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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ The existence of hitpoints proven

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Apr 25 2006, 10:14 PM

This is an exerpt from a book on predictive psychology I found from 1997. It has many anecdotes and stories for an easy read. Just for your sick amusement and wonderment I'm typing up a paragraph in it about how a Judas Priest obsessed kid tried to kill himself with a sawn of shotgun but only blew his jaw off and lived for a while afterwards.

It just goes to show that even the almighty headshot is not necessarily an instapwn. Sniffle.

The way I see it the only way this could have happend was with hitpoints. I just don't see how an unarmored man could take a called shot at power 10+ at base damage S upgraded to D and not go and die. Oh no, D20 wins.

QUOTE

In his less than enthusiastic positioning of that shotgun in his mouth, he failed to kill himself but succeeded at creating an unsettling irony: He became as frightening to behold as anything that ever appeared on the cover of a Judas Priest album. In his hesitation to murder himself, James shot off the bottom of his face. His chin, jaw, tongue, and teeth were all gone, blown around the churchyard. I cannot describe how he looked and I also cannot forget it. I've seen my share of alarming autopsy photos, of people so injured that death was the only possible result, people so injured that death was probably a relief, but something about James Vance living in a body damaged more than enough to be dead was profoundly disturbing.

Even lawyers who thought they'd seen it all were shaken when he arrived at depositions, a towel wrapped around his neck to catch saliva that ran freely from where the bottom of his face had been.

Source: De Becker, Gavin. "The Gift of Fear." Little, Brown, and Company 1998. ISBN 0440226198

Posted by: Ancient History Apr 25 2006, 10:20 PM

Ah, the real-life version of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arseface.

In Shadowrun, one would either call this a last-minute Hand Of God (maybe he failed his Willpower test after listening to Judas Priest but wanted to survive?) or a Glitch on a Called Shot.

Posted by: Kanada Ten Apr 25 2006, 10:20 PM

Hand of God? Anyway, Bizarre magazine had a picture of a British guy with a inoperable brain tumor who decided to blast his brains out with a pistol. Somehow, so the article goes, he managed to blow the tumor out and still lived.

Posted by: James McMurray Apr 25 2006, 10:21 PM

Sounds more like a critical glitch to me.

Posted by: hyzmarca Apr 25 2006, 10:30 PM

It didn't say how long he lived after being shot. It is possible that the God simply forgot to use the deadlier overdamage rules so the shot couldn't be staged past D. So long as your stabalized you can sleep off a D wound.

Posted by: FanGirl Apr 25 2006, 10:31 PM

I was going to post about how an article I read for class about "social capital" reminded me of the contacts system in SR, but this is just ghastly. Jesus.

Posted by: Austere Emancipator Apr 25 2006, 10:32 PM

Have you seen "motorcycle.jpg" (which has nothing to do with motorcycles) at Rotten.Com? vatican.rotten.com is down right now so I can't link to it.

Also there's http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12425803/.

Posted by: FanGirl Apr 25 2006, 11:17 PM

QUOTE (Austere Emancipator @ Apr 25 2006, 05:32 PM)

Also there's http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12425803/.

Yeah, a lot of people survive nail gun accidents with little to no ill effects, because the nails are so thin and the nails shoot in so fast. I once read a newspaper story about a guy who accidently shot himself in the head with a nail gun and didn't even realize it until he went to the dentist for what he thought was a toothache.

EDIT: I found "Motorcycle" on http://www.rotten.com/faq/ You'll have to scroll down to see it.

Posted by: emo samurai Apr 25 2006, 11:18 PM

The kid may have been the inspiriation for Arseface; he does predate him by a few years.

Posted by: hyzmarca Apr 25 2006, 11:32 PM

At this point I'd like to point out to all GMs that characters should not take wound modifiers for severed testicals.

http://www.snopes.com/risque/penile/scrotum.htm

Posted by: Shrike30 Apr 25 2006, 11:58 PM

I was reading a book written by an NYPD robbery detective whose name escapes me. One of the incidents he tells of (that drove him to later start developing more effective ammunition than the round-nose .38 FMJ that was the "standard round" for the NYPD at the time) was an encounter between two officers and an armed robber at a store the officers had been staking out (waiting for someone to try and rob it). The officers had already taken off their vests and put their shotguns into cases, and so when the robber turned and fired into one of their chests at a couple of feet, they both emptied their guns into his head, 11 rounds of .38 fired between two carry revolvers.

The robber fell to the floor, and the partner of the officer who'd been shot started looking him over for injuries, but couldn't find any. After a minute, they realized the robber had been armed with a starter's pistol, and started to feel bad about having killed him when he wasn't really armed.

At which point the robber sat up, wiped some blood out of his eyes, and coughed, propelling a slug out of his nose, then asked one of them for a handkerchief. None of the slugs had penetrated his skull, simply due to their round nose and the angles they struck at. It made a mess of his skin and hair, but didn't actually penetrate to anything vital.

Posted by: HMHVV Hunter Apr 26 2006, 12:20 AM

QUOTE (Shrike30)

Good Christ - that's pathetic! Arming the cops with that junk? Jeez.

Out of curiosity, when did they replace that ammo?

