Blunt Trauma ... Messed up?

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

As for fall damage, I think armor is already considered flexible, so actually flexible armor is likely worse. Again, that lines up, you could probably say flexible armor provides no benefit to fall damage and it wouldn't be that unrealistic (I imagine it would help at least a tiny amount due to stuff on the ground being part of the damage)

Flexible armour should be able to soak up some of the impact, and rigid armour, being rigid, can dug into you and make the impact worse. I think they're about equally good or bad vs massive impacts like a fall, and I'm fine with them both counting as 'flexible'.

[Tyneras]

Originally Posted by Plane

In theory if you wear a 5 flexible DR cape which stops 5 crushing damage, you suffer 1 injury of blunt trauma...

Which is super weird, for example, if your own flesh is rigid DR 5 (you're a ninja turtle) meaning if you weren't wearing that cape, you'd be fine.

I think maybe the solve for that is to treat blunt trauma values as "penetrating crushing damage" rather than "penetrating injury".

I'd been treating BT this way long enough I'd forgotten it was a house rule.

That way you can treat BT progressively with certain layers.

The only issue with this is it makes BT very easy to avoid with layering. EG:

DR 5 (flexible -20% force field +20%) [25] two layers = [50]

5 damage hits 1st layer, 1 BT gets through
1 crushing hits 2nd layer, 0 BT gets through

whereas if you had DR 10 [50] as a single layer, 1 BT would get through from 5 crushing.

I've been combining effectively identical layer types and treating them as a single one for a long time. Forget why, may have just been to make the math simpler. With me you'd need to maybe the layers qualitatively different (5 DR flexible force field, 5 DR tough skin for example) or I would treat it as a single DR 10 layer.

[Plane]

Maybe there's some way of making "Divides the Quotient" layers of flexible DR somehow balanced but I'm not really sure how.

Maybe somehow flexible could be a meta-limitation of "Bane: Grappling" and "4/5 effectiveness against crushing" and "9/10 effectiveness against othe physical attacks"?

That latter pair might actually be "9/10 against all physical attacks" w/ "double effectiveness against crushing"

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by VariousRen

It's 1 point of blunt trauma per 5 of crushing, 1 point point per 10 for any other damage type.

Thanks, I think I just subconsciously forgot about noncrushing damage.

Originally Posted by Anders

So if you have amazing armor and fall a long way, you would prefer to land on spikes rather than on the flat ground.

If you fell an exact distance and RNG was on your side. So I could see someone abusing this with Impulse Buys possibly, but I don't think it would be worth the effort.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

It is also not free points, as Flexible DR does not protect against damage inflicted by slow manipulation, such as some grappling moves (Arm/Wrist Lock, Leg Lock, Wrench Limb, and Wrench Spine). This is one of the reasons why Wrestling is actually effective at TL7+.

Oh nice, that's awesome to know. And it makes Flexible actually feel like a limitation to me.

Originally Posted by Plane

I think maybe the solve for that is to treat blunt trauma values as "penetrating crushing damage" rather than "penetrating injury".

That makes perfect sense to me. It could be a bit silly at really high numbers with bullets being about to give knockback only if armor stops them, but that's actually pretty fun so I'll allow it.

Originally Posted by Rupert

Flexible armour should be able to soak up some of the impact, and rigid armour, being rigid, can dug into you and make the impact worse. I think they're about equally good or bad vs massive impacts like a fall, and I'm fine with them both counting as 'flexible'.

Actually, that makes perfect sense. Side note, I wonder if the weight of armor (and encumbrance in general) would realistically affect fall damage (it seems too fiddly to actually use in play).

[Plane]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

That makes perfect sense to me. It could be a bit silly at really high numbers with bullets being about to give knockback only if armor stops them, but that's actually pretty fun so I'll allow it.

The other half of the equation is to have it ALWAYS apply (not just if it fails to penetrate DR) that way it causes the same amount of knockback either way.

Side benefit: aside from giving Crushing Attack 20% more damage, it also gives it 20% more knockback (sorely needed)

Based on this, the "1/10 basic damage" knockback which things like piercing attack get would be 1/12 the "12/10 basic damage" knockback which crushing would now get, which seems small enough to be not-unsettling.

You could also give knockback to attacks without blunt trauma via the NBT enhancement (B104) if BT gave some measure of it.

Let's say Ignores DR +300% becomes Ignores Flexible DR +60% by assuming that's -80%...

Adding 3/5 the cost means a 1d Crushing Attack that does costs 8 points per die.

Relative to a 10-dice innate attack (let's say Impaling 10 [80] or Huge Impaling 5 [80]) this is an extra 10% of the overall cost.

By jumping from "1 per 10" to "1 per 5" you're basically increasing by "1 per 10" to "2 per 10".

OTOH for something 3/die like small piercing 10 [30] 8 points is more than 26%.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by Plane

The other half of the equation is to have it ALWAYS apply (not just if it fails to penetrate DR) that way it causes the same amount of knockback either way.

I'm still not certain that it causing any amount of knockback actually makes sense. Rather, I'd just have the damage be considered crushing for anything that cares about it (for instance, this makes flexible DR bad for homogenous creatures because you'll take more injury in the end).