Quote:
Originally Posted by JazzJedi
I've been playtesting a hack I made to simulate blunt trauma and thought I would share. For years, I used T-bone's Edge Protection rule, but I found this unsatisfactory for ballistic armor with trauma plates and other rigid armor especially with high DR ultratech armors, such as TL 10 Combat Hardsuit (DR 75) which would convert to DR 60 EP 25. This means that there is no blunt trauma from the first 60 points of damage, which doesn't seem realistic to me.
|
Hi! Glad to hear that you've been able to make use of the Edge Protection rule to mostly good (?) effect.
With high-DR ultra-tech armor, it's true, the rule leaves characters' rigid armor soaking up 60 (or whatever) points of damage without any ill effect on the wearer (save lots of glorious knockback). That's not an effect of the Edge Protection rule per se; it's an effect of high-DR armor in GURPS (and since the armor is rigid, the EP rule doesn't reduce its über-DR by much).
That's a bit unsatisfactory to me too, so you may have noticed that the
EP rule page addresses the matter in a suggested option. The short version:
If you take a massive wallop to the steel breastplate or ceramic trauma plate or TL10 ultra-plas battle plate... that armor may refuse to crack or deform a bit, but you're still taking a huge wallop. It's just spread over a large area, that's all - something that should certainly lessen the damage, but not protect you completely.
So, the suggestion: Apply a blunt trauma-like rule to all armor. That is, for all damage fully stopped by armor DR, apply 1/5 of that damage (round down) as crushing damage. That's from the armor itself slamming into you.
That suggested option might not deliver quite the effect you want, but for anyone wanting to play around with it, there it is.
Footnote 1: For
collisions, GURPS already uses this same rule (i.e., no matter how much DR the armor offers, rigid or flexible, you still take basic hits/5, up to DR/5, as blunt trauma damage). My suggestion only says "Hey, it's probably realistic to apply that to all impacts, not just collisions."
Footnote 2: The suggestion raises a question: If
rigid armor allows up to DR/5 basic hits from weapons to get through as blunt trauma damage, then what about
flexible armor?
Answer: If you're using the EP rule, there's nothing more to consider; flexible armor is already modeled by low DR, high EP.
If you're using plain GURPS armor (just classic DR, no funny EP business), you can differentiate rigid vs flexible armor by using a different divisor. For example, if rigid armor lets up to DR/5 get through as blunt trauma, flexible armor could let up to DR/3 get through. Or DR/2 or DR/4, if those seem more right. (Which – if I'm reading your post correctly – is what you're suggesting with BT?)
Anyway, that's all in the spirit of "more toys for the hackers". In the end, using the above suggested option may not make a big difference for low-tech armors, but I think it's a welcome way to put a little fear into smug wearers of oh-so-impenetrable high-tech armors.