Fixing Injury Tolerance [Basic/Powers]

[AlexanderHowl]

One of the issues with Injury Tolerance is that Unliving objects as supposed to have twice the HP of living objects while Homogeneous/Diffuse objects are supposed to have four times the HP of living objects. This means that a corpse would have twice the HP of the person that they were beforehand, while a sack of ground meat made from the same person would have four times the HP, which is paradoxical. In order to address that paradox, I would suggest the following changes to the rules concerning Injury Tolerance.

In addition to its normal effects, Unliving should halve final damage, rounded down (minimum 1 HP), and should be 60 CP rather than 20 CP, rather than doubling HP. In addition to its normal effects, Homogenous should quarter final damage, rounded down (minimum 1 HP), and should be 120 CP rather than 40 CP, rather than quadrupling HP. In addition to its normal effects, Diffuse should quarter area effect damage (minimum 1 HP), and should be 150 CP rather than 100 CP, rather than quadrupling HP.

What do you think? Is it a workable solution? Or is it something that people take too seriously?

[naloth]

Generally I agree. You will get into a slight rounding issue, though, where weak attacks of 1 HP effectively do more damage under this system.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

In addition to its normal effects, Unliving should halve final damage, rounded down (minimum 1 HP), and should be 60 CP rather than 20 CP, rather than doubling HP.

I'd go with 50 instead. It's still a a premium most of the time over +10 HP and having HP is better than having 1/2 damage.

In addition to its normal effects, Homogenous should quarter final damage, rounded down (minimum 1 HP), and should be 120 CP rather than 40 CP, rather than quadrupling HP.

I'd go with 100 instead. IT:DR/2 to IT:DR/4 is only 50 points and even then it's often cheaper to buy HP instead.

In addition to its normal effects, Diffuse should quarter area effect damage (minimum 1 HP), and should be 150 CP rather than 100 CP, rather than quadrupling HP.

I don't think I would touch Diffuse.

[Sorenant]

The HP multiplication is more like a guideline, rather than rule.
The living is relatively easy to kill/destroy because it has vital organs and can bleed out, among other things. The unliving/machine is harder to kill/destroy because they aren't as fragile as the living. The homogenous characters are even more so, because poking a hole through an animated stone golem doesn't significantly damage it.
However that's one part of the equation. A robot might actually have less HP than a human because their components are sensitive and fragile, without redundancies and so on. A golem is a supernaturally animated and the amount of damage it can sustain before the magic breaks might be way below that of the damage needed to destroy its physical body.
It's also has been suggested before that using IT(DR) instead of extra HP is a valid alternative, though there are break points.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Sorenant

The living is relatively easy to kill/destroy because it has vital organs and can bleed out, among other things. The unliving/machine is harder to kill/destroy because they aren't as fragile as the living. The homogenous characters are even more so, because poking a hole through an animated stone golem doesn't significantly damage it.

This is the most important thing. The damage that will destroy a person isn't going destroy them as a corpse, and the damage to shut down a car engine isn't going to remove it as an obstacle or let you twist off easy to carry parts. So yes, if you hack sir greg to death, his corpse is likely still in one piece and a necromancer could happily animate it with most of the HP intact.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Sorenant

The HP multiplication is more like a guideline, rather than rule.
The living is relatively easy to kill/destroy because it has vital organs and can bleed out, among other things. The unliving/machine is harder to kill/destroy because they aren't as fragile as the living. The homogenous characters are even more so, because poking a hole through an animated stone golem doesn't significantly damage it.

And for some reason, the living slam and fall less hard than the others...

[Sorenant]

Originally Posted by Anders

And for some reason, the living slam and fall less hard than the others...

Originally Posted by B430

Mass only matters indirectly: massive objects usually have high HP, but it would hurt more to collide with a locomotive than with a pillow of the same mass! HP take into account both mass and structural strength.

Alternatively you could consider the extra HP of unliving or homogeneous objects relative to a living as massless and not interfere with slams. Example: Slamming into a 150 lbs zombie is not going to hurt more than a 150 lbs human, so any extra HP the zombie has as consequence of his IT(Unliving) is bought as massless.
Another yet option is to also buy IT(DR) with unliving or homogeneous instead of extra HP.

[naloth]

Originally Posted by B430
Mass only matters indirectly: massive objects usually have high HP, but it would hurt more to collide with a locomotive than with a pillow of the same mass! HP take into account both mass and structural strength.

For some reason I'm having visions of the scene in Antman involving the toy train scene.

