Help with Armor/Damage/Damage Resistance rules, please. Options

[tim]

I'm slightly confused here on how damage resistance works and how some thing interact with damage resistance tests. When exactly do Bone Density Augmentation/Bone Lacing apply, and could someone please provide a full example of it?

If I have 13 Ballistic Armor, and I am shot with a pistol for 5P damage with no AP modifiers, and the attacker gets say 3 net hits, I have 8 damage coming at me from what I see. So far as I can tell, that 8 damage would be treated as Stun damage due to it not beating my Ballistic Armor value. But do I roll Body+Ballistic Armor because of it being a source that was originally Physical damage, or do I roll Willpower+Ballistic Armor because the damage is converted to stun damage. If I do need to roll Willpower+Ballistic, does Bone Density/Lacing apply at all? And if not, is there actually much point in taking them if you are aiming to be heavily resistant to damage?

[Tanegar]

Your damage resistance roll would still be Body + Ballistic Armor. Willpower, AFAIK, is only used to resist (some!) spells. Your Bone Lacing or Bone Density augmentation (I believe they are mutually exclusive) would apply.

[TheOOB]

Here's a standard combat example.

Attacker has Agility 6, Pistols 6, and a Smartlink on Their Ares Predator IV(5P Damage, -1 AP)

Defender has Reaction 3, Body 3, and an Armored Vest(6 Ballistic Armor).

The attacker shots, rolling 14 dice, and getting 5 hits. The defender rolls 3 dice to avoid the attack, and only gets 1 hit. The attacker gets 4 net hits.

The defender now has to resist 9P damage with -1 AP(5P base damage, plus 4 net hits). They roll 8 dice(3 body + 6 ballistic armor - 1 ap), and get 2 hits. They end up taking 7 physical damage, and are in pretty bad shape.

Unless otherwise stated, all damage is resisted by Body + Appropriate Armor. It's mostly magic that ignores this rule.

[Manunancy]

To make things clear : the damage is downgraded into stun, but it's till from a physical source (like a punch in the face would), which mens it's ressited with Body+relvant armor juste like regular physical damage. As some have alread ysaid, willpower is only used to resist damage from 'mental' sources such as a manabolt.

[Halinn]

More clarifying: even something like a taser (which deals only stun damage) would use body for resistance (body+½ impact armor for a taser, being electrical damage, but still body).

[Thanee]

Yep. Damage Resistance Tests are pretty much always done with Body, so they are definitely very useful augments.

Unless otherwise noted, a character rolls Body + armor to resist damage. In some cases another attribute may be called for; Willpower is often used in place of Body, for example, against certain Stun damage attacks.

Even though this mentions Willpower and Stun damage, the main part is the "unless otherwise noted" here. Almost no attacks note that you use another attribute, so Body gets used.

As a side note: When resisting physical direct combat spells (i.e. Powerbolt), you roll Body, but you do not get to use your Bone Density Augmentation or Bone Lacing bonus, because it is not a Damage Resistance Test.

Bye
Thanee

[BobChuck]

This is good, but let's do a couple more complicated examples.

Take a basic - well, intermediate - Heavy Troll. He's big and tough, he's heavily augmented, he's using an Ingram White Knight, he's not that bright, etc. I happen to have the stats for one of these on-hand, and I'll list the important bits below - there are of course lots of things I'm not listing, because they won't matter for this example. Let's assume he'll be shooting at himself.

Body of 9 with Aluminium Bone Lacing (Body +2 for damage resistance; Impact +1), Agility 4 (6) and Strength 9 (11) with Muscle Replacement 2, Reaction of 5 (7) with Wired Reflexes 2, Willpower 3.
Toughness Quality (+1 body for damage resistance), Heavy Weapons 5 (Machine Guns +2), Smartlink.
Ingram White Knight with Gas Vents 5 (inherent to weapon), stock, sling, foregrip, and personalized grip, also with external smartgun system, metahuman customization, custom look 2, and additional clip. This guy is (in theory) for Missions Play, meaning the "heavy strength and recoil" rule is in effect, so his total Recoil Compensation with this weapon is 11.
Interesting note: As a heavy weapon, any uncompensated recoil applies double the normal penalty. However, this guy can't actually fire enough bullets to ever have any uncompensated recoil - he can put at most 10 bullets in the air per phase. The Ingram White Knight is a wonderful weapon for this sort of build.
Armor Jacket 8/6 (with Nonconductivity 6) and Form-Fitting Full Body Armor 6/2, plus Dermal Plating 2/2, combined with troll 1/1 and bone lacing (above) works out to Ballistic 17 / Impact 12. For damage resistance, he rolls body 9 + bone lacing 2 + toughness 1 = 12 + relevant armor.
His name is Tank. It's possible to make a starting character even more ridiculous than this (and I am leaving out some irrelevant bits), but Tank is still worthy of the name.

