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Demi Benson's picture

Thoughts on Toughness, armor, and core mechanics

I've been a fan of your Toughness for a long time. This plus Edge Protection and new ST-based damage progression make a great combo... but, it adds a lot of computation to combat, which is already teetering on the edge of "too complex".

I suspect you'd get more  (or faster) buy-in if these three rules plus a new armor system were better integrated into the core mechanics. That is, rewriting the combat system to make a stronger distinction between the damaging blow (from fists, bullets, arrows, swords, but not poison, disease/death-ray, acid, or fire) and its "damage value", the crushing component, and the wounding from the type of blow (cutting, impaling, etc). That lets you point out where the three forms of DR (DR/EP/T) get applied: subtract DR from damaging blow, subtract Toughness from crushing damage, and subtract EP from extra wounding.

This would also tie in nicely to knockback calculations (based solely on crushing component) and shock penalty (based partially on damage type).

How does this ties in to a new armor system? Since EP and Toughness take care of that silliness with GURPS flexible armor or tough skin, we no longer need armor with special case values for physical blows (e.g. DR like "2*" or "5/3"), instead we pull all physical protection into a fixed three-value format like "4/0/2" (lorica segmentata) or "1/2/0" (a martial arts padded suit) or "0/0/infiite" (impenetrable magic silk shirt). Impaling attacks halve EP (rounded up).

That leaves the non-physical wounding (burning, corrosion, and toxic) to be incorporated into armor. Since those are only three values, you can just add those the above armor format - 10/0/25/3/3/0 for a tactical suit - even ignored for low-tech armors which won't have any values.

Some other thoughts on how to rework the armor format...

  • Virtually no armor will protect versus toxic damage, so leave that one off all together. If an armor (or super power) does have it, add it back in at the end with an X (for toXic, since T already means Toughness). e.g. "5X"
  • All types of protection can have a letter associated. D for DR, E for EP, T for Toughness, B for burning, C for corrosion, and X for toxic. So the armor format just adds in whatever it has values for ("4D/2E" or "10D/25E/3B/3C"), leaving off any with zero protection. This makes the armor tables more cramped, but now we don't need all those footnotes and special case symbols, and ultimately simpler because every armor table can have all the information you need.
  • Even radiation, fatigue, pain, and stunning special types can get an entry in the main table, using R, F, P, or S for their protection type. For radiation, it would be the Protection Factor (PF) divisor, not a linear damage reduction. Most of these will never be used, so you just leave them off.
  • Some protection only applies if the suit is sealed, so you can append a lowercase "s" to the armor format for B, C, X, or R types - "3Cs/10Rs" for a NBC suit with a radiation liner.

Then there's the weirdness with small piercing doing 0.5x damage and impaling to the limbs doing 1x damage. It's awkward, especially with the Toughness rules. We have to have a way of showing that those aren't deadly but will still hurt. Ok, so if we're redesigning the whole combat mechanic anyways, why don't we adjust HP and damage so no one has to do divide by 2, round off, subtract, etc... we can double (or triple) HP across the board (HP = ST x 2), adjust some basic damages and most damage-type multipliers. Bullets will be the most changed, because we give them low damage dice but high wound multiple. That also takes care of the special case for bullets and knockback since their crushing component is so low it will hardly affect anyone.

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