How Does Injury Tolerance (Diffuse) Even Work?

How Does Injury Tolerance (Diffuse) Even Work?

I've been working on the four basic elementals to add them to Monstrous Compendium II. I really want to get them right, because elementals are quite important - they can be enemies, they are the most frequently summoned creatures, they can be used as allies or shapeshifting forms, etc. Three of the four elementals (air, fire, and water) are diffuse beings. So, let's take a look at Injury Tolerance (Diffuse) in more detail.

Pardon my French, but how the fuck does it work? Let's investigate. Injury Tolerance (Diffuse) appears on p. B60. It does the following:

    1. You become immune to crippling injuries. (You will see why soon)

    2. Most foes cannot slam you.

    3. Most foes cannot grapple you.

    4. Includes No Blood

        4.1. You are immune to bleeding

        4.2. You are immune to blood-borne toxins

        4.3. You are immune to attacks that rely on cutting off blood to part of your body

        4.4. This also removes (even though it isn't explicitly stated) the optional Veins/Arteries locations

    5. Includes No Vitals

        5.1. "Vitals" and "groin" hits are treated as "torso" hits

    6. Includes No Brain

        6.1. "Eye" and "skull" blows are treated no differently than a blow to the face, but eyes still can get crippled.

    7. Impaling and piercing (any size) attacks never do more than 1 HP of injury. Other attacks can never do more than 2 HP of injury. Area-effect, cone, and explosion attacks cause normal injury.

#1 and #6.1 contradict each other - "eyes can get crippled" and "you are immune to crippling injuries." However, p. B552 (and DFRPG Exploits, p. 55) adds the following:

    8. Eyes, extremities, and limbs (if present) can still be crippled. (Good luck crippling anything with the injury cap though.)

    9. Ignore all knockdown and wounding modifiers for hit location. (This actually is also listed on p. B552, but not the description of Diffuse.)

If we are getting pedantic here, extremities are not mentioned in DFRPG Exploits and hence cannot be crippled, but this is clearly just an oversight.

There is an alleged Krommpost that says "we forgot to add "if Homogenous" after "can still be crippled", but if that was a known issue, why was it clearly printed both under Homogenous and Diffuse in DFRPG Exploits? Thus, I'm not buying that it was an oversight they forgot to errata.

Wait a second. If we take a look at Injury Tolerance (No Brain) and take an even better look at p. B420, we will see that the descriptions of the effects of this advantage differ in the same book. I'm already mad.

    10. No Brain means that skull, face, and eye injuries don’t cause knockdown or stunning unless they are major wounds – and even then, the roll is at no special penalty.

The underlined part isn't mentioned in the advantage itself, and it's actually a big deal! And I actually didn't know that before.

Now, what does Diffuse not include?

1. Injury Tolerance (No Eyes). As we saw above, if using DFRPG rules (and you should), eyes still can get crippled, even though an eye hit doesn't get an increased wounding multiplier or forces a knockdown roll. Let's see the implications.

    - A diffuse creature with eyes can receive a corrosion attack to the face (if it even has one; more on that later) without the x1.5 wounding multiplier (see #9 above). If it is a major wound, it blinds one eye. However, the 2 HP injury cap still applies here, so this is relevant only to HP 1-3 creatures.

    - A diffuse creature with eyes can be attacked in the eye with an impaling, piercing, or tight-beam burn- wait, stop. Tight-beam burning attack? It really feels that they are supposed to have a 1 HP injury cap like impaling and piercing, but they don't - they can deal 2 HP of injury if we are playing strictly by RAW. I think this is just an oversight. But anyway, injury over HP/10 blinds the eye. Since we are limited to 1-2 HP of injury, if you have HP 11 or more, impaling and piercing attacks to the eyes cannot deal enough injury to cripple you. For tight-beam burning attacks, having HP 21 or more makes you immune.

