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GrinderTheTroll
Hi there,

Once you cross your Damange/Pain Resistance level, do you incur all the prior penalties or just penalties based on the number of boxes past the threshold.

For example:

Pain Resistance 4, I suffer no wound modifiers up to 4 boxes. After that, would a 5th box give me a -1 (5 wounds total) or would this be the starting point for considering wound modifiers (1 wound past my resistance)?

If anyone has a page reference, that'd would be great.

Thanks,

GTT
Shrike30
My understanding of the way that it works is that it gives you a certain number of "free" boxes before you even start counting towards penalties.

So, with your example of having 4 points of Pain Resistance:

A normal char with 5 boxes of damage would have -1, and if he were to bump up to 6 points of damage would have -2 (because you get -1 for every 3 full boxes of damage you've taken).

With 4 points of pain resistance, he functions as if he's taken 5-4 points of damage, or 1 point. That's not enough to get a penalty. The bump to 6 means he functions as if he has 2 points, also not a penalty. The only time this guy even starts taking mods is at 7 points of damage, which is where he picks up his first -1... the second will be at 10 points.

This modifier is applied seperately to both damage tracks, meaning your character could be rolling around with 6 points of physical and 6 points of stun, and with pain resistance 4, he'd have no modifiers, yet.
GrinderTheTroll
In SR3, you'd get a flood of penalties once you cross the Pain Resistance threshold (from what I recall) but this is never spelled out directly in SR4 from what I remember reading.

Thanks for your insight.
Cain
QUOTE
A normal char with 5 boxes of damage would have -1, and if he were to bump up to 6 points of damage would have -2 (because you get -1 for every 3 full boxes of damage you've taken).

With 4 points of pain resistance, he functions as if he's taken 5-4 points of damage, or 1 point. That's not enough to get a penalty. The bump to 6 means he functions as if he has 2 points, also not a penalty. The only time this guy even starts taking mods is at 7 points of damage, which is where he picks up his first -1... the second will be at 10 points.

Are you absolutely certain about that? The book just says "for every three boxes", not for every 3 full boxes, so I wasn't sure. However, the character sheet has wound penalties starting from the very first box. I can't really tell which one it's supposed to be.
Moon-Hawk
The character sheet makes it pretty clear that "for every three boxes" means round up, not down.
mintcar
You don't get modifiers for the first box of damage you take, that would be crazy.

Pain resistance lets you ignore damage boxes when calculating penalties. I find it easiest to count backwards (rating) steps from the last box the character took. The box you land on tells you what penalty you have.
Moon-Hawk
No crazier than every other edition of Shadowrun.
Brahm
QUOTE (Moon-Hawk)
No crazier than every other edition of Shadowrun.

It would be a lot crazier given the change in how damage occurs. It is a -1 die penalty for every full 3 boxes.

QUOTE (page 153-154)
For every 3 boxes of cumulative damage taken on a Condition Monitor track, the character suff ers a –1 wound modifier
Azralon
QUOTE (mintcar @ Mar 9 2006, 04:36 AM)
You don't get modifiers for the first box of damage you take, that would be crazy.

That's how it used to work (and because of that SR4 fooled me initially). Take a Light (1 box), and you were at a penalty of 1 (+1 TN) back in the day.

Used to:

0 boxes: +0 TN
1,2 boxes: +1 TN
3,4,5 boxes: +2 TN
6,7,8,9 boxes: +3 TN
10 boxes: unconscious


Nowadays it's:

0,1,2 boxes: -0 dice
3,4,5 boxes: -1 dice
6,7,8 boxes: -2 dice
9,10,11 boxes: -3 dice
etc. until you're unconscious
Moon-Hawk
The penalty for SR3 was far more severe in any case except for extremely small dice pools. In SR4, losing one die means you lose 0.3 successes. In SR3, you could lose 1/3 of all of your successes by raising the TN by 1.
Target number modifiers affect large pools much more than dice pool modifiers.
GrinderTheTroll
So any concensus about my initial question?

Do you reconcile wound penalties by counting wounds beyond the Pain Resistance, or once the limit is reached, count all boxes of damage?
Moon-Hawk
On that issue, I think you would count wounds beyond the pain resistance. i.e. once you're really, really wounded, the pain resistance is still helping.
Ryu
Count dice penalties as if having "actual damage - damage resistance" boxes of damage.
Azralon
I think we're looking at another case of bad editing. It looks like the Pain Resistance power was written up asynchronously from the damage penalties rules. Either that or their example is misleading.

