8,347
edits
Chunky Salsa Rule: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
m (Mass update links) |
No edit summary |
||
| (10 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
[[File:
▲'''"Any situation that would reduce a character's head to the consistency of chunky salsa dip is fatal, regardless of other rules."'''
An exception to the [[Hit Points]] system common to virtually all role playing games, in that massive head trauma is automatically lethal to a character regardless of the number of hit points they have. This is a fairly common house rule in many [[Tabletop Games]] groups, but a few systems have it explicitly built in, particularly those on the cynical side of the [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]].
The
The [[Chunky Salsa Rule]] exists specifically to avoid [[Critical Existence Failure]]. Compare [[Boom! Headshot!]].
Please note that this trope is not about the splatter itself. For that, see [[Ludicrous Gibs]].
{{deathtrope}}
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* In ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'', [[The Medic|Konoka]] warns the rest of the heroes that she can't heal them if they get their heads squashed like a tomato.
* [[Mobile Fighter G Gundam|"Article One of the Gundam Fight International Regulations; A unit who's head section has been destroyed, is disqualified!"]]
== Tabletop Games ==
* [[Trope Namer]]: ''[[Shadowrun]]'' actually has a rule ''named'' "the chunky salsa effect", although it deals with the effect of explosives in enclosed spaces, rather than massive head trauma. The end results are, of course, similar. Note, though, that the "chunky salsa effect" is actually named after a WWI/WWII tactic in which fragmentation or concussive grenades would be thrown into a tank. The armor of the tank causes the force or shrapnel to "rebound" within the chamber, drastically increasing the effectiveness of the grenade. What's left inside the tank afterward resembles...yeah.
** This leads to the Chunky Salsa Grenade, which exploits this effect by combining an ordinary frag grenade with a powerful (but short-duration) Force Wall spell. This creates a closet-sized, contained explosion, to hideously lethal effect. It is specifically noted that the ''top'' of the cylinder is open, leading to a rain of gore.
*** And now there's a grenade that uses the force wave mechanic classified as a [[Blatant Lies|nonlethal weapon]], it releases a force wave that does stun damage that reflects off of a surface
* The [[Arms Law]] combat system used by ''Role Master'', ''Space Master'', and ''[[The History of Middle Earth|Middle Earth]] Role Playing'' had a elaborate critical hit/miss system that included numerous automatically lethal injuries. One of the more humorous entries was for a piercing injury -- "Strike through ear destroys brain. The unfortunate lummox dies instantly, and any ear wax is removed."
** Another hilarious, though wince-inducing result from a crushing injury (don't remember exactly where it was) was "Blow to [[Groin Attack|foe's groin]] pulverizes the pelvis and any squishy bits. Foe is immobilized and unable to do anything except writhe in pain for THIRTY rounds, then dies as a relief."
* Though noted for a system that increases hit points for every level, ''[[Dungeons
** In 3rd Edition it forces a Fortitude save if a character suffers massive damage, which is any single attack or other source of damage (such as a long fall) that does fifty or more [[Hit Points]] of damage to a character. Failing the save kills the character regardless of hit points. Of course, by the time any character reaches the point where 50 [[Hit Points]] of damage isn't sufficient to kill them, they're likely to have a fairly decent fortitude save.
*** Averted for constructs, plants, undead and other creatures without discernable anatomies though, along with them being immune to [[Back Stab|sneak attacks]] and [[Critical Hit|critical hits]].
Line 31 ⟶ 30:
** 1st Edition apparently did not have this rule. Second Edition did have an "Inescapable Death" clause (if "50-ton ceiling descending to crush him") and similar rule which forced any character who suffered more than 50 HP damage in a single attack to make a System Shock roll.
*** The phrasing of this rule creates the amusing image of [[The Grim Reaper]] forgoing [[Chess with Death|the usual chess match]] in favour of a [http://xkcd.com/393/ d20].
** 2nd Edition's ''Player's Options
*** Amusing and partly on-topic, it was also possible to deal triple damage even ''
{{quote|
4: Knockdown, stunned for 1d4 rounds [...]
