[Low-Tech]What are the stats for Light Leather?

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Really? What is the DR of light leather vs crushing?

Abrasion isn't crushing. Or cutting. Or piercing or impaling or corrosion or burning. It actually doesn't have a proper damage type in GURPS - I don't really blame GURPS for this, because it REALLY doesn't come up often in adventures, unless Batman is captured by The Mad Woodworker who straps him to a table and condemns him to death by belt sander or something, and even then his regular body armor will probably protect him.

If we ever came up with an Abrasion damage type, I'd totally give light leather DR 1 against it, too.

[Dinadon]

Originally Posted by Bruno

If we ever came up with an Abrasion damage type, I'd totally give light leather DR 1 against it, too.

What, like a really slow corrosion like effect?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Dinadon

What, like a really slow corrosion like effect?

Abrasion needn't be slow. Your typical abrasion injury comes from hitting a (not too smooth) surface at moderate speed and sliding along it. From a skinned knee to tumbling along the ground after falling off a motorcycle.

[Dinadon]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Abrasion needn't be slow. Your typical abrasion injury comes from hitting a (not too smooth) surface at moderate speed and sliding along it. From a skinned knee to tumbling along the ground after falling off a motorcycle.

Yes, but enough time with a sander tends to make things disappear, like corrosion. It wouldn't necessarily be the main damage that's slow.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Dinadon

What, like a really slow corrosion like effect?

Abrasion has a fair amount in common with both cutting and with corrosion. It's often found paired, in the real world, with crushing.

Like corrosion, it tends to be a large area damage with a shallow depth. Unlike corrosion, and like cutting, it leads to very severe bleeding and fluid loss immediately - it can in fact lead to worse bleeding than a non-arterial cutting wound.

Like corrosion, it's a big problem to heal up from severe abrasion but unlike corrosion there's never continuing damage once you're removed from the source - you don't have to neutralize the pavement on your shins after being thrown off your skateboard.

It's worse than corrosion for chance of infection because you almost always have bits of abrading material embedded in the wound, but unlike cutting you don't cut off bloodflow to the area or parts of the limb further away from the core, so healing is easier.

It's much harder to cause temporary or lasting crippling with abrasion, but if do you manage to cripple a limb with abrasion its probably totally screwed - scraping the muscles right off the bone is basically impossible to recover from.

Unlike corrosion the damage to materials depends more on relative hardness of surfaces than on specific material composition - this means that most armors are very good at protecting against abrasion, even if they're flexible and transmit crushing easily. But armor made from layered soft material, like layered cloth armor or felted/padded cloth armor would be at best ablative - softer than gravel means they'd get shredded off your body when you go skidding across it. Hard plastic or mail would get scratched up and might have some links bent by the occasional larger rock but they'd be largely undamaged. Plate would look nasty but basically laugh it off.

It's related to crushing by circumstance - most cases of abrasion "in the wild" involve crushing as well - but you could always use that belt sander on someone.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Bruno

It's related to crushing by circumstance - most cases of abrasion "in the wild" involve crushing as well - but you could always use that belt sander on someone.

Or drag them along the ground behind an animal or vehicle. That would be predominantly abrasion, and is a bit more likely to happen than belt-sander assault.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Or drag them along the ground behind an animal or vehicle. That would be predominantly abrasion, and is a bit more likely to happen than belt-sander assault.

I'm terrified of the belt-sander, does it show?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I'm terrified of the belt-sander, does it show?

Got my finger caught in a disc sander once. Not my best day.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Plate would look nasty but basically laugh it off.

This is what abrasion looks like when your brain is functioning well enough to protect itself.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Abrasion isn't crushing. Or cutting. Or piercing or impaling or corrosion or burning.

In terms of what armor is useful against it, cutting probably comes closest, though mechanically Corr(0.1) is probably appropriate (it's an attack that will never do anything until armor is completely destroyed, at which point it becomes very dangerous very fast).