How to kill a bull in a single blow

Shin Okada · Jul 8, 2003

The "kip-up" thread let me think about this. How much in stats and levels, and what kind of feats, a human monk need to kill a bull in a single blow? Assuming a typical bull has same stats as a Bison (37 hp in average), a monk must inflict about 50 points of damage per attack to kill a bull in a single blow constantly. It seems very hard to achieve. Even a 20 th-level monk with str of 23 do 1d20+27 damage with full power attack (37.5 damage in average).

How much is the minimum level of God-Hand Masutatsu Oyama?

Derren · Jul 8, 2003

High Level Monks can use Quivering Palm. Also Power Critical might help (Together with some Str enhancing magical items)

daTim · Jul 8, 2003

Well, using 3.5 rules here, you could probly have a stregnth of 28 or so fairly easily by 20th level, combined with a full power attack you would be doing 2d10+24 damage. (2d10 base lvl 20 monk, +9 from Str, +15 from PA) You dont get the double damage from power attack since your hands are tiny, you cant double hand it, though there is a feat called "Hammer Fist" from Dragon that lets you do so. On average 35 damage, which will kill slightly less than half, but not all of them reliably. Or 50 damage on average with the Hammer Fist feat, which would kill most any Bull in one hit. Even those with 51 HP still have to pass a massive damage save.

You could always use the touch of death thing they get to kill one a week at least. I'm sure there is a better way but for some reason I just cant think of it.

Out of curosity, why a Bull of all animals?

Pielorinho · Jul 8, 2003

Shin Okada said:
The "kip-up" thread let me think about this. How much in stats and levels, and what kind of feats, a human monk need to kill a bull in a single blow? Assuming a typical bull has same stats as a Bison (37 hp in average), a monk must inflict about 50 points of damage per attack to kill a bull in a single blow constantly. It seems very hard to achieve. Even a 20 th-level monk with str of 23 do 1d20+27 damage with full power attack (37.5 damage in average).

How much is the minimum level of God-Hand Masutatsu Oyama?

To be fair, he only killed three of 52 bulls with a single blow. We can figure that:

1) He criticaled 3 in 52 times (slightly better than 1 in 20); and/or
2) These bulls were weaker than average.

Let's just go with #1, though. We're looking for a means of doing 47 points of damage on an average critical (since 37 would just stagger the bull).

I'm going to figure him as having STR 20 (Starting 16, +4 level adjustments) and being a Monk 16. That'll make his average critical, assuming he power attacks, be as follows:

2*(2d6+5 (str)+12 (power attack))=2*(7+17)=2*(24)=48 points.

How does that sound?

Daniel

wolff96 · Jul 8, 2003

He uses splatbooks.

Specifically, the feat from MotW that allows you to declare that one strike is a critical threat.

Makes it much easier. Besides, a bull is not as tough as a bison and real life -- unlike D&D -- allows Called Shots.

Hypersmurf · Jul 8, 2003

Besides, a bull is not as tough as a bison and real life -- unlike D&D -- allows Called Shots.

Real life is broken.

-Hyp.

Crothian · Jul 8, 2003

Hypersmurf said:
Real life is broken.

-Hyp.

But it got nerfed in 3.5

aurellius · Jul 8, 2003

Didn't Real Life get nerfed sometime back in the 70's or has it been around longer than that?

M

andargor · Jul 8, 2003

aurellius said:
Didn't Real Life get nerfed sometime back in the 70's or has it been around longer than that?

M

[trivia]
Birth of a Nerf

It was 1970. Skirts were short, hair was long. The Beatles broke up. And Fred Cox (Arts and Sciences '62) was in the midst of a record-setting 15-year career as a kicker for the Minnesota Vikings.

Then fate, as they say, intervened. A friend, John Mattox, approached Cox with an idea for a children's backyard kicking game. There was only one problem: What to use for a ball?

"John said you had to use something heavy so they can't kick it out of the yard," Cox recalls. "I said all you're going to end up with is a bunch of little kids with sore legs. What you need is something a little lighter, something on the order of foam rubber.

"It was kind of a fluke that I came up with the idea."

Unbeknownst to Cox and Mattox, Parker Brothers, the toy giant, had been trying for several years to produce a football to complement its hugely popular foam Nerf ball. The same sponge-like quality that made the round Nerf work as a faux baseball or basketball proved too light for a football. Imagine the hoopla when Cox and Mattox visited Parker Brothers' headquarters to offer their somewhat-heavier-but-still-light-enough-for-kids prototype.

Since the product was introduced in 1972, more than 50 million have been sold--the hottest selling footballs in the world. Placed end to end, they would stretch from Pittsburgh to Tokyo. (Not that anyone has tried...)

"It's amazing how few people know I was ever involved with it," says Cox, now a chiropractor in Monticello, Minnesota.

"Very few people I played with on the Vikings knew I invented the ball. Now they tell me they wish they'd invented it...." --Bob Fulton
[/trivia]

EDIT: Parker Brothers marketed the round Nerf ball in 1969. Far out!

GullyFoyle · Jul 8, 2003

bulls tougher

A Bull is probably tougher than a Bison – bulls have been bread to be HUGE, bison have only had natural selection (seems strange to say). Look at a rodeo bull and then look at a bison farm.

BTW I grew up on a farm, though we didn't have bulls the neighbors did – huge, dumb, and fast.