Noah's Mugging Rules

I propose alternate rules, spelled out here:

1. A helmeted character cannot be sapped. The sap attack works by applying a sharp blow to a certain point on the back of the skull. You might be able to do dice damage sapping a helmeted character, but the helmet will prevent the chance of knockout.

2. As with a backstab, the victim must be unaware of the thief's presence. The attacker must also have unobstructed access to the back of the victim's head (that is, a halfling might have difficulty sapping a giant).

3. The negative modifier for the called shot to the head (-4) mitigates the thief's bonus for rear attack (+4) so that a sap attack is made using base THAC0. For humanoids without natural armor, the head is considered AC 10; no armor, dex or shield bonus applies (although certain magical bonuses might).

4. After a successful attack, the dice damage is multiplied by 10% and subtracted from the victim's system shock score. The victim then makes a system shock roll with the modified score. Failure indicates a knockout for 3d10 rounds (or some other reasonable amount of time).

EXAMPLE: Stinky Pete (a third level fighter/thief with a strength of 16), saps Gribble (a fifth level dwarven cleric with a constitution of 14) with a warhammer, doing 4 points of total damage. Gribble's system shock is 88%, minus 40% for the damage inflicted, means he must roll below 48% or go unconscious. Gribble rolls a 52 and drops like a stone.

If you think it is still too easy to sap someone in this fashion, the negative modifier for the called shot could be increased to, say, -6 or -8 (anything above that doesn't really seem reasonable, though), or the percentile multiplier could be reduced to 5% (I am more in favor of the former, however -- if you manage to hit with your sap, it should have a good chance of causing a knockout).

Furthermore, there should be some size differential. A medium sized humanoid should have a better chance of knocking out a small size humanoid than a giant size humanoid (and a giant size humanoid should have an easier chance of knocking out a medium sized humanoid than another giant). Thus, I think, the damage multiplier should scale accordingly; that is, a medium size humanoid has a 10%/point chance of scoring a knockout versus another medium size humanoid, a 20%/point chance versus small humanoids, but only 5%/point chance versus a giant.

In any event, the point of sapping is not to grant a thief an easy way to knock out Bardas Phocas so said thief can then slit the pretender's throat. Rather, it is a way of quietly subduing low-level and 0th level humanoids without all the mess of a backstab -- to incapacitate a character without applying lethal force. Of course, if dice damage exceeds the victim's hit points, your mugging may end up a murder anyway. But it is much less likely.

Comments?