12: Torso crushed, victim killed
13+ : As 12 above ''with tripled damage dice'' }}
*** ''Player's Options: Spells & Magic'' did the same for spell effects, but with multiple hits taken from area effects, and uber- Severity also affected how much of body was left (which can be important for resurrection):
{{quote|
4: Victim singed, -1 to attack rolls [...]
12: Abdomen incinerated, immediate death
13+ : As 12 above with additional torso or leg hit (50% chance of each) }}
**
** In d20 Modern, which uses many rules from D&D, the Massive Damage Threshold is much lower, equal to the character's Constitution, though it can be increased by the feat Improved Damage Threshold. A failed save, however, only drops a creature to -1 hit points. This rule is there to make gunshot wounds dangerous regardless of level.
** They also have Vorpal Blades. Regardless of how many hit points you have, removing your head will kill you (Unless you're a zombie or golem or something else that isn't strictly speaking alive to begin with or have extra heads)
** There are also Illithids, who can extract the brain of an enemy when grappling (assuming it has one, and actually uses it - Zombies, Golems and such are excluded again) as an instant-kill and an snack between meals.
* While most models in any given ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' or ''[[Warhammer
** Averted for anyone with the "Eternal Warrior" special rule.
** The above is only 40K. In WFB many high-strength attacks do a random (usually D3 or D6) amount of damage instead. Which means yes, a level 1 mage with 2 wounds can survive being hit with a cannonball. Chariot bodies, on the other hand, go pop when hit with one. There's also an Instant Death rule - Killing Blow - in FB, but that is a special rule, not a general one.
Line 48 ⟶ 51:
** Taken to ridiculous extremes with the Apocalypse Rules in 40k, where many weapons forgo the normal "to wound" and "Armor Save" rolls, because they ''atomize whatever they hit!'' Appropriately, these weapons also have a huge blast radius. This can even turn the most heavily armored vehicles and Star-Gods into (metal)chunky salsa in one blast.
*** Even without Apocalypse rounds, some weapons like the [[Tele Frag|shokk attack gun]] can [[Critical Hit|randomly]] kill any infantry in the blast radius (though it may just as randomly have said blast radius around the shooter), or a particularly angry [[The Ogre|Ogryn]] can one-shot a Commissar who executed the wrong guy.
* ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]]'' and ''[[Dark Heresy]]'' has a few instant-kill conditions (mostly involving magic or psychic powers), but they are rare: Because most characters in both settings are very fragile, there is little point to an instant-kill caveat because any attack with a reasonable strength will kill anyway. What they ''do'' have, however, are effects on massive damage on the player characters' bodies. Especially ''[[Dark Heresy]]'' (''WHFRP'''s are more random), where any attack in excess of your wounds +10 kills you in a way that ensures at least one exploding body part. A [[
* The ''[[Serenity]]'' role-playing game has a rule: if you take damage equal to twice your Wound Points, the character's dead without even a prayer. Also, [[Thrown Out the Airlock|getting tossed into "the Black" (outer space) without a spacesuit]] is certain death, the assumption being the victim isn't going to get picked up. The book jokes that if a player insists on damage measurement for being spaced, the GM should pick up every die on the table, roll them, and count the results as wounds.
* The ''Call of Cthulhu'' RPG:
** If Cthulhu himself appears, he eats 1D4 investigators ''per round'', with no saving throw of any kind. You get a roll to survive so long as there are 1d4+ 1 in the party. Technically, Cthulhu does have a damage roll, but he rolls more dice than humans can get hit points.
** The Dhole (the impossibly huge Lovecraftian worm monster, not the wild dog) has an attack where it just crawls over the character. If they are actually hit by this, the only roll they're entitled to is a Luck roll to see if there's enough of them left to fit in a
** Yig the snake god has a bite attack causing "1d8 damage + ''Instant Death''". Which is more sensible than it sounds, as if you block his bite with a weapon then the weapon will take 1d8 damage. If he bites you somewhere armoured then 1d8 may not be enough to actually bite into your skin. Once you take
** In the d20 variation of Call of Cthulhu, if your character ever takes ten or more damage from any one attack you must make a fortitude save against instant death.
