2 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

So?

(On a side note: Lightsaber combat mechanics are pretty broken given how deadly lightsabers actually are, so I would say that that was a narration of a direct hit. The idea of Lightsabers glancing off of something doesn't make sense unless that something has the Cortosis quality. Unless Vader's armor has the Cortosis quality, his armor absorbed none of the damage from that strike.)

And with 5 Brawn (and Feral Strength 2 for good measure), even 1 Success is a lot of damage.

Who says that the hard plates of Vader's armor don't have the Cortosis quality?

And, yes, with a Brawn of 5, even a single success can cause a lot of damage. But that doesn't mean it absolutely has to. It depends upon what the character is trying to accomplish. And, if he wants to cause damage, then he needs to get at least one success, if not more in order to have enough successes to get past the target's Soak. Once you know that, then you can narrate the damage however you want. The narrative effect of a successful hit that barely grazes the ear would be to me, an attack that just manages to inflict no more than one wound after Soak, if not zero wounds after Soak. In other words, in the case of the Brawn 5 guy attacking the brawn 1 guy, not wearing armor, he's not going to be barely grazing his ear. He's going to be boxing the guy's ear, and knocking him for a loop. Also remember, that an unarmed attack doesn't have to cause wound damage anyway. An attacker can choose to do Strain damage. That is your grazing the ear.

1 hour ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Already did, particularly with the Parry and Reflect , as well as Circle of Shelter talents. Those are in the CRB .

You hit.

That is in a talent. It is not in the combat rules. Try again.

29 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

So?

(On a side note: Lightsaber combat mechanics are pretty broken given how deadly lightsabers actually are, so I would say that that was a narration of a direct hit. The idea of Lightsabers glancing off of something doesn't make sense unless that something has the Cortosis quality. Unless Vader's armor has the Cortosis quality, his armor absorbed none of the damage from that strike.)

And with 5 Brawn (and Feral Strength 2 for good measure), even 1 Success is a lot of damage.

Well there is the fact if you really think about it wounds are near misses mechanically. It is crits that are actual hits. I mean If I "Hit" you with a lightsaber it would kill you. so clearly wound damage from a lightsaber is not a hit. Because I can heal it with a Stiff pack. a little nodoze and I am fine...

Just now, Daeglan said:

Well there is the fact if you really think about it wounds are near misses mechanically. It is crits that are actual hits. I mean If I "Hit" you with a lightsaber it would kill you. so clearly wound damage from a lightsaber is not a hit. Because I can heal it with a Stiff pack. a little nodoze and I am fine...

Yeah, that's kinda my deal with lightsabers. In my opinion, the only attacks with lightsabers you can narrate as direct hits are the ones that result in serious crits or incapacitation (though there may be some exceptions).

Leaving a caveat that some armor (i.e. Mandalorian armor) can allow greater freedom with narration, and full-on hits can be narrated as graze hits, as a slight cut would be something that can be treated with a stim.

4 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

That is in a talent. It is not in the combat rules. Try again.

Those talents are a part of the RAW . They're applications of the combat rules and precede the main combat rules. The RAW states that a successful combat check is a hit. It doesn't matter in what specific chapter it says this. The RAW as a whole states this. And the RAW says in the above talents, that a successful attack is an attack that hits the target. Try again.

Just now, Daeglan said:

Well there is the fact if you really think about it wounds are near misses mechanically. It is crits that are actual hits. I mean If I "Hit" you with a lightsaber it would kill you. so clearly wound damage from a lightsaber is not a hit. Because I can heal it with a Stiff pack. a little nodoze and I am fine...

Except Wounds aren't "near misses". They're scrapes , cuts , bruises , and the like. They're still hits . They're still physical wounds . They're just not critical injuries. A near miss is still a miss . It's simply one where there were no net successes, but not necessarily any net failures.

