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Originally Posted by Nightshade

I think the degree of damage from a broken rib is probably greater than a D4 represents. If you've got a vest that _genuinely_ will stop the top output of a non-impaling handgun, the impaling one isn't liable to get much through either.

Example: Let's say you've got ballistic armor that stop 9 points, the max damage for a D8+1 handgun. If the weapon impales, it does 2d8+2--but it also gets a much flatter output because of the two die curve. Sure, under occasional results you can get as much as 18 points, but that's one in 64 results for something that only occurs one in 5 hits. Given the necessary coarseness of damage, that doesn't seem unreasonable to me (and I'd be very suprised if it doesn't mirror occasional top end results under those circumstances). The _average_ result will be about two points of damage, which easily lands in the "heavy bruising" category to me.

The problem is that with the impale rules the chances of doing 4, 5, 6 or 9 points through that armor are much higher than in real life.

Also, with CoC's new damage table, weapons like the ,.45ACP become penetrators, when in fact they are among the least effective against body armor.

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Yup. An interesting tact was taken if a fairly obscure old game called Space Quest was to have a die roll representing penetration and a damage multiplier you used on the penetrating points to get damage. It allowed you to easily distinguish between high penetration/low damage weapons and the inverse. Its downside was it did require multiplication in every damage result, and it only worked with a system that used a fairly large numerical value for damage tracking.

Interesting, but not vialbe for BRP. What could work would be something like giving weapons a PEN rating that is used to bypass armor. Heavy hitting weapon could get a condtinal damage mod that only applies to damage that get's through the armor, and only up to the amount that gets through.

FOr excample, a 9mm Parabelleuum could be 1D8, PEN +2, while a .45 could be 1D8, DAM +4. Against an unarmored person the .45 would get to add up to 4 [points extra damage (for damage rolls of 4 or greater), but against an armored foe the 9mm might be more effective.

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Of course part of that is that a large amount of most vehicle space is, in the end, little more than a box to hold things.

Yup. Probably 85% of most vehicles is filled up with air.

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Well, being me, I'd be prone to just going back to hit location, but I realize that's not a direction most people want to go to.

That wirks for me. Is there a hit location table for vehicles in BRP? If not, CORPS has a nice one worth swiping (it's d10, but double the ranges and voila, it works for BRP), and handles things in a manner that is compatible with BRP. You can hit the engine, controls, passengers, wheels, or even empty space.