Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 02-04-2021, 03:33 PM   #1
johndallman
Night Watchman
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Injury Tolerance

Injury Tolerance [5 to 117] is an exotic physical advantage, which comes in many varieties, but all of them reduce your vulnerability to harm, because your body is different from the default human configuration. This advantage appeared during the GURPS 3e period, and is described in Compendium I.

The varieties of Injury Tolerance fall into two groups. The first consists of a lack of vulnerable body parts, which exempt you from the rules for injury to, or via, them:
  • No Blood [5]: You don’t bleed, and aren’t affected by poisons carried in blood, or by having your circulation cut off.
  • No Brain [5]: If you have a brain, and it is actually used, it is distributed around your body, and can’t be targeted for extra damage.
  • No Eyes [5]: You see by some other means (or you’re blind), so your eyes cannot be attacked, and you’re immune to normal blinding attacks.
  • No Head [7]: This provides No Brain, and also removes the Skull and Face locations. You need to specify how you use the senses a head normally provides. You may well have No Neck (below) and No Eyes, but they aren’t required.
  • No Neck [5]: You can’t be choked, strangled or decapitated.
  • No Vitals [5]: You don’t have vitals (or groin) that can be targeted for extra damage; treat them as the Torso hit location.
The second group consists of whole-body differences, and requires reference to “Injury to Unliving, Homogenous, and Diffuse Targets”, p. B380.
  • Diffuse [100]: Your body is fluid or particulate, and usually takes reduced injury from physical blows. You cannot suffer crippling injuries, and most enemies cannot grapple or slam you. You also have the benefits of No Blood, No Brain and No Vitals.
  • Homogeneous [40]: Your body has little or no internal structure, like a slime or a tree. Animated suits of armour, buildings and unpowered vehicles also have this. You take less injury from piercing and impaling attacks, and have the benefits of No Brain and No Vitals.
  • Unliving [20]: You aren’t made of living flesh, although you have a complicated internal structure: this is intended for machines, corporeal undead and powered vehicles. You take reduced injury from piercing and impaling attacks.
It is entirely possible to have several varieties of this advantage, but you’re limited to a single one from the second group. For example, Discworld golems have No Blood, No Vitals and Unliving.

Powers adds three new varieties, plus enhancements for Diffuse:
  • Damage Reduction, not to be confused with Damage Resistance (which works like armour). Damage Reduction divides the injury you suffer, after armour, Damage Resistance and wounding modifiers, by 2 [50], 3 [75] or 4 [100]. Requiring it to be limited, as per “Limited Defences” on p. B46, is a suggested option for the GM.
  • Independent Body Parts [35] does what it says, but is complicated. See Powers p. 52 for details.
  • Unbreakable Bones [10]: Your crippling thresholds are doubled, and you are immune to permanent crippling and dismemberment, at least while you’re still alive.
  • Infiltration is +40% on Diffuse, and lets you seep through tiny holes and gaps. Watertight seals are required to keep you out.
  • Swarm includes Infiltration. It lets you spread out over a large area, up to half a mile radius (modifiable with Area Effect). Your outer edge can move at your Move, and you can only be hurt by attacks that affect an area, which do damage in proportion to the fraction of your area they hit. You can focus your senses anywhere within your area with a Ready, and for all other purposes, you’re treated as being Insubstantial as per that advantage. This is +80% on Diffuse, or +160% if you can affect the material world.
Injury Tolerance is widely used in GURPS supplements to describe the relevant kinds of being, but doesn’t belong on templates for ordinary living creatures. There’s an exception in Action 4: Specialists, which lets you buy No Neck if you have ST 15+, on the basis that your neck is so muscular that it counts as part of your torso. Banestorm offers No Blood with a Pact limitation, and Bio-Tech allows engineering some variants at high TLs. DF 14 Psi has a brain-cooking attack, which several kinds of Injury Tolerance protect from, and DF Epic Treasures has several suits of armour that grant the wearer Diffuse or Homogenous. Horror adds the Body of Swarm enhancement, plus limitations for Diffuse, and revises some of Powers’ additions, catering for horror, rather than supers. Magic: Death Spells has several spells that are ineffective against the right kind of Injury Tolerance, and Mars Attacks “pulp science” can give living creatures the benefits of Unliving, although with significant downsides. Martial Arts has more combat detail for this advantage, and Monster Hunters Power-Ups 1 adds “Unstoppable”, which lets you ignore penalties for being on less than 1/3 HP. Powers: The Weird adds another form, “Environmental Adaptation,” which lets you change your native environment, not quite instantly, plus the perks “No Ears” and “No Nose.” Sorcery: Protection and Warning spells adds Damage Reduction (1.5) and Supers lets it scale up to near invulnerability.

I have not used Injury Tolerance so far, but looking at all its published variations has given me ideas about how to use it in a magic-as-powers system I’m working on. Has it made (or avoided) its mark in your games?

