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Reptile tail damage


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Hi all,

Hits to arthropods legs and wings don't affect (too much) the total HPs or the functionalities of the creature. Shouldn't it be the same for the tail of reptiles? It can be rendered useless or even severed/maimed, but the creature shouldn't lose general HPs (maybe past the base hit points of the tail). What do you think? I thought this was the rule but actually I can't find it anywhere. 

Cheers,

Alex

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1 hour ago, Alexandre said:

Hi all,

Hits to arthropods legs and wings don't affect (too much) the total HPs or the functionalities of the creature. Shouldn't it be the same for the tail of reptiles? It can be rendered useless or even severed/maimed, but the creature shouldn't lose general HPs (maybe past the base hit points of the tail). What do you think? I thought this was the rule but actually I can't find it anywhere. 

Cheers,

Alex

As you found, it is not the rule. I don't think tails have ever been an exception.

And it's not " don't affect", it's a limit of GHP taking hit points rather than double hit points for legs.

The arthropod rule on legs is because they have so many that the general hit point idea will break down without the exception as written in the Bestiary.

I don't have a problem with tails as they are.  Have been running Stone and Bone recently and the combat results for scorpion man tails do not rub me wrong.

 

 

 

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I don't know, it's hard to believe that cutting off a lizard's tail would lead to its death by blood loss. In general I love hit locations for humanoids, but the more the target is exotic the more I feel I have to wing it. It would be useful to have damage guidelines for non human hit locations. I have survived 30 years without so it's probably not the most important thing, but it would be a nice to have in the next edition of the bestiary, for example... 

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52 minutes ago, Alexandre said:

I don’t know, it’s hard to believe that cutting off a lizard’s tail would lead to its death by blood loss.

Probably correct for lizards that can voluntarily discard that bit of tail. Maybe doesn’t generalise to all reptiles. Might be amusing to chop off a T. rex’s tail — presumably it would land on its face and be unable to get up again. Presumably …

NOTORIOUS VØID CULTIST

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5 hours ago, Alexandre said:

Hits to arthropods legs and wings don't affect (too much) the total HPs or the functionalities of the creature. Shouldn't it be the same for the tail of reptiles? It can be rendered useless or even severed/maimed, but the creature shouldn't lose general HPs (maybe past the base hit points of the tail). What do you think? I thought this was the rule but actually I can't find it anywhere. 

There are no specific rules that cover this. If you wish to change it in you games that's fine, although I wouldn't apply it to two-leggeds as they use their tail for balance. I'd suggest that they don't bleed to death if they drop their tail - it's a defence mechanism - and then they play dead.

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