Aggravated Hardness

[Virjigorm]

The big divide here seems to be over whether you think that hardness is a different form of soak. The short answer is: it is not. Never has been. There was no hardness in 1e that I recall, so soak started to get used as a general term. I often refer to the Twilight anima effect as "soaking" damage, even though it does not; there is no such thing as post-damage-roll soak, since soak is applied before damage is rolled. In 2e, there is now a trait which has been created separately from soak and described differently than soak, called Hardness.


Hardness does not reduce damage at all unless the raw damage is less than the hardness. If the raw damage is more than that value hardness does not do anything. You then apply a different trait called "Soak", and reduce the damage by that amount.


The bottom line is, hardness works nothing like soak, the two traits are distinct, and the rules clearly state those facts.

 

[Flagg]

There was no hardness in 1e

It was introduced in the 1E Lunars book.

 

[wordman]

There was no hardness in 1e

It was introduced in the 1E Lunars book.

Even earlier, actually. The Invulnerable Skin of Bronze (core.218) used Hardness, though they did not call it so. The term wasn't used officially until Power Combat came along (play.205). The 1E rules that describe it don't specify how it works with aggravated damage, either. They don't actually need to, though, as the 1E definition of aggravated damage (quoted in an earlier post) makes it clear that a lethal Hardness rating would stop aggravated damage as well.

 

[Halykan]

There was no hardness in 1e

It was introduced in the 1E Lunars book.

Even earlier, actually. The Invulnerable Skin of Bronze (core.218) used Hardness, though they did not call it so. The term wasn't used officially until Power Combat came along (play.205). The 1E rules that describe it don't specify how it works with aggravated damage, either. They don't actually need to, though, as the 1E definition of aggravated damage (quoted in an earlier post) makes it clear that a lethal Hardness rating would stop aggravated damage as well.

"Make it clear" in what sense? I have read said passage and don't find it any more enlightening than what Virjigorm already posted.


On a side note, the power combat rules suck, and I tend to disagree with them on principle.


Frankly, I'd be inclined to allow ag. to ignore hardness - as it doesn't ignore armor unless expressly stated, aggravated is less dangerous than piercing damage against a typical character (one with substantially more soak from armor than stamina) which seems kind of silly, so at least letting people chip with agg. does not feel wrong to me.


However, as the OP is looking for the cold hard facts, I'd view it like this:


1) Aggravated does not ignore armor unless explicitly stated.


2) Some armor possesses Hardness in addition to Soak.


thus


3) It seems that aggravated damage would not ignore that armor's Hardness either, unless explicitly stated (and it isn't).


While I think Virjigorm's argument about explicit types of hardness is pretty reasonable, I'd point out that armor doesn't explicitly have an aggravated soak amount either, it just borrows the lethal value. Seems like the same rule applies here, if you're going to be hidebound about it.

 

[Persell]

Agg. differs from lethal in only TWO ways. Natural soak, and healing times/difficulty.


The idea that armors lethal soak applies to agg., but not do the same with hardness is, frankly, idiotic.

 

[wordman]

the 1E definition of aggravated damage (quoted in an earlier post) makes it clear that a lethal Hardness rating would stop aggravated damage as well.

"Make it clear" in what sense?

As I mentioned, the 1E rule specifically defines aggravated damage as being "the same as lethal damage, in terms of healing times and the protection that armor offers against such attacks". That's pretty unambiguous in 1E. However, this definition of aggravated damage is not used in 2E, so, as I said, the only aid the 1E definition provides is that it may give a clearer idea as to what the designers actually intended, but didn't clearly say.

 

[random5000uk]

Earth dragon form gives x amount of bashing/lethal/aggravated soak, and equal amounts of hardness (including aggravated). So, to me at least, shows that aggravated hardness is different to lethal hardness. and that lethal hardness can't be used on aggravated damage.

 

[Persell]

Except that is not armor, it a charm. Also it says gains an equal amount of hardness. Not the best example.