    - No Eyes prevents Eye-Gouging, Eye-Poke, Eye-Rake, etc. from causing blindness or special injury (p. MA115). Thus, if you are a Diffuse creature with eyes, others can use Eye-Poke, but just like before, HP 21+ makes it useless. A bad hit may hit your skull and damage the attacker's fingers, but I will talk about the skull a bit later. The same applies to the cinematic Eye-Pluck. The cinematic Lethal Eye-Poke is worse than the normal eye poke, because damage becomes piercing and hence HP 11+ makes you immune to eye crippling from it. Eye-Gouging doesn't work even if you have eyes, because it requires a grapple, and you're (sort of) immune to it.

    - If you have eyes, then critical hits will use a different table. Taking into account the injury cap, this... doesn't really do much. You can get knocked off balance or be deafened - all other effects are the same as for normal critical hits.

    - There's also Liquids in the Face (p. B405) that is more of Liquids in the Eyes than Face.

    All of the above are extreme edge cases. The only real benefit of having No Eyes is that you become immune to blinding attacks, such as flashbangs, Flash spell/psionic ability, etc. Why does Protected Vision cost as much as Injury Tolerance (No Eyes) when the latter is clearly better?

2. Injury Tolerance (No Neck). Yeah, as a diffuse creature, you have a neck! But what does having a neck even mean in this case?

    - No Neck makes it so you cannot be choked, strangled, or have your neck snapped, but all of these actions require a grapple, and Diffuse makes you immune to that.

    - No Neck removes the neck hit location. What does the neck location even do for diffuse creatures? The neck hit location increases the wounding multipliers for crushing, corrosion, and cutting attacks, but you ignore these. Sure, you do not have to wear neck armor anymore, but if you are diffuse, you are unlikely to wear any armor at all.

    Thus, Injury Tolerance (No Neck) does nothing on Diffuse creatures, even though there are monsters in published books that have both (Icky Goo, DFRPG elementals, etc.).

    "But Eggplant, what about the chance to hit the spine?"

    Miss me with this shit. I really doubt that diffuse creatures have spine and joint locations. I know that it's not spelled out explicitly. And with the injury cap in place, this yet again basically only matters to HP 1 creatures and the like.

3. Injury Tolerance (No Head). Diffuse includes No Brain, but not No Head, even thouugh No Head includes No Brain. Thus, even if you take No Head on a Diffuse character, it should cost 2 points instead of 7 points. So, what would it do?

    - You have no "skull" hit location. Since you already have No Brain, a skull hit doesn't get an increased wounding modifier and does not cause a knockdown roll, unless it's a major wound. So, now it is a location that does nothing special, but has additional DR 2 and uses a different critical hit table (already talked about it above). And No Head removes it.

    - You have no "face" hit location. If you have a face, you have that corrosion attack edge case described under No Eyes above. Knockdown modifiers are removed by Diffuse, and knockdown roll on any injury is removed by No Brain. Also, you use the critical head blow table that isn't that much different.

    - MA137 introduces new face sublocations - ear, jaw, and nose. GURPS Low-Tech Instant Armor also give you cheeks that don't do anything. Jaw effects are removed by Diffuse. Ear and nose hits require injury over HP/4 to do anything, so due to the injury cap, it is only relevant to HP 1-8 creatures. Oh, you also become immune to Ear Clap (p. MA70) if you have No Head. Woo!

    - Sure, you don't have to wear a helmet, but due to being diffuse, you are unlikely to wear one at all.

    Thus, Injury Tolerance (No Head) does effectively nothing on Diffuse creatures, even though there are monsters in published books that have both (Icky Goo). These extreme edge cases definitely are not worth spending 2 points. Not even worth being a perk.

4. GURPS has the Extra Mouth advantage, but no No Mouth disadvantage. In my games, I treat it as a -4-point disadvantage (because Weak Bite is -2 points). Thus, if you are diffuse, you still can bite.

