[Basic] Advantage of the Week: Injury Tolerance

[RedMattis]

The fact that Injury Tolerance unliving/homogeneous exists and is common in a lot of settings (undead, robots, cyborgs, ...mundane doors) is something I feel stuff like "Innate Attack" doesn't take into account for their pricing. It makes it rather unattractive to pick those attacks in fantasy or sci-fi settings.

...despite the fact that such things often makes sense. F.ex. someone with weapon-as-IA-gadget which shoots silver bullets. It would need something like "Deals full damage against unliving/homogeneous targest vulnerable to silver/holy power, +??%".

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I also feel like an Injury Tolerance for other damage types makes sense. F.ex. Slimes which largely ignore cutting damage. Cutting in particular is somewhat covered by the "independent body-parts", but that one
A: Doesn't help unless they outright sever the limb
B: Is very non-generic. A slime doesn't have any legs or hands which could be cut off, instead a cut slime would probably turn into two slightly smaller slimes (which is probably better than a leg jumping around and trying to kick people).

If you're not looking for Pi/Impaling, or cutting through independent body-parts (which is a bit janky) you're basically forced to pick to Injury Tolerance (Damage Divisor; damage type, -??%), and that is dramatically more expensive.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by corwyn

In a modern game, where monsters are known, try to keep PCs from carrying grenades. But my victorian Monster Hunter prefers a flamethrower.

How are modern PCs getting grenades? Even in the USA, you cannot normally purchase explosive weapons, and the military keeps pretty good track of them outside of active combat zones. An attempt to purchase grenades will likely get the PCs visited by the ATF and/or the FBI because that is the sort of activity done by rather stupid domestic terrorists. Detonating explosives will have even more attention brought against them, and they should not be exempt from investigation by local, state, and/or federal law enforcement afterwards.

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I mean actual character write ups.

Can you provide an actual example? I don't remember ever seeing that. Like... ever.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

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.

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

Can you provide an actual example? I don't remember ever seeing that. Like... ever.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I mean actual character write ups.

Official entries are really good about it, and computer tools are usually good as well. But when people start writing down traits on sheets... they get sloppier.



I just found three character sheets for a monster hunters campaign, each a different type of inhuman. I wrote down, each on a seperate sheet:

• Injury Tolerance (homogenous) [40]
• Injury Tolerance [25]
• Unliving [20]

Now, because of the context, I know what's going on, but when someone just writes "independent body parts", I have to go on a hunt, because I always forget about that one.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by RedMattis

The fact that Injury Tolerance unliving/homogeneous exists and is common in a lot of settings (undead, robots, cyborgs, ...mundane doors) is something I feel stuff like "Innate Attack" doesn't take into account for their pricing. It makes it rather unattractive to pick those attacks in fantasy or sci-fi settings.

I would argue that it's already priced in, mostly in that Piercing attacks are able to target the vitals (and note that Unliving does not include No Vitals). My problem is mostly that Pi+ and Pi++ seem overpriced, Pi- underpriced (I'd probably go with 4/5/6/7 instead of 3/5/7/8).

[Toptomcat]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

How are modern PCs getting grenades? Even in the USA, you cannot normally purchase explosive weapons...

You need to be registered and have a $200 tax stamp per item, but it isn't actually banned. And simple 'jam-tin' improvised grenades are quite within capabilities of someone within the point total of a Monster Hunter campaign to piece together, and just about anyone can make a Molotov.

Kind of extreme, socially aberrant and likely to get you into trouble in the long term, yes, but so's the practice of delving into old subway tunnels to deal with a zombie infestation.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

How are modern PCs getting grenades? Even in the USA, you cannot normally purchase explosive weapons, and the military keeps pretty good track of them outside of active combat zones.

Bear in mind that these are the same authorities that are failing to notice the presence of zombies in the sewers. It's generally preferable to have the authorities be incompetent or malignant in modern games.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

How are modern PCs getting grenades?

From the quartermaster... modern has a lot of different contexts.

[Tyneras]

Injury Tolerance appears quite a bit for me, due to the frequent appearance of robots, zombies and other inhuman things.

Usually it gets listed as IT (No Blood, No Brain, etc.) so I've never had any notational issues, though IT:DR usually gets listed separately, tho not always.

Speaking of IT:DR, I've replaced the Unliving and Homogenous injury reduction with IT:DR 2 (Pi, Imp) and IT:DR 4 (Pi, Imp) which isn't quite the same, but close enough and simpler to remember. Admittedly most of the time the replacement is just in my head, so you won't know it looking at a character sheet.

I use Independent Body Parts with Detachable Head, Reattachment Only and No Reattachment (Requires repairs) to for androids that don't have a common HP pool between their parts and are largely fine as long as their brain isn't destroyed.

[Anthony]

IT(DR) annoys me as a name because the name is too close to DR. I prefer Damage Divisor (which is both clearer about what it does and lacks the confusion potential).