RogerBW's Blog

From a conversation on discussion.tekeli.li came the challenge: if you want to break into someone's house by throwing his plant pots through his (glass) patio doors, how do you go about it? In GURPS, obviously. Do not use this as a guide for actual criminal acts, or if you do at least delete any trace of your having read this post before they catch you.

Let's assume you are not a specialist in these matters so you have no relevant skills; your stats are all a standard 10.

(Case 1)

"Improvised Weapons" (box on p. B404) says that you should find the weapon that most closely resembles the object you're using. (The standard place where I look for pre-calculated examples of improvised weapons is in Martial Arts, but it doesn't help here.) I'm going to regard a flowerpot as a "mace" at -1 (p. B276 Muscle-Powered Ranged Weapon Table); that's probably a bit generous.

So you pick up the pot (a Ready action; if there's distraction I might call for a DX roll to grab it quickly, but probably not), then roll your default Thrown Weapon (Axe/Mace) skill (DX-4, -1 for the weapon). You can make it an All-Out Attack for +1 (the door isn't going to hit back), and you can take three seconds of Aim before you throw to gain the flowerpot's Acc (+1) and a further +2 for the extra time. Range is ×0.5/×1, so you can throw it five yards, but let's assume you're within two yards of the target to avoid range penalties. The door is slightly bigger than a human, so let's assign that a further +1, for a total of 10. All in all you have a 50% chance of hitting the target; this seems rather low.

You then do sw+3 crushing damage, 1d+3 at your average ST 10 (so 3-9 depending on your roll). Ten square feet of plate glass has DR 1 and 3 hit points (p. B558, HP and DR of Structures), so if you do hit you have a ⅚ chance of making a breach in the glass that you can get through. If you get it to -3 hit points it needs to make a HT roll or be destroyed, in which case (being Brittle) it shatters and cannot be repaired. (If the door is larger than that, and it probably is, then the HP you need to shatter the whole thing will increase, but you don't need to do more damage to make a hole in the individual bit you're trying to get through.)

I'd probably give the flowerpot an HT roll to avoid getting cracked.

(Case 2)

If instead you chose to kick the door, you'd be rolling DX-2 to hit (p. 271 Melee Weapon Table; you could also use Brawling or Karate skill if you have them). A melee All-Out Attack gives you +4, and +1 for target size, so you'll hit on a 13- on 3d6 (~84% chance). (If you're using the expanded combat rules from Martial Arts you can also make the attack Telegraphic, since the door won't be parrying it, for a further +4.)

If you do hit, a "Kick w. Boots" does thr+1 damage, net 1d-1 for 0-5 points. If you do 0 or 1 you had no effect; 2-3 will crack the glass a bit but not break it; 4-5 will break a hole that you can go through, as above, but you won't shatter it completely.

Even if you shatter the door, because it did not successfully defend itself, you take no damage from this process.

(Case 3)

Or you could shoulder-charge the door: a Slam (p. B371). Hitting is a straight DX roll, still with the All-Out Attack bonus, so you have a chance of 15- to hit, the best so far (~95%); you might even choose to use All-Out Attack (Strong) rather than (Determined), to trade off that +4 to hit for +2 damage. You do damage dice equal to your HP (10) × speed (5) / 100, so 1d-2, the lowest yet (I suppose one can justify this somewhat because the area of impact is larger than in the other cases). This time the door gets to damage you back, but it has fewer hit points so it rolls 1d-3 against you. If it rolls twice or more what you roll, which is unlikely but possible, you will fall down.

In the worst case you've just taken 3 hit points from bouncing off the door. That's unpleasant, but not a major wound. Even if you're using the optional Bleeding rules (p. B420), it's a crushing injury so you probably won't bleed.

I'll say again what I said in How to Throw a Cat: I would absolutely not stop to do these calculations in a game unless for some reason it mattered exactly how long it took to get through the door (e.g. because there was a horde of zombies shuffling along behind the PCs and I wanted to know how much they'd caught up). Or someone wanted to try to get into a bank vault using their Ten Thousand Dragons Punch. In a mundane situation, I'd just say "OK, there's a plant pot, you smash the door with that" and continue with more interesting things.

No patio doors were harmed during the research for this article. Or flowerpots.