Firan Survival Guide: Damage

From FiranMUX

To understand how armor protects you, you must first understand how damage hurts you. This is all a little bit complicated. Here is what happens when a person gets attacked or shot at in combat...

1. The success (if any) of the hit is determined. This is described in the section on attacking for melee weapons, or the section on shooting or section on throwing for ranged weapons. There will be some sum total of successes derived from this.

2. The hit location is determined at random. For PC-versus-PC combat, use the (undocumented) hitlocs command to see the percentage chance of hitting different body parts. This explains why people tend to get hit in the chest a lot, as it has a comparatively high chance of being hit as opposed to, say, the left eyelid. For NPC puppets (such as animals) and autocode damage on the battlefields, one of the body parts is picked at random with no weighting factor figured in; in this case, your left eyelid is just as likely to get hit as your chest.Also, it is noted what piece of armor (if any) is protecting that location. You can see what armor is covering what locations on you by using the worn command, or by appraising individual pieces of armor if you have the appropriate skill. Currently it is the knees (1% chance of being hit), lips (0.4% chance of being hit), biceps (6% chance of being hit), wrists (1.2% chance of being hit), hands (0.6% chance of being hit), and shoulders (1.2% chance of being hit) that are left uncovered by armor, for a total 10.4% chance of being hit unarmored. In leather armor, the neck (4% chance of being hit) is also unprotected, for a total 14.4% chance of being hit unarmored.

3. The type of damage is determined, based on the type of damage the weapon does:

   • Chopping weapons tend to cause gashes, but can also cause lacerations, breaks, bruises, or punctures.

   • Slashing weapons tend to cause gashes or lacerations, but can also cause bruises or punctures.

   • Bashing weapons tend to cause bruises, but may also cause gashes, lacerations, punctures, or breaks.

   • Piercing weapons tend to cause punctures, but may also cause stabbing pain, lacerations, or gashes.

   • Punching tends to cause bruises, but on occasion may cause breaks.

4. Damage is (virtually) rolled. This is where things really start to get complicated in the code, but in general you roll a number of damage dice equal to your net successes on the attack. These are virtual dice, where the number of 'sides' is determined by either the damage rating of the weapon or (if it's just something a person picked up and threw) the weight of the object. The damage modifier for the person's style is then added. A bonus is added based on either the character's muscle or perhaps some other attribute of either the character or the weapon. Finally, this value is multipled by the character's muscle attribute and divided by 4, to come up with the sum total of damage. Now you know! Told you it started to get complicated.

5. If no armor is worn on the body part hit, the total of the damage is taken. A shock check is made at this point and, if that's failed, a death check. Be sure to see the section on health for the description of the many ways you can be maimed and killed.

6. If armor is covering the location hit some of the damage may be soaked by it. See below for details!

Characters with the armor appraisal skill can appraise armor to see its current state of repair. The better repaired your armor is, the more damage it will absorb on average. Of course, the act of soaking damage is what hurts the armor in the first place. As an example, consider this armor description learned via the appraise command:

Body location: chest   Durability: 6

Current Quality: 983   Maximum Quality: 1000

Defense Difficulties (Current/Maximum) --

chopping: 8/8    piercing: 7/7    bashing:8/8    slashing:8/8 

To interpret this, start by looking at the last line. These number indicate the difficulty of a dice roll required for damage to pass through the armor. Obviously, the higher the difficulty the better the defense provided. Which number is used is based on the type of damage inflicted. For example, suppose that before the armor soaked the total damage done was 20 points of slashing damage. In a virtual sense twenty 10-sided dice would be rolled, at difficulty 8. Suppose that this led to 9 successes. This would mean that 9 points of damage got past the armor and harmed the person wearing it. The other 11 points of damage was soaked by the armor.

As armor soaks damage, the number listed as 'Current Quality' drops based on the total amount of damage inflicted, even if it wasn't soaked. If this number drops low enough the armor becomes unusable. This is why it's important to keep armor in good repair. Additionally, as this number drops the difficulty ratings at the bottom lower, making it easier for damage to pass through your armor's defenses and hurt you. Armor can be repaired by an armorer, with higher level armoring skills allowing a person to repair the armor more fully. The maximum quality can be achieved by someone with the armoring skill at level 5; someone with armoring 4 can repair it to 99% of its maximum quality, and armoring 3 does 95%. The maximum quality for any piece of armor varies based on the type and the quality of the piece.

Back to Combat System: Weapon Stats

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