How Much BODY does a human body have?

[Static UK]

I hope this isn't too weird a question but... How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

If a charcater has 10 BODY, he falls unconscious at 0 BODY, and eventually dies at -10 BODY. If someone wanted to get rid of the body by use of a disintagrator gun, acid, or whatever, how much BODY needs to be done to disintegrate/ disolve the body?

 

Thank you.

[Shaft]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

I would build a disintergration attack as a Major Transformation attack: transform matter into nothing, so you just need to do more damage than 2x his BODY.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

To some extent I would chalk this up to the Special Effects of whatever method you use. Dead is dead as far as the character is concerned, and apart from organ harvesting, some forensic evidence, and the occasional necromancy, the details aren't essential to quantify IMHO.

 

If you did want to quantify them, though, I would consider reducing the corpse to negative its starting BODY, x2, to be sufficient to completely disintegrate/dissolve it.

[Static UK]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

To some extent I would chalk this up to the Special Effects of whatever method you use. Dead is dead as far as the character is concerned, and apart from organ harvesting, some forensic evidence, and the occasional necromancy, the details aren't essential to quantify IMHO.

 

If you did want to quantify them, though, I would consider reducing the corpse to negative its starting BODY, x2, to be sufficient to completely disintegrate/dissolve it.

 

Forgive me, I'm not sure if I've understood correctly, but are you suggesting that a character with 10 BODY when dead at -10 BODY needs to reach -20 BODY to become dissolved?

 

I was wondering if it should be a flat additional 10 BODY to dissolve. Why should someone who is slightly fitter/ more healthy take more BODY to dissolve? I'm talking about (relatively) normal humans/ heroes here not strangely formed mutants/ aliens.

[rjcurrie]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

I think Static UK's question was actually about the corpse left behind once a character was dead.

 

I'd treat the corpse as an object that has the same BODY as the living being and has separate PD and ED instead of DEF. Assuming the special effect of the attack was something that would destroy the corpse, it would say it was destroyed when it hit BODY 0.

 

As an alternative, if you know that some of the dead character's BODY was from "will to live", you may want to reduce the BODY of the corpse.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

Forgive me' date=' I'm not sure if I've understood correctly, but are you suggesting that a character with 10 BODY when dead at -10 BODY needs to reach -20 BODY to become dissolved? [/quote']

 

Yes, that's it. Sorry I wasn't clearer.

 

I was wondering if it should be a flat additional 10 BODY to dissolve. Why should someone who is slightly fitter/ more healthy take more BODY to dissolve? I'm talking about (relatively) normal humans/ heroes here not strangely formed mutants/ aliens.

 

Well, BODY is a somewhat abstract concept which can subsume several factors. It's not just a matter of someone being fitter; more BODY can literally be someone with a bigger body, e.g. the average man versus the average woman, or a bodybuilder versus a marathon runner. OTOH a smaller person may indeed have as much BODY as a larger person due to overall fitness, denser muscle mass, good genetics etc.

 

However, once you start to weigh the various abstract concepts it becomes much harder to answer your "How much damage do I have to do?" question in a way that's applicable in game without subjective assessments by the GM, which would problematize any objective standard anyway. What I suggested was just one shorthand method which is consistent with the (admittedly simplified) game-mechanical way to determine point of death. If another standard makes sense to you, by all means you should use it.

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

If you look on the object BODY table, a 100kg object has 10 BODY. Now, it's a good bet that in the process of getting that way, a dead body has lost some bits. You kinda have to figure out how many kg of bits are left, and go from there.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

If you mean in general, the rules don't specify. If you you want to declare a universal "nothing left but empty boots" stage for your own games you can; just settle on what makes sense for the feel you want.

 

If you mean as the SFX of a particular attack then not leaving a corpse behind sounds like an effect to be modeled. As someone else mentioned Major Transform Person into Disintegrated Person is the way to go. All or nothing, have to get double the targets normal BODY all in one go. If successful, poof, no more person and no messy remains left behind. There are other ways, but they get pretty marginal.

