Unifying Corrosion and Ablative

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

First, Corrosive Damage is changed from it's own damage type into a damage modifier. The supermajority of existing corrosive damage would be burning (no incendiary) damage, followed by toxic damage, with a handful of outliers like cutting corrosive damage from the Nanothorn Blade (UltraTech page 164).

I like this idea.

Another idea might be Crushing that's corrosive. An example of something I could see being that would be "Water Blade" from P140.

Speaking of which: that also has an Armor Divisor, so your proposed revisit of the concept of Ablative/Semi-Ablative/Corrosive should definitely involve a discussion of how things like Armor Divisor interact with things that chip at DR.

Especially the "ablative until reaching a minimum of 1 or 3" we see with wood and brick/concrete.

We'd also possibly need to revisit how to address "Corrosion-Only" limited DR and if it ought to be repriced or not.

Originally Posted by Tyneras

After that comes smoothing out the values of each available, being written as (Corrosive #, +%) or (Ablative #, -%) modifiers. I don't pretend these are perfect values, but they fit well enough. The value representing how much damage reduces the DR by 1.

Value Corrosive Ablative
10    50%       -20%
9     60%       -25%
8     70%       -30%
7     80%       -35%
6     90%       -40%
5     100%      -45%
4     125%      -50%
3     150%      -60%
2     175%      -70%
1     200%      -80%

Resolving corrosive damage on ablative surfaces, the simplest solution is to use the lowest number.

I like the idea of flexibility in the ratios.

Rather than 'use the lowest' I'd like to see them synergize and combine somehow. If "my DR falls apart from the slightest thing" meets "I tear DR apart" then it should drop faster than just one of them alone.

Originally Posted by Tyneras

Corrosion-Proof DR
Transhuman Space Shell Tech (p.5) has the acid-resistant enhancement for the Sealed advantage, which amounts to 6 points to be immune to corrosion from strong acids. Moving this enhancement to DR directly, at +10% for strong acids will equal in value after 12 points of DR, and +20% for immunity to all corrosion effects would equal out over 6 points of DR. This strikes me as reasonable, this becomes expensive quickly for significant DR.

I think perhaps rather than all-or-nothing protection against corrosion, like your previous table we could instead approach it in a tiered way much like Hardened does, where it reduces it a step as an enhancement instead of increasing it a step as a limitation.

ST5 still doesn't give us a means of Sealed itself failing under corrosion (Sealed inherently protects against the "ignores DR" aspect of things like Contact Agent +150% or Blood Agent +100% for AE/Cone stuff) of course...

This is something implied in the 'Abrasive Atmospheres' section of campaigns.

You can get that via the HT of gadgets degrading under "Erosive" attacks (PU4)

But one major confusion here is whether or not gadgets benefit from the advantages they provide to their users.

Worn gear generally does not w/o Force Field but maybe there are exceptions?

B82

grants complete immunity to corrosive or toxic agents that must touch skin or exposed machinery to work.
..
your exterior breathing apparatus (nose, snorkel, etc.) is protected by this trait.

I wish there were some examples of designs showing how you would do this...

The nose is usually a "mucous membrane" for organic beings... so it's a route for blood agent, and of course for contact agent...

I assume this applies not just to nose but also to drawing air in from mouth to breathe?

So there seems to be some element of "force field" in play here if it applies to a snorkel...

Since a snorkel is actually not part of your body but worn equipment.

But w/o force field it just doesn't apply to other equipment?

It seems to set precedent of advantages protecting the gadgets which provide them unless there's some reason it wouldn't.

IE for example if you had "one hand only" DR (-80%) then if the gadget which provided it was a ring worn on that hand, the ring would automatically be protected by the DR too?

But if you wore any other rings, they wouldn't get the DR?

OTOH if that ring provided "one foot only DR" then the ring would not be protected since it isn't worn on that hit location?