The Business: A Palladium That Survives Through The 21st Century (Part 4)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

This is not 1975.

This is not 1990.

This is 2023, almost 2024. There is copious, and easily available, depictions of the relationship between damage and armor in fiction as well as documentations of the real thing out there for you to watch and read.

Let me make this fist-to-face obvious: most tabletop games GET THIS WRONG.

The basis of doing damage is to use some means of generating kinetic force and then imparting that force upon a target. In short, this is increasingly complicated ways of hitting someone with a rock.

From using your fists to smacking it with a hypersonic missile, you are using kinetic force to put the hurt on someone or something. You have to go into corner-case technologies to get away from this (flamethrowers, nukes, chemicals, bioweapons) or into outright fantasy (anything pew-pew, be it a blaster of a magic fireball).

Therefore, what matters is the comparison of what delivers the damage vs. what receives the damage.

That is where Armor comes into the equation.

Putting Something Hard Between That Rock And Your Squishy Bits

Palladium die-hards are used to treating Armor as a secondary (or, in the case of Mega-Damage, substitute) pool of Hit Points. This is not how it works.

Instead, Armor works on a Pass/Fail basis. Under Palladium rules, this is what Armor Rating covers; we're using that term and expanding its usage. Therefore, it is obvious as to how to apply Armor Rating to the game: Armor Rating is a bonus to the Saving Throw vs. Damage. But that's not all it does.

As the videos on Ballistic Armor and Chain Armor show, it is not enough to stop penetration. The force still transmits into the target; it just doesn't get past your man's skin and into his innards, which causes all sorts of serious injuries. That's why Chain Armor has quilted padding underneath--just ask all the chicks wearing chain bikinis how important that is--and why Plate carriers are experimenting with shock-absorbing materials.

(Seriously, RPG designers and publishers, keep up with this stuff. This ain't fictional supertech anymore.)

Armor also filters out negative Status effects that can be applied to the target. A Ballistic Plate Carrier, with Level 4 plates inserted front and back and shock-absorbing goo applied on the inside, will negate penetration by anything short of .50 BMG and reduce or eliminate kinetic shock. A shirt of chain will stop cutting and bashing attacks, and maybe some piercing attacks; a suit of full plate will stop anything that doesn't cause massive blunt force trauma or hit like a Mac Truck.

Therefore, Armor is Conditional.

Armor will not only have a Rating, but also have Conditions that it applies to. Some Conditions negate, and others transmute; e.g. said Ballstic Vest transmutes penetrative damage into blunt force trauma, removing a lot of possible follow-on effects (e.g. wound infection, poisoning).

For RIFTS players, you'll recognize this as negating the integrity of your man's Full Environmental Protection condition. Getting your Grunt's armor mangled can expose your man to hostile environmental effects. This also means that Called Shots are back on the menu, as it allows successful attackers to bypass Armor entirely.

How It Works

Your man blows his Dodge/Parry checks and takes a hit. The attacker rolls the attack's damage dice to set the Save's Target Number. You roll your man's Saving Throw, adding his Armor Rating to the roll; if the Armor Rating makes the difference between Passing and Failing, then the Armor degrades to account for the damage done to it by the attack- by how much is determined by the specifics of the attack.

Transmuted Damage: If the Armor stops a primary form of harm (e.g. penetration by a projectile) but not a secondary form (e.g. blunt force trauma), then the attacker cuts the number of Xd6 rolled by half- rounding down. (Just because you survived getting shot by a guy with a Mosin-Nagant doesn't mean that your ass can't get knocked out; the Ballistic Vest is meant to keep you alive, not make you No Sell getting shot like you're The Hulk.)

This also means that attack forms (including powers and weapons) will tell you how they do their damage. Fireballs and blasters burn their targets and cauterize wounds. Silver does this to vampires.

In practice, it'll look something like this:

Chain Armor: Armor Rating 25 vs. mundane attacks. Requires the "Armor Penetrating" trait to negate.

And something like Bodkin arrowheads will have that trait.

Because what matters is if you have the conditions to negate the challenge, not if you have bigger numbers against their number. People who've played Rolemaster or used the Weapon vs. AC chart in AD&D1e (and if you haven't, you're playing it wrong), get this idea. So do people who actually fight for real.

In Mass Battles

Because this is an informal blog post, I'm being loose--probably too loose--with mixing what is for Hero Figures (i.e. PCs) and what is not.

Armor, when applicable, is a bonus to the Saving Throw. Simple as that. Troops, vehicles, battleships, etc. with it will notice its presence when they get hit; it will keep them alive (if not in the fight, then at least able to fight another day) instead of crippled or dead.

(Again, experience talking.)

Which means that it's time to bring Scaling into it.

That's An Anti-Tank Rifle!

Scales have Labels.

Borrowing Mekton Zeta's scheme: Man, Powered Armor, Tank, Ship, Death Star, PleaseDon'tSueMeDocSmithEstate.

Just as Armor is matched to Attack, Scales also matter here. You aren't harming that M1 Abrams with your shotgun, but that co-axial M2 HMG in .50 BMG will rip you, your car, your house, your family, and your neighbors apart with aplomb.

Armor can, sometimes, be just enough to save your man's ass. However, far more likely is that the armor itself was insufficient and instead it was some form of Cover that did the job instead.

Cover, for game purposes, interacts via Scaling. The dragon's firey breath won't be stopped by your suite of plate armor, but that stone wall is rated at Tank scale and so it's going to negate the dragon's Scale rating so long as you are behind it.

Likewise, you'll need yourself an anti-tank weapon to go against something on the Tank scale- such as a REF soldier in combat against Invid.

Correcting scale ratings in the published materials to conform to source materials (for IRL stuff, licensed stuff, or derivatives thereof) is an unfortunate chore, but needed; the days of ambushing Battlepods with Vietcong shooting laser rifles is over- and so are the days of hapless slaughter of people in RIFTS Earth due to MDC being unfit for purpose.

And yes, Workign As Intended. Your man, barring superpowers, is not meant to stand in the open no-selling direct hits by 155mm artillery shells.

Tomorrow we talk movement.