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Originally Posted by Atgxtg
Most version of BRP that I've seen had the impale rule, and those that didn't (SB1) had higher damaged for missile ratings.
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As I recall, Ringworld didn't. And even those that did, I'm just suggesting that a single 2d+2 hit won't usually kill in systems that only track total hit points (especially if armor is present at all).
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Personally, I think the problem is that limb hits also cause total HP loss, and can kill. While having an arm or leg taken off can, and probably will kill someone, it won't do it right away. To be realistic, a rule like limb hit damage to total HP caps at location HP, combined with a bleeding rule.
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As I recall, it capped at twice limb hit points in RQ3 (and there was a bleeding rule of sorts). But honestly, as I said, people rarely died from total hit point loss in RQ1-3 in my experience; it could happen occasionally, but it was the single big torso or head hit that did them in, and the majority of those were from crits or impales (you did always get the single big conventional hit from an unparried attack by something with a huge damage bonus cases, but they weren't in the majority). Fact was, when a serious opponent was likely doing at least 1d8+1+1d4, it just didn't take much for a crit from it to kill you; there's enough linearity there that the torso or head locations were too vulnerable to gusting. Same situation with the 2d8+2 you'd get from most criticals from arrows.