Blunt Trauma ... Messed up?

[OddGamer]

I'm sure this is around somewhere, but I couldn't find it. My search-fu is weak.
Okay, so I'm looking at the Blunt Trauma rules and considering them in the context of a fairly high DR... and coming up with some really weird things.
According to B379, if you have a suit of flexible, 40 DR armor, and you get shot by a bullet that does 40 damage exactly, you take 4 points of damage from blunt trauma. However if the roll for that bullet is 41 instead, you take only 1 point of damage. ... How does that make sense? Isn't it sort of weird to roll more damage but actually cause less harm to your opponent?
If it were some sort of crushing damage (from a fall, say), it would, of course, be even worse with 40 damage doing 8 in blunt trauma and 41 doing only the 1 point.

[Stormcrow]

I believe the point is that blunt trauma is caused by flexible DR holding together and crushing you from the impact. If the DR is penetrated, it means the armor didn't hold together, so it can't crush against you in the spot you were hit.

[Rupert]

Yes, it is odd. My house rule is that the blunt trauma is the minimum injury you take from the hit. So if you're in your DR40* armour and you're hit with a 42-point cutting attack, you take 4 points of injury (3 points from the penetrating cutting damage, and one more for the blunt trauma). Take 43 points of cutting, and you just take the 5 points of cutting injury (3 damage x 1.5 = 5 points of injury). Thus I use blunt trauma as the floor to the amount of injury you take from a hit.

[Plane]

I still can't really get my head around why 100 points of small piercing, normal piercing, large piercing and huge piercing all cause the same (10 HP) blunt trauma, even though they cause very different (50, 100, 150 or 200) levels of HP loss of injury from Penetrating Damage.

[Tyneras]

Damage is how much energy is being thrown at you, injury is the shape of that damage once it interacts with you. Blunt Trauma rules are effectively saying that 10% of that energy gets through in the shape of a crushing injury.

[kirbwarrior]

(Weird, I thought Blunt Trauma was 1/5, I remember taking advantage of the free points on DR4)

Mechanically it definitely is odd but in real life it isn't. A bullet really can do less damage because it penetrates instead of 'kicks'. However, the window is really small and thus the damage can suddenly do too much. 41 is only 1 damage, but 45 is already more.

As for fall damage, I think armor is already considered flexible, so actually flexible armor is likely worse. Again, that lines up, you could probably say flexible armor provides no benefit to fall damage and it wouldn't be that unrealistic (I imagine it would help at least a tiny amount due to stuff on the ground being part of the damage)

EDIT: So, what happens if you wear flexible armor outside of rigid armor? How much damage does blunt trauma?

[VariousRen]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

(Weird, I thought Blunt Trauma was 1/5, I remember taking advantage of the free points on DR4)

It's 1 point of blunt trauma per 5 of crushing, 1 point point per 10 for any other damage type.

[Anders]

So if you have amazing armor and fall a long way, you would prefer to land on spikes rather than on the flat ground.

[AlexanderHowl]

It is also not free points, as Flexible DR does not protect against damage inflicted by slow manipulation, such as some grappling moves (Arm/Wrist Lock, Leg Lock, Wrench Limb, and Wrench Spine). This is one of the reasons why Wrestling is actually effective at TL7+.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

(Weird, I thought Blunt Trauma was 1/5, I remember taking advantage of the free points on DR4)

I thought of Flexible -20% on 1-4 as free points for a long LONG time until I came across how grappling attacks bypass it. I'd seen it mentioned before but forgot about it.

There's just weirdly no "Flexible Only" limitation to lessen the cost of Armor Divisor or Cosmic: Irressitible Attack to try and emulate Wrench Limb via Innate Attack.

I also think we need some kind of pricing for "Limited: Falls" (this would be worth fewer points than Limited: Crushing, as a subset)

Armor actually DOES protect against falls, but non-natural armor counts as flexible, so to distinguish between natural-rigid and artificial rigid.

Basically you take "Flexible -20%" then you buy "Not Flexible +20%" an then you limit that enhancement by "Limited, Falls". This would be something you take for any DR you buy representing "not natural DR" whose rigidity protects against all blunt trauma EXCEPT for falls.

The net result is a smaller-value limitation worth at most -16% (you can't apply more than -80% in cost reduction to Not Flexible)

My assumption here is that wild (unmodified) DR is "natural" and DOES count as rigid against falls. If that weren't the case, you'd instead need some kind of enhancement for "natural" where your rigid DR doesn't become flexible against falls.

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

As for fall damage, I think armor is already considered flexible, so actually flexible armor is likely worse.

You'd think so, but it doesn't appear to be.

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

Again, that lines up, you could probably say flexible armor provides no benefit to fall damage and it wouldn't be that unrealistic (I imagine it would help at least a tiny amount due to stuff on the ground being part of the damage)

If as I suggest above we define the rarity of 'falls' for "Limited: Falls" (DR only protects against falls) then you could use that rarity to price "Bane: Falls" (DR protects against everything EXCEPT falls).

This would have to replace the idea

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

what happens if you wear flexible armor outside of rigid armor?
How much damage does blunt trauma?

I would see this as impacting Low-Tech's "Damage to Armor" rules.

In theory if you wear a 5 flexible DR cape which stops 5 crushing damage, you suffer 1 injury of blunt trauma...

Which is super weird, for example, if your own flesh is rigid DR 5 (you're a ninja turtle) meaning if you weren't wearing that cape, you'd be fine.

I think maybe the solve for that is to treat blunt trauma values as "penetrating crushing damage" rather than "penetrating injury".

That way you can treat BT progressively with certain layers.

The only issue with this is it makes BT very easy to avoid with layering. EG:

DR 5 (flexible -20% force field +20%) [25] two layers = [50]

5 damage hits 1st layer, 1 BT gets through
1 crushing hits 2nd layer, 0 BT gets through

whereas if you had DR 10 [50] as a single layer, 1 BT would get through from 5 crushing.

One idea I'm having for this is maybe we could treat DR like Modular Abilities where you pay an upfront high cost for a "slot" (a layer) and then pay a smaller cost for the levels assigned to that slot.

Every form of MA (B71)uses that "fixed base cost" except Cosmic Power for some reason. Although defined as "one slot" it actually functions more like "infinite slots".

Leech basically works like that: the 25/4 pricing is basically paying 21 for the slot and "level x 4" for how much the slot is filled.

I could see doing this for Energy Reserve too, because since they regenerate separately from each other, having many many discrete ERs is ideal for regeneration.

The only drawback seems to be potentially only being able to use one ER at a time to fuel abilities, unless I'm misreading how Improved Zombie works. IZ might just mean "can only benefit from one Affects Other at a time"