Calculating Damage

Damage

In the midst of combat, you attempt a special type of skill check known as "attack rolls" to determine if you can damage your foe with weapons, spells, explosives, or your own teeth and claws.

On a successful check, you hit and deal damage. Damage decreases a creature’s Vitality Points on a 1-to-1 basis (so a creature that takes 6 damage loses 6 Hit Points). A creature reduced to 0 Vitality Points begins taking Wounds in damage. A creature reduced to 0 wounds is Dying. The full rules can be found in the Vitality and Wounds section.

Damage is sometimes given as a fixed amount, but more often than not you’ll make a damage roll. A damage roll typically uses a number and type of dice determined by the weapon, unarmed attack, or spell, and is often enhanced by modifiers, bonuses, and penalties. When making a damage roll, follow these steps:

1. Roll the damage dice and apply modifiers, bonuses, and penalties.

2. Determine the damage type.

3. Apply the target’s immunities, weaknesses, and resistances.

4. If any damage remains, reduce the target’s Health.

Step 1: Roll the Damage Dice and Apply Modifiers, Bonuses and Penalties

Your weapon, unarmed attack, spell or supernatural ability determines what type of dice you roll for damage, and how many. For instance, if you’re using a normal light pistol, you’ll roll 2d4. If you’re casting a 3rd-level fireball spell, you’ll roll 6d6. 

When you use melee weapons, unarmed attacks, and thrown ranged weapons, the most common modifier you’ll add to damage is your Brawn modifier. You typically do not add an ability modifier to spell damage, firearms, or explosives.

As with skill checks, you might add circumstance, feat, origin, supernatural, or item bonuses to your damage rolls. If you have multiple bonuses of the same type, you add only the highest bonus of that type. You also apply penalties to the damage roll, again taking only the greatest penalty of a specific type (but applying all untyped penalties together).

Use the formulas below.

Melee damage roll = damage die of weapon or unarmed attack + Brawn modifier + bonuses - penalties

Ranged damage roll (thrown) = damage die of weapon + Brawn modifier + bonuses + penalties

Ranged damage roll = damage die of weapon + bonuses - penalties

Spell (and similar effects) damage roll = damage die of the effect + bonuses + penalties

If the combined penalties on an attack would reduce the damage to 0 or below, you still deal 1 damage.

Increasing Damage

In some cases, you increase the number of dice you roll when making weapon damage rolls. This results in an increase in weapon damage by "Steps." Determine the base damage of your weapon and reference its Step (for example, a light pistol deals 2d4 damage, so it is Step 6), and move the damage a number of steps indicated by the feat or ability (for example, Gravity Weapon increases damage by 2 Steps, so a light pistol moves from Step 6 to Step 8).

Refer to Weapons for more information about Weapon Sizes and Damage Steps.

Persistent Damage

Persistent damage is a condition that causes damage to recur beyond the original effect. Like normal damage, it can be doubled or halved based on the results of an attack roll or saving throw. It appears as “X persistent [type] damage,” where “X” is the amount of damage dealt and “[type]” is the damage type. Instead of taking persistent damage immediately, you take Persistent damage at the beginning of your turn, so long as you have the Persistent Damage condition. At the end of every turn (after you have taken all your actions), make a DC 15 flat check against each of the types of persistent damage affecting you. On success, you end the condition.  Persistent damage runs its course and automatically ends after a certain amount of time, as fire burns out, blood clots, and the like. The GM determines when this occurs, but it usually takes 1 minute.
See Damage Types for more information about Persistent Damage.

Doubling and Halving Damage

Sometimes you’ll need to halve or double an amount of damage, such as when you critically succeed on some Spell Attack checks. When this happens, you roll the damage normally, adding all the normal modifiers, bonuses, and penalties. Then you double or halve the amount as appropriate (rounding down if you halved it). 

Step 2: Determine the Damage Type

Once you’ve calculated how much damage you deal, you’ll need to determine the damage type. There are many types of damage, and sometimes certain types are applied differently. The smack of a nightstick deals bludgeoning damage. The stab of a knife deals piercing damage. The impact of a firearm deals ballistic damage. The entropic magic of a horror's nightmares deals void damage. Sometimes you might apply precision damage, dealing more damage for hitting a creature in a vulnerable spot or when the target is somehow vulnerable. The damage types are described in the Damage Types section.

