[gurps] Re: How much blood?

[Ben Finney]

Lucas Bodnyk <daletheladrien at yahoo.com> writes:

> One of my players has a white wolf-esque vampire with supernatural
> durability and vampiric bite. He needs to heal 73 HP.

Assuming GURPS 4e here (though IIRC the 3e advantages worked much the
same), with Vampiric Bite as described on p. B96.

> What is a realistic amount of blood/HP he can draw from any given
> victim (obviously draining them dry)?

Hmm, the advantage doesn't give any guidance on this.

> Part of me wants to say basic HP. Part wants to say 5x (at which
> point they're automatically dead), but part of that damage
> breakpoint assumes damage other than just blood loss.

The optional Bleeding rules (p. B420) suggest otherwise: there's no
differentiation made between HP lost to bleeding versus HP lost any
other way, suggesting that one could potentially die as per the normal
death-by-HP rules from nothing more than blood loss.

> Would 2x or 3x be reasonable?

I would interpret the rules as suggesting that a human can lose HP to
blood loss until they fail a death check. For an average healthy adult
human (HT 10), that would be at -1×HP half the time (50% chance of
failing a single death check against HT 10).

Whether the vampire can continue to drain HP from blood *after* the
victim has failed a death check would, in the absence of an official
ruling, be for the GM to decide.

Given that a HT 10 human has 50% chance of *surviving* their first
death check at -1×HP, I'd allow the drain to continue to at least
-2×HP. I might rule that the victim must continue to make HT checks
*after death* to continue providing nourishing blood to the vampire,
with the nourishment ceasing once a HT check is failed or -5×HP
reached.

-- 
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Ben Finney