Pillows are usually homogeneous while a locomotive is a machine/unliving. If you have a pillow that's 5 lbs and a train that's 5 lbs, GURPS would imply the pillow does more slam damage? Something seems off that the pillow should have should have x2 the HP for a potential collision given the same weight.

[NineDaysDead]

Why multiply HP for Unliving, etc.?

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

This doesn’t explain anything, since this was never in question. The question is “why do Unliving, Homogenous things etc have more HP than living things of the same weight?” not “What are HP?”

*Living thing: vulnerable to system failure from destruction of a small part. There are multiple internal organs any of which if damaged or destroyed will cause incapacitation or death, not to mention pain, shock, etc.
* Unliving thing: Less vulnerable. An airplane or car can be shot full of holes, but still function. Tear the doors of a car and it will still work fine. Tear the skin off a person and he's moaning in pain. Tear the skin off a zombie and he's a skeleton and still coming... Or think Terminator (arnie-model).
* Homogenous thing. You can keep smashing it to bits, but it doesn't matter until you've structurally destroyed it. A block of wood. A golem. A raft. Or think a terminator (liquid metal model) .

Now, there are also *damage modifiers* for each type of damage. So burning damage is fully effective vs. all three types as it affects a larger surface area, but piercing damage is most effectively against living things, because the damage area is relatively small. You are perhaps arguing for a big damage divisor. But a big damage divisor (homogenous takes x1/4 damage from everything) not only loses the flavor - the current system encourages you to choose your weapons and deal with zombies with axes and flamethrowers - but also is essentially identical to giving 4x HP anyway.

So, the system simply recommends that anything that is homogenous have 4x HP and anything unliving have 2x HP and then piles on additional divisors as necessary.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by naloth

Pillows are usually homogeneous while a locomotive is a machine/unliving. If you have a pillow that's 5 lbs and a train that's 5 lbs, GURPS would imply the pillow does more slam damage? Something seems off that the pillow should have should have x2 the HP for a potential collision given the same weight.

For soft objects, per p. B431, you have normal damage, whereas for hard objects you have double damage. If the object is elastic, it gives from DR 2 to DR 10 against collision damage to the person who collides with it. You could plausibly apply that to objects colliding with humans instead of the other way round.

[Gnome]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Unliving objects as supposed to have twice the HP of living objects

Can you provide a citation for this? I've never known about such a rule, and it doesn't seem sensible to me. HP is so abstract and can depend on so many idiosyncratic details, like internal body structure and mechanics, I just don't see how the HP of a living and unliving thing (presumably you're comparing a man to the zombie formed from his corpse?) can be easily compared this way. GURPS Magic does give zombies a HP bonus as I recall, so in that sense there is a rule in existence for this particular comparison. I assume GURPS Zombies gives more options for the type of zombie we're dealing with (I don't have that book). It many depend of course on what it is that "animates" the zombie in the first place, and what it takes to disrupt that animating force.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

while Homogeneous/Diffuse objects are supposed to have four times the HP of living objects.

Ok, here you're on more solid ground, as for objects of the same weight, Homogenous will have twice the HP of Unliving.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

This means that a corpse would have twice the HP of the person that they were beforehand, while a sack of ground meat made from the same person would have four times the HP, which is paradoxical.

I don't see a paradox. "Destroying" the person involves making him dead, which just means disrupting any of his many vital functions. "Destroying" the corpse depends on the nature of the supernatural force animating it. "Destroying" a sack of meat might involve scattering its bits to the four winds, although I can't say I'm certain anymore what it is we're discussing. A flesh golem, perhaps? Maybe I'll retreat again to the idea that it depends on what is making it "alive" in the first place. In all of these cases, the assignment of HP to the creature is somewhat arbitrary, which is to say it depends on how the GM envisions that particular monster working.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

In addition to its normal effects, Unliving should halve final damage, rounded down (minimum 1 HP), and should be 60 CP rather than 20 CP, rather than doubling HP. In addition to its normal effects, Homogenous should quarter final damage, rounded down (minimum 1 HP), and should be 120 CP rather than 40 CP, rather than quadrupling HP. In addition to its normal effects, Diffuse should quarter area effect damage (minimum 1 HP), and should be 150 CP rather than 100 CP, rather than quadrupling HP.

Dividing damage is already built into another advantage: IT:Damage Reduction. I see no point in bundling various forms of IT. Unliving and Homogenous make you resistant to imp/pi damage, presumably because those are more damaging if there's some internal structure to disrupt--living things have lots of vital internal functions, Unliving have fewer, and Homogenous fewer still.

EDIT: Ninjaed by a few posters above...