Contact Agents and Porous Armour

[Anthony]

Contact agent specifies: "Your attack must touch bare skin or porous clothing to have any effect at all. DR always stops it."

The fact is, something that will leak through porous clothing will also leak through porous armor, though it may take longer (or not; I doubt mail does much against fluids). On the other hand, since it does have DR, the implication is that such armor will in fact stop fluids. So, questions:

Will a (non-area) contact agent pass through porous armor? Given that area makes contact agent a +150% enhancement (bypasses all non-Sealed armor), and essentially any non-Sealed armor will actually let liquids through to some degree, I'm guessing no.
If No, how do we build such an attack? Also, how would you represent the injury being reduced or delayed but not eliminated?
If Yes, how do we identify which armors are actually porous?

[Nereidalbel]

Porous armor is effectively clothing with a DR value. Mail, however, can have a layer of leather in the padding, which would protect you.

[Walrus]

In GURPS you get what you have bought. Flavour should guide you by its effects, not by its description, so you should be confused by your intuition.

Originally Posted by Anthony

Also, how would you represent the injury being reduced or delayed but not eliminated?

Reduced injury is exactly the case of DR. I'd say, you have a case of mixed AD: against some armor types you have AD>1 and against some - AD<1. And don't use Contact Agent then since you have more complicated case.

Delayed damage is either Delay +0% or some sort of Onset limitation.

If Yes, how do we identify which armors are actually porous?

This should be explained in attack description. Some agents need holes like in mail, others may consider leather porous since there are some pores in it anyway.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Walrus

In GURPS you get what you have bought.

Sure, but the question is 'what did I buy' and 'how do I actually buy specific concepts'.

[PK]

It's important to realize that there's a difference between "technically porous" and "porous for game purposes." For example, heavy cloth armor is technically porous, yes, but in a combat situation, it's going to stop any contact agent.

Imagine a foe covered in a deadly venomous secretion. That foe strikes you on your cloth armor. Does it soak through? No, even the most solid of blows isn't going to leave enough poison on your armor to penetrate to you. Even if he grapples you for several turns, that's still only a few seconds of contact; not enough to literally soak your armor. Perhaps if he manages to pin you, and then sits there on top of you, secreting venom into your armor over the course of half a minute or more . . . but at that point, it's really just a special effect, as he has you pinned and could just do the same thing to your face!

(A fantastic monster whose venom can penetrate weak armor even if it's delivered via a simple punch or grapple wouldn't have Contact Agent. He would have a lesser limitation -- basically "Contact Agent Except Versus Cloth or Leather Armor," probably worth -10%.)

None of the above applies to immersion (whether via a dispersed air attack or being plunged into a vat of poison), because in such a case only sealed armor (or the Sealed advantage) will protect you, and such armor is -- by definition -- nonporous.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by PK

It's important to realize that there's a difference between "technically porous" and "porous for game purposes." For example, heavy cloth armor is technically porous, yes, but in a combat situation, it's going to stop any contact agent.

Mail in a combat situation is not, though the padding under it might. And even in the case of heavy cloth, plenty of contact agents will get through armor within 15s or so, which is still plenty of time to be combat relevant (most such effects will be Cyclic).

Originally Posted by PK

Imagine a foe covered in a deadly venomous secretion. That foe strikes you on your cloth armor. Does it soak through? No, even the most solid of blows isn't going to leave enough poison on your armor to penetrate to you.

Why not? Large quantities of low grade poisons (or more often, corrosives) are perfectly possible.

In any case, I'm fine with saying that there should be a separate limitation or enhancement for single-target effects that penetrate non-sealed defenses, I just wanted to clarify one way or the other.

[Mathulhu]

I think you would be better using "completely resisted by sealed armour limitation" rather than contact agent.

Oozing Doom (I think) from Dungeon Fantasy takes DR seconds to penetrate armour, are you looking for something like that?