Armour and Damage

Structure, armour capacity and disablement, derived per location from the anatomy.

Three quantities, three different jobs

Quantity	What it is	What it scales with
Threshold	Penetration resistance	The material. Not the location
Armour capacity	Ablative covering that is used up	Presented area — covering a big surface costs more
Structure	How much the part takes before it stops working	Narrowest cross-section — what has to break to sever it

Structure uses the minimum of a part's width and depth rather than its area, and that choice does real work. A foot is long front-to-back but no thicker than an ankle — and it is the ankle that fails. Presented area would have made a foot as tough as a thigh.

Armour is a budget, not a number

Capacity is distributed across locations by area × plating weight. Weight is the design decision, and real armour is never even: you plate what ends the fight when it is lost and accept that a forearm is thin, because mass spent at the extremities buys the least.

That is why a torso vest reads as 24 points on the torso and nothing anywhere else, while an assault suit spreads 90 across everything — same idea, different answer to the same question.

The damage ladder

Damage accumulates on a location. Crossing a fraction of its structure steps it down. There is no roll here — the state is a function of damage taken, which is what keeps one-roll resolution intact.

Structure lost	State	Effect
0%	Intact	Working normally
50%	Damaged	Degraded — see the table
100%	Disabled	Non-functional until repaired
150%	Destroyed	Severed or wrecked; overkill transfers inboard

Overkill travels inboard

When a location is destroyed, damage past that point moves up the limb — hand to forearm to upper arm to chest. Never outboard, never across the body.

So losing a hand cannot kill you, but enough damage arriving through a hand eventually can, because it keeps travelling. That is what makes extremities meaningful without making them lethal.

Damage types

A type is not a row in a lookup chart. It is three answers, which means a new weapon gets described rather than looked up:

Axis	Question
Penetration	How much of the location's threshold applies?
Delivery	One concentrated hit, spread across locations, or a field effect?
Target	Capacity, structure, components, or the crew inside?

Type	Threshold applies	Delivery	Targets	Character
Kinetic	100%	concentrated	capacity	The baseline every other type is measured against. Full threshold applies; reliable once armour is stripped.
Shaped charge	35%	concentrated	structure	Trades total damage for penetration — punches a narrow hole and reaches structure through plate that stops kinetic outright. Spaced and reactive armour are the counter.
Energy	75%	concentrated	capacity	Bores rather than impacts. Immune to wind and drop, generates heat in the firer, needs no ammunition.
Plasma	60%	concentrated	capacity	Strips capacity fast and dumps heat into the target. Conspicuous and power-hungry.
Explosive	140%	spread	capacity	Poor against intact plate — threshold counts for more than usual — but it strips capacity across adjacent locations rather than one. Excellent finisher, bad opener.
Fragmentation	250%	spread	structure	Devastating to anything unarmoured and nearly worthless against plate. The clearest case of a weapon that is a wrong answer to the wrong target.
Concussive	50%	concentrated	crew	Transmits through armour rather than defeating it. Hurts the occupant without breaching the hull.
EMP	0%	field	components	Ignores threshold and capacity entirely. Attacks electronics, sensors and cybernetics; does almost nothing to structure.
Radiation	0%	field	crew	Passes through unshielded armour to the crew. Shielding, not thickness, is the counter.
Corrosive	0%	field	capacity	Deals little immediately and degrades threshold over time. A softener that makes the next attack land harder.

Threshold factor is a multiplier on the location's own threshold. Below 1 the type defeats plate more easily than baseline kinetic; above 1 it is worse against plate than kinetic is. Zero means threshold does not apply at all.

What that produces

Against an assault-suited chest (threshold 7) the same nominal attack meets very different resistance:

Type	Effective threshold
Kinetic	7
Shaped charge	2
Energy	5
Plasma	4
Explosive	10
Fragmentation	18
Concussive	4
EMP	0
Radiation	0
Corrosive	0

So a shaped charge that would bounce off nothing gets through where fragmentation simply cannot, and EMP does not care what the plate is made of. Choosing ammunition becomes a real decision made before you know exactly what you will meet.

The lesson worth stealing is not the type list

The lineage this borrows from distinguishes weapons mostly by range, heat, ammunition, and whether damage arrives in one lump or scattered — with armour as a pure ablative pool and no penetration gate at all.

Its sharpest idea is not a damage-type chart. It is that concentration matters more than type: against localised armour, ten damage in one hit and ten damage in ten hits are entirely different events. A single heavy strike punches through one location's plate; the same total scattered is absorbed everywhere and breaks nothing.

That is why delivery is one of the three axes here and not a footnote — and why explosive and fragmentation are deliberately bad openers and good finishers.