[GamePhil]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

If you mean as the SFX of a particular attack then not leaving a corpse behind sounds like an effect to be modeled. As someone else mentioned Major Transform Person into Disintegrated Person is the way to go. All or nothing' date=' have to get double the targets normal BODY all in one go. If successful, poof, no more person and no messy remains left behind. There are other ways, but they get pretty marginal.[/quote']

 

Well, the rules specify that you can't use Transform to turn a living person into a dead person, so turning a living person into a disintegrated person is also marginal unless you mean it to be in combination with an attack that can actually kill them or for disintegrating the corpse after it's been killed.

 

Nevertheless, the way I would do it as long as I didn't mind there being reversal criteria for vaporized people.

[Outsider]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

If you look on the object BODY table' date=' a 100kg object has 10 BODY. Now, it's a good bet that in the process of getting that way, a dead body has lost some bits. You kinda have to figure out how many kg of bits are left, and go from there.[/quote']

 

Actually, a 100 kg object's BODY varies depending on the nature of the object.

 

Living/Vehicle : 10

Unliving : 7

Complex : 5

 

So once a person is dead, their BODY should become 7, if they are 100 kg.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

Well, the rules specify that you can't use Transform to turn a living person into a dead person, so turning a living person into a disintegrated person is also marginal unless you mean it to be in combination with an attack that can actually kill them or for disintegrating the corpse after it's been killed.

 

Nevertheless, the way I would do it as long as I didn't mind there being reversal criteria for vaporized people.

 

The rules also mention, or at least used to, that the cost of Major Transform is based on Killing Damage with the rationale that if you're going to kill them anyway you might as well do something creative instead.

 

{shrugs} YMMV

[braincraft]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

If you look on the object BODY table' date=' a 100kg object has 10 BODY. Now, it's a good bet that in the process of getting that way, a dead body has lost some bits. You kinda have to figure out how many kg of bits are left, and go from there.[/quote']

 

Unless that body got dead from a poison or heart attack or magic soul-rending spell.

[GamePhil]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

The rules also mention, or at least used to, that the cost of Major Transform is based on Killing Damage with the rationale that if you're going to kill them anyway you might as well do something creative instead.

 

{shrugs} YMMV

 

Yup, which is why I basically agree with you on how to do it. I've had characters with similar Powers before, and don't find it detracts anything from the game, but it is technically against the official rules.

[Alibear]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

he falls unconscious at 0 BODY

 

Thank you.

 

 

Eh? How long have you been away? You fall unconcious at -10 stun.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

I hope this isn't too weird a question but... How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

If a charcater has 10 BODY, he falls unconscious at 0 BODY, and eventually dies at -10 BODY. If someone wanted to get rid of the body by use of a disintagrator gun, acid, or whatever, how much BODY needs to be done to disintegrate/ disolve the body?

 

Thank you.

 

 

IMO, to completely "disintigrate" they body, the attack would have to be capable of doing the original Body of the person (when they were alive) in a single attack, or do continuous Body damage (which represents slowly eating away at the remains) or be built as a Transformation attack and change the corpse into something else (air?)

[archermoo]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

Eh? How long have you been away? You fall unconcious at -10 stun.

 

Actually you fall semiconscious when your STUN hits 0. You are still potentially dimly aware of your surroundings, and might even still be standing. The book describes it as being more of a deep stun. At -11 or less you are truly unconscious, unaware of your surroundings. In either state your OCV, DCV and ECV are reduced to 0.

[Sean Waters]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

Body is an interesting measure, left, I like to think, deliberately vague. If you think about it, the amount of damage something can take before being destroyed is going to depend to a huge degree on what is causing the damage: you could probably do hundreds of points of BODY to a piece of rope with a hammer and it is still recogniseably a piece of rope, even if it is functionally useless. Set light to it, however, and it is effectively destroyed with much less damage.

