How Much BODY does a human body have?

[Static UK]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

Clarification: The original question was about dissintegrating/ disolving corpses, not the effects of dissintegration on living things. The reason being I am creating a henchman for a nasty villain that 'cleans-up' after his boss. He basically destroys/ dissintegrates any corpses left using a nasty TK ability (needs concentration at 0 DCV & throughout use of the power) that only works on inanimate things (ie, not usable against living targets), corpses are inanimate. I was wondering about how much BODY a corpse would have because this would add a time constraint on the ability to dissintegrate a corpse, and may lead to the henchman being caught in the act by someone due to the full concentration required (ie, the more body a particular corpse has the longer it takes to dissingegrate it).

 

I'm tempted to go with the corpse having as much BODY as the victim had whwn alive (with some variance depending upon the source of that BODY, ie BODY through willpower doesn't count etc.)

 

Thanks for your help, and some interesting ideas. Any more?

[Sean Waters]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

Clarification: The original question was about dissintegrating/ disolving corpses, not the effects of dissintegration on living things. The reason being I am creating a henchman for a nasty villain that 'cleans-up' after his boss. He basically destroys/ dissintegrates any corpses left using a nasty TK ability (needs concentration at 0 DCV & throughout use of the power) that only works on inanimate things (ie, not usable against living targets), corpses are inanimate. I was wondering about how much BODY a corpse would have because this would add a time constraint on the ability to dissintegrate a corpse, and may lead to the henchman being caught in the act by someone due to the full concentration required (ie, the more body a particular corpse has the longer it takes to dissingegrate it).

 

I'm tempted to go with the corpse having as much BODY as the victim had when alive (with some variance depending upon the source of that BODY, ie BODY through willpower doesn't count etc.)

 

Thanks for your help, and some interesting ideas. Any more?

 

Go with 7 Body, then a 2d6 Body drain or KA will handily 'dissolve/disintegrate' any remains on an average roll'. In fact, I'd probably allow a lesser attack to dot he job, using a variation of the 'coup de grace' rules.

 

Or, for 11 points, something like:

 

Killing Attack - Ranged 1 point, Uncontrolled (+1/2), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Continuous (+1), Penetrating (x3; +1 1/2) (22 Active Points); Limited Power: only to destroy corpses Power loses about half of its effectiveness (-1)

 

or (for 20 points and assuming it is just for destroying the inanimate)

 

Major Transform 1 point (Corpse into component chemicals, Who the hell knows?), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Uncontrolled (+1/2), Penetrating (x2; +1), Continuous (+1) (20 Active Points)

 

That way the actually Body doesn't really matter - somewhere between 7 and 14 phases and the corpse is just a pile of component chemicals (depending on the process used).

 

Moreover the decay is interruptible (if you know how) because 'uncontrolled' needs some way to turn it off - that will depend on the particular sfx.

 

If they are just normals then you would not even need the 'penetrating'.

[Alibear]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

Am I correct in believing that a character falls unconscious when it reaches 0 BODY (the rulebook just says you begin to die' date=' 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.[/quote']

 

No, that was my point, David, Body and Stun are separate. You can bleed to death and still be conscious and active. You keep fighting till you either die or lose consciousness. Most people would stop and try and stop the bleeding but I wouldn't force that on heroic PC's.

 

Stun regulates consciousness and body regulates life.

[BobGreenwade]

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.

This was kind of my idea when I wrote for TUV (and edited somewhat by Steve; see page 188):

A Vehicle reduced to 0 BODY cannot move or function, but is not yet fully destroyed -- it can be repaired. A Vehicle reduced to negative its own BODY is destroyed ("totaled"), and cannot be repaired. However, at the GM's option, characters can salvage a few parts or some scrap metal. A Vehicle reduced to negative twice its BODY (for example, -20 for a Vehicle with 10 BODY) is smashed into so many little pieces it lacks any salvage value.

Originally I wanted to include a brief note suggesting that the GM could apply a similar rule to characters, but Steve quite reasonably vetoed it as not being really germane to the book's topic. However, the idea stands: you could rule that -(2X BODY) leaves nothing behind. Or, if it makes you feel more comfortable, you could say that -(2X BODY) leaves too little to resurrect or provide organ transplants, while -(3X BODY) is what's needed for total obliteration.

