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 to determine how much damage you deal. A damage roll typically uses a number and type of dice determined by the weapon or unarmed attack used or the spell cast, and it is often enhanced by various modifiers, bonuses, and penalties. Like checks, a damage roll—especially a melee weapon damage roll—is often modified by a number of modifiers, penalties, and bonuses. When making a damage roll, you take the following steps, explained in detail below.

1. Roll the dice indicated by the weapon, unarmed attack, or spell, and apply the modifiers, bonuses, and penalties that apply to the result of the roll.

2. Determine the damage type.

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

4. If any damage remains, reduce the target’s Vitality Points by that amount. If a creature is reduced to 0 Vitality, reduce their Wounds by that amount.

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. Sometimes, especially in the case of weapons, you’ll apply modifiers, bonuses, and penalties to the damage.

When you use melee weapons, unarmed attacks, and thrown ranged weapons, the most common modifier you’ll add to damage is your Strength ability modifier.

You typically do not add an ability modifier to spell damage, damage from most ranged weapons, or damage from explosives and similar items.

As with skill checks, you might add circumstance, feat, origin, supernatural, or item bonuses to your damage rolls, but if you have multiple bonuses of the same type, you add only the highest bonus of that type.

Again like checks, you may also apply circumstance, feat, origin, supernatural, item, and untyped penalties to the damage roll, and again you apply only the greatest penalty of a specific type but apply all untyped penalties together.

Use the formulas below.

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

Ranged damage roll = damage die of weapon + Strength modifier for thrown weapons + 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. Once your damage die is rolled, and you’ve applied any modifiers, bonuses, and penalties, move on to Step 2. Though sometimes there are special considerations, described below. 

Increasing Damage

In some cases, you increase the number of dice you roll when making weapon damage rolls. Many times, this results in the increase of weapon damage by Steps.

To increase the damage of your weapon, 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 in the feat or ability you're references (for example, Gravity Weapon increases damage by 2 Steps, so for a light postol you'd move 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. Unlike with normal damage, when you are subject to persistent damage, you don't take it right away. Instead, you take the specified damage at the end of your turns, after which you attempt a DC 15 flat check to see if you recover from the persistent damage. 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). The GM might allow you to roll the dice twice and double the modifiers, bonuses, and penalties instead of doubling the entire result, but this usually works best for single-target attacks or spells at low levels when you have a small number of damage dice to roll. 

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 in different ways. 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

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

Some complex effects might have parts that affect you even if you're immune to one of the effect's traits; for instance, 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 other attack that deals damage, it takes normal damage and does not take the bonus damage listed. This does not make it immune to any other critical success effects of other actions that have the attack trait (such as Grapple and Shove).

Another exception is immunity to nonlethal attacks. If you are immune to nonlethal attacks, you are immune to all damage from attacks that deal nonlethal damage, no matter what other type the damage has. For instance, many robots have immunity to nonlethal attacks. This means that no matter how hard you hit it with your fist, you're not going to damage it.

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 of the source of the temporary immunity. For instance, if an ability makes you frightened and you then gain temporary immunity to the ability, you don’t immediately lose the frightened condition due to the immunity you just gained—you simply don’t become frightened if you’re targeted by the ability again before the immunity ends.

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 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 would apply to the same instance of damage, 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 also might 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 would deal 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 can be found in the Vitality and Wounds section. 

Non-Lethal Damage 

You can make a nonlethal attack in an effort to knock someone out instead of killing them. Weapons with the nonlethal trait do this automatically. You take a –4 circumstance penalty to the attack roll when you make a nonlethal attack using a weapon that doesn't have the nonlethal trait. You also take this penalty when making a lethal attack using a nonlethal weapon. 

If a creature has taken an amount of nonlethal damage equal to their current Vitality or Hit Points, they are rendered unconscious.