Question about bone armor

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Unless I've missed something, that's not the way semi-ablative works. Semi-ablative means the armor suffers a -1 to DR for every 10 points of damage it prevents (or maybe every 10 points dealt, I've never been entirely clear on that), and HP doesn't factor in.

Yeah, I'm just using HP as shorthand to keep track of when to level down from DR 3 to DR 2, then DR 1, then DR 0. Maybe I should call it something else than HP.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Anders

Low-Tech Armour has rules for bone armour (not very effective, but possible). It is semi-ablative. If it was damaged, could it be repaired with suitable materials and Armoury (Body Armour)?

Also, how does it interact with armour divisor?

Example: Nick has bone armour with DR 3, giving it 30 HP. He is hit by a metal weapon that does 10 points of damage. The bone armour stops 3 of them, reducing it's hit points to 27. Now he is hit by a stone weapon that does 10 points of damage. The bone armour stops 6 points of them, because it has an Armor Divisor of 0.5. Is the bone armour's hit points reduced by 3 or 6?

Originally Posted by Anders

Yeah, I'm just using HP as shorthand to keep track of when to level down from DR 3 to DR 2, then DR 1, then DR 0. Maybe I should call it something else than HP.

Maybe Semi-Ablation Points (SAPs) ? You could count from 10 down to 0 (or 0 up to 10, doesn't matter) as damage is stopped by the DR, and every time you hit 10 you reduce the DR.

Or: calculate total SAPs based on DR*10 like you did above, which is probably easier, and calculating "max DR" v "current DR" based on that?

Treating DR as a depletable pool is probably simpler though since it is healed like HP is.

Especially since LT also has DTA rules (armor is protected with 1 less DR it gives wearer, has own HP) the application of both to semi-ablative DR would be kind of "lighting the candle on both ends" in terms of DR gradually reducing both to losing it's own HP and accruing SAPs.

Does anyone know if there was any fully ablative (-80% in Basic Set terms) DR for any worn armor in LT? Something with a 1:1 stop/loss ratio (Semi-Ablative has a 10:1 ratio) would lose DR so fast that tracking HP sounds mostly pointless.

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by Plane

Does anyone know if there was any fully ablative (-80% in Basic Set terms) DR for any worn armor in LT? Something with a 1:1 stop/loss ratio (Semi-Ablative has a 10:1 ratio) would lose DR so fast that tracking HP sounds mostly pointless.

Fully ablative would be odd for armor because it would imply that (say) a bullet piercing a hole through a breastplate would render the entire rest of the breastplate completely useless.

[Anthony]

There's probably things you can do to make bone more durable (lacquer, wax, etc), but the only really tough bone you can get is teeth.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

Fully ablative would be odd for armor because it would imply that (say) a bullet piercing a hole through a breastplate would render the entire rest of the breastplate completely useless.

Something that shatters. An obsidian breastplate.

[AlexanderHowl]

Obsidian would be scaled though, as it would otherwise be too cumbersome, so only pieces would shatter.

[Anthony]

Most armor is somewhat to fully ablative if you look at a small enough area, it's just that it's usually more along the lines of creating a new chink in armor (targetable at -8) than reducing the overall DR.

[Tinman]

Originally Posted by Anders

Low-Tech Armour has rules for bone armour (not very effective, but possible). It is semi-ablative. If it was damaged, could it be repaired with suitable materials and Armoury (Body Armour)?

I would sy it can be repaird by replacing broken/damaged pieces of bone (if it's a big piece made from smaller pieces. If it's one big piece you'd need a new one.)

Also, how does it interact with armour divisor?

Example: Nick has bone armour with DR 3, giving it 30 HP. He is hit by a metal weapon that does 10 points of damage. The bone armour stops 3 of them, reducing it's hit points to 27.

Problem right here. Semi-ablative only looses 1 point of DR per 10 damage. Not for each point stopped & doesn't use HP for the armor.

Now he is hit by a stone weapon that does 10 points of damage. The bone armour stops 6 points of them, because it has an Armor Divisor of 0.5. Is the bone armour's hit points reduced by 3 or 6?

That's an excellent question. I would say if it stops 6, it takes 6.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Tinman

Problem right here. Semi-ablative only looses 1 point of DR per 10 damage. Not for each point stopped & doesn't use HP for the armor.

I'm using HP to keep track of how many points it has stopped.

Edit: So how many HP should each use of Armoury restore. I'm thinking that 1 hour of repairs restores MoS times two "HP" (minimum 1) and uses up... say $1d worth of resources. Bone armour isn't very expensive.

[Ejidoth]

The rule for semi-ablative DR is (from B47), "When an attack strikes semi-ablative DR, every 10 points of basic damage rolled removes one point of DR, regardless of whether the attack penetrates DR."

So stuff like armor divisor really doesn't matter, because it doesn't matter how much damage the armor blocks, just how much pre-armor damage there was in total. Take that total number, divide by 10, round down, and that's how much DR is lost after the attack.

So, to refer back to the example earlier,

Example: Nick has bone armour with DR 3, giving it 30 HP. He is hit by a metal weapon that does 10 points of damage. The bone armour stops 3 of them, reducing it's hit points to 27. Now he is hit by a stone weapon that does 10 points of damage. The bone armour stops 6 points of them, because it has an Armor Divisor of 0.5. Is the bone armour's hit points reduced by 3 or 6?

The armor has DR 3. It gets hit by a metal weapon that does 10 points of damage, it loses 1 DR. It gets hit by a stone weapon that does 10 points of damage, it loses 1 DR. The amount of damage that it blocks and the amount of damage that 'get through' are different, but the actual ablation is the same: 1 DR per 10 damage.

I'm not the first one in this thread to point this out, but it seems like this detail is getting missed.

EDIT: Corrected 'pre-damage armor' to 'pre-armor damage', that was a dumb typo. Sorry about that!