Damage

You can inflict damage on a target by making a close attack. The exact nature of your Damage is up to you, with the GM's approval; it can be anything from a powerful impact to razor claws, energy fields, or some other damaging medium. The target resists with Toughness:

Damage Check

Success: The damage has no effect.

Tie: Instead of a tie being considered a "Success", the defender gets a bruised penalty.

Failure: The target loses HP equal to the difference and gets a bruised penalty.

A bruised penalty imposes a -1 toughness penalty, is a damage condition, and does not have any defense check (see Recovery in Gameplay Rules). Bruised penalties are cumulative, so a target who fails 3 defense checks against Damage has a total -3 toughness penalty.

Strength And Damage

Strength provides a "built-in" Damage effect: the ability to hit things! This built-in damage is named Unarmed. You can apply effect modifiers to the damage your Strength inflicts, making it Penetrating or even an Area effect! You can also have Alternate Effects for your Strength Damage; see the Alternate Effect modifier for details. Like other Damage effects, a character's Strength Damage is close range and standard action by default.

Modifiers can't be applied to Unarmed Damage if your Strength is 0 or less. Any modifiers applied to your Unarmed Damage changes the cost per rank of strength starting at the base 2 points per rank. Generally every modifier on Unarmed damage must also be applied to any strength-based effect but if there is a conflict of modifiers the Gamemaster decides how to handle it. The modifiers on strength-based effects, on the other hand, are exclusive to that effect. See Strength-Based below for Damaging effects that are not Unarmed such as a melee weapon.

Damaging Objects

Objects take damage similar to characters except objects receive damage conditions directly instead of having HP and use a different set of damage conditions. Constructs (see Constructs) are damaged as characters not objects.

Inanimate objects are defenseless by definition and therefore subject to finishing attacks (see the Finishing Attack maneuver in Gameplay Rules): essentially, you can choose between making your attack on the object as a routine check or, if you make the attack check normally, gaining an automatic critical hit if your attack hits, for a +1 bonus to effect.

Attacking an object held or worn by another character is a smash action (see the Smash maneuver in Gameplay Rules).

If an object is damaged it will either to bend, break or be destroyed depending on the toughness check. If the object fails the Toughness check by only a single degree then it will bend or crack etc, two degrees of failure on the Toughness check results in a break (such as a hole punched through the object) while three or more degrees of failure means the object is destroyed (shattered, smashed to pieces, etc.). An object that is bent will still function (for the most part) until it is broken. An object that is destroyed can't be repaired by hand.

You may use damage to try to fix a bent object by bending it back to normal. Otherwise these conditions are cumulative: if you are trying to break an object that is bent then 1 degree of success will cause it to break. Against a broken object 1 degree of success will destroy it. Obviously objects won't naturally recover unless the object has Regeneration.

Example: Lady Justice, rescuing people from a tenement fire, is hemmed-in by collapsed debris. Her player decides to simply punch a path through. Since she's going for maximum damage, she decides to make the attack check normally (rather than a routine check). Given her attack bonus, she'll only miss on a natural -3 anyway. She succeeds and does her Strength in Damage, +5 for the automatic critical. The GM decides the brick, mortar, and heavy beams have Toughness 9 and makes a Toughness check, rolling a 1, against Lady Justice's result of 15. A 5 result is three degrees of failure, so she easily smashes through the debris and clears the building, carrying people to safety!

The Toughness ranks of some common materials are shown on the Material Toughness table. The listed ranks are for about an inch and a half (distance rank -7) thickness of the material: apply a +1 Toughness bonus per doubling of thickness or a -1 per halving of it. So a foot of stone is Toughness 8. Equipment has Toughness based on its material. Devices have a base Toughness equal to the total points in the device divided by 5 (rounded down, minimum of 1).

Table: Material Toughness

Recovery

Living subjects recover naturally over time or from the powers Healing and Regeneration. For more detail see Gameplay Rules: Recovery.

Objects on the other hand do not naturally recover (normally) and must be repaired. See the guidelines under the Technology skill when repairing damaged objects.

Extras

Affects Insubstantial: An effect with this extra more aptly works on insubstantial targets, in addition to having its normal effect on corporeal targets (while corporeal). If you are currently insubstantial this modified power will not work on corporeal targets, for that you need Affects Corporeal. If the number of Affects Insubstantial applications are equal to or greater than the number of ranks of the target's Insubstantial power then your damaging effect works to full effect. Note that Fluid Insubstantial is not immune to any type of damage. The asymmetry between Affects Corporeal and Affects Insubstantial is intentional. Although this modifier is intended for damage it can also be applied to barriers so that Insubstantial can't pass through it. Flat +1 per application

Affects Objects: This is included in damage and can't be applied again.

Incurable: Effects such as Healing and Regeneration have a harder time healing this Damage although natural recovery from stamina or by repair (for constructs and objects) can still recover as normal. Effects with the Persistent extra can more aptly heal Incurable effects. If a character dies the incurable restriction is removed so that they may be revived normally. Flat +1 point per application

Unrecoverable: This functions like the complement of Incurable in that effects with this modifier can't be cured by natural recovery (stamina or repair) but all other forms of healing (Healing and Regeneration) still work. Unrecoverable and Incurable can't both exist on the same effect for balance reasons. For an effect that can't be cured by a specific descriptor use a limited version of Incurable. +2 cost per rank

Free Modifiers

Strength-Based: The Damage effect is Strength-based--something like a melee weapon--allowing your Strength Damage to add to it. You add your Strength and Damage ranks together when determining the rank of the attack. However, any decrease in your Strength reduces the amount you can add to your damage, and negative Strength subtracts from your Damage! Likewise, anything that prevents you from exerting your Strength also stops you from using a Strength-based Damage effect. If you can't swing your fist, you can't swing a sword, either. On the other hand, a laser blade or thuderbolt staff does the same damage whether you can exert your Strength with it or not.

Non-Lethal: If damage with this modifier would reduce HP from a non-negative number (0 or more) to -1 or less, instead the target has -1 HP and is stabilized. This modifier has no effect on the damage done to objects or to characters that already have -1 HP or less. If you want to be able to choose between lethal and non-lethal damage take the other as an alternate effect.