[TSandman]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

One must remember that Death is not the destruction of the Body, but only the end of the biochemical processes.

 

If you do enough damage to the "body" via poison, mental jackammering or chainsaws, you come to a point where those processes cannot self-sustain and stops, rendering the actual character "dead".

 

There IS physical evidence left behind tho, its condition depending on the SFX...

 

To leave "No evidence behind", one way you could be going is that you'd need only to render the target to -10 BODY if the attacks is targeting it's low level integrity (Disintegrator Gun, Strong Acid, Digestive Juices, Using TK to pry molecules apart, etc), -20 BODY if it's using more "normal" methods of killing (Gunning like mad to reduce the corps to pulp, slice it "Butcher Style" with a sword, Burn to ashes with Fire...

 

As for the less "physically interacting ways" of Poison, mind-destroying satellites etc, you'd still have a body with near perfect Integrity on your hands...

 

I remember a session in another system-game I've played a gadgeteer, I disposed of a corpse using strong bio-eating acids and a good old top-loading washer

[archermoo]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

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.

 

As Alibear noted, STUN and BODY are unrelated. There is no amount of BODY loss that will cause you to lose consciousness. If you lose enough obviously you'll die, but just from BODY loss you'll never go unconscious. In one high lethality game I regularly had a character operating at as much as -12 or -15 BODY (he had a BODY of 18).

 

We also played that not only did you have to take 1 STUN for every 1 BODY you took, but that you could never have less STUN damage on you than BODY damage. So for a character with enough BODY and/or little enough STUN you could be in a coma. I.e. have so much body on you that you couldn't be conscious.

[Alcamtar]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

There is no amount of BODY loss that will cause you to lose consciousness. If you lose enough obviously you'll die' date=' but just from BODY loss you'll never go unconscious.[/quote']

 

So... "dead but conscious"... that could lead to some interesting play!

[archermoo]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

So... "dead but conscious"... that could lead to some interesting play!

 

Yeah, but under most circumstances your are MUCH more likely to take STUN damage than BODY. So even if your STUN is a lot higher than your BODY, you'll still probably get KO'd before dying.

 

Probably.

[braincraft]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

Yeah, but under most circumstances your are MUCH more likely to take STUN damage than BODY. So even if your STUN is a lot higher than your BODY, you'll still probably get KO'd before dying.

 

Probably.

 

But it's (usually) a lot easier to recover from STUN than from BODY. And if you have nonresistant Damage Reduction, the gap gets pretty close.

[Kdansky]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

But it's (usually) a lot easier to recover from STUN than from BODY. And if you have nonresistant Damage Reduction' date=' the gap gets pretty close.[/quote']

 

That's quite a few "ifs" you are sporting there.

 

If you don't have nonresistant Damage reduction (note that resistant or none at all don't help much, and I exspect resistant to be the norm, because DR is mainly good against KA lotto, purely as "take some more hits" defenses, it's too expensive compared to plain PD/ED (or armor or whatever version you want)).

 

If nobody in your party has Healing. Rare occurence in any fantasy game, still not a terribly uncommon spell in supers games.

 

If you don't have regeneration for 8 points. Rare in fantasy, but extremly common in supers games. And those that don't sport it usually have very high resistant defenses (20/20 FF comes to mind, that holds off 4d6 KAs easily).

 

But getting stunned first is GOOD in hero. I really like it that I can risk to take some players down as a GM without spoiling the fun. Sure, sometimes someone really dies, but usually, some of them only go KO (and the others either run (+carry friends) or win). It was terribly annoying to me in GURPS that I had the GMing choice of either killing off a party member every second battle or making the battles totally trivial.

[archermoo]

Re: How Much BODY does a human body have?

 

But it's (usually) a lot easier to recover from STUN than from BODY.

 

Very true, which is the basic reason that it is possible at all to die before going unconscious. It is still for the most part VERY rare. BANG you're dead isn't particularly easy in HERO. BANG you're unconscious and are going to die real soon without help is much easier. Which is oddly enough pretty much how the real world works too.

 

And if you have nonresistant Damage Reduction' date=' the gap gets pretty close. [/quote']

 

Hasn't been my experience.