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Old 09-30-2008, 07:06 PM   #1
Bruno
 
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Default How does Armor Divisor work vs Ablative DR?

Let's use a slightly ridiculous example:

Mrugnak, the minotaur Barbarian from a Dungeon Fantasy game is wielding a large, Fine, Balanced, Dwarven Morningstar of Penetration. With a Striking ST of 21, he deals out 4d+3 (2) every hit. With a Forced Entry skill at DX+2*, vs an inanimate object he gets +8, and an All Out Attack Strong dishes out another +4.

Assume he's gone Berserk and he's trying to bash his way through the curtain wall surrounding the tower from The Tower of Octavius. You'd basically have to be crazy-go-nuts to try to make your own door in a wall like this: Curtain wall: 6’ stone, 936 DR, 171 HP. Assuming the DR is like the DR from stone in the Basic Set, it's Ablative vs Crushing damage when struck repeatedly on the same spot (to a minimum DR of 3).

Luckily for Mrugnak, Morningstars do Crushing damage!

Assuming he does average damage, he deals out 29 damage a second when All-out-Attacking a stone wall.

If he wasn't using a MAGICAL Morningstar, this would strip off 29 DR a second, and then would start blasting away at HP, meaning that in 38.17 seconds, Mrugnak has blasted a hole RIGHT THROUGH a 6' thick curtain wall.

Side note: It's a little unclear what size a hole this is. I'm hoping a roughly giant-morning-star-spiky-ball-of-death sized one.

But Mrugnak has a magical morningstar of Armor Divisor (2)! Does this mean he actually only needs to bash off HALF as much DR before he starts tunneling through the HP?

That doesn't seem quite right, because after bashing through 468 DR (half of the total), there must STILL be another 468 DR left - his morning star just treats it like 234 (still well and enough to block the incoming 29 damage).

My theory on how this is supposed to work, please help, my brains they are confused:

It seems like he can ignore the Armor Divisor for the first 31 blows (which remove 899 DR) leaving 37 DR.

On hit #32, only 18 DR is in effect against the blow (and are immediately crushed leaving DR 19? I think?) letting 9 HP slip through to reduce HP to 162.

On hit #33, only DR 9 is in effect against the blow (leaving DR 10) and 20 more damage slips through, reducing HP to 142.

On hit #34, only DR 5 is in effect against the blow (leaving DR 5) and 24 more damage goes through, reducing HP to 118

On hit #34, only DR 2 is in effect (leaving DR 3) and 27 goes through, reducing HP to 91

On hit #35 only DR 1 is in effect (leaving minimum DR 3) and 28 goes through, reducing HP to 63

On hit #36 only DR 1 is in effect (Leaving minimum DR 3) and 28 goes through, reducing HP to 35

On hit #37 only DR 1 is in effect (Leaving minimum DR 3) And 28 goes through, reducing HP to 7.

On hit #38 Mrugnak makes a hole in the wall.

So Mrugnak has saved 0.17 seconds (round up to 1) by having DR divided by 2.

This seems... unexpected. Am I doing this wrong?

* Actual In-Play Mrugnak only has Forced Entry at DX, but this only slows him down, it doesn't really stop him...
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Old 09-30-2008, 07:49 PM   #2
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Default Re: How does Armor Divisor work vs Ablative DR?

That's a very good question. For most attacks with an armor divisor, I'd do it just like your example, with the attack ignoring half the DR but the DR only taking damage equal to what it absorbed. Ablative armor wouldn't necessarily become useless after a bodkin-point arrow got through it, after all.

The problem here is that the morningstar is magical, meaning it doesn't follow our rules. In this case, it probably depends on how the magic works - does it "soften" the armor, making it more susceptable to damage, or does it somehow "curse" the armor such that it can't absorb as much of the attack before transferring the energy into the protected target? In the former case, the morningstar would probably deal, effectively, double damage against the ablative armor. In the latter, it would work exactly how you've described it. I'd recommend the latter option - otherwise, magical armor penetration is potentially overpowered.


