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Old 01-06-2021, 10:47 AM   #1
Ulzgoroth
 
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Default Large Area Injury issue and alternatives?

So per Campaigns p400, "Some attacks affect much or most of the victim’s body" and in those cases "Damage Resistance protects normally against large-area injury - but if your DR varies by location, your “effective DR” is the average of your torso DR and the DR of the least protected hit location exposed to the attack (which could still be your torso), rounding up."

This has the fairly obvious problem that if you're wearing an immensely strong breastplate and absolutely nothing else you are fully protected from, well, "for instance, dragon’s breath, a bomb blast, a huge fire, or immersion in an acid pit." (Admittedly, bomb fragmentation still may get your exposed bits.)

An almost trivial adjustment to this would be to instead roll damage, determine penetrating damage against the two relevant DR ratings, and then take the average of those damage results. This would mean that Large Area Injury will always* get some damage through incomplete coverage, and superfluously heavy torso armor doesn't double as a full-body blast shield.

*If the best penetrating damage is 1 point, it might be averaged with 0 and round to 0.
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Old 01-06-2021, 10:57 AM   #2
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Default Re: Large Area Injury issue and alternatives?

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
An almost trivial adjustment to this would be to instead roll damage, determine penetrating damage against the two relevant DR ratings, and then take the average of those damage results. This would mean that Large Area Injury will always* get some damage through incomplete coverage, and superfluously heavy torso armor doesn't double as a full-body blast shield.

I've done that for a while. It often resolves to "take half damage"
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Old 01-06-2021, 11:12 AM   #3
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Default Re: Large Area Injury issue and alternatives?

I'm not sure how your "least protected area" could ever be your torso if you have only torso armor. If you have only torso armor, your "least protected area" is all the bits with DR 0, and your DR is (torso DR)/2. That's by the book, not a house rule or interpretation.
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Old 01-06-2021, 11:20 AM   #4
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Default Re: Large Area Injury issue and alternatives?

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I'm not sure how your "least protected area" could ever be your torso if you have only torso armor. If you have only torso armor, your "least protected area" is all the bits with DR 0, and your DR is (torso DR)/2. That's by the book, not a house rule or interpretation.
...Yes?

The parenthetical "(which could still be your torso)" is part of a direct quote from Campaigns. It's not something I added, and as you observe it is irrelevant to the case where you have heavy torso armor but gaps elsewhere.
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Old 01-06-2021, 11:28 AM   #5
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Default Re: Large Area Injury issue and alternatives?

edit : I was wrong and Ulzgoroth answer below is far more likely, actually (naked torso)

Last edited by Celjabba; 01-06-2021 at 11:49 AM.
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Old 01-06-2021, 11:31 AM   #6
Kromm
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Default Re: Large Area Injury issue and alternatives?

I guess I'm missing the problem.

Are you saying that "DR 100 on my torso, DR 0 elsewhere, giving DR 50 vs. large-area effect" bothers you? If so, then okay . . . do more math. It's fine to work out injury to two areas and average, though then you're left deciding which of several areas with the same DR to use, whether relative area should matter, etc. That's why the rules are the way they are.

Or are you saying that "DR 100 on my torso, DR 0 elsewhere" could be read as DR 100? That's how I skimmed your question. In that case, I just wanted to point out that the rules could never be read that way.
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Old 01-06-2021, 11:42 AM   #7
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Default Re: Large Area Injury issue and alternatives?

The parenthesis would also apply if you have a weird armor loadout, like certain gladiator patterns that wore helmets and some limb armor but no torso armor.
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I guess I'm missing the problem.

Are you saying that "DR 100 on my torso, DR 0 elsewhere, giving DR 50 vs. large-area effect" bothers you? If so, then okay . . . do more math. It's fine to work out injury to two areas and average, though then you're left deciding which of several areas with the same DR to use, whether relative area should matter, etc. That's why the rules are the way they are.

Or are you saying that "DR 100 on my torso, DR 0 elsewhere" could be read as DR 100? That's how I skimmed your question. In that case, I just wanted to point out that the rules could never be read that way.
The former, not the latter, of course. That effective DR 50 means you can put on your breastplate and go swimming in lava with impunity while otherwise naked.

You're throwing in a whole lot of complications to the trivial fix I proposed though. While I certainly am the sort to see the appeal of a more involved and realistic approach, what I actually offered is exactly one subtraction operation more complicated than the RAW.
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Old 01-06-2021, 11:49 AM   #8
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Default Re: Large Area Injury issue and alternatives?

Ideally, you'd check the DR of each location separately, then multiply the penetrating damage by the fraction of body coverage that location represents; this result would have any appropriate wounding modifiers applied and checked against the location's crippling threshold; you'd retain fractions and add all these together at the end to determine the actual HP worth of Injury. Realistically, unless you have an automated spreadsheet (or other computer program) to do the calculation, the suggestion to average Injury to the torso and least armored location is probably the best alternative. It does suck that a guy with heavy DR 9 torso armor and nothing else takes the same damage as someone in DR 9 full plate (which is roughly 3x the weight, but still has eye slits, so there's a location with DR 0), but the above alternative is pretty much unplayable.
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Old 01-07-2021, 12:36 PM   #9
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Default Re: Large Area Injury issue and alternatives?

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
The former, not the latter, of course. That effective DR 50 means you can put on your breastplate and go swimming in lava with impunity while otherwise naked.

You're throwing in a whole lot of complications to the trivial fix I proposed though. While I certainly am the sort to see the appeal of a more involved and realistic approach, what I actually offered is exactly one subtraction operation more complicated than the RAW.
Yea, I've really never used the area damage rules as written for the reason above. Formerly I treated it as multiple hits to multiple hit locations, dividing the damage between the 5 major areas (legs, arms, head, and torso counting twice), further having DR (chinks) if it wasn't full coverage. It's bit cumbersome.

Using average damage (relative to the highest and lowest DR) rather than average DR seems much easier. I'll try this out instead the next time it comes up.
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Old 01-07-2021, 05:40 PM   #10
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Default Re: Large Area Injury issue and alternatives?

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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
I'm not sure how your "least protected area" could ever be your torso if you have only torso armor.
You have a breastplate but not a backplate.
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