So, you all know that I love GURPS like a fat man loves fried chicken [Full Disclosure: I am a fat man; I adore fried chicken] but my love is not blind. There are issues with the best-written set of rules, and GURPS is not immune.
One of my biggest peeves is actually an artifact of a design decision from when the game was created. GURPS is designed to only require six-sided dice, and this leads to things like increasing number of dice to represent more powerful weapons - seems logical. If a .38 bullet does 2d damage, and a .44 Magnum does 3d, then of course a 5.56mm does 5d and a 7.62x51mm does 7d.
But there's a side effect to adding more dice - a rapidly increasing "damage floor" that doesn't reflect reality of bullet wounding. If the shooter rolls a hit, and the target fails to defend, he's going to take at least 7 points of damage from a 7.26mm bullet. There's no mechanism to do less. Any hit to the torso does 7 points on a really, truly terrible roll, and only goes up from there. So what if the bullet only grazes the target, or punches through and through?
There is no mechanism in the rules for this, but that just means that we need to start talking about house rules. Here's a set that I propose to give real flexibility, regardless of the type of attack.
If an attack roll successful and the defense roll is only just barely successful (rolling exactly the number needed), the attack does 1d of damage, with a maximum damage of the number of dice of the attack. Thus a flesh wound of this type from a .380ACP round does 1-2 points of damage, while a 5.56mm bullet does 1-5 points.
If an attack roll is just barely successful (rolling exactly the number needed), and the defense roll fails, the attack does exactly 1 point of damage. This is a graze or a nick.
If both attack and defense rolls are just barely successful, rolling exactly the number needed, no damage is caused to the target, but any secondary effects that require nothing more than touch can take effect (electrical damage, contact poisons, etc) and as a special effect clothing might be slashed or torn.
This can be applied to any attack, even swords and bows, to keep axes and crossbows from doing 6 or 7 points of damage at a minimum.
Thoughts? Does it pass the smell test? Does it feel realistic?
There is a mechanism, if the bullet only grazes then you can use hit location rolls. remember that hitting extremities and limbs has a max accountable damage that is equal to the damage the limb takes to be crippled. likewise when rolling the damage to sever a limb the damage taken is still equal only to the damage required to cripple it.
ReplyDeletethis is often used in conjuction with attacking whatever part of the body presents itself.
also you can use hit locations for gun fighting with cover(unless aim is used). for instance say I fire 3 rounds in my turn at the subject.scoring a possible hit for all three. then the gm can roll hit locations and any locations that are deemed covered thus hit the cover. the subject need only defend against a hit on an exposed body part.
two body parts (other than called shots like vital organs, heart and such) included on the hit locations table can score a killer wound, head which has a huge max damage (understandably) and torso.
some of this is covered in basic set