Unsoakable Damage

[nonamemaddoxx]

I was under the impression that unsoakable damage meant that natural soak was inapplicable, but that soak from armor would still reduce said damage. However, I have not been able to find any references in second edition books confirming that this is the case.


Is my understanding correct? If not, how is unsoakable damage handled? If you guys could give me page references, that'd be great.


Thanks.

 

[Dracogryff]

I do believe unsoakable damage is unsoakable, by either armor or natural soak. That has always been my impression anyhow. The fact that there are effects that state that they ignore armor soak or ignore natural soak, I presume that if it doesn't state either and says it's unsoakable, that neither apply. *shrugs* I don't have specific page references or anything other than it seems logical to me.


Perhaps if I have time later, I'll actually go hunting for an unsoakable effect or charm or whatever and see what I can make of it...but I've always operated on the principle of ignores natural soak mean only armor applies, ignores armor means that only natural soak applies, and unsoakable means neither applies.

 

[Flagg]

I searched the entire core book for unsoakable. If there are rules addressing this, they don't use that word.


I would assume that in the absence of a qualifier, unsoakable means soak does not apply. Period.

 

[Smeggedoff]

Aggravated damage perhaps?

 

[Dracogryff]

Agg has no mention of 'unsoakable' anywhere, merely that natural soak does not work against it, but armor does. I'm beginning to wonder if there is anything that inflicts 'unsoakable' damage in 2E...but I've certainly not done an in-depth examination of a lot of things.


Granted, a Compassion stylist Lunar who has the Form Charm (at least) as well as Consumptive Worm Hungers can ignore all soak...but that's by using two Charms, and they're doing special bashing only that can't kill someone. *chuckles*

 

[nonamemaddoxx]

I'm beginning to wonder if there is anything that inflicts 'unsoakable' damage in 2E

Finding such a charm is what made me think about it. Void Avatar Prana (MoeP: Abyssals, Pg. 186) has an effect that explicitly causes unsoakable lethal damage, and I'm sure there are other examples.


Anyway, thanks for clarifying.

 

[Flagg]

I'm beginning to wonder if there is anything that inflicts 'unsoakable' damage in 2E...

There are about a dozen examples in the core book alone.

 

[Brickwall]

Unsoakable damage cannot be soaked. It is not a subtype of damage, nor a technical word. It is what it says. Nothing soaks it. Sponges do not soak it, water does not soak it, armor, skin, and awesomeness do not soak it. It is not soaked. It is unsoakable.

 

[cyl]

The usual formula for unsoakable damage is :


- unsoakable dice of damage, which is a dicepool rolled directly bypassing any kind of soak


Sometimes there are no dice rolled, but levels of damage directly inflicted instead, but these are rare and expensive effects.

 

[Arthur]

Unsoakable damage is, by definition, damage inflicted on someone that has the characteristic of not being affected by soak, that is, the raw damage is generally equal to the post-soak damage. Perfect soaking, like Adamant Skin Technique, would probably still apply.


Levels of damage, on the other hand are, according to the official errata, still affected by soak. Post-soak levels are not rolled, and always counted as successes. If, after applying soak to levels of damage, the post-soak levels is inferior to your minimum damage (i.e. Essence), you roll dice of damage equal to your minimum damage minus the levels of damage that passes the soak. That is: if you have Essence 5 and inflict 7 levels of Lethal damage in someone with soak 5L/5B, you cause 2 automatic levels and damage and roll 3 damage dice. That's clarified here in the Errata.


Should there be unsoakable levels of damage, they would be directly applied to the victim's Health Levels.


Just to clarify.