* In ''[[GURPS]]'', if a character hits -10 times their maximum HP, their body is destroyed utterly if at all plausible for the damage source, and if not they're not just dead, but in terrible
** ''[[GURPS]]'' also mentions the example of being held down and
** Amusingly, creatures with Supernatural Durability can pretty much only die this way.
** Beheading is also instant death unless you have no head to begin with or have extras.
Line 62 ⟶ 65:
* In another Steve Jackson game, Car Wars, the "confetti" rule specifically exists describing the effects of a car being hit [[For Massive Damage]]: the car is removed from the map, a quantity of debris counters proportional to the car's weight are selected, and the counters are dropped from a given height over the former position of the car.
** What's fun about that rule is that the confetti is treated as obstacles for the remaining vehicles. So while it can be quite satisfying to completely shred an opponents vehicle, the end result is that you've made things harder on yourself.
** Arguably applies to characters in cases of steamrolling, where a large vehicle just drives over a small one. Going by the rules, say an 80,000
* In the classic ''Cyberpunk 2020'' taking more than 8 points of damage to any extremity would cause its loss, and losing one's head in this way was instantly fatal, no save. Another rule said that any damage to a character's head was doubled, and most weapons did about 20-30 points of damage per average hit. Suffice to say, a helmet was a smart investment.
** Even the punches of any reasonably skilled martial artist (skill 4 or above) are enough to invoke this rule and kill you automatically on any hit to the head.
* No matter how much armor a 'Mech carries elsewhere in [[BattleTech]], it cannot carry more than 9 points in the head. That plus the 3 points of internal structure means that it takes only 12 damage to destroy the head. And the head is where the cockpit is. Where the pilot sits. Do the math. There are a number of weapons that are capable of delivering rather more than 12 damage to a single location. Fortunately, you only hit the head on a 2d6 roll of 12, but ''any'' attack has that 1:36 chance of hitting the head.
** Three hits to the engine is also guaranteed death: the fusion engine shuts itself down to prevent a catastrophic explosion. Standard engines take up 6 slots, but they were all in the center torso (behind the heaviest armor, unless you get hit from behind). Extra-Light engines take up half the weight of standard engines, but add an additional 6 slots (four if it's Clan-tech). And these slots are in the side torsos, which are more vulnerable.
Line 97 ⟶ 100:
* ''[[Deadlands]]'' tracks damage by location; 5 damage points to the head or guts is fatal, 5 damage points to a limb means it's chopped off or crushed or otherwise busted-and-will-not-heal. There's also a "gizzards" result, which counts as worse damage to the guts (the attack hits a vital organ, not just muscle or bone).
* Inverted in ''[[World Tree RPG|World Tree]]'', Life Points are God: an arrow through your eye into your brain won't kill you instantly (usually), but will hurt like hell and cost you the use of that eye (until you get it magically repaired).
* In the d20 Stargate setting, a character who was merely dead could be brought back via any combination of the Sarcophagus or other random applied phlebotinum the GM allowed, unless said character was reduced to -
* Extras in ''[[Exalted]]'' instantly die if hit with an attack that has seven dice after soak is removed. (Technically, this is because of their lack of narrative importance and resultant fragility, but the effect is the same.) UnExalted characters may also be targeted by a number of powers and abilities that automatically kill as a free action.
* The 3rd party parody product Fire And Brimstone: a Guide to Lava, Magma, and Superheated Rock promises to have rule sets which take into account the full complexity of lava and magma in all its forms. The rules promise they are completely compatible with all gaming systems. After a few pages of background information on lava and magma, you can find this gem. "If you fall into lava, you die. No save." There is a sidebar: "If you fall into lava and you are immune to fire, you don't die." The rest of the guide consists of charts and diagrams for those too thick to get it.