Step 3: Apply the Target's Immunities, Weaknesses and Resistances

Defences against certain types of damage or effects are called immunities or resistances, while vulnerabilities are called weaknesses. Apply immunities first, then weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and resistances third. 

3A. Immunity

When you have immunity to a specific type of damage, you ignore all damage of that type. If you have immunity to a specific condition or type of effect, you can't be affected by that condition or any effect of that type. You can still be targeted by an ability that includes an effect or condition you are immune to; you just don't apply that particular effect or condition. (For example, a spell that deals both fire and acid damage can still deal acid damage to you even if you're immune to fire).

Immunity to critical hits works a little differently. When a creature immune to critical hits is critically hit by an attack or another attack that deals damage, it takes normal damage, but does not take any bonus damage or precision damage generated by the critical success. This does not make it immune to any other critical success effects of actions with the attack trait (such as Grapple and Shove).

Some effects grant you immunity to the same effect for a set amount of time. If an effect grants you temporary immunity, repeated applications of that effect don’t affect you for as long as the temporary immunity lasts. Unless the effect says it applies only to a certain creature’s ability, it doesn’t matter who created the effect. 

Temporary immunity doesn’t prevent or end ongoing effects. For instance, if you are already Frightened, gaining immunity to fear doesn't remove the Frightened condition from you; it just prevents you from receiving additional applications.

3B. Weaknesses

If you have a weakness to a certain type of damage or damage from a certain source, that type of damage is extra effective against you. Whenever you would take that type of damage, increase the damage you take by the value of the weakness. For instance, if you are dealt 2d6 fire damage and have a weakness 5 to fire, you take 2d6+5 fire damage.

If you have a weakness to something that doesn't normally deal damage, such as water, you take damage equal to the weakness value when touched or affected by it. If more than one weakness applies to the same attack, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually happens only when a monster is weak to both a type of physical damage and a given material.

3C. Vulnerability 

Supernatural creatures tend to be weak against certain forms of damage, either a particular form of energy or a specific material. Damage dealt from a source that a creature is vulnerable to also deals an amount of Wound damage equal to the number of damage dice rolled. A horror stabbed with an orichalcum dagger will always take 1 point of wound damage in addition to the standard 1d4 points of physical damage to Vitality, while a vampire struck by a torch will take 1 point of wound damage in addition to the standard 1d6 fire damage to Vitality. These wounds are based on the initial damage die.

If the target has hit points instead of wound points, they take 5 additional points of damage per damage die. So a werewolf NPC would take an additional 10 points of damage from a silver bullet fired from a light pistol, as a light pistol does 2d4 damage. 

3D. Resistance

If you have resistance to a type of damage, each time you take that type of damage, you reduce the amount of damage you take by the listed amount (to a minimum of 0 damage). Resistance can specify combinations of damage types or other traits. For instance, you might encounter a monster that’s resistant to non-magical bludgeoning damage, meaning it would take less damage from bludgeoning attacks that weren’t magical, but would take normal damage from your enchanted nightclub (since it’s magical) or a non-magical pistol (since it deals ballistic damage). A resistance might also have an exception. For example, resistance 10 to physical damage (except silver) would reduce any physical damage by 10 unless that damage was dealt by a silver weapon.

If you have more than one type of resistance that would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable resistance value.

It’s possible to have resistance to all damage, usually indicated as Resistance #/-, the - indicating the lack of anything that breaks through the Resistance. When an effect deals damage of multiple types, and you have resistance to all damage, apply the resistance to each type of damage separately. If an attack dealt 7 slashing damage and 4 fire damage, resistance 5 to all damage would reduce the slashing damage to 2 and negate the fire damage entirely.

Step 4: If Damage Remains, Reduce the Target's Health 

After applying the target’s immunities, resistances, and weaknesses to the damage, whatever damage is left reduces the target’s Vitality Points on a 1-to-1 basis (so a creature that takes 6 damage loses 6 Vitality). A creature reduced to 0 Vitality Points begins taking Wounds in damage. A creature reduced to 0 wounds is Dying. The full rules are in the Vitality and Wounds section. 

Non-Lethal Damage 

You can make a non-lethal attack in an effort to knock someone out instead of killing them. Weapons with the non-lethal trait do this automatically. You take a –4 circumstance penalty to the attack roll when you make a non-lethal attack using a weapon that doesn't have the non-lethal trait (and vice versa for making a lethal attack with a non-lethal weapon).
If a creature takes an amount of non-lethal damage equal to their current Vitality or Hit Points, they fall Unconscious.