The take-home message is that, although the magic on Mrugnak's morningstar doesn't help in making a hole in the wall, it definately helps in squishing fully-armored knights.
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Old 09-30-2008, 08:23 PM   #3
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Default Re: How does Armor Divisor work vs Ablative DR?

I believe the idea is that Armour Divisors don't interact with ablation at all, only damage penetration. As ablation is related to damage dealt, they don't need to.
Hence, the effects of Penetrating only matter once the DR is low enough that his damage can get through it, once it's halved (on average, once the DR's dropped to less than 58), then it can start hurting HP.
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Old 10-01-2008, 12:40 AM   #4
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Default Re: How does Armor Divisor work vs Ablative DR?

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Benj
I believe the idea is that Armour Divisors don't interact with ablation at all, only damage penetration. As ablation is related to damage dealt, they don't need to.
Hence, the effects of Penetrating only matter once the DR is low enough that his damage can get through it, once it's halved (on average, once the DR's dropped to less than 58), then it can start hurting HP.
I tend to vaguely follow that line too, but I'd still prefer Kromm's elaboration of how it should be done.
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Old 10-01-2008, 02:20 AM   #5
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Default Re: How does Armor Divisor work vs Ablative DR?

Considering the wording of both, the ablating armor is reduced by the amount of damage inflicted, which is completely independant of any armor divisor. Since armor divisor has no effect on damage, it shouldn't change how much armor is ablated away.
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Old 10-01-2008, 06:48 AM   #6
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: How does Armor Divisor work vs Ablative DR?

Like others, I'd say that armor divisor doesn't interact with ablative defense. Only the actual damage does. This has some odd effects sometimes when dealing with UT Force screens.

However, the place where I make an exception is when dealing with cover value. When firing armor piercing bullets through a wooden door I have the AP bullets go through twice as much door. I don't increase the damage to the door though.
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Old 10-01-2008, 07:10 AM   #7
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Default Re: How does Armor Divisor work vs Ablative DR?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin
Like others, I'd say that armor divisor doesn't interact with ablative defense. Only the actual damage does. This has some odd effects sometimes when dealing with UT Force screens.
This thread might be useful: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=40353
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Old 10-01-2008, 01:28 PM   #8
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Default Re: How does Armor Divisor work vs Ablative DR?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
It seems like he can ignore the Armor Divisor for the first 31 blows (which remove 899 DR) leaving 37 DR.
So, setting up the scenario: 29 dmg per round, starting with 37 DR and 171 HP. Check.
Quote:
On hit #32, only 18 DR is in effect against the blow (and are immediately crushed leaving DR 19? I think?) letting 9 HP slip through to reduce HP to 162.
Well, if it's 37 DR (18 effective), and Mrugnak's doing 29 points per round, then 11 HP slip through, reducing HP to 160.

Sadly, this has no real impact on the results since it still takes Mrugnak the same amount of time to make a hole using his AP Mace as it does without. Note, however, that if the base dmg is applied to the DR, it takes him one less round:

Code:
	DR-dmg		DR-pen. dmg	No AP
Rnd	HP	DR	HP	DR	HP	DR
31	171	37	171	37	171	37
32	160	8	160	26	171	8
33	135	0	144	10	150	0
34	106	0	120	0	121	0
35	77	0	91	0	92	0
36	48	0	62	0	63	0
37	19	0	33	0	34	0
38	-10	0	4	0	5	0
39	-39	0	-25	0	-24	0
Interesting exercise, though.
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Old 10-01-2008, 01:45 PM   #9
Mark Skarr
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Default Re: How does Armor Divisor work vs Ablative DR?

I know Kromm has specifically addressed this (or something very similar) in the past, and I'll be darned cuz I can't find it anywhere.

From memory, which is notoriously spotty in my case, he said something to the effect that the armor divisor wipes out the additional affected DR. So if you do 1 pt with (2), you'd eliminate 2 points of aDR.

I could be wrong. I cannot find the forementioned post. Asking the man himself would probably be better. But, I know he's talked about it before.

I haven't had a chance to play with that idea; I've usually used it like The Benj talkes about, from above.
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