Damage multiplier question

[stranger38]

Good day folks. here we go again.

By the rules, damage multipliers stack? add to each other?

ex: i shoot a crossbow bolt into a orcs vitals.

the bolt is x2 damage. vitals x3.

so the bolt does x5 after dr? or only the bigger multiplier aplies?

[zoncxs]

They do not stack. The higher value is what you go with.

bolt doing impaling damage does x2.

if you aim at the vitals, it gets replaced with x3.

aim at the skull and it gets through the DR 2 for the skull, it gets x4.

[stranger38]

Originally Posted by zoncxs

They do not stack. The higher value is what you go with.

bolt doing impaling damage does x2.

if you aim at the vitals, it gets replaced with x3.

aim at the skull and it gets through the DR 2 for the skull, it gets x4.

i was reading some other thread in the forum, that the multipliers stack or something.

if not, what then when i land critical hit? let's say i rolled for x2 damage.

that same bolt would do x3 in the vitals, THEN x2 from thr critical?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by stranger38

i was reading some other thread in the forum, that the multipliers stack or something.

It's not an entirely uncommon houserule. While a pi++/imp projectile going through the brain or vitals should deal more injury than a pi- projectile with the same base damage, I think multiplicative stacking overstates the effect. Linear stacking - where x2 with x3 becomes x4 while x0.5 with x3 becomes x2.5 (basically, add the multipliers together, then subtract 1) rather than those becoming x6 and x1.5, respectively - is probably a bit better. But either way, it's a houserule.

There is a case where there are multiplicative wounding modifiers, however - the Vulnerability Disadvantage and corresponding Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction (typically abbreviated IT:DR) Advantage. If you shoot someone with a x2 Vulnerability to piercing damage in the Vitals, then you're looking at a x6 total Wounding Modifier - but if they instead had IT:DR x1/2, then that's only x1.5.

Originally Posted by stranger38

if not, what then when i land critical hit? let's say i rolled for x2 damage.

that same bolt would do x3 in the vitals, THEN x2 from thr critical?

Here's the difference between a damage modifier and a wounding modifier. A double-damage crit does double damage; wounding only comes into play for modifying the penetrating damage to determine how much Injury is caused.

So, for a x2 damage critical hit with a pi++ projectile to the Vitals of someone with Vulnerability x2 for piercing damage, here's the order of operations.

First, you roll damage and double it. Then you subtract any DR (modified by armor divisor, if applicable) the target is benefitting from to determine penetrating damage. The Wounding Modifier for the penetrating damage is normally x2 for pi++, but when targeting the Vitals this changes to x3. Finally, that Vulnerability applies because this is a piercing attack, making the total Wounding Modifier x6.

Does that make sense?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by stranger38

if not, what then when i land critical hit? let's say i rolled for x2 damage.

This is one of the areas where GURPS has some pretty specific jargon, a different term for each step of resolving damage.

• Basic Damage is the number you roll on the damage dice, plus any additive modifiers (e.g., "2d+2"), times any multipliers (which might be fractions, like 1/2).
• Penetrating Damage is Basic Damage minus DR. This is also where modifiers like Armor Divisor come into play, as well as the more exotic effects on penetrating damage like Contact Agent, Follow-up, Sense-Based, or Malediction.
• Injury is Penetrating Damage times the Wounding Modifier for the type of attack. Hit locations often change the Wounding Modifier of the base attack -- but this replaces the attack's default modifier, rather than combine with it in any way. There's only one Wounding Modifier. For contrast, another path to Injury is Blunt Trauma (B379), which is one way you can suffer Injury that's not from Penetrating Damage. (That is, the attack doesn't penetrate DR, but it still can do Injury calculated in a different way.) Since the Injury result is given directly by that rule, there's no Penetrating Damage and thus no Wounding Modifier used.

Injury is the number that's subtracted from Hit Points (HP). Other rules might apply to any of those three stages. For example, Knockback is based on Basic Damage, not Injury or Penetrating Damage. See B377, Damage and Injury, for the full procedure.

So, to finally get around to the question, the crit multiplier affects Basic Damage, while the hit location (vitals) affects the Wounding Modifier. The two don't directly combine, but they do both get used. A x2 crit will wind up doing more injury than a regular hit, because the Basic Damage is higher, thus Penetrating Damage is usually higher. The x2 crit may well wind up eventually doing more than twice the Injury, even with an Injury Modifier of x1, because the amount of Penetrating Damage will more more than twice as high. (If the normal attack would penetrate DR, then that second multiple of the dice roll is all Penetrating; DR's already been accounted for. Consider, say a roll of 6 versus DR 5. Normal hit is 6-5 = 1 Penetrating Damage, while a x2 crit is 6x2 - 1 = 11 Penetrating Damage.)

It's pretty easy for old RPG hands, including old GURPS hands, to just use the word "damage" for any of these steps, counting on context to make it clear which step they're talking about. So if a case gets confusing, it can help to keep in mind those specific terms and see in what stage of the procedure the question arises.

Since I've reached the rambling stage, I'll add a tangent about crits. Sometimes, you'll see people grumble that half the crit results "do nothing" and that "their crit was wasted". Remember that all crits mean that the defender doesn't get to use an Active Defense (see the second sentence of Critical Hits on B381), which makes it much more likely that the defender will get "actually hit" and thus take damage compared to a normal "hit" (successful attack roll, which could be called a "potential hit", though that's not a GURPS term). The crit table just doesn't repeat the no-defense effect in every single line of the table -- though the rule is noted just above the table itself on B556.

[Maz]

Originally Posted by Varyon

It's not an entirely uncommon houserule. While a pi++/imp projectile going through the brain or vitals should deal more injury than a pi- projectile with the same base damage [...]

I'm not sure why you say its a common houserule, the times I have heard people talk about it on these boards, the common consensus seems to me to have been that "thats a bad idea" as it makes some sort of attack extremely good compared to other. And makes blunt trauma-attacks (crushing) unrealisticly bad.

Remember also that impaling doesnt just do "x2 wounding modifier" it only does so on torso and face/neck hits. Arms, legs, hands, feet are all just x1 for it. And Skull/eyes is then x4.

Where Cut for instance is x1,5 against all other locations, but x2 vs. neck, and as all other types of attacks; x4 vs. skull/eyes.


It's just to underline the point that it's not actually the damage type itself that has a wounding modifier, it's the hit location in relation to the damage type.