Line 103 ⟶ 106:
* The 1980s FASA ''[[Doctor Who]]'' roleplaying game included the rule "Disintegrated characters cannot regenerate"
* In ''[[Mekton]]'', the rules for nukes are heavy on this sort of thing; if you're in the hex where it goes off, you're dead. The same applies to supernovae, except that every hex within about 100 AU of the star is treated as 'where it goes off'.
== Video Games ==
* Action games typically make [[Boom! Headshot!|the head]] a weak spot [[For Massive Damage]], regardless of the enemy's other protection (except some sort of sparkly all-surrounding shield, which would have to be knocked down).
** ''[[Unreal Tournament 3|Unreal Tournament III]]'' has a Helmet pickup, which protects the wearer from a single headshot. Since the sniper rifle, the only stock weapon capable of inflicting headshots, does 200 damage or so with a headshot, you're paste if you don't have that helmet. That said, all of the [[Unreal]] games do have the all-over shields (the only armor pickups in [[Unreal Tournament 2004|UT2003 or UT2004]], special pickups on top of conventional armour in all other games) which absorb damage, including headshots, until depleted.
** ''[[Gears of War]] 2'' is notable in that the
** In ''[[Perfect Dark]]'''s story missions, headshots to unshielded enemies (and friendly NPCs) are always instantly fatal, even if the player has used the game's [[Harder Than Hard|customizable "Perfect Dark" difficulty setting]] to increase enemies' health to 1000%.
* In the ''[[Baldur's Gate]]'' series, characters who take amount of damage significantly higher than their current hit point total, or suffer a one-hit kill due to obscene damage or a vorpal weapon, will often be "chunked" (i.e., explode messily). While this is simply a cooler death animation for your enemies, allied characters who get chunked on harder difficulty levels can't be resurrected and force a reload - and better tactics the next time around - if you want to keep them in your party.
** Ditto for characters who fail their saving throw against the spell 'Disintegrate'; no matter how much health you had left, if you blow that roll, you ([[Disadvantageous Disintegration|and your equipment]]) are dust in the wind.
* In ''Wasteland'', a [[After the End|post-apocalyptic]] [[Role
** [[Spiritual Successor]] ''[[Fallout]]'' continues the tradition; [[Critical Hit
*** Instant death critical hits, which are the highest result from the critical hit table, can also happen if you do 0 damage in ''[[Fallout]]'' and ''[[Fallout 2]]''. This can lead to a [[Game Breaking Bug]] since the game engine will consider the character dead, meaning that you can no longer interact with him/her, but scripting which depends on the death of the said character will not fire. Examples include the boxing ring in Fallout 2 where the fight will never end if you kill your opponent with a 0 damage instant death critical.
*** In ''[[Fallout 3]]'', the aforementioned perk is the [[Rule of Cool]] taken to [[Serial Escalation]] normally, good hits will pulp limbs in ''[[Bullet Time|slow motion]]'' - with ''Bloody Mess'', a powerful hit will '''blow off the target's arms, legs and head''', and when you prove [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill]] the target will '''''[[Ludicrous Gibs|explode into blood splattering hamburger!!!]]''''' And it makes weapons more powerful to better cause those effects!
**** It doesn't even have to be a powerful hit sometimes- if your enemy is at low enough health, a single shot, punch, or swing of a pool cue can turn your target into giblet fireworks.
Line 121 ⟶ 123:
** In the old ''[[Prince of Persia]]'' games, falling damage was always fatal when the fall was three stories or more. Falling onto [[Spikes of Doom]] also meant instant death, and so did taking a hit from a [[Mooks]] when your sword was sheathed.
** In ''[[Cave Story]]'', instant death results from falling onto the nastier variety of [[Spikes of Doom]] or having something sufficiently heavy fall on you. (Technically, it only inflicts 127 damage, but that's more than twice as many [[Hit Points]] as you'll ever have.)