Just now, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Yeah, that's kinda my deal with lightsabers. In my opinion, the only attacks with lightsabers you can narrate as direct hits are the ones that result in serious crits or incapacitation (though there may be some exceptions).

Leaving a caveat that some armor (i.e. Mandalorian armor) can allow greater freedom with narration, and full-on hits can be narrated as graze hits, as a slight cut would be something that can be treated with a stim.

Even a full on hit with a lightsaber can be narrated as grazes and relatively minor cuts, even against normal armor, even if you don't subtract Soak. It just means that the the attack was only a single net success , resulting in the minimum damage possible. This would narratively result in some lacerations with the tip of the blade, but not necessarily serious injuries.

Just now, Tramp Graphics said:

Those talents are a part of the RAW . They're applications of the combat rules and precede the main combat rules. The RAW states that a successful combat check is a hit. It doesn't matter in what specific chapter it says this. The RAW as a whole states this. And the RAW says in the above talents, that a successful attack is an attack that hits the target. Try again.

Except Wounds aren't "near misses". They're scrapes , cuts , bruises , and the like. They're still hits . They're still physical wounds . They're just not critical injuries. A near miss is still a miss . It's simply one where there were no net successes, but not necessarily any net failures.

Even a full on hit with a lightsaber can be narrated as grazes and relatively minor cuts, even against normal armor, even if you don't subtract Soak. It just means that the the attack was only a single net success , resulting in the minimum damage possible. This would narratively result in some lacerations with the tip of the blade, but not necessarily serious injuries.

Scrapes cuts bruises are near misses.

1 minute ago, Daeglan said:

Scrapes cuts bruises are near misses.

No, they're not. A near miss is when an attack flies very close by you, but misses you, IT comes close to hitting, but just misses .

Quote

near miss

/ ˈˌni(ə)r ˈmis /

noun

1. 1 .

   a narrowly avoided collision or other accident.

   Similar:

   close thing

   near thing

   narrow escape

   close call

   nasty moment

   close shave

   narrow squeak

   

   

   

   
2. 2 .

   a bomb or shot that just misses its target.

A cut or scrape is not a near miss. That is a hit . A near miss is an attack that narrowly misses the intended target. That means no net successes , but not necessarily any net failures either.

3 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

No, they're not. A near miss is when an attack flies very close by you, but misses you, IT comes close to hitting, but just misses .

A cut or scrape is not a near miss. That is a hit . A near miss is an attack that narrowly misses the intended target. That means no net successes , but not necessarily any net failures either.

And thisbis why you fail. You are so literal yet fail to actually pay attention to what RAW actually says.

1 hour ago, Tramp Graphics said:

A character who fails in an attack does not hit his target at all . Period. He misses him. A failure never makes contact. A failure is a miss , a success is a hit. You can't do damage on a failed attack, narratively or otherwise, because a failed attack is a miss . In order to do damage, you must first make contact, you must successfully hit the target. That means rolling at least one net success . The only way a miss is going to cause damage is with an area effect weapon, in other words, the Blast quality.

No, dude, literally in Pathfinder 2E fighters who take a certain feat WILL DO DAMAGE ON A FAILURE. You can literally roll, not hit the AC, but you still do damage, just a little less because you're a god with weapons that even failing means "lol nah actually you just take slightly less damage, and I'll murderize you next turn." It literally modifies the mechanics to make it so you don't narratively really fail. You don't have to be wielding an AoE weapon or anythign like that. It can just be a sword or an axe or a hammer, and if you roll damage high enough you can actually kill them on a failure .

That goes against what you're saying in your definition of what a failure is, and contradicts failure = miss.

Not all things are binary in RPGs.

7 minutes ago, StarkJunior said:

No, dude, literally in Pathfinder 2E fighters who take a certain feat WILL DO DAMAGE ON A FAILURE. You can literally roll, not hit the AC, but you still do damage, just a little less because you're a god with weapons that even failing means "lol nah actually you just take slightly less damage, and I'll murderize you next turn." It literally modifies the mechanics to make it so you don't narratively really fail. You don't have to be wielding an AoE weapon or anythign like that. It can just be a sword or an axe or a hammer, and if you roll damage high enough you can actually kill them on a failure .