Human

Structure, armour and threshold

Location	Structure	Unarmoured	Torso vest	Infantry rig	Assault suit	Overkill goes to
Head	4	0 / 0	0 / 0	3 / 4	6 / 7	—
Neck	2	0 / 0	0 / 0	1 / 4	2 / 7	Chest
Chest	8	0 / 0	13 / 4	13 / 5	20 / 7	—
Abdomen	7	0 / 0	11 / 4	12 / 5	18 / 7	Chest
Upper arm (each)	2	0 / 0	0 / 0	1 / 1	3 / 4	Chest
Forearm (each)	1	0 / 0	0 / 0	0 / 1	2 / 4	Upper arm
Hand (each)	1	0 / 0	0 / 0	0 / 1	2 / 4	Forearm
Thigh (each)	4	0 / 0	0 / 0	2 / 1	8 / 5	Abdomen
Shank (each)	2	0 / 0	0 / 0	1 / 1	6 / 5	Thigh
Foot (each)	2	0 / 0	0 / 0	0 / 1	1 / 5	Shank

Armour cells read capacity / threshold. A location with no plating has no threshold either — which is why a torso vest leaves limbs not just thin but genuinely open.

Profile	Total capacity	Threshold	Character
Unarmoured	0	0	Clothing. Every hit reaches structure.
Torso vest	24	4	Plate over the vitals and nothing else. Cheap, light, and it leaves every limb bare.
Infantry rig	37	5	Helmet and plate carrier with token limb coverage. The usual compromise.
Assault suit	90	7	Full coverage. Heavy, hot, and it slows you down, but a limb hit stops being a wound.

What failure does

Location	Damaged (½ structure)	Disabled (all structure)	Destroyed (1½×)
Head	Concussed: −2 to every action	Unconscious	Killed
Neck	−1 to actions; bleeding	Unconscious, bleeding out	Killed
Chest	−1 to actions; winded	Incapacitated, dying	Killed
Abdomen	−1 to actions; bleeding	Incapacitated, dying	Killed
Upper arm	−2 with that arm	Arm useless; drop what it held	Arm severed; bleeding
Forearm	−2 with that arm	Cannot grip; drop what it held	Forearm severed; bleeding
Hand	−2 to fine work with it	Cannot hold anything in it	Hand lost
Thigh	Movement halved	Cannot stand unaided	Leg severed; bleeding
Shank	Movement halved	Cannot stand unaided	Leg severed below the knee
Foot	Movement −25%; balance checks	Hobbled; movement quartered	Foot lost

Heavy mech

Structure, armour and threshold

Location	Structure	Light plating	Standard plating	Assault plating	Overkill goes to
Sensor head	2	5 / 5	9 / 8	15 / 11	—
Upper hull	8	66 / 9	121 / 12	195 / 16	—
Lower hull	7	40 / 9	74 / 12	120 / 16	Upper hull
Weapon mount (each)	3	6 / 4	11 / 5	24 / 9	Upper hull
Arm (each)	2	7 / 4	13 / 5	30 / 9	Weapon mount
Upper leg (each)	3	10 / 4	20 / 6	41 / 11	Lower hull
Lower leg (each)	2	9 / 4	18 / 6	37 / 11	Upper leg
Foot (each)	3	3 / 4	7 / 6	14 / 11	Lower leg

Armour cells read capacity / threshold. A location with no plating has no threshold either — which is why a torso vest leaves limbs not just thin but genuinely open.

Profile	Total capacity	Threshold	Character
Light plating	181	9	Mass spent on mobility instead. Survives glancing fire and little else.
Standard plating	342	12	The common compromise: hull heavy, legs solid, arms accepted as expendable.
Assault plating	622	16	Everything plated. Slow, thirsty, and very hard to take apart.

What failure does

Location	Damaged (½ structure)	Disabled (all structure)	Destroyed (1½×)
Sensor head	−2 to hit; targeting degraded	Blind; only manual optics	Sensors gone; cockpit exposed
Upper hull	−1 to all actions; hull breached	Reactor scram; shutdown	Destroyed
Lower hull	Heat dissipation halved	Engine dead; no powered movement	Destroyed
Weapon mount	That mount −2 to hit	Mount cannot fire	Mount torn away; ammunition check
Arm	−2 with that arm	Arm actuators dead	Arm severed
Upper leg	Movement halved; piloting −1	Cannot walk; piloting check to stay upright	Leg severed; falls
Lower leg	Movement halved	Cannot walk	Leg severed below the knee; falls
Foot	Piloting −1 on rough ground	Movement quartered; falls on a failed piloting check	Foot lost; falls

Every number here is provisional

Structure is anchored so the largest torso segment sits at 8 boxes, and the armour budgets are chosen to make the profiles feel distinct. Neither has been playtested. What is derived is the shape — the relative ordering of locations follows from the anatomy and will hold even when the anchors move.

The type factors in particular are placeholders chosen to make the types behave differently from one another, not measured against anything.