** In ''[[Iji]]'', most weapons and attacks only do armor damage, and a few attacks can bypass the armor for health damage. The only guaranteed instant death attack is General Tor's Phantom Hammer, which fills half the screen with a massive laser and is more than a mere [[One-Hit Kill]]
*** If you die normally, you scream and then collapse. If you get hit by the Phantom Hammer, your entire body instantly turns to dust and is blown away.
** In the ''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]]'' games, lightly brushing up against a spike will kill you instantly, no matter how many HPs you have left. In ''[[Mega Man 1]]'', they disregard [[Mercy Invincibility]] as well.
** In ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog 2]]'' and ''[[Sonic 3 and Knuckles]]'', where it's possible to achieve [[Super Mode]] in the normal stages, the otherwise invincible Super Sonic can still be killed by crushing or drowning (or [[Bottomless Pits]]). (Hyper Sonic in ''S3&K'' is immune to drowning at least.)
*** In ''[[Sonic CD]]'''s Stardust Speedway zone, the boss battle is a race against Metal Sonic, with Dr. Robotnik using a laser as a pacemaker. If you touch the laser, you die, ''even if you have rings left.''
** In ''[[Spelunky]]'', spikes will kill any dumb spelunker in a gruesome way even if he has [[Cap|99]] [[Hit Points]]. Shopkeepers and other [[
** Averted in ''Donkey Kong Jungle Beat'', where anything can be survived with enough points and fast hands. Even the classic "smashed between two walls" can be [[Super Strength|pushed apart]], since the challenge comes from a getting high score, rather than survival.
* [[Role Playing Games]] and [[Survival Horror]] games also feature this more or less frequently, though in rpgs it's usually the player who gets to use instakill technique, while in survival horror it's usually enemies. For example, in ''[[Resident Evil]] 4'' (and 5, for that matter) a chainsaw-wielding enemy can decapitate you in one swing independent of your health bar.
Line 147 ⟶ 149:
*** Or crushed by closing doors.
** Likewise in Bungie's old title ''[[Marathon Trilogy|Marathon]]'' and its sequels. In addition to enemy sprites standard death and [[Ludicrous Gibs|explosive death]], they also had a [[Kill It with Fire|flaming]] death, occasionally with such deaths accompanied by their own special [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|death screams]].
*** And a crushing death, with the same scream as death by fire.
*** The Invincibility shield can be penetrated by the fusion pistol. If a player gets blasted by a fusion overcharge shot and their health is low enough, they will gib.
* In ''[[Starsiege]]'', the Cybrids get a weapon that does no damage to HERCs; the weapon shoots radiation that can kill a human pilot if the HERC doesn't have the right upgrade installed. As Cybrids are AIs, the weapons doesn't affect them (at least, not in single-player; the manual clearly states that for gameplay reasons, Cybrid players are just as vulnerable to that weapon as humans in multiplayer matches, assuming that the target doesn't equip that upgrade).
Line 156 ⟶ 158:
** For example: the Soldier's taunt attack (he holds a grenade and [[Suicide Attack|detonates it]]) where any foe standing in the immediate vicinity of the player pulling the pin will find his spleen on the underside of another player's boot. However, if using a Rocket Jumper and the Gunboats, ''the Soldier himself'' can survive the blast ''and'' landing damage.
** Played straight with environmental kills and telefrags, which can kill someone even if they have an [[Limit Break|Ubercharge]] active.
* In ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'', proper use of the
** Bronze colossi in particular are immune to everything but this rule. You can pound on them for a game week, fracture every part of their body, but they'll still keep ticking until a single hit that can decapitate or bisect them. Beasts made of metals or minerals are similarly [[Implacable Man|implacable]].
** Additionally, drawbridges can be used to obliterate almost '''''anything'''''; if it's opened on top of something that isn't too large, it will erase every trace of whatever got crushed by it from existence.
* While it is quite possible and legitimate to win in PVP through traditional [[Hit Point]] depletion, in the [[Iron Realms]] MUD game Aetolia: The Midnight Age, it is far more fun and effective to use one of the various
* In ''[[Syphon Filter]]'', enemies can take headshots at you too, resulting in [[One-Hit Kill]], needless to say.