 

Arguably that is more of a function of defences than BODY, but, like I said, it is a matter for sfx more than anything else.

 

As to the OP question, human bodies are notoriously difficult to comlpetely destroy, but I'd prpbably base the ability to completely destroy something on sfx as much as anything. If you want to build a disintegrator gun, no matter how you build it, if you do BODYx2 damage to the target, then it is dead. One GM maight decide you then need to do additional damage to get rid of the remains, another might decide that the corpus is then disintegrated. I'd generally go for the latter: If I've kileld someone with a disintegrator gun, doing, even for an average starting character, 20 Body past defences, I don't want to waste time having to destroy the remains - they are gone - I've done enough damage to destroy an F15 Eagle, for goodness sakes.

 

Personally I like to do disintegrators with Body Drain (bear in mind that once someone is dead the Body damage no longer fades). That is just personal preference though.

 

One caveat: some cunning individuals like disintegrator guns on the basis that they prevent certain powers, noteably resurrection regeneration, from working; not necessarily - disintegration might not stop a vampire from re-forming itself, for instance - disintegration is no more - or less - uselful than any other sfx.

[Alibear]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

Actually you fall semiconscious when your STUN hits 0. You are still potentially dimly aware of your surroundings' date=' and might even still be standing. The book describes it as being more of a deep stun. At -11 or less you are truly unconscious, unaware of your surroundings. In either state your OCV, DCV and ECV are reduced to 0.[/quote']

 

David (Static) didn't mention semi-conscious, he said unconscious; so I corrected that. I don't know why you corrected me when you later went on to state what I originally said.

 

Colour me confused. ??

[archermoo]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

David (Static) didn't mention semi-conscious, he said unconscious; so I corrected that. I don't know why you corrected me when you later went on to state what I originally said.

 

Colour me confused. ??

 

Well, for one thing your number was off. You go full unconscious at -11, not -10. At -10 you are still semi-conscious.

 

Of course, all of that is beside the point that it is STUN that determines whether you go unconscious in the first place, rather than BODY as Static UK initially stated.

[Vondy]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

Once the character is dead I would adjudicate what happens to the body via special effects and common sense. I don't feel its something that needs to be modelled. "We drop it in a vat of hydrochloric acid," or "I fry it with my plasma blast until its reduced to smoking ash and human residue" are fairly straightforward and probably don't need numbers attached. Just decide if its possible and how long it takes and call it a day.

[Alibear]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

Well' date=' for one thing your number was off. You go full unconscious at -11, not -10. [/quote']

 

Fair point, well made.

[Kdansky]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

A human body has one body. That's obvious!

 

 

Why did nobody think of that before me?

[Static UK]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

A human body has one body. That's obvious!

 

 

Why did nobody think of that before me?

 

AAaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Static UK]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

David (Static) didn't mention semi-conscious, he said unconscious; so I corrected that. I don't know why you corrected me when you later went on to state what I originally said.

 

Colour me confused. ??

 

Naughty Alibear! I know about the STUN- semi/un/conscious thingy. My query was regarding BODY.

 

Am I correct in believing that a character falls unconscious when it reaches 0 BODY (the rulebook just says you begin to die, I assume you are not still up and about at 0 or negative BODY) although I have, for dramatic effect, allowed a charcter to crawl off to do some last heroic deed (ie, pressing the button that saves everyone else) before falling unconscious in the past.

[Static UK]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

Actually, a 100 kg object's BODY varies depending on the nature of the object.

 

Living/Vehicle : 10

Unliving : 7

Complex : 5

 

So once a person is dead, their BODY should become 7, if they are 100 kg.

 

Hummm. I'd just assumed this refered to inanimate objects (pg 449 H5rev), never thought that it could apply to corpses? However I think it sounds a little too simplistic, especially for super corpses! I think I'll use that for normals though.

 

Thanks.