Conclusion: Do NOT take Injury Tolerance (No Neck) and Injury Tolerance (No Head). Consider the extreme edge cases baked into Diffuse. No Eyes, however, still makes sense.

However, there are some other things that have to be discussed.

1. Slam Immunity. Diffuse states that you cannot be slammed, but this doesn't always make sense. For example, you have the Body of Air meta-trait that has ST 0 and Diffuse (oh boy, we're coming back to this one later) and a foe slams you. What does "immune" mean exactly? I know, the common sense tells me that the opponent simply moves through you harmlessly, but one could also interpret it as you not taking any damage from the slam. In this case, the opponent would slam against air and possibly take damage and get knocked down. And if you do not take any damage from a slam... why? Why does a regular crushing attack damage you, but a slam does not? It makes no sense this way, so I assume immunity means that you cannot be knocked down by a slam.

    Okay, that one could be solved with common sense. But what if you had ST 1? Or if you had the Body of Water meta-trait instead that is Diffuse, but has proper ST? What the hell happens now? Obviously, you consult with the Elder Gods go to the forums or whatever other place and ask if it's been clarified before and get a "hurr durr this isn't important, just make a ruling" in response. Slams happen all the time, what do you mean it isn't important?

    It seems that when it comes to Diffuse creatures, almost everything works differently depending on whether you have ST 0 or ST 1+, and this is no exception. I'd say that you move through a ST 0 creature unhindered, while dealing damage to it, subject to the normal injury cap, but take no damage yourself. You do not cause knockdown or knockback. If you slam into a ST 1+ diffuse creature, you resolve the slam normally, but still without knockback.

    But what if... the diffuse creature has DR? For example, imagine a volume of air encased in a force sphere - that's still a diffuse creature, isn't it? In that case, it seems that slams should work normally, including knockback and knockdown, regardless of ST. The only difference is that the injury cap still applies.

2. Overrun and Trample. Obviously, a ST 0 diffuse creature cannot slam, overrun, or trample, even if it has DR. For ST 1+ creatures, these rules work normally.

3. Knockback. I believe that if a diffuse creature does not have DR, it should be immune to knockback, unless knockback was caused by an area-effect, cone, jet, or explosive attack.

4. Tenuous. Few people probably even know about this disadvantage, but this is a new form of Fragile from GURPS Space. It makes it so if you critfail a HT roll against a major wound caused by an explosive attack, you instantly die. Very appropriate to some diffuse beings, but I would rework it into "fail the roll by 5 or roll a critical failure" to bring it in line with similar mechanics. Also, do not forget that major wounds and crippling injuries are different things - even if you are immune to crippling, you still are not immune to major wounds.

5. DR. Speaking of Damage Resistance - it's a bit messy. For example, fire elementals in DFRPG have DR 6, water elementals have DR 5, and air elementals have DR 0. My assumption is that this is to prevent thieves with their puny daggers, cats, and other weak opponents from dealing with the diffuse elemental by delivering many weak attacks. This sort of makes sense, but why was the air elemental excluded? If it were me, I'd give them all DR 2-4.

    However, there are some cases that make it all feel off. Imagine yourself punching a fire elemental as hard as you can. Like a dumbass, you stick your fist into the flame and... break your hand in addition to burning it, because Hurting Yourself (p. B379) comes into effect.

    "But Eggplant, you buttwagon, they obviously have DR with Tough Skin"

    No, they don't. The is no * after the number that would denote flexibility, and even if it were flexible, you'd create another edge case. Swing your mace at a fire elemental, roll 5 damage, and... deal 1 point of blunt trauma. That makes no sense, doesn't it?

    Now, I hope you didn't forget about corrosion damage. Splash a fire elemental with acid, and now it is easier to damage, because its DR has been eroded.

    All this makes it clear that DR isn't actually the way to go in this case. Elementals should be resistant to injury, not damage. RAW, there is no way to do that, but Christopher Rice prices Injury Resistance at 10 points/level. Of course, the injury cap should apply after Injury Resistance is subtracted.