That goes against what you're saying in your definition of what a failure is.

Not all things are binary.

In real life nothing is actually binary. Real life is analog.

3 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

And thisbis why you fail. You are so literal yet fail to actually pay attention to what RAW actually says.

I'm telling you what the words actually mean. not how you want to interpret them. The RAW says that wounds are scrapes, bruises, and minor cuts, and the like. It does not say that they're "near misses". a near miss is not a hit. A near miss is a miss . it is an attack that only just misses, meaning no net successes, but no net failures either. That is a near miss.

From AoR CRB:

Quote

A wide variety of effects can inflict physical damage : blaster shots, an angry wampa's claws, frag grenades, falling, etc. Damage to a character's physical body is tracked using wounds. Each point of damage inflicts 1 wound on a character. A character can only withstand so many wounds before he is incapacitated. This is represented by the character's wound threshold.

Further, under States of Health, the AoR CRB states:

Quote

A character is wounded if he has any number of wounds below his wound threshold. At this point, he's suffered a few cuts, bruises, and scrapes. However, he has not taken any permanent or incapacitating damage. He's a bit battered, but he's still hale and hearty overall.

Nowhere does it say he's suffered "near misses". It says a few cuts, scrapes, and bruises .

Wound damage is not near misses. Wound damage is cuts, scrapes, bruises, and such.

1 minute ago, StarkJunior said:

No, dude, literally in Pathfinder 2E fighters who take a certain feat WILL DO DAMAGE ON A FAILURE. You can literally roll, not hit the AC, but you still do damage, just a little less because you're a god with weapons that even failing means "lol nah actually you just take slightly less damage, and I'll murderize you next turn." It literally modifies the mechanics to make it so you don't narratively really fail.

That goes against what you're saying in your definition of what a failure is.

That means, mechanically , you never miss either, and that means mechanically , you can never fail . It means you always hit. If a talent, or feat is literlally modifying the mechanics of the game, then this is not a narrative outcome. It's a mechanical one allowing the the attacker to never fail regardless of his roll. I would call that broken, and thus I'd call that bad game design .

Just now, Tramp Graphics said:

I'm telling you what the words actually mean. not how you want to interpret them. The RAW says that wounds are scrapes, bruises, and minor cuts, and the like. It does not say that they're "near misses". a near miss is not a hit. A near miss is a miss . it is an attack that only just misses, meaning no net successes, but no net failures either. That is a near miss.

From AoR CRB:

Further, under States of Health, the AoR CRB states:

Nowhere does it say he's suffered "near misses". It says a few cuts, scrapes, and bruises .

Wound damage is not near misses. Wound damage is cuts, scrapes, bruises, and such.

That means, mechanically , you never miss either, and that means mechanically , you can never fail . It means you always hit. If a talent, or feat is literlally modifying the mechanics of the game, then this is not a narrative outcome. It's a mechanical one allowing the the attacker to never fail regardless of his roll. I would call that broken, and thus I'd call that bad game design .

Yet you ignore what the rules actually say about combat rolls.They do not talk about hitting or missing. They talk about succeeding or failing. You refuse to except that. You also refuse to except what the rules say about defense.

9 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

That means, mechanically , you never miss either, and that means mechanically , you can never fail . It means you always hit. If a talent, or feat is literlally modifying the mechanics of the game, then this is not a narrative outcome. It's a mechanical one allowing the the attacker to never fail regardless of his roll. I would call that broken, and thus I'd call that bad game design .