Posted by: Shrike30 Apr 26 2006, 02:09 AM

My understanding is that the NYPD switched from .38 wheelguns to 9mm semiautomatics around 1983-1985. The .38 had been used for decades prior to that.

9mm isn't really a significant upgrade ballistically from .38 Special, you just have the ability to carry 15+ rounds in a semiauto rather than the 6 of most revolvers, and reloading is significantly faster. A lot of police departments have upgraded to (or are considering) .40 S&W for their duty pieces in the last couple of decades, as they feel the need for a more powerful round.

Posted by: Calvin Hobbes Apr 26 2006, 05:35 AM

Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets describes a shootout between the FBI and a criminal that ended with the guy having an obscene number of bullets put into him and escaping for a couple of blocks before dying.

Posted by: Voran Apr 26 2006, 07:28 AM

QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)

Man, its probably a good thing they saw the nails and and didn't yknow, stick him in the MRI machine first.

Posted by: Austere Emancipator Apr 26 2006, 10:56 AM

QUOTE (Shrike30)

9mm isn't really a significant upgrade ballistically from .38 Special [...]

From a barrel of the same length, it's about 100 more ft-lbs at the muzzle: ~250 vs. ~350 with standard loads from a 4" barrel. Not a huge leap, but perhaps significant.

Does the story tell if they were using snubnose revolvers? In any case, that guy was insanely lucky. Even a round-nosed, ~120 grain FMJ at ~800fps should handily penetrate a human skull at a smaller angles of incidence. And the "slug out of his nose" thing is not very credible.

QUOTE (Shrike30)

A lot of police departments have upgraded to (or are considering) .40 S&W for their duty pieces in the last couple of decades, as they feel the need for a more powerful round.

That and .45 ACP. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I should note that going from .38 Special FMJs to 9x19mm JHPs is already a huge leap forward in terminal effect. In comparison, going from the latter to .40 S&W JHPs is a rather minor increase in lethality.

Posted by: Kremlin KOA Apr 26 2006, 03:06 PM

QUOTE (Kanada Ten)

Mr lucky could do it

Logic 2 -1for not skilled in surgery -2 for inappropriate tools... - others for other stuff but we hit long shot territory already

*Bang*

Mr lucky cures his own cancer with a bullet

and because of the seriously funky nautre of something like that gets the spent edge back

Posted by: The Other DSE May 2 2006, 02:06 AM

I think that the best description of damage I've ever seen was in a game called Millenium's End. The overall game was pretty good, although it was like Champions in how long it took to create a character and set up a game.

However it was interesting in that it separated the body into about 25 different damage locations (left/right shoulder, left/right chest, head, neck, stomach, groin, etc). The point being that there was only one location in which one could inflict insta-death. Not the head, the neck. Now having said that, as I recall if you inflicted massive trauma to several of the other vital areas your life was measured in seconds, but I always thought it was kind of interesting.

Of course, I remember having an argument with a player when I was running a Vampire:The Masquerade game. His vampire got his head blown clean off by a shotgun held at the base of his skull (he was a captive and tried to be a "hero" when he should have just held still). His argument was "the damage wasn't aggravated" (i.e. mystical, fire based, or something like that). My response was simply "Man, I think decapitation is aggravation enough."

Posted by: Crusher Bob May 2 2006, 09:09 AM

That's the face + neck, not just the neck. That hit location went from about the tops of the eyes down to the ends of the collarbones... ME also had pretty good systems for bleening, 'eventually fatal' wounds, limb incapacitation, and more.

Posted by: Austere Emancipator May 2 2006, 11:33 AM

http://poetry.rotten.com/failed-mission/failed-mission.jpg (WARNING: there's brains in this picture) looks like he's been shot above the eyes, and I think we can safely say that his wound was instantly fatal.

Posted by: Konsaki May 2 2006, 11:51 AM

That was with a 50Cal sniper rifle from a mile away, if the stories are right. Heh, hate to be someone nearby cause you would have greymatter all over the place.

Posted by: Austere Emancipator May 2 2006, 12:37 PM

If it's a very long range shot, then it probably is from a .50 BMG, which makes it one hell of a lucky shot. From within a few hundred meters, a single 7.62x51mm FMJ should be capable of that effect. As should any rifle caliber bullet within that range if it yaws right after impact.

Posted by: Tanka May 2 2006, 03:23 PM

Can we please not link to Rotten.com? Sure, the description of the thread says "not for the squeamish", but a lot of those photos are NSFW in any case.

At least put a gore warning or somesuch for those who can't afford to be caught looking at such pictures.

Posted by: The Other DSE May 2 2006, 03:56 PM

Thanks for the clarification Crusher Bob. I didn't have the book in front of me at the time.

I still don't have the book near me (maybe I'll grab it this evening and look at it again), but it may have been that the top of the head also had an eventual "insta-death" result. If it did though, it wasn't as "easy" as the neck region.

Now mind you, from what I recall of the system, I expect a major trauma to the top of the head would give you almost no time to live, and you'd be unable to do anything due to shock (or some mechanic like that) for that remaining time.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 2 2006, 11:09 PM

QUOTE (Shrike30)

I believe the NYPD loads 9mm JHP now. Meaty mushrooms all the way.