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Aberrant Game: Armor vs Damage.

Posted by ParagonRising
ParagonRising
member, 2 posts
Sun 6 Mar 2011
at 00:01
  • msg #1

Aberrant Game: Armor vs Damage

Game System: Aberrant d10

I have a question that I have never been able to really figure out and it concerns Armor vs Damage.

Example:

Character has the following:
Stamina 5
Mega-Stamina (Resiliency) 5
Armor 3

That comes out to:
Bashing: 24
Lethal:   17

The Mega-Stamina 5 says that Missiles practically bounce off your chest.

A typical gun does 6d10 damage. A person could easily seriously injure that character. It doesn't seem right. I mean, Mega-Stamina 5 AND Armor 3?   That should easily block a bullet if a Kevlar vest can and yet the numbers show a bullet killing him.

I used the Dice roller and the results showed me killing him outright every single time!

AM I MISSING SOMETHING? Any help would be appreciated.
jait
member, 64 posts
Sun 6 Mar 2011
at 17:20
  • msg #2

Re: Aberrant Game: Armor vs Damage

quote:
The Mega-Stamina 5 says that Missiles practically bounce off your chest.


Artistic license?  With Mega-Stamina 5, and the gun doing full damage with a maxxed out To-Hit modifier,  11 dice damage does 6 dice after soak, which'll drop our unarmored Nova down 6 levels (4 bruised, a Hurt and an Injured).  He'd be Wounded.

So, maybe the missiles they were referring to weren't Shotgun rounds?

This got me intrigued...  So, I decided to work some of it out for myself:  Now, it's been a while since I've looked at the Aberrant system real closely.  And I guess it's about time I do, anyway.  So, here we go.  Let's work this out step-by-step.

I freely admit that I'm rusty.  I might've missed something.   I'll welcome other people correcting me and pointing out where I"m wrong.

For purposes of demonstration, I'm going to go with the stats you provided for the defender, and max everything else out on everyone's side.  So, every dice-roll gets TOTAL success.

For sake of argument, let's say that there's one attacker and three defenders: one with your stats, the others a regular STAMINA-5 baseline.

This gives us:
DEFENDER-1  Soak: 24B/17L
DEFENDER-2  Soak: 05B/02L
DEFENDER-3  Soak: 05B/02L



Scenario 1
ATTACKER-1 (STAMINA-5, Firearms-5) Shoots a Shotgun at point-blank range, and rolls 15 dice (+5 to To-Hit dice-pool for Shotgun accuracy). 

Boom!  15 successes on the to-hit.

As per P. 240, each extra success you score on the attack roll equals additional die you add automatically to your damage effect"  However, it also states, A maximum of five damage dice may be added in this fashion". So, end result is 11-dice for the damage roll (Shotgun does 6D10, +5 from extra-successes on the to-hit).

Defender-1 was standing out in front is hit with the shotgun blast at point-blank range. He has a Lethal Soak of 17.  Before the Attacker even rolls his damage, we subtract the Defenders Soak (17) from the Attackers damage pool (11).  This puts us into negative numbers.  So, really, the damage is negligible.  Except, of course, that the Attacker did hit.  He gets to roll at least one die for damage.  hey! We're maxxing everything out, so he does 1-point of damage!

Now, while Defender-1 is laughing his ass off for having so easily soaked the shotgun damage, the Attacker shoots baseline Defender-2. He has a Lethal Soak of 02.  Before the Attacker even rolls his damage, we subtract the Defenders Soak (02) from the Defenders damage pool (11).  This puts us at an active Damage dice-pool of nine dice.  Since we're going with max successes, he does 9 dice of damage, dropping our once healthy baseline down to incapacitated or, possibly mercifully, dead.




Scenario 2
With a snarl, ATTACKER-1 throws the shotgun down and calls upon his enormous cosmic power to fry the idiots who stand in the way between him and world domination.   ATTACKER-1 (DEXTERITY-5, Quantum-Bolt-5) Shoots a Quantum-Bolt at point-blank-range.  His Quantum-Bolt does [Quantum-5 x 2] 10 automatic damage + (Quantum-Bolt-5 x 4) 20 rolled damage for a enormously punishing amount of 30 damage points (everything's maxxed, remember?).