Except no, per the system (mechanics) it's still a failed roll. You failed to achieve the success condition, so you still failed mechanically, but failure when you use this specific feat doesn't mean you missed, you just didn't hit as hard as you would if you succeeded mechanically. You always hit when you use this action, just how hard is what changes. And you can still miss otherwise if you don't use this feat for one of your actions. So, thus, you can't claim failure always equals miss in everything because here it doesn't (and fighters have 2 or 3 feats that act like this, too.)

And it's not bad design - fighters in PF2E are the best at weapons, so they hit more, are the only ones to achieve the best proficiency level with weapons, and have feats that lets them shift the failure state of Strikes because they're that good with weapons. (As an aside, all the martial classes have a niche - Barbarians do the most damage, Rangers are best at multiple attacks, Champions are best at armor, Monks are best at stances/unarmed, and Rogues are best at debilitation/non-magical debuffs/striking from positioning. All of them have features and feats that shift the base mechanics to permit this, just like fighters who are best at hitting and with weapons do so with theirs.)

1 minute ago, Daeglan said:

Yet you ignore what the rules actually say about combat rolls.They do not talk about hitting or missing. They talk about succeeding or failing. You refuse to except that. You also refuse to except what the rules say about defense.

The RAW does talk about combat checks being hits or misses, just not in the specific chapter you want. It says it under the talents I mentioned above . That is still RAW . So it is not I that is ignoring the rules. It is you .

You are ignoring what the Parry , Reflect , and Circle of Shelter talents specifically say a successful combat check is. It is you who is trying to say that wound damage is a near miss when the RAW specifically says otherwise and actually spells out exactly what wound damage is. Wound damage is physical damage; cuts, scrapes, bruises and such, not near misses.

It is you who is wrong.

1 minute ago, StarkJunior said:

Except no, per the system (mechanics) it's still a failed roll. You failed to achieve the success condition, so you still failed, but failure when you use this specific feat it doesn't mean you missed. And you can still miss outside of it. So, thus, you can't claim failure always equals miss in everything because here it doesn't.

The key there is that the feat in question is modifying the mechanics of the system. It's modifying the result of the roll. In essence, it's turning a failure into a success. As such, technically , it's not a "failed" roll anymore. It's simply one that is not as successful as it could be. Regardless, I'd still call it broken .

6 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

The key there is that the feat in question is modifying the mechanics of the system. It's modifying the result of the roll. In essence, it's turning a failure into a success. As such, technically , it's not a "failed" roll anymore. It's simply one that is not as successful as it could be. Regardless, I'd still call it broken .

No, it is still a Failed roll. It's a "Failure effect" on the feat - which is something that triggers on a Failure, same as spells and other feats. It's not a Success. It's a Failure. Full stop. You can't trigger any other feats that trigger off Successes, you can't get a Crit, you can't get anything like that because it is still mechanically a Failure.

Failures being misses is not a universal truth, so stop basing arguments on it.

7 minutes ago, StarkJunior said:

No, it is still a Failed roll. It's a "Failure effect" on the feat - which is something that triggers on a Failure, same as spells and other feats. It's not a Success. It's a Failure. Full stop. You can't trigger any other feats that trigger off Successes, you can't get a Crit, you can't get anything like that because it is still mechanically a Failure.

Failures being misses is not a universal truth, so stop basing arguments on it.

You're missing my point. The "Failure effect" turns said failure into a successful attack. Yes, it's triggered by the failed roll. but the final result turns the attack into a successful one. In other words, it negates the failure and turns it into a minor/ limited success. I'm not going to try to argue the ins and outs of a game I've never played, nor really have any intention of playing. However, if the feat in question is allowing you to inflict damage on a naturally failed roll. then it is mechanically turning that failure into a limited success. It means that the attacker can never miss. That is a specific result unique to a specific feat , nothing more, and doesn't inherently change the base mechanic, nor truth of of Success = hit, fail = miss in the rules as a whole.

1 hour ago, Tramp Graphics said:

The RAW does talk about combat checks being hits or misses, just not in the specific chapter you want. It says it under the talents I mentioned above . That is still RAW . So it is not I that is ignoring the rules. It is you .

