Conditional Injury with Knowing Your Own Strength

[dataweaver]

Indeed, the whole point of the WP vs. Protection table is to remove the need to convert back to damage vs. DR. That is, in fact, the reason why the tutorial I have for generating that table specified taking the difference between 1 and the factor of the number of steps down from there: the table essentially is doing the subtraction for us ahead of time and summarizing the results.

I would add that pairing KYOS with CI ought to produce a result where the only time you need the HP-to-RT, damage-to-WP, or DR-to-Protection tables is when you're translating published stats (like weapon damage, armor DR, or NPC HP) for use with the Exponential Power system, as I call the combo; and that should be done before gameplay starts as much as possible. The only tables that should matter in play should be the subtraction table (mainly for WP vs. Protection), an addition table (for layering DR or combining attacks), and the Conditional Effects table (to convert the final number to something that has meaning in-game).

The system ought to be something along the lines of:
1: look up the attack's WP on the attacker's character sheet.
2. Apply some sort of damage roll (which, for reasons I can go into if you wish, is likely to look pretty much the same no matter what damage dice the standard system uses).
3. Look up the target's Protection on his character sheet. Compare the attacker's WP (as modified by step 2) to the target's Protection to determine the extent that the target's Protection has managed to degrade the WP. If the target's Protection is “n/a”, ignore this step.
4. Look up the target's RT and reduce the WP by that amount to get the Severity of the injury.
5. Look up the Severity on the Conditional Effects Table to figure out the in-game effects of that injury.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by RyanW

I try my best not to convert "at the table" by having most relevant information precalculated. Character sheets and NPC cards have the damage, HP, and DR replaced with WP, RT, and Protection.

The problem is that you still need to keep the Log Subtraction table around, and apply it in play. Avoiding that is why I had multiple thresholds; the basic idea, though it was masked, is that to get your -1 shock penalty threshold, you add (DR+0.1*HP) and look it up on the log table. The -2 shock is at (DR+0.2*HP), -3 is at (DR+0.3), etc, though I did a bit of rounding.

To deal with armor divisors, I take the observation that 10 damage with a (2) armor divisor is the same thing as 20 damage (halved after DR). Since wound levels are on a log scale, you can handle AP(2) by just adding enough penetration (+2 WP, +3 dB, +6 on a x10/+20, +9 on a x10/+30) and subtracting 2 levels wounding (I have it at +10/-2 for rounding reasons).

[dataweaver]

Yeah; I was taking it as self-evident that multipliers and divisors applied to damage, armor, etc. get translated as straight pluses and minuses. Maybe I shouldn't have (considered it self-evident). If your attack does 1d×10 damage, figure out what the WP for 1d should be, then add the number of steps needed to get to ×10: in a six-step system like CI-as-written, add six; in a twenty-step system, add 20; and so on.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

3. Look up the target's Protection on his character sheet. Compare the attacker's WP (as modified by step 2) to the target's Protection to determine the extent that the target's Protection has managed to degrade the WP. If the target's Protection is “n/a”, ignore this step.

That's the step I want to get rid of, at least most of the time.

[dataweaver]

Yeah; you can't do that without replacing it with a table lookup to replace damage minus DR with WP.

It helps that there are two cases where you can dispense with the WP-vs-Protection lookup: first, if Protection equals or exceeds WP, you get to stop the entire sequence right then and there: the attack does no damage at all. Second, if WP is high enough to overwhelm Protection (or if there is no Protection to overwhelm), there's no Protection-based degradation to worry about. It's only when Protection is less than WP, but not so much that it's completely useless, that you need to bother with the table.

End result: it's a table that you only sometimes need, instead of a table that you always have to consult (i.e., the damage-to-WP table). As well, it's a table with a finite length: one end is a hard cutoff, and the other trails off to -0.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

End result: it's a table that you only sometimes need, instead of a table that you always have to consult (i.e., the damage-to-WP table). As well, it's a table with a finite length: one end is a hard cutoff, and the other trails off to -0.

In my version, it's a table that has all of three entries, and they are 3, 2, and 1. It's a little coarse grained, but I think I'm entirely okay with that in exchange for simplicity.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Yeah; you can't do that without replacing it with a table lookup to replace damage minus DR with WP.

You need a table lookup, but there are several options for how to go about it.

The procedure you describe appears to be something like:

1. Look up the stats of your weapon
2. Roll damage. This is likely something like 3d6+damage bonus.
3. Look up the target's protection.
4. If armor divisors are involved, adjust target protection by divisors.
5. Obtain (Damage - Protection)
6. Look up that value on a table (table entries: 13 for +20/x10)
7. Subtract lookup result from damage.
8. Subtract RT from damage.
9. Possibly divide damage by some number, depending on the scale you used.
10. Apply modifiers for attack type modifiers (cut, impale, etc).
11. Apply injury tolerance modifiers (CI actually combines these steps, but it's simpler to just say all impaling and piercing attacks are at -2 on Unliving targets, -4 on Homogeneous. It's not 100% the same as Basic, but the way IT works in Basic is kind of strange anyway).
12. Look up result on a table to figure out what it does (table entries: 13 for CI).

Total: 2 sheet lookup, 1 roll, up to 8 add/subtract (in 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11), 2 table lookup, possibly one division. Stored data is up to 3 per attack (damage, armor divisor, damage type), 3 per target (protection, RT, injury tolerance), and two universal tables with 13 entries each.

Now, what can we do to reduce this? There's two basic adjustments we can make: we can eliminate the division (by changing lookup values), and we can change from rolling damage to rolling penetration -- treat an armor divisor of (5) as x5 damage, x0.2 wounding. The result looks like this.

