Cutting Attack

Cost: 7/level
A Cutting Attack (cut) attack inflicts laceration damage, like those caused by an axe or broken glass. It can also inflict blunt trauma and cause knockback. It can be an Innate Attack.Basic Set, p.61 Cutting damage does x1.5 (round down) against living and unliving targets, making it effective against monsters, zombies, and machines.
==Modifiers==
*The Thrusting Blade modifier mentions "Attacks that do less than 1d-2", implying that 1d-3 (which is 0.1 dice!) is possible.Power-Ups 4: Enhancements, p.21
1d-4 is basically pointless because 0.3 x 4 = 1.2 and subtracting that from 1 creates negative numbers.
==Powers Built From Cutting Attack==
*Sandstorm (+250%/+110%): Cutting Attack 1d (Area Effect, 4 yards; Link; Persistent; Side Effect, Blindness) [25] + Obscure 6 (Vision; Area Effect, 4 yards; Link; Ranged) [26] - total [51]
==Quotes==
Kromm in 2013 http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=1652958&postcount=10
We don't explicitly say that cutting damage gets its ×1.5 injury vs. targets that aren't alive, but it does . . . we just leave it out of Injury to Unliving, Homogenous, and Diffuse Targets and assume that people will apply the multiplier because we didn't say not to.
==Conversion to crushing damage==
This can be done voluntarily with weapons (but not necessarily with innate attacks, unclear) using the Turn your blade option.
The defensive spells Turn Blade (M167) and Bladeturning M168) do this along with unreadying a weapon. In the first case it is a spell vs will QC, in the 2nd case there is a DX vs spell QC. M63 Graceful Weapon resists either with it's power, which is presumably a separate roll in addition to the usual Will or DX roll of the weapon's user.
GURPS Sorcery: Protection and Warning Spells pg 5 could not convert Turn Blade, but represents Bladeturning status (an Afflicted advantage) as reflective DR (for disarming only) for the unreadying aspect and Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction for the cutting>crushing aspect.
"1.5, limited" is a new tier (usually the 1st is divisor 1) meant to represent not getting the 1.5 multiplier that cutting normally enjoys over crushing. "reduced damage is treated as crushing" is treated as a 0-point feature.
==the Low-Tech optional mandate for crushing damage==
LT102 introduced Blunt Trauma and Edged Weapons, an optional rule regarding a NEW threshold:
:at least 1 point of penetrating damage past twice the armor’s DR
Not meeting that that threshold (but otherwise surpassing 1x the DR as normal) results in:
:treat the cutting attack as merely crushing, subtract the armor’s usual DR from damage to get injury.
:Such injury doesn’t actually slice through the armor, equivalent to blunt trauma
It however also says this:
:This rule applies only to armor, not to other forms of DR (e.g., Tough Skin).
Tough Skin is a -40% limitation so it's unclear if this has any impact on something which is merely -20% Flexible, which is included in that. Or the Damage Resistance advantage without any limitations.
==See Also==
* Damage
* Innate Attack
==References==
Category:Advantages