To sum up: Armor = Ballistic 17 / Impact 12, Damage Resistance = 12 + Armor, Attack = 15 dice, base damage = 6P, -1 AP, 11 RC. Physical Condition Track = 13, Stun Condition Track = 10. Initiative = 9, Passes = 3, Reaction = 7.

Example 1: Lets assume he shoots a single regular bullet at himself (which he can't actually do with a White Knight, but that's not important right now).
Attack = 15 dice, assume 5 hits.
Defense = 7 dice, assume 2 hits.
so 3 net hits.
Damage is 6 base +3 net hits = 9.
Ballistic armor is 17 -1 AP, so converts to stun (but still counts as ballistic damage).
Resistance is 17-1 + 12 = 28, gets 9 hits and shrugs the whole thing off.

Example 2: This time, Tank is going for the kill. Narrow Long Burst using ExEx (Extra Explosive rounds).
Attack = 15 dice, -5 (or 6) for Long Burst, but has 11 recoil comp, so no penalty. again, gets 5 hits.
Defense = 7 dice, and gets 2 hits.
So 3 net hits.
Damage is 6 base +5 (narrow burst, 6 bullets, -1 since first bullet is the base damage) +1 (ExEx ammo) +3 (net hits) = 15 damage.
Ballistic armor is 17, -2 AP, so still converts to stun.
Resistance is 17-2 +12 = 27, gets 9 hits again, but is still taking 6S damage.
A character with Body 3 and just a Lined Coat would probably have been cut in half by that attack, even at full health. Long Bursts are dangerous chummer.

Example 3: finally, a more typical example. Narrow Short Burst of Stick & Shock.
Attack is still 15 dice, -2 (or 3) for short burst, fully compensated, so 5 hits.
Defense = 7 dice, 2 hits.
3 net hits.
Damage is 6S +2 (narrow short burst) +3 (net hits) = 11 damage.
Resistance is Impact Armor this time, which is 12, divided by 2 because it's elemental damage, + Nonconductivity 6 because it's Electrical elemental damage, +12 for modified body = 24 dice. 8 hits this time, leaving 3S damage.
Since it's electrical damage, also has to resist being incapacitated, needing at least 3 successes (it's always 3, regardless of damage taken). Rolls Body 9 +Will 3 (it's not damage resistance, bone lacing and toughness do not apply), + 6 (Impact/2), + 6 (nonconductivity 6), -1 wound penalty (it's not damage resistance, so wound penalties apply) = 23 dice, getting 7 hits. He's not incapacitated, which is good, but he still suffers a -2 penalty to all checks for (2 base +3 net hits on the attack (third line)) 5 combat turns. Stick and Shock is nasty.

I hope these help.

[Thanee]

Example 2: This time, Tank is going for the kill. Narrow Long Burst using ExEx (Extra Explosive rounds).
Damage is 6 base +5 (narrow burst, 6 bullets, -1 since first bullet is the base damage) +1 (ExEx ammo) +3 (net hits) = 15 damage.
Ballistic armor is 17, -2 AP, so still converts to stun.

Just a little side note... the "still" is a bit of an exaggeration here, since you do not count the burst DV modifier when comparing damage to armor for purposes of figuring out whether the attack deals physical or stun damage (i.e. only 10 DV are compared to the modified 15 armor).

Bye
Thanee

[forgarn]

The one thing that I am not real keen on is that in the above example #2 you used ExEx ammo. My feeling is that it should be a +1 per round fired, not just a +1 in general. The +1 in general is saying that these rounds do extra damage, but not as a group. It is the same whether I hit you with 1 round (FA), with 3 rounds (BF), or with 10 rounds (FA). That tells me that 10 exploding rounds have the same effect as 1 exploding round. Not very efficient ammo.

Just my opinion though.

[Thanee]

Well, the same is true when you compare different BF/FA weapons (with different DVs). It's just how the system works.

Bye
Thanee

[Halinn]

The one thing that I am not real keen on is that in the above example #2 you used ExEx ammo. My feeling is that it should be a +1 per round fired, not just a +1 in general. The +1 in general is saying that these rounds do extra damage, but not as a group. It is the same whether I hit you with 1 round (FA), with 3 rounds (BF), or with 10 rounds (FA). That tells me that 10 exploding rounds have the same effect as 1 exploding round. Not very efficient ammo.

Just my opinion though.

Firing regular ammo FA doesn't do 10 times the damage either. The rules are quite clear that ExEx is just adding to the base DV.