Applying Ablative/Semi-Ablative to Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction)

[Kelly Pedersen]

An idea I just had, that I'd like to invite some thoughts on. I was just thinking, you could probably apply the Ablative or Semi-Ablative limitations from Damage Resistance to Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction) as well. At least some of the justifications for IT: DR would work on an ablative model, I think: redundant organs or structures, super-science "structural integrity fields", just plain magic - these are all things that could reasonably be said to have their effectiveness diminish with repeated attacks. So, an ablative model could be justified.

I think, for Ablative, I'd have the IT: DR's divisor decrease by one step (that is, from 15 to 10, 10 to 5, 5 to 4, and so on), while for Semi-Ablative it would require a hit with enough damage to require the maximum divisor to reduce it to 1 (or 0, if you've got the Cosmic enhancement that lets it round damage below 1 to 0). So, if you have IT: DR with a /15 divisor and Semi-Ablative, anything less than a 15-damage hit would not reduce the divisor.

I think, however, that reduction at this pace really has to mean lower limitation values than Ablative/Semi-Ablative on DR. With those, one big hit can completely eliminate your DR, whereas with this scheme, one big hit will never do that - it takes a bunch of hits to whittle you down, which is harder to arrange, I'd say, than one big one. I'd peg Ablative under this scheme at -40%, while Semi-Ablative would be -20%.

What do people think? I think these modifiers could be useful to represent characters who can take a lot of punishment initially, but can be worn down as a fight goes on. Superman, for example, (at least in his post-Crisis version) comes to mind. Giving him Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction with some very large divisor (100, say), and Semi-Ablative means that in a fight with someone who's regularly doing 100 damage, he'll get worn down as it goes on and start having trouble, whereas he can fight someone who does less than 100 damage all day and not have any particular trouble.