Last edited by johndallman; 02-04-2021 at 03:39 PM. Reason: Clarity.
johndallman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-04-2021, 04:08 PM   #2
Phil Masters
 
Phil Masters's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: U.K.
Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Injury Tolerance

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
I have not used Injury Tolerance so far, but looking at all its published variations has given me ideas about how to use it in a magic-as-powers system I’m working on.
Well, pedantically, anyone who’s played or run Transhuman Space will have had some forms of the advantage on some character sheets, albeit usually buried inside metatraits. It’s hard to do robot characters without.
__________________
--
Phil Masters
My Home Page.
My Self-Publications: On Warehouse 23 and On DriveThruRPG.
Phil Masters is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-04-2021, 05:16 PM   #3
awesomenessofme1
 
Join Date: Mar 2016
Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Injury Tolerance

Injury Tolerance (Unstoppable) also has an enhancement that lets you also ignore penalties for being below 1/3 FP.
awesomenessofme1 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-04-2021, 06:38 PM   #4
ericthered
Hero of Democracy
 
ericthered's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Injury Tolerance

I've used injury tolerance a lot. Yesterday I stuck homogenous on the character sheet of the big bad for a campaign I'm running in march.

Injury tolerance is all over the enemy templates in the monster hunters games. Its one of the primary tools the series uses to make melee combat viable at TL8. And I generally lean into those advantages.

Beyond that, robots, undead, and machines typically have injury tolerance in some form. One or the other seem to turn up in about half of my games.

Injury Tolerance (Damage Resistance) is a remarkably flexible trait. I most often use it for tolerance to fire. In psi-wars, its been used on creatures that are "only partially in reality".

As a final note: even with blowthrough on guns and injury tolerance unliving, a firearm with a high rate of fire and a large caliber can still be pretty effective. I learned that GMing Monster Hunters the first time.
__________________
Be helpful, not pedantic

Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog

Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one!
ericthered is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 02-04-2021, 07:07 PM   #5
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Injury Tolerance

Injury Tolerance (Diffuse) can be a terrifying traits for monsters in modern campaigns since most characters do not have attacks with area effect, cone, or explosive. When combined with Unkillable 1, it becomes almost unfair, as you have an enemy that can tolerate dozens of attacks that would kill off a normal human.
AlexanderHowl is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-04-2021, 10:35 PM   #6
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Injury Tolerance

Injury Tolerance irritates me. Sure it's a general category of advantages, but they are separate advantages with very different effects. And on official character sheets they are never listed as Injury Tolerance. It's always "No Blood" or "Diffuse" or whatever, defeating the point of having entries in alphabetical order so that you can easily look them up.
David Johnston2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-04-2021, 10:48 PM   #7
awesomenessofme1
 
Join Date: Mar 2016
Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Injury Tolerance

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
Injury Tolerance irritates me. Sure it's a general category of advantages, but they are separate advantages with very different effects. And on official character sheets they are never listed as Injury Tolerance. It's always "No Blood" or "Diffuse" or whatever, defeating the point of having entries in alphabetical order so that you can easily look them up.
Um... what are you basing this assertion on? Because the only official character sheets I can think of are the ones in the Basic Set (none of which have Injury Tolerance listed outside a meta-trait). Meanwhile, official templates, as far as I can tell, literally always say "Injury Tolerance (X)" rather than just X.
awesomenessofme1 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-05-2021, 12:30 AM   #8
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Injury Tolerance

Quote:
Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1 View Post
Um... what are you basing this assertion on? Because the only official character sheets I can think of are the ones in the Basic Set (none of which have Injury Tolerance listed outside a meta-trait). Meanwhile, official templates, as far as I can tell, literally always say "Injury Tolerance (X)" rather than just X.
I mean actual character write ups.
David Johnston2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-05-2021, 03:53 AM   #9
corwyn
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Saskatoon, SK
Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Injury Tolerance

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
Injury Tolerance (Diffuse) can be a terrifying traits for monsters in modern campaigns since most characters do not have attacks with area effect, cone, or explosive. When combined with Unkillable 1, it becomes almost unfair, as you have an enemy that can tolerate dozens of attacks that would kill off a normal human.
In a modern game, where monsters are known, try to keep PCs from carrying grenades. But my victorian Monster Hunter prefers a flamethrower.
__________________
MiB 7704

Playing: GURPS Nordlond Dragons of Hosgarth
Running Savage Worlds Tour of Darkness (Vietnam + Mythos)
corwyn is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-05-2021, 05:11 AM   #10
Rupert
 
Rupert's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Injury Tolerance

My game sees a lot of Unliving enemies, usually robots, though more recently vehicles. Other than that, this set of advantages is quite rare.
__________________
Rupert Boleyn

"A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history."
Rupert is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
advantage of the week, injury tolerance

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 06:49 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.