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Varyon · 07-18-2013, 10:10 AM

Occasionally in fiction, you have a creature/machine who has "flesh" that is significantly more difficult to penetrate than that of a human. To properly damage such a foe, armor-piercing weapons/ammunition (or techniques) are necessary. This goes beyond simply having a tough outer shell - every millimeter of flesh is equally difficult to penetrate.

How do we represent such characters in GURPS? DR may be tempting, but ultimately falls flat as it seems better to represent initial resistance to damage. It also has the oddity that, once you can reliably crack the DR, switching to AP ammo (with its reduced wounding modifier) results in less damage! The armored flesh seems more like something that would be DR assessed per HP of damage, effectively being a multiplier to HP, so perhaps higher HP is appropriate? Unfortunately, this has the same effect as above, where you are better off using non-AP ammo - in fact, hollow point may well be your best bet.

The ideal method would be to have Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction that is affected by armor divisors. What would be the best way to build something like this? The simplest method is as a Limitation on IT:DR - call it Armored Flesh or what-have-you, its effect would be that Armor Divisors apply, reducing the value of IT:DR down to a minimum of 1 (the level baseline humans have). What value should such a Limitation have? Of course, in some fiction armor piercing effects are even more effective than this would indicate - often, any Armor Divisor completely negates the target's IT:DR, even if you're just dealing with AD(2) against a creature with IT:DR 100. I'm thinking it would be appropriate to give the character a Weakness (I think that's the Disadvantage - if not, it's the one that's the exact opposite of IT:DR, multiplying rather than dividing damage) against attacks with Armor Divisor... but how should we set the frequency, and how do we account for the fact that this multiplier can only negate IT:DR, not increase damage beyond it?

tl;dr: What is a fair Limitation value on IT:DR that is affected by Armor Divisors, and how do we build a character who has IT:DR that effectively multiplies Armor Divisors against it?

07-18-2013, 10:10 AM	#1
Varyon Join Date: Jun 2013	IT:DR (Armored Flesh) Occasionally in fiction, you have a creature/machine who has "flesh" that is significantly more difficult to penetrate than that of a human. To properly damage such a foe, armor-piercing weapons/ammunition (or techniques) are necessary. This goes beyond simply having a tough outer shell - every millimeter of flesh is equally difficult to penetrate. How do we represent such characters in GURPS? DR may be tempting, but ultimately falls flat as it seems better to represent initial resistance to damage. It also has the oddity that, once you can reliably crack the DR, switching to AP ammo (with its reduced wounding modifier) results in less damage! The armored flesh seems more like something that would be DR assessed per HP of damage, effectively being a multiplier to HP, so perhaps higher HP is appropriate? Unfortunately, this has the same effect as above, where you are better off using non-AP ammo - in fact, hollow point may well be your best bet. The ideal method would be to have Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction that is affected by armor divisors. What would be the best way to build something like this? The simplest method is as a Limitation on IT:DR - call it Armored Flesh or what-have-you, its effect would be that Armor Divisors apply, reducing the value of IT:DR down to a minimum of 1 (the level baseline humans have). What value should such a Limitation have? Of course, in some fiction armor piercing effects are even more effective than this would indicate - often, any Armor Divisor completely negates the target's IT:DR, even if you're just dealing with AD(2) against a creature with IT:DR 100. I'm thinking it would be appropriate to give the character a Weakness (I think that's the Disadvantage - if not, it's the one that's the exact opposite of IT:DR, multiplying rather than dividing damage) against attacks with Armor Divisor... but how should we set the frequency, and how do we account for the fact that this multiplier can only negate IT:DR, not increase damage beyond it? tl;dr: What is a fair Limitation value on IT:DR that is affected by Armor Divisors, and how do we build a character who has IT:DR that effectively multiplies Armor Divisors against it?