A New Type of Damage: Magic

[Pursuivant]

GURPS does a very good job of breaking out the different sorts of realistic insults to the body (Burning, Corrosive, Crushing, etc.) but it didn't include a category for unrealistic damage: Magical.

Magical damage can be used to represent any sort of physical supernatural harm, ranging from malaise caused by supernatural disease, to magical toxins which defy mundane cures, to portions of the victim's body being rearranged, turned inside out, or transformed into baby turtles.

Most spells still inflict normal physical damage, but for spells which produce unspecified HP damage, the GM can substitute magical damage instead.

As an option, only healing spells, ultratech healing or mystical powers can heal HP lost due to magic.

Magical damage also doesn't necessarily need to represent the effects of actual spells or magical powers. It can also represent the effects of certain superpowers, psionic attacks or ultratech devices such as nanobot swarms or probability alteration weapons.

[Anthony]

I'm not sure what this is supposed to represent. There's room in the game for a transformation damage type (though Symptoms does much of the work), but most of your examples are just Toxic damage.

[Phantasm]

One of the biggest complaints about Magic is that many spells have untyped damage (other spells have a damage type that made sense in 3e but in 4e are better represented with another type, such as Sunbolt with impaling rather than burning damage, but that's another discussion). This was a result of rushing it out the door without a proper edit to catch such things.

So in a way we have this "magic damage" you're looking for. However, in 4e the emphasis has shifted from the cause to the effect. What kinds of effects would your "magic" damage do that's not covered by Affliction (stun), Burning, Corrosive, Crushing, Cutting, Fatigue, Impaling, Piercing, or Toxic damage types?

IOW, the fact that there is untyped damage is a bug, not a feature.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I'm not sure what this is supposed to represent. There's room in the game for a transformation damage type (though Symptoms does much of the work), but most of your examples are just Toxic damage.

Calling it "transformation" or "supernatural" damage might work, too.

Basically, I'm looking for a mechanic that covers "weird" damage that doesn't fit into any other category.

Mechanically, it's identical to crushing damage, at least for damage multipliers and effects on armor, except that certain types of mundane healing might not work.

Since I was thinking in terms of GURPS Magic, with all its unspecified damage types, calling it "magic" seemed to fit the bill. It seems particularly appropriate for spells such as Deathtouch, since it allows the GM to describe any sort of ghoulish special effects he desires when telling players exactly how the spell works. For example, in one campaign, Deathtouch might make flesh wither and die (but without the skin burning effects of burning or corrosive damage), while in another it might be an overall lessening of the victim's "vital forces" with no outward signs of damage.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

This was a result of rushing it out the door without a proper edit to catch such things.

IMO, Magic has been "rushed out the door" twice - once in its original incarnation as a 1e book, and once again during the conversion from 3e to 4e. Some corrections were made from 1e to 3e, and more were made for 4e, but even so LOTS of fan-proposed fixes for problem spells never made it. So, basically, GURPS Magic is just the same old 1e book from 1987 (or whenever) with some patches and (slightly) better (color) artwork.

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

So in a way we have this "magic damage" you're looking for. However, in 4e the emphasis has shifted from the cause to the effect. What kinds of effects would your "magic" damage do that's not covered by Affliction (stun), Burning, Corrosive, Crushing, Cutting, Fatigue, Impaling, Piercing, or Toxic damage types?

Fair question. First, let's call "magic" damage "supernatural" or "weird" damage instead to make it more generic. It's designed to cover any sort of injury from any sort of mechanism which doesn't fall into the usual damage categories.

Mechanically, I see it being identical to Crushing damage, except that it has no special effects at all other than the ability to cause Death, Crippling or permanent injury , Shock or Stun.

Basically, if you get hit by it you just subtract HP. No blunt trauma, no armor divisor against open-weave armor, no damage multiplier/divisor for penetrating damage, no special knockout ability for hits to the head or vitals, and no ability to cause Severe Bleeding.

Beyond that, effects are up to the GM. For example, it might resist certain types of mundane healing or have different effects for crippling or permanent injuries than normal injuries.

For example, someone afflicted by destructor nanobots might seem like they just have plain old toxic damage, but the usual antitoxins don't work. The victim is helpless until he gets treatment by a TL9+ aid-giver who is familiar with what destructor nano and has the necessary curative treatments.

And, should he survive the experience, the victim might have unusual disadvantages as a result, which are different than those that a poisoning survivor might have. For example, they might have random scarring on their skin - like that inflicted by corrosive or burning damage, plus neurological damage like that inflicted by toxins, and maybe a weakened limb like damage inflicted by a crushing injury.

Or, as another example, at the end of one of the Harry Potter books, Draco Malfoy gets hit by several dozen non-lethal but hostile spells at once, which leaves him as some sort of oozing, helpless puddle on the floor.

Assuming that some of the combined jinxes and curses actually inflicted HP damage, mundane medicine isn't going to be of much use. Instead, other than his own recuperative powers, the only thing that's going to get Draco back into bullying form again is loads of curative spells.

