Damage and Injury

Damage and Injury

If your attack roll succeeds and your target fails his defense roll (if any), you may make a damage roll. This tells you how much basic damage you dealt to your target.

Your weapon (and, for muscle-powered weapons, your ST), or your natural or Innate Attack, determines the number of dice you roll for damage. If your target has any Damage Resistance (DR) – from armor, the Damage Resistance advantage, protective magic spells, etc. – he subtracts this from your damage roll.

If your damage roll is less than or equal to your target's effective DR, your attack failed to penetrate – it bounced off or was absorbed. A cutting, crushing, impaling, or piercing attack can sometimes cause damage without penetrating, however; see Flexible Armor and Blunt Trauma.

If your damage roll exceeds your target's DR, the excess is the penetrating damage. If your foe has no DR, the entire damage roll is penetrating damage.

Once you know the penetrating damage of your attack, apply the wounding modifier for damage type (this matters only for cutting, impaling, and certain types of piercing damage). This gives the injury the foe suffers, which is subtracted from his Hit Points.

Example: Your "basic damage" with your sword is 2d+1 cutting. You roll 2 dice, add 1, and do 8 points of basic damage. Your foe has DR 3, so your penetrating damage is 5 points. You then apply the ×1.5 wounding modifier for cutting attacks, resulting in 7 points of injury (always round down). Your foe loses 7 HP.

Damage Roll

Knockback

When you hit someone very hard, you may knock him away from you! This is called "knockback." Only crushing and cutting attacks can cause knockback. A crushing attack can cause knockback regardless of whether it penetrates DR. A cutting attack can cause knockback only if it fails to penetrate DR.

Knockback depends on basic damage rolled before subtracting DR. For every full multiple of the target's ST-2 rolled, move the target one yard away from the attacker. For instance, a man with ST 10 would be knocked back one yard per full 8 points of basic damage. If the target has ST 3 or less, knockback is one yard per point of basic damage! If the target has no ST score at all (like a wall), or is not resisting, use its HP instead.

Anyone who suffers knockback must attempt a roll against the highest of DX, Acrobatics, or Judo. If he is knocked back more than one yard, he rolls at -1 per yard after the first. Perfect Balance gives +4 to this roll. On a failure, he falls down.

If you knock your foe into something solid, the result – including damage to him and whatever he hit – is as if he had collided with it at a speed equal to the yards of knockback. See Collisions and Falls.

"Knockback Only": Some attacks – a jet of water, a shove, etc. – do knockback but no damage. Roll the listed damage and work out knockback as usual, but no actual injury occurs (unless the target collides with something!).

You usually make your own damage rolls, and the GM rolls for NPCs. Damage rolls are expressed as a number of dice, sometimes with a modifier; e.g., "6d-1" or "1d+2." A negative modifier can't reduce damage below 0 if the attack does crushing damage, or below 1 if it does any other type of damage.

High-damage attacks may express damage as a number of dice with a multiplier. For instance, “6d×3” means "roll 6d and multiply the total by 3." If those six dice came up 21, you would do 63 points of damage. This is just a quick way to roll lots of dice.

The result of the damage roll (after any additive or multiplicative modifiers, as explained above) is the hit's "basic damage."

Half Damage (1/2D) for Ranged Weapons

If a ranged weapon has two range statistics, the first is its Half Damage (1/2D) range, in yards. If the target is at or beyond 1/2D range, divide basic damage by 2, rounding down. (This is a simplification! Realistically, most weapons lose striking power gradually as air resistance slows them down, but a detailed calculation would be unplayable.)

Some ranged weapons (e.g., grenades) do not suffer a reduction in damage; these do not list a 1/2D range. The damage of an attack modified with Follow-Up is never halved, either – although its "carrier" attack is subject to 1/2D effects as usual.

Finally, if an attack has a 1/2D range but requires a resistance roll to avoid an affliction of some sort, add +3 to the resistance roll instead of halving damage (if any).

Damage Resistance and Penetration

Damage Resistance (DR) rates the degree of protection that natural or worn armor, a force field, tough skin, etc. affords against damage. Objects and vehicles have their own DR values that protect against any damage they suffer – and if you take cover behind or inside them, their DR also protects you.

Subtract DR from basic damage. The result is the "penetrating damage" that punched through or deformed the armor enough to cause a significant injury. For instance, if you are hit by an attack that inflicts 6 points of basic damage and you're wearing mail with DR 4, you take 2 points of penetrating damage.

In general, DR from multiple sources is additive; e.g., if you have a natural DR of 2 and put on a tactical vest with DR 15, your total DR is 17. Exceptions will always be noted.

