Would Disintegration Cause Aggravated Damage?

[Enderdragon1201]

Hello. I was wondering if a weapon or power that can disintegrate things would deal aggravated damage, I would guess yes, but what do you think?

[Tessie]

Generally yes. You'd have to be more specific and describe the weapon to get a more specific answer.

[Enderdragon1201]

Generally yes. You'd have to be more specific and describe the weapon to get a more specific answer.

I was basically thinking of a character that could output lightning much more powerful than normal lightning. It apparently takes about 3 gigajoules to disintegrate a person's entire body, with the average lightning putting out about 1 gigajoule, and his being more like 10 gigajoules.

[Tessie]

It takes 3 GJ of perfectly distributed thermal energy to disintegrate a human body. A lightning strike (which I believe averages 0.5 GJ) only delivers a fraction of its own energy to the human body; most simply passes through to the ground. For a lightning strike to disintegrate the human body it'll require multiple magnitudes more energy due to how little (relatively speaking) is converted to thermal energy in the human body.
For lightning weapons I would actually have it deal ridiculous amounts of bashing damage instead. Lightning strikes deal 10 bashing so you can work from there.

[Enderdragon1201]

It takes 3 GJ of perfectly distributed thermal energy to disintegrate a human body. A lightning strike (which I believe averages 0.5 GJ) only delivers a fraction of its own energy to the human body; most simply passes through to the ground. For a lightning strike to disintegrate the human body it'll require multiple magnitudes more energy due to how little (relatively speaking) is converted to thermal energy in the human body.
For lightning weapons I would actually have it deal ridiculous amounts of bashing damage instead. Lightning strikes deal 10 bashing so you can work from there.

Well, when it comes to distribution the character in question has control over the lightning, and so he can control the distribution and how much of the energy stays in the body.

[proindrakenzol]

A high energy electrical blast (I'd hesitate to call it "lightning") that near-instantly vaporized whatever portion of the human body it struck would definitely do aggravated damage.

You can set aside most concerns about how electricity actually behaves because this would be some sort of magic.

The thing to ask yourself as a Storyteller is "if a player gets hit in a targeted location (e.g. the arm) do I want them to permanently lose the limb?" If the answer is "no," then don't use aggravated damage.