Injury Tolerance Comparison [Basic/Powers]

[AlexanderHowl]

I was wondering if anyone else had noticed that Injury Tolerance (Homogeneous; Unbreakable Bones) [50] was slightly better than Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction /2) [50]? Since Homogenous includes No Brain and No Vitals, it lacks the wounding multipliers and special rules concerning those locations, while Damage Reduction does not, which I think makes all the difference.

[Balor Patch]

If you are in a gun heavy campaign then certainly. If the bulk of the damage in your campaign is cutting, crushing, or burning then certainly not.

[Plane]

Not to mention burning attack / fatigue attack

[Mark Skarr]

I concur. Injury Tolerance (Homogeneous, Unbreakable Bones) is a more specifc defense than IT:DR /2, and under its specific protection, is superior. However, IT:DR/2 is always applicable, where IT (H, UB) only applies under certain circumstances.

However, I can't find anywhere that, without modification, IT:DR protects from Fatigue damage, as it isn't injury until past 0 FP. I could be wrong--just got up.

[Plane]

Good point... B438 mentions "Some poisons cause effects other than injury or fatigue" for example so FP loss doesn't seem to get treated as injury...

Maybe that's why there's this phrasing under B109 Symptoms:

if the cumulative damage (HP or FP loss) inflicted by the enhanced Innate Attack exceeds a fraction of the victim’s basic HP or FP

In this case "damage" seems to be referring to injury (in the case of FP) rather than basic damage (unless DR doesn't protect against Symptoms... doubtful since it's healing above a % of loss which restores it) but "cumulative damage to FP" isn't being lumped together with the phrase "injury" here either.

Does this mean "Large Area Injury" isn't a thing for Fatigue Attack and you can't buy Damage Resistance (Fatigue Attacks only) like you can buy DR (Fatigue Attacks only) ?

Also interesting: if IT:DR doesn't halve the FP loss, could it at least halve HP loss that results from being pushed into negative FP?

[Varyon]

IT:Homogeneous, once you pull out No Brain/Vitals, costs [30] for a roughly 1/4 divisor toward Pi/Imp (roughly because in a few places it becomes 1/5 to better adhere to SSR; it’s really -4 SSR to wounding). This implies Only Pi/Imp should be a -70% Limitation, when really it’s at most -40% (Common). To match better with IT:DR (and Vulnerability*), Unliving should probably be [30] and Homogeneous [60] ([70] with No Brain/Vitals added in). Arguably more, as IT:DR is [15] per -1 SSR to Pi or Imp, not both.

*As it stands, one could technically create a powerful golem or similar who is cursed with a weakness to Pi or Imp (or both, if you opt to group them together as a single type) in the form of Vulnerability x4. That is, IT: Homogeneous [40], No Blood [5], No Eyes [5], Unbreakable Bones [10], and Vulnerability x4 (Pi/Imp Only, Common -40%) [-60], for a net cost of [0] but gaining all the benefits of No Blood/Brain/Eyes/Vitals, and being immune to permanent crippling besides. Oh, and if you don’t lump Pi/Imp together, you could have your golem retain the Homogeneous resistance to either Pi or Imp. There’s clearly something wrong with that.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Varyon

IT:Homogeneous, once you pull out No Brain/Vitals, costs [30] for a roughly 1/4 divisor toward Pi/Imp (roughly because in a few places it becomes 1/5 to better adhere to SSR; it’s really -4 SSR to wounding). This implies Only Pi/Imp should be a -70% Limitation, when really it’s at most -40% (Common).

Honestly, that's a problem with the DR rules, not a problem with IT. Powers that only work on a limited class of effects are much less limiting when you choose who to use them on than when someone else makes the choice, or when it's random.

Let's say incoming attacks are evenly distributed between burn, crush, cut, impale, and pierce.

IT(U) has a 40% chance to reduce damage by 50%, for a real damage reduction of 20%.
IT(H) has a 40% chance to reduce damage by 80%, for a real damage reduction of 32%.
IT(DR 2) has a 100% chance to reduce damage by 50%, for a real damage reduction of 50%.

That lines up pretty well with the respective costs...

[AlexanderHowl]

Unliving and Homogeneous have better utility in TL5-TL10 settings due to the preponderance of pi attacks, which end up being 50% of the attacks and 90% of the damage. When compared to Damage Reduction /2, a 12d pi++ attack deals an average of 42 HP of injury to Damage Reduction /2 and Unliving and 21 HP of injury to Homogeneous. When it comes to brain hits, that changes to 168 HP for the former but remains 21 HP for the latter.