The DR of armor often varies by body part. If you are not using the hit location rules (see Hit Location), just assume that any hit strikes the torso, and apply its DR.

Finally, note that DR from certain sources may provide differing degrees of protection against different damage types.

For more on DR, see Damage Resistance and Armor.

Armor Divisors and Penetration Modifiers

An "armor divisor" indicates that an attack is especially good (or bad) at penetrating Damage Resistance. Armor divisors appear on weapon tables as numbers in parentheses after damage dice; e.g., "3d(2) pi" means 3d piercing damage with a (2) armor divisor.

A divisor of (2) or more means that DR protects at reduced value against the attack. Divide the target's DR by the number in parentheses before subtracting it from basic damage; e.g., (2) means DR protects at half value. Round DR down. Minimum DR is 0.

Some divisors are fractions, such as (0.5), (0.2), or (0.1). DR is increased against such attacks: multiply DR by 2 for (0.5), by 5 for (0.2), and by 10 for (0.1). In addition, treat DR 0 (e.g., bare skin) as if it were DR 1 against any fractional armor divisor!

There are several other "penetration modifiers" that affect the protection required to stop a given attack – see Blood Agent, Contact Agent, Follow-Up, Respiratory Agent, and Sense-Based. These are often found on Afflictions and toxic attacks. See Special Penetration Modifiers for details.

Fast Damage Resolution for Multiple Hits

If a rapid-fire attack scores multiple hits, you can speed play as follows: instead of rolling damage per hit, determine damage for one hit, subtract DR, and multiply the resulting penetrating damage (or blunt trauma) by the number of hits.

Flexible Armor and Blunt Trauma

Flexible armor such as a leather jacket, mail hauberk, or a modern ballistic vest is much lighter than rigid armor, but it doesn't absorb the full force of the blows it stops. An attack that does crushing (cr), cutting (cut), impaling (imp), or piercing (pi-, pi, pi+, pi++) damage may inflict "blunt trauma" if it fails to penetrate flexible DR.

For every full 10 points of cutting, impaling, or piercing damage or 5 points of crushing damage stopped by your DR, you suffer 1 HP of injury due to blunt trauma. This is actual injury, not basic damage. There is no wounding multiplier.

If even one point of damage penetrates your flexible DR, however, you do not suffer blunt trauma.

If you layer other DR over flexible DR, only damage that penetrates the outer layer can inflict blunt trauma.

Corrosion

An attack that inflicts corrosion (cor) damage – acids, disintegration beams, etc. – destroys one point of the target's DR per 5 points of basic damage rolled. This affects armor first, then natural DR. This reduces DR against future attacks, not against the attack that burned off the DR! Natural DR lost by living beings heals at the same rate as lost HP.

Overpenetration and Cover

Some attacks are powerful enough to pass right through cover, a shield, or a victim, and damage someone on the other side. It's usually too much trouble to worry about this, but if it becomes important (e.g., shooting through a door, or a bystander behind your target), see Overpenetration.

Hurting Yourself

Any time you strike unarmed (with bare hands, feet, fangs, etc.) and hit a target with DR 3+, you may hurt yourself! For every 5 points of basic damage you roll, you take one point of crushing damage, up to a maximum equal to the DR of the target you hit. Apply this damage to the body part you used to attack, if you are using hit locations. Your own DR protects against this damage. Exception: This rule does not apply if the target's DR has the Tough Skin limitation (see Damage Resistance).

Wounding Modifiers and Injury

Any damage left over after subtracting DR from basic damage is "penetrating damage." If there is any penetrating damage, multiply it by the attack's "wounding modifier." This is a multiplier that depends on damage type:

• Small piercing (pi-): ×0.5.
• Burning (burn), corrosion (cor), crushing (cr), fatigue (fat), piercing (pi), and toxic (tox): ×1 (damage is unchanged).
• Cutting (cut) and large piercing (pi+): ×1.5.

• Impaling (imp) and huge piercing (pi++): ×2.

The damage after this multiplier determines the injury: the HP lost by the target. Round fractions down, but the minimum injury is 1 HP for any attack that penetrates DR at all. Reduce the victim's current HP total by the injury sustained.

Example: Filthy Pierre is struck by an axe, which does cutting damage. His attacker's basic damage roll is 7, but Pierre is wearing DR 2 leather armor, so he suffers 5 points of penetrating damage. Multiplying by 1.5 for cutting damage, Pierre ends up losing 7.5 HP, which rounds to 7 HP – a nasty wound!

Note that blunt trauma injury has no wounding modifier. Where you were hit may further affect the wounding modifier; see Hit Location. The rules above assume a hit to the torso or face.

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