Sorry if it's been touched on before, but two hours of searching and checking errata yielded no helpful results.

from SR4 pg78 (I've got the fifth printing BBB)
"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."

I know I'm an art major, but would someone care to explain how ignoring one box per rating becomes ignore four boxes at rating 2. Should it read two boxes per rating point? Why is it worth 5bp (Rating 1 in other words ) to ignore one/two boxes of damage that naturally would not give you any negative modifiers? Seems to be a steep price to pay for nothing.

Okay, here's how it works. Normally, you take a wound penalty for every three boxes. So when you get three boxes of damage, you take a -1 penalty. So normally, if you take four boxes of damage, that's enough to give you a -1 penalty (you get up to a -2 penalty when you hit six boxes of damage). But if you have two points of pain resistance, you ignore two of those four boxes of damage. It is treated like it was two boxes of damage, and since two boxes is less than three (where you start taking penalties), you have no wound modifiers. If you took one more point of damage, you would have five points of damage, treated like three points of damage, which would give you a -1 penalty.

Alright, makes sense to me now. Thanks a bunch.

Also keep in mind that the character has two Damage Tracks (Physical and Stun), and he can ignore the effects from boxes of damage from each track. So technically taking the Quality at rating 1 really does mean he can ignore 2 boxes - one box of Physical and one box of Stun.

Oh, really? I always counted both tracks against it. So if you have two boxes of stun and two boxes of physical, that's your four boxes (in this example) used up and you'll be taking -1 from one of the tracks. It didn't say on each track, it just said "boxes" so I added them. Which is right?

I believe you are. If you look at the adept power of Pain Resistance, you'll see that it specifically mentions it works equally on both damage tracks. So, the difference between the two is that High Pain Tolerance only works against so many boxes, while Pain Resistance works fully on both tracks.

Except that if you have 2 boxes of stun and of physical, you don't take any penalties, because neither track has hit 3 boxes in the first place.

Oh yeah. I meant that if you had 3 boxes on each track, then you'd be on -1 from one of them if you had High Pain Tolerance 2.

What is it with me and facts, this week?

Huh. We just apply the High Pain Tolerance to both tracks equally. I think that this is similar to where we fixed Toughness to be against any damage regardless of source, instead of +1 die vs. physical damage only which cost as much as a full Body point but isn't close to as cool.

Besides, it's really not all that buff an ability what with pain editors and drugs giving a lot of the same bonuses.

If you have pain tolerance 2, you get to ignore 2 boxes. Why couldn't you ignore 1 box from each track, and be at an effective 2 boxes, and thus no penalties?

If you have Pain Tolerance 2, you're right. If you're an adept with Pain Resistance, you get two boxes on each track.

Yeah, that would work too. Not my day...