** Being anywhere in a grenade's blast radius or [[Man On Fire|touching fire]] is always lethal, no matter how much health you have.
* All AT weapons in the ''[[Battlefield (series)|Battlefield]]'' series is considered to be a Chunky Salsa Type weapon, which means getting hit by it causes you to be "killed" rather than critically wounded.
* ''[[Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine]]'' has four instant-kill possibilities: a meltagun at point-blank range, a Lascannon headshot (unless you're a Devastator with an Iron Halo), a charged plasma cannon shot, and an upgraded Thunder Hammer.
* In the first ''Battlefront'' game, Jedi were invincible to common soldiers, no matter how much firepower you poured into them (it didn't let you play as them, though). The only way to kill a Jedi is to land a starfighter on top of them (which kills anything),or on cloud city throw them off with a nade or any splosion . Also, when riding a speeder bike at full throttle any time you hit an enemy infantryman he dies, whenever you hit anything else you die, and whenever you hit a Destroyer Droid with its shields up you both die.
* In ''[[Quake II]]'' and ''[[Quake 4|Quake IV]]'', there's a Strogg called the Medic who can revive any corpse he finds, from a grunt to a [[Goddamned Bats|dog]] to a miniboss (or worse, another medic). The only way to counter this is to go around with the pistol or shotgun gibbing every corpse.
** In ''4'', if you're standing in the wrong place when the ship lands, it crushes you. In ''[[Doom (series)|Doom]] 3'', if you get caught in any running [[No OSHA Compliance|exposed machinery]], you're chunky salsa.
Line 172 ⟶ 174:
* In ''[[Grim Fandango]]'', everybody is already dead, so there's no way to kill anyone, right? Wrong. The conventional means of "death" in the Land of the Dead is by getting "sprouted": shot with special bullets that make flowers grow rapidly in the victim's bones, condemning him or her to what amounts to [[A Fate Worse Than Death|an eternity of]] [[Nightmare Fuel|painful immobility]]. However, at one point in the game, Manny defeats his rival Domino by {{spoiler|knocking him into the grinders of a large steamship and reducing him to bone meal.}}
* ''[[Sacrifice]]'' has a gibbing mechanism, where if an enemy is just killed, their body remains until its soul is collected and the soul itself has to be converted by the opposing side to get it. Hitting an enemy with an attack that does enough damage, and the enemy explodes in a shower of [[Ludicrous Gibs]], leaving behind a blue soul that anyone can snag, with no hope of revival without use of the [[Animate Dead]] spell.
* In ''[[Warcraft]] 3'', organic enemies killed by
* In ''[[Lost Planet]]'', the Rifle, the Plasma Gun, and the Revolver is an instant kill if one gets a headshot, regardless of remaining health.
* In ''[[Quake]] I'' and ''II'' both the player and enemies gib if they take enough fatal damage. In the second game, enemies can be [[No Kill Like Overkill|gibbed after they are killed]] (even before they hit the ground), which is required to prevent Medics from resurrecting them.
* ''[[Doom (series)|Doom]] 3'' also uses the overkill (HP reduced significantly below zero) rule with zombies and Z-secs, eg blasting a zombie with a shotgun at close range gibs/disintegrates them.
* Mentioned in, of all things, ''[[Sonic Adventure 2]]''. Before Eggman's second boss fight with Tails, he traps Sonic in a capsule, ejects it into space, and sets it to explode. If you lose or restart the fight, he says this in the opening crawl:
{{quote|
* In ''[[Dead Island]]'', a point-blank shotgun blast tears extremities off zombies and humans alike, even if it deals proportionally small amounts of damage. This means that one 420-damage shot to the face can kill a
* The medics in ''[[Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas]]'' can revive dead people, unless their heads have been blown off.
{{reflist}}
Line 185 ⟶ 187:
[[Category:Injury Tropes]]
[[Category:Laws and Formulas]]
[[Category:
[[Category:
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
| |||