KA-ZOW!  He makes his Quantum-Bolt roll (of course), and gets the additional +5 to damage dice from the excessive To-Hit successes.  So, he's doing:
  • 10 [Quantum-5 x 2] automatic damage
  • and 25 (Quantum-Bolt-5 x 4) + 5 from To-Hit successes


However, before he can roll, Our DEFENDER invokes his Lethal Soak.  First, the automatic successes get removed (10 levels of lethal soak take out the 10 automatic damage, leaving our DEFENDER-1 with 7 lethal soak levels left, and our ATTACKER-1 with a mere 25 dice of damage to roll.  DEFENDER-1's remaining Lethal-Soak levels start taking away from ATTACKER-1's damage-pool--before he rolls damage.)  ATTACKER-1 is left with a mere 18 dice of damage to roll.

ATTACKER-1 rolls his 18 dice for--we're maxxing everything out--18 successes!

That leads us to HEALTH... 
Mega-Stamina-5 gives our DEFENDER 3 extra health levels (so... 11 instead of eight).  But it just isn't enough.  He's still seven health levels short.   He's incapacitated at the very best.  More likely that Quantum-Bolt did him in.

Ouch.

Even the Advanced Body Armor, providing six additional levels of Lethal Soak wouldn't have been enough to keep him alive.

Then our very-frightened unarmored baseline is left... all alone...  with only two levels of lethal soak...  Against a potential Quantum-Bolt of 25 damage?

Glancing momentarily at the shot-riddled corpse of DEFENDER-2 and the Quantum-Bolt-Charred corpse of DEFENDER-1, he decides maybe he will hand over those launch codes, after all.

So...  Does this help?

What process were you running through?


ParagonRising:
Game System: Aberrant d10

I have a question that I have never been able to really figure out and it concerns Armor vs Damage.

Example:

Character has the following:
Stamina 5
Mega-Stamina (Resiliency) 5
Armor 3

That comes out to:
Bashing: 24
Lethal:   17

The Mega-Stamina 5 says that Missiles practically bounce off your chest.

A typical gun does 6d10 damage. A person could easily seriously injure that character. It doesn't seem right. I mean, Mega-Stamina 5 AND Armor 3?   That should easily block a bullet if a Kevlar vest can and yet the numbers show a bullet killing him.

I used the Dice roller and the results showed me killing him outright every single time!

AM I MISSING SOMETHING? Any help would be appreciated.




Hm.  What if our DEFENDER had Armor-5 instead of Armor-3?
Soak would have been:
05B 02L STAMINA 5
05B 03L MEGA-STAMINA 5  (+3 Bruised health levels)
05B 03L RESILIENCE (double Mega-Stamina ratings)
15B 15L ARMOR 5 (3 x Armor level Bashing/Lethal Soak)
=== ===
30B 23L

23 Lethal soak gives us 6 more additional lethal-soak than DEFENDER-1 had in Scenario 2.  It would still give our ATTACKER-1 12 damage dice to draw on... and if we're maxxing everything out... he'd still be one level too far over the incapacitated mark.

Mind you, if he was also wearing the Advanced Body Armor (six levels of soak), his lethal soak of 29 means he'd still be alive after the Quantum-Bolt blast.    Probably only Injured.

Of course, it ain't likely that the dice'll max out... but then, it also ain't likely that you'll be facing a Quantum-Bolt-5 too often.
This message was last edited by the user at 21:47, Sun 06 Mar 2011.
ParagonRising
member, 6 posts
Sun 6 Mar 2011
at 19:01
  • msg #3

Re: Aberrant Game: Armor vs Damage

I see what I was overlooking. That clears up a lot! I was rolling the dice and taking the damage total and then taking the soak from it. Instead of taking the die away.

Thanks Jait and Cutty (he helped me via private messages). That was really wracking my brain for the longest time and it was so simple.
Jobe00
member, 175 posts
Role-Playing
Game Mechanic
Mon 7 Mar 2011
at 01:04
  • msg #4

Re: Aberrant Game: Armor vs Damage

I noted this same problem. Give me a few days to find my Aberrant book and post the House Rules I used.

I thought it was a complete crock myself too, and had a player with a Mega-Stamina Nova who's whole gimmick was his toughness.
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