    One could say that diffuse creatures should be immune to blunt trauma, but I disagree. If you have a diffuse creature with proper DR, why wouldn't it take damage from blunt trauma when it can take damage from a regular crushing attack?

6. Evasion. Since I assume that you can move through a ST 0 diffuse creature without DR freely, you evade (p. B368) automatically and vice versa.

7. Flexibility and Invertebrate. By default, Diffuse does not include the ability to squeeze through narrow openings and bend yourself into a pretzel. Thus, I suggest adding Double-Jointed [15] and, in most cases, Invertebrate [-20]. Speaking of Invertebrate, GURPS Basic Set simply says that you're able to squeeze through smaller openings than your SM would otherwise indicate, but that's vague. DFRPG amends that, saying that you are treated as 2 SM smaller for this purpose. DFRPG wins again. Also, if you are a ST 0 diffuse creature, you can take Invertebrate and only get the upsides, because you cannot lift anything anyway. This is cheesy, so I'd say that Invertebrate is included by default into ST-10 [-100]. Also, Double-Jointed for ST 0 creatures doesn't really do anything - you cannot get grappled anyway, and Climbing and Erotic Arts are... questionable for such creatures, and so are penalties for working in close quarters - you cannot manipulate objects anyway. So, do not add any of these traits to ST 0 creatures - consider the increased squeezability baked in.

    However, there are some cases when these traits do not make sense. For example, remember the first fight from the Three Hearts and Three Lions? There was a diffuse (or spiritual, but it doesn't matter for this example) being in an animated suit of armor. Such creature's movements would be restricted by armor, so Double-Jointed is not a given (unless the armor joints are very flexible), and Invertebrate, possibly, isn't mandatory. This leads into the next important thing:

8. Grappling. Now, let's grapple with the elephant in the room. By RAW, you are immune to being grappled, unless the GM says otherwise. My kneejerk reaction would be to call it retarded and say that this should be a blanket immunity to being grappled, but now that I've written so much in the post, I understand that there are indeed some cases when a diffuse being can be grappled normally. Consider the same diffuse being inhabiting a suit of armor that I just mentioned. Diffuse? Check. Can be grappled? Check. However, the options would be limited - you can grapple to restrain movement, you can pin, but locks and wrenches shouldn't do any damage. Throws, however, should work normally.

    Let's imagine a different creature - a ST 0 air elemental. No, you cannot grapple it. No, it cannot grapple you either.

    Now, what about the water elemental? It can grapple you (and, of course, drown you), but you cannot grapple it back. Have you ever tried to wrestle water? However, you still can try to break free. This works the same as grapples with Telekinesis - the victim gets grabbed, but he cannot grapple Telekinesis back, even though he may try to break free.

    What if we give a water elemental DR? If it has rigid DR, it become grappleable as in the first example. If we give it flexible DR, it should remain grappleable, but it probably should get a huge bouns due to Double-Jointed. Even if a volume of water has a membrane you can hold on to, it's still ridiculously difficult to grapple.

    By RAW, the Body of Water meta-trait has Slippery 5 [10] despite having no DR, which implies that a water elemental can be grappled, but I'm not buying that. That +5 bonus to DX rolls to squeeze through narrow openings isn't worth 10 points. I'd remove this from the meta-trait - it already has Invertebrate.

    Another thing we have to remember is grapples via Telekinesis and Binding. I think this yet again should be based on DR. Imagine an air elemental stepping into glue. Why would it get grappled? Or a water elemental flowing over glue. It just wouldn't make any sense. However, if there is DR, then a grapple should happen. Telekinesis should be subject to the same limitations as normal grappling, but there is one edge case. Do you remember the Hydrokinesis perk (p. PP56)? With this perk, you will be able to grab liquid diffuse beings with no DR.

    I probably missed something, but there you go.