Disciplined Engagement - Quarantine

Hello!
Im having trouble trying to interpretate this move from the Quarantine:

Disciplined engagement: when you inflict harm, you can choose to inflict any amount of harm you like, less than or up to your harm as established, including s-harm. Decide at the moment you inflict the harm; you need not tell anyone in advance how much harm you intend to inflict

In our last adventure, the Gunlugger lvls up and takes this move from the Quarantine playbook. Now he's on the loose mutilating people without causing any harm. I was drunk (in real life) and not expecting this sort of shit, so ive just let it happen. But on the next day i realised that something has to be wrong with you chopping your friends hand and cutting off their cheeks without the victim suffering any harm. On the other hand, this is exactly what the move does. I can go with "you shoot the bastard with your rifle, and the bullet barely touches the skull, and the victim takes 0 harm", but "i want to cut all the five members of his body and turn him into a turtoise, without him taking any damage" seems a little too much.

What do you guys think?

Uh, yeah, no. You get to choose how badly you hurt them, you don't get to choose to hurt them and NOT hurt them.

-Vincent

Got it.

So, if he throws a bomb in a closed place full of people, he also cant control the inflicted harm? The action of causing harm (shooting somebody) has to be reversible to an action where you do not cause harm in roleplay (you shoot next to your victim, without doing harm)?

Yeah, he pretty much has to explain how he intends to pull off the amount of harm, and failing that it's fiction first.

Thanks guys!

Right. It lets him shoot people and graze their ear for zero harm, not shoot them in the gut for zero harm.

If he's looking to use it for threatening bad-guy stuff, it does still give him options. You don't have to be "nice" about how you inflict that small amount of harm, after all. Just make sure you match the damage to the fiction.

For example:

• "my first shotgun shell is filled with rock salt" (0-harm, still forcing the harm roll)
• "I shoot off his pinky with my magnum" (still within bounds for a description of inflicting 1-harm on an NPC)

Pinky, 1-harm? Really? 1-harm is massive damage, 2-harm is lethal damage, 3-harm is they're already dead damage. Shooting someones pinky off might hurt, but it's never going to kill them (or halfway kill them). Sounds more like a shocking, extremely painful 0-harm to me. Take their whole hand? Foot? Knee? Okay. 1-harm.

Pinky, 1-harm? Really? 1-harm is massive damage, 2-harm is lethal damage, 3-harm is they're already dead damage. Shooting someones pinky off might hurt, but it's never going to kill them (or halfway kill them). Sounds more like a shocking, extremely painful 0-harm to me. Take their whole hand? Foot? Knee? Okay. 1-harm.

p210, 2nd ed, When an NPC suffers harm:
1-harm: cosmetic damage, pain, concussion, fear if the NPC’s likely to be afraid of pain.

That seems right in line with someone shooting off your finger to me.

2-harm: wounds, unconsciousness, bad pain, broken bones, shock. Likely fatal, occasionally immediately fatal.

This seems more like hand or foot shot off, or kneecapping, though in a cinematic setting that might not rise to the "likely fatal, occasionally immediately fatal" level.

I guess don't shoot off his other pinky afterwards cause then you've got a likely fatal wound.

I guess don't shoot off his other pinky afterwards cause then you've got a likely fatal wound.

Dunno, you aren't supposed to keep track of harm on NPCs quite the same way you do for PCs, right? That said, unless you're dressing the wounds as you go, shooting off two pinkies could lead someone to bleed out.

Alas, that's just the nature of hit points, for good or for ill! :)

They just don't "scale well", when you compare individual strikes to cumulative hit point damage.

Kitsunin, I don't usually track harm to npcs, gangs and vehicles as cumulative, no, so in my games shooting off two pinkies probably wouldn't constitute 2-harm. I view the harm clocks for npcs, gangs and vehicles as cues and descriptors for the MC, and so they are very different from PC's harm clocks, which tracks a cinematic style of harm (the shotgun blast grazed you, but the knife coming after went right into your gut).

That said, if you have doghead on the ground and you're just punching and punching and punching, then sure, I'll let the harm accumulate

S-harm means you're stunned but have taken no real harm. If you have a wound that a real person would go to a field medic or a doctor to look at, you're not stunned. You're harmed. If, after a minute or two, the ringing in your ears dies off, the spots clear from your eyes, you shake you head to clear it and you're basically ok, you were stunned. Using a bomb, a machine gun or a chain whip (from the Battlebabe - hand area) to inflict S-harm is mechanically and fictionally the equivalent of throwing a flashbang or hitting everyone at once with a taser.

This whole situation made me laugh out loud, thanks for that. :)