 

[Kian]

I was wondering about it as well. With my ST we came to the conclusion aggravated should ignore lethal Hardness. Aggravated is a different type of damage. There's no reason to treat it as lethal. There's a specific bit of text saying lethal and aggravated soak for an armor are the same, but nothing regarding hardness. And I can't recall anything from this edition saying anything about lethal and aggravated being in any other way similar. Being supernatural damage, and artifact armor being so in tune with the wearer, it makes sense that it couldn't protect the wearer fully from something to which the armor itself would be weakened.


It doesn't even seem like such a huge concession either. If you're not beating hardness, you're going to be doing minimum damage anyway.


On a related issue, does piercing damage halve hardness as well? In particular, I found the odd situation that under certain conditions frog crotch arrows work better against armor than target arrows. Frog crotch arrows handle armored soak as double (the opposite of piercing), but deal +4L damage. Target arrows are piercing, but at +0L damage. So against heavy artifact armor frog crotch arrows have a much easier time beating hardness, and deal minimum damage. Target arrows might get stopped by the hardness and deal no damage at all, despite being designed for armored opponents.

 

[Haku1]

Piercing only works on soak.

 

[The zombie cat]

On a related issue, does piercing damage halve hardness as well? In particular, I found the odd situation that under certain conditions frog crotch arrows work better against armor than target arrows. Frog crotch arrows handle armored soak as double (the opposite of piercing), but deal +4L damage. Target arrows are piercing, but at +0L damage. So against heavy artifact armor frog crotch arrows have a much easier time beating hardness, and deal minimum damage. Target arrows might get stopped by the hardness and deal no damage at all, despite being designed for armored opponents.

while there is no listing for it my interpretation has always been thus.


piercing will halve the hardens of armor, but not natural or charm hardness.


by the same token frog crotch arrows double hardness provided by armor.


Edwrad

 

[Haku1]

There's one problem with associating hardness with soak-adjustments from attacks.


Hardness comes before soak. So, unless the adjustment to the attack's damage is considered to be the raw damage such as frog-crotch arrows (it actually does get the damage bonus of Strength +4L at this stage due to it being a -damage- bonus used in the raw calculation of damage).


Raw damage = successes + base damage.


Base damage = Strength + weapon damage bonus (typically).


It's specifically noted on page 149 of the corebook that it deals with raw damage, no modifiers beyond anything that can play around with hardness or modifies the raw damage. If the raw damage is below the Hardness, it's a pft attack and utterly useless. Above the hardness and the target has to suck it up like the little princess that they are.


If hardness is bypass by so much damage, it can't handle, soak is now in play. If your attack says that soak is halved or that armor soak outright ignored (say via a charm that ignores armor), this would be where that effect is applied. Or if say a frog-crotch arrow doubles the lethal soak of armor, this would be where it's applied as well. Ditto with the target arrow's piercing effect.

 

[Kian]

I understand how they work. I was simply calling attention to the fact that an attack with an armor piercing arrow can deal no damage at all due to having less raw damage than the same attack with arrows that are weak against armor. But the weak arrow will still deal minimum damage because even if soak eliminates it completely, minimum damage is still there.


It makes little sense for an armor piercing arrow to deal no damage where an arrow weak against armor can. This means an archer might choose the weaker arrows if the opponent's armor has a high enough hardness, as it takes four more successes with armor piercing arrows to beat the hardness. If however you halve hardness with piercing attacks, you'll go for the armor piercing arrows, which is what would make sense. This would only apply to piercing weapons, which tend to have less damage to compensate the halved soak, but still need to overcome hardness.

 

[Haku1]

Hardness is also noted as rare (artifact armors, spells and a few charms), and far too weak, to be honest


And really, it's only super weak in that you just need to have enough successes + strength + weapon damage bonus to over come it. I think even mortals can beat a hardness of 6 fairly easy (bronze skin and all). We won't go into exalts busting hardness.