QUOTE (SR4 p188-189)
Pain Resistance allows you to ignore the effects of injury. It does not reduce actual damage, only its effect on you. Subtract your level of Pain Resistance from your current damage before determining your wound modifiers.


From this I read that if I have X boxes of damage and Y levels of Pain Resistance, then I calculate my damage penalties as if I had (X-Y) boxes of damage. Straightforward stuff.

QUOTE (SR4 p189)
So, an adept with 3 levels of Pain Resistance does not suffer any modifiers for sustaining up to 3 boxes of damage and suffers a reduced penalty with more significant injuries. Pain Resistance works equally on both the Physical and Stun Condition Monitors.


Per the damage penalty rules, a normal person with 3 boxes of damage is at a -1 penalty. So let's plug in the clearly-expressed formula above and see what happens.

Boxes of damage = X = 3. Levels of Pain Resistance = Y = 3. Damage penalties calculated as if we had X-Y boxes of damage (3-3=0), so this example character takes no damage penalties. This is consistent with their example.

The example breaks when they mention this character starts to do some reduced suffering after those 3 boxes of damage. Really this character shouldn't take any penalties at all until their 6th damage box (6 boxes - 3 PR = feels like 3 boxes, which is a -1 penalty).

From a literal standpoint, the example is correct, but it can easily be misinterpreted. Kinda like saying "after you get a busted lip, you can die" is technically true but it's leaving out the part where your assailant has given you a concussion and a broken neck as well.

~~~~~

The ray of sunshine comes when we look at the High Pain Tolerance quality.

QUOTE (SR4 p78)
High Pain Tolerance enables a character to better shrug off the distraction of pain from his concentration. A character who possesses this quality can ignore one box of damage per rating point when calculating wound modifiers (see Wound Modifiers, p. 153). So a character with this quality at Rating 2 can take 4 boxes of damage without suffering a wound modifier.


That example makes sense: 4 boxes - 2 HPT = feels like 2 boxes, which is a -0 penalty.

The last bit of info comes from the bioware Damage Compensators.

QUOTE (SR4 p340)
The user may ignore a number of damage boxes (both Physical and Stun) equal to the compensator’s rating before determining injury modifiers.


There's no example there, unfortunately, but it reinforces the X-Y precedent.

~~~~~

Now, my question (it's been brought up elsewhere). Is "unconsciousness" considered a "wound modifier?"

Let's say I'm Average Joe with a 3 Body and 1 point of pain-ignoring powers from somewhere. Normally I go night-night when I've taken my 10th box of damage on either the Stun or Physical track, regardless of whatever damage penalties I might have.

Since I compute my damage penalties as if I had 1 box less damage, does that mean I don't actually black out until I've taken my 11th box? Or am I still KO'd at 10 boxes, I just don't feel as bad about it?
mintcar
QUOTE (Moon-Hawk @ Mar 9 2006, 10:05 AM)
No crazier than every other edition of Shadowrun.

I know it was like that before, but in SR4 there's no damage levels, and a few boxes of damage slips by your downstaging a lot more often. Penalties at one damage box could easily place you at an almost permanent -1 penalty.
Eryk the Red
Quite simply, no. Unconsciousness is not a modifier, it's a state of being. Pain Tolerance is not a source of free damage boxes.
Azralon
QUOTE (Eryk the Red @ Mar 9 2006, 02:20 PM)
Quite simply, no. Unconsciousness is not a modifier, it's a state of being. Pain Tolerance is not a source of free damage boxes.

Not as much "extra damage boxes" as "delaying the consequences of the damage you've taken."

Someone with an active Pain Editor will simply not fall unconcious from Stun damage; not because he's got extra boxes, but just because he's ignoring the boxes he does have.

A Body:3 and Willpower:3 guy could get Damage Compensators at rating 12 and might likewise be intended to just keep going until the very moment of his death. Or, he could pass out when either track reaches 10 but never have a clue that he's even hurt. I could see it going either way.
mintcar
Because you could use stims to keep fighting longer in previous editions, not just fight just as good though damaged, I'm having pain resistance delay unconsiousness with a number of boxes equal to rating. That is, a guy with rating 3 pain resistance of some sort falls unconsious when he's gotten 3 boxes of physical overflow stun or 3 boxes of damage overflow (if aplacable).
Rotbart van Dainig
Same here - when paying up for those Damage Comensators (11), you shouldn't drop before the guy with just a Pain Editor.
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