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

IOW, the fact that there is untyped damage is a bug, not a feature.

Yep. Part of the reason I originally called it "magical" damage is as a fix for this problem as encountered in GURPS Magic. There are some other books that have untyped damage, but the proper type of damage is usually logical from context. Magic, by definition, isn't logical.

[Dinadon]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Mechanically, it's identical to crushing damage, at least for damage multipliers and effects on armor, except that certain types of mundane healing might not work.

Except that's not very generic and would be setting specific. As a power you would do this by adding Unhealing Damage (from PU4) to the attack, giving:

Crushing 1d (Magical -10%, Unhealing Damage +100%) [10]

For a spell I would either allow Adjustable Spells (from Thaumatology) to grant the enhancement to the spell, or make variants of existing spells. This fits how I normally see unhealable damage spells, as a more powerful category of damage spells.

Since I was thinking in terms of GURPS Magic, with all its unspecified damage types, calling it "magic" seemed to fit the bill. It seems particularly appropriate for spells such as Deathtouch, since it allows the GM to describe any sort of ghoulish special effects he desires when telling players exactly how the spell works. For example, in one campaign, Deathtouch might make flesh wither and die (but without the skin burning effects of burning or corrosive damage), while in another it might be an overall lessening of the victim's "vital forces" with no outward signs of damage.

The GM can already describe things how he wants, naming a damage type doesn't affect that. As for signs of damage, that's more to do with HP. Someone low on HP will look hurt, with the cosmetics of that depending on what type of damage he's taken. Aside from Supers taking No Visible Damage, making damage invisible is another powerful enhancement since healers will skip the character. But the player is likely to know he's low on HP, and any sensible cleric will cast healing spells on someone who keeps falling unconscious after being hit by a mook.

Anyway, calling magic is also redundant. Damage from a spell already overcomes DR(Not vs Magic) and is annoyed by DR(Only Magic). Calling the damage type magic means you're doing magical magic damage, which I find confusing. What about spell casters who get their spells from a non-magical source, such as druids and clerics?

[Mathulhu]

If you start with Toxic instead of Crushing and you don't have to get rid of the hit location effects and knock back and blunt trauma.

I have always thought that Death Touch was Toxic damage, like I assumed Sunbolt was laser damage, but then I have never paid much/enough attention to the core Magic book.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Magical damage can be used to represent any sort of physical supernatural harm, ranging from malaise caused by supernatural disease, to magical toxins which defy mundane cures, to portions of the victim's body being rearranged, turned inside out, or transformed into baby turtles.

Toxic, toxic, toxic and corrosive.

As an option, only healing spells, ultratech healing or mystical powers can heal HP lost due to magic.

Cosmic: Unhealing (Except against Cosmic efforts, or magical effects) +100%

This is actually a feature of the supernaturals of my cabal game. Damage from demonic claws can only be healed with holy magic or if they have been cleansed, damage from werewolf claws can only be healed naturally, and so on.

Your description of your damage type is largely either cosmetic (Who cares what people call it?) or deals entirely with how it is healed, which is covered by something else. Damage type's sole purpose is to determine how it interacts with certain armors, certain hit locations and certain injury tolerances. Everything you describe interacts with armor and hit locations like other damage types: Your magical malaise acts like toxic, but with a few limitations (Magical) and enhancements (Unhealing), your magical fireball acts like burning, and so on. Thus, it isn't really a new damage type.

[kirbwarrior]

The only thing I can come up with for a new damage type for gurps would be Basic or N/A (or something else more clever); a damage type that does nothing but cause injury. No armor specifically for it, no special defences or weaknesses, nothing. The only reason even for this is the subtle differences from Toxic (namely, Toxic may or may not be ineffective to inanimate objects, and toxic has some upsides to it). Mind, I have no idea what this should represent, but it would effectively be 'unlabelled' damage.

Any other type of damage I've come across in fiction will be one of the types in gurps (and I've tried to find something that doesn't work) in my opinion.

[Walrus]

There're generic types of damage in GURPS which describe far more than it's intuitive from their name. Especially when it's combinde with Malediction-like attack delivery (so non-projectile spells from Magic suffice).

Crushing damage is generic "mechanical" damage which doesn't deal something unusual to target (like pi/imp/cut which deal certain specific structural changes). Add no knockback, no wounding, large area, lasting injury or whatever to represent various kinds of physical injury.

Burning damage is generic "physical" damage which is dealt by some inappropriate physical conditions, whether it's actual burning, electricity (Surge and/or Non-incendiary), frost, laser or "generic magic". Don't forget that non-malediction distinguish tight-beam burning as well.

Toxic damage is generic damage to "living" targets. It doesn't have to be from actual poison, biological toxin or whatever. It may represent soul corruption, nanobots or whatever, just add appropriate Symptoms.

Corrosion damage is generic "destruction" damage. It doesn't matter whether an object is dissolved by acid, cosumed by grey goo, banished into warp piece-by-piece or transformed into baby turtles.