1. Look up the stats of your weapon
2. Roll penetration. This is likely something like 3d6+penetration bonus.
3. Look up the target's protection.
4. Obtain (penetration - Protection)
5. Look up that value on a table (table entries: 13 for +20/x10)
6. Subtract lookup result from damage.
7. Apply attack's wounding adjustment.
8. Subtract RT from damage.
9. Apply injury tolerance modifiers. On a +20/x10 scale, the Unliving modifier is now about -6, Homogeneous -12.
10. Look up result on a table to figure out what it does. The conditional effects table now has severity ranges instead of single values.

Total: 2 sheet lookup, 1 roll, up to 6 add/subtract (in 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9), 2 table lookup. Stored data is up to 3 per attack (damage, wound adjustment, damage type -- though damage type isn't used except to determine interaction with injury tolerance), 3 per target (protection, RT, injury tolerance), and two universal tables with 13 entries each.

That's about the best we can do without storing more numbers. If we're willing to store more numbers, I see three more choices:
Precomputed Armor Tables
for each relevant Protection value, you can precompute steps 4-6. For example, penetration 11 vs protection 10 is

1. 11 - 10 = 1.
2. Look up 1 on the log subtraction table. Obtain a value of -19
3. Result is -8.

There is variable here, so for protection 10 we can just have a table that looks like:

11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20-22 23-25 26-35 36+
-8  -2  2   5   8   10  12  14  15  [-3]  [-2]  [-1]  36+

This saves up to 2 subtraction operations. The drawback is that we now need to store one table per possible Protection value.
Precomputed Severity Tables
The order of steps 7 and 8 doesn't matter, so we can also precompute the effects of steps 4,5,6, and 8. It looks just like the above table, only subtract RT from the numbers in the bottom row.
This saves an additional subtraction operation, but means we now need to store one table per target.
Precomputed Effects Tables
If we're willing to lose some resolution, we can also incorporate step 10. This requires redefining wounding modifiers as column shifts. That's the method used in KYoD.
This saves us a table lookup, but the effects table needs to be larger to support the possible range of column shifts.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Anthony

You need a table lookup, but there are several options for how to go about it.

The procedure you describe appears to be something like:

1. Look up the stats of your weapon
2. Roll damage. This is likely something like 3d6+damage bonus.
3. Look up the target's protection.
4. If armor divisors are involved, adjust target protection by divisors.
5. Obtain (Damage - Protection)
6. Look up that value on a table (table entries: 13 for +20/x10)
7. Subtract lookup result from damage.
8. Subtract RT from damage.
9. Possibly divide damage by some number, depending on the scale you used.
10. Apply modifiers for attack type modifiers (cut, impale, etc).
11. Apply injury tolerance modifiers (CI actually combines these steps, but it's simpler to just say all impaling and piercing attacks are at -2 on Unliving targets, -4 on Homogeneous. It's not 100% the same as Basic, but the way IT works in Basic is kind of strange anyway).
12. Look up result on a table to figure out what it does (table entries: 13 for CI).

Total: 2 sheet lookup, 1 roll, up to 8 add/subtract (in 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11), 2 table lookup, possibly one division. Stored data is up to 3 per attack (damage, armor divisor, damage type), 3 per target (protection, RT, injury tolerance), and two universal tables with 13 entries each.

My procedure:

1. Look up WP for weapon. (you have to look up damage by RAW)
2. Roll 1d. On a 5-6, increase WP by 1. On a 1-2, reduce WP by 1. (You have to roll damage by RAW)
3. Look up Protection. (You have to look up DR by RAW)
4. If armor modifiers apply, add or subtract the relevant number to Protection. (This is multiplication/division by RAW)
5. If Protection meets or exceeds WP, stop. No damage occurs. If WP exceeds Protection by 4+, continue without modifying WP. Otherwise, reduce WP by 4-difference. (Slight increase in complexity versus RAW)

Everything after that is identical to Conditional Injury.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by RyanW

My procedure:

1. Look up WP for weapon. (you have to look up damage by RAW)
2. Roll 1d. On a 5-6, increase WP by 1. On a 1-2, reduce WP by 1. (You have to roll damage by RAW)
3. Look up Protection. (You have to look up DR by RAW)
4. If armor modifiers apply, add or subtract the relevant number to Protection. (This is multiplication/division by RAW)
5. If Protection meets or exceeds WP, stop. No damage occurs. If WP exceeds Protection by 4+, continue without modifying WP. Otherwise, reduce WP by 4-difference. (Slight increase in complexity versus RAW)

Everything after that is identical to Conditional Injury.

That's just steps 1-7 from my list (your step 5 is actually steps 5-7, you're just using a very simple table). Step 9 doesn't occur because you're using a +6=x10 scale, steps 8, 10, 11, and 12 are rephrasing CI.

[Raekai]

Originally Posted by RyanW

My procedure:

1. Look up WP for weapon. (you have to look up damage by RAW)
2. Roll 1d. On a 5-6, increase WP by 1. On a 1-2, reduce WP by 1. (You have to roll damage by RAW)
3. Look up Protection. (You have to look up DR by RAW)
4. If armor modifiers apply, add or subtract the relevant number to Protection. (This is multiplication/division by RAW)
5. If Protection meets or exceeds WP, stop. No damage occurs. If WP exceeds Protection by 4+, continue without modifying WP. Otherwise, reduce WP by 4-difference. (Slight increase in complexity versus RAW)

Everything after that is identical to Conditional Injury.

Speaking of that underlined part, how do you convert non-ST-based damage (e.g., firearms) in your system? I would assume it's just the same as normal CI, but I also don't want to assume.