Blow-Through

Blow-Through is discussed on page 109 of GURPS 3e's basic set: a "single blow" of impaling and bullet damage couldn't inflict more than HT (ie HP at the time) when targeting torso. Some other situations:
*this was HTx3 to head/vitals.
*torso/head/vitals cap of "double the above" for beam/fireball/lightning
**it's not clear if "above" refers to HTx3 in 2nd paragraph (in which case double is HTx6) or the 1st paragraph's HT (double being HTx2)
Capping damage to HTx6 would not seem to accomplish much, given that death usually automatically occurred at -5xHT: it would only help Unkillable types who could actually survive such an amount.
One key aspect in the phrasing is how "damage" is used instead of "injury" in 3e. For example under the basic rules:
*cripples the limb instead of dealing additional hits of damage
This is key in that it would limit knockback, since that's based on damage. Crippling only the injury (as in 4e) would not cap knockback imparted via damage on limbs.
This could also protect Ablative DR: if the cap on hands is damage (not injury) needed to cripple, then the maximum of 4 damage against Hand would mean that char with 10 HP ablative DR 10 hit by 10 damage would only lose 4 (not all 10) DR when their hand is hit. This would effectively make DR > 1/3 HP immunity to extremity crippling, DR >1/2 HP immunity to limb crippling, with higher amounts just to protect torso.
*this could be a misinterpretation though as "damage .. can take" and "dealing .. hits" could be expressions equivalent to "injure" rather than referring to Basic Damage
**one middle ground might be to have it specify Penetrating Damage instead: in which case the benefit to caps is that they would take effect prior to damage divisors such as for being Unliving
4e addresses it in Cover rules, although limiting the injury caused by such attacks doesn't show up until GURPS High-Tech which had two variations: 100% HP if using Bleeding rules, 200% if not
Category:Rules