring to more in detail is that, in Conditional Injury, if the nose is just a modifier to the Face, adding "broken/lapped off" nose for sufficiently severe wounds, it still requires roughly a 1/2 HP injury to cause a real face Maj.Wound, while crippling the nose (1/4 HP, or Sev. -4) once cripples it with the usual Maj.Wound effects. However, if the nose is an independent CI hit location with Gross Effect modifier of +4, it requires basically HP/8 to cause a major (nose) wound, that is negligible on the face, plus the nose in general is an extra source of bleeding to be accounted for independently from the face (as in CI).

This could be desirable, as a nose punch even insufficient strength to break it (1 dmg) can still result in a knockdown and stun of few seconds, and sounds about right. Furthermore it is basically negligible on the face (Severity < -6), leading to a nice emergent behavior. However doing this for all Martial Arts and Low Tech locations might be a lot of book-keeping, so I wonder if this would be intended by the authors, esp. considering that multiplying the number of hit location means to track bleeding for each one independently, and that some hit locations (i.e. abdomen) basically cease to exist in the random sublocation hit tables.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

You can easily estimate bleeding rates based on distance from the hit location to the Vitals or the Brain. There are diagrams of gunshot wound location and estimated survival times.

If you want to get a bit more complex, estimate bleeding based on distance to a major artery or blood vessel.

In any case, the farther you get from the torso and the more you can isolate the wound the less severe the bleeding.

The simples in that case for me would be to retro-engineer what the author from CI did and apply it to the other locations. Just numerically. I think I found it, still not ready to share the full table :)

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Kaslak

Something I think sometimes is overlooked is that in MA, if I recall correctly, it specifies that the cutting should be specifically angled to lop off the nose. I can imagine that if you swing sideways straight to the nose bone, with a not too strong character, a broken nose is still the likely output, while for a strong swing, potentially lethal face damage might happen.

That turns Nose hits with cutting attacks less into a random hit location and more the focus of a specialized Targeted Attack maneuver. RL cutting type attacks which hit from the bridge of the nose "down and/or in" produce truly awful, usually mortal, head injuries.

Originally Posted by Kaslak

I think that in default GURPS style there is no need to track penetration to the brain - as you can kill someone with a mortal wound (Conditional Injury language) on the face.

That's reasonable. The only reason to track penetration to the brain is for "insta-kill" type attacks. As long as you apply the Knockdown and Unconsciousness rules for head hits to all "face type" hits you're pretty well covered. Massive damage with a head hit is likely to be a fight ender and then bleeding, infection, etc. eventually finishes the victim off.

Originally Posted by Kaslak

This could be desirable, as a nose punch even insufficient strength to break it (1 dmg) can still result in a knockdown and stun of few seconds, and sounds about right.

Of course, on many creatures a hit to the nose has effects similar to a hit to the groin for males. Not quite Stunning, but certainly Severe Pain. That's why punching sharks or bears in the nose is a not-completely-insane self-defense technique and why cats can sometimes get dogs to back off with a well-placed swat to the schnoz. Not sure if that's modeled into the Martial Arts Hit Location, though.

Originally Posted by Kaslak

considering that multiplying the number of hit location means to track bleeding for each one independently, and that some hit locations (i.e. abdomen) basically cease to exist in the random sublocation hit tables.

Bleeding from different hit locations shouldn't be tracked independently. It should all be summed up into one overall bleeding rate. Not only does that make for simpler rules, it's also realistic. Blood lost from different hit locations is all blood that isn't in the right places to do its job.

[Kaslak]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Bleeding from different hit locations shouldn't be tracked independently. It should all be summed up into one overall bleeding rate. Not only does that make for simpler rules, it's also realistic. Blood lost from different hit locations is all blood that isn't in the right places to do its job.

Raw, if I remember correctly modifiers sum up with a global aggregate roll in MA, while (again, RAW) in Conditional Injury each location is rolled independently, but each one has usually a different modifier owing to the location and/or to the worst type of injury.

Summing up ratios in CI (if I understand correctly what you mean) would reduce bookkeeping (even though weighting different locations according to the modifiers would require some number crunching), but the consequence of increasing the number of locations still applies. If a pelvis wound is just an abdomen wound with a special effect (crippled leg on > HP/2, or Severity. -2), can result in would accumulation with other abdomen wounds, so possibly a severity increase (so increase severity, thus increase penalty on HT roll,) but at the same rate of loss (single roll in RAW also). With two sub-locations you would sum up the rates (or, RAW roll twice) for one abdomen and one digestive tract wound, for instance...

My take on this is as CI (RAW) increases already the number of rolls compared to MA, probably one should keep locations aggregated and treat sub-locations with special effects, unless results get wonky because of extreme differences (better imho to keep the arm vein arteries separate from arm and arm joints in terms of bleeding and gross effects applied) or if some interesting mechanics is sought for with the gross effect (e.g. the nose with low threshold for major and reeling wounds)

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Kaslak

(better imho to keep the arm vein arteries separate from arm and arm joints in terms of bleeding and gross effects applied)

True. Same for any other hit location where you can reasonably stop bleeding or otherwise isolate the injury using First Aid. Internal bleeding, fast or slow, is nasty because it requires Surgery skill by definition.

The only reason to track internal bleeding from different locations separately is if you're playing GURPS Trauma Surgery and someone needs to make an executive decision as to which bleeding injury to stop first. Even then, there's usually medical protocols for treatment priorities and it's fairly easy to determine which injury is the most life threatening based on amount, color and location of blood.