You are ignoring what the Parry , Reflect , and Circle of Shelter talents specifically say a successful combat check is. It is you who is trying to say that wound damage is a near miss when the RAW specifically says otherwise and actually spells out exactly what wound damage is. Wound damage is physical damage; cuts, scrapes, bruises and such, not near misses.

It is you who is wrong.

The key there is that the feat in question is modifying the mechanics of the system. It's modifying the result of the roll. In essence, it's turning a failure into a success. As such, technically , it's not a "failed" roll anymore. It's simply one that is not as successful as it could be. Regardless, I'd still call it broken .

It talks about in a talent that didnt exist for 3 years of the games existance. And by the way your argument about the feat applies to the talent you are using to try and prove your point. Which kind of disproves your point.

7 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Except that Sloped armor isn't all or nothing, as pointed out in the article I linked to. Full deflection is only one possible outcome. The other advantage of sloped armor is the amount of armor the round has to penetrate increases vs if it hit head on, even though the actual plate thickness remains constant. By angling the plate in relation to the attack, the round must travel through more material in order to completely penetrate the armor. That is Soak, not Defense. It's not all or nothing. And, even with a deflection, it's still not all or nothing. The armor takes damage. as stated here:

Ergo, even deflecting an attack is not all or nothing. It's still damage reduction, not Defense. Defense is preventing a hit entirely, It's making a target harder to actually hit .

Respectfully, your view that "Defense is preventing a hit entirely" is your position/opinion/premise, not necessarily fact.

Regarding my sloped armor hypo you admit that "Full deflection is only one possible outcome", which I myself said. But, that means it is an outcome.

You also don't refute my statement that applying 2020 earth reality to the Star Wars universe is senseless. Just because something doesn't exist now doesn't mean it never will.

But all that aside...

Lets say you are the game designer. You desire to have an armor, something worn by characters for the reduction and/or prevention of damage, that functions in such a way that sometimes, but not always, an attack against the wearer, directly because of the effect of the armor (that is important!), does no damage to the wearer. As an explicit example, your desire is that if the character has one (1) wound remaining, that any weapon, regardless of the amount of base damage it causes, and equally regardless of the amount of Soak the character has from other sources, directly because of the effect of the armor has an increased chance , not certainty, to do no damage to the character. However, if the special ability fails that damage proceeds as normal (i.e. it is prohibited to attempt to implement this mechanic as Soak, that already exists and is not this mechanic by definition). You feel the game you are a designer for needs armor with this ability. How would you, Tramp Graphics, implement this in the game? And for the sake of the argument you have to do so, your boss has instructed you on pain of dismissal to design a game mechanic to accomplish this end.

What do you do?

12 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

It's describing a hit.

No it isn't. Show me the word hit in any of the 3 core books where it actually describes fully the attack action . The word hit is not there. You obviously may call it a hit or whatever you wish. But the mechanics of what is happening, the details, are pretty clear. It is describing a success with the explanation that a success applies damage. The RAW actually has one section in each book where it describes what an attack action does, and it never once says hit. It says success, and speaks about a success applying damage. That's it. No mention that it's all about a hit or a miss, only about a success and damage or a failure and no damage. While you can call it a hit, it is not a hit in the sense of a "hit or miss" as you are claiming. It's a narrative system. Why would they limit how you can describe a successful attack to just a hit or miss?

Is hit another word for a success? Sure. I'm sure referees describing the success of a roll have used many words for what happened: a hit, a strike, a wack, a slap, a punch, a blast... Whatever you call it though, you have to look at the actual description in the RAW for this system to tell you what that hit, strike, wack, slap, punch, or blast actually did. It's written out pretty plainly - it's a success, with success applying damage.

You're darkly comically way to invested in this one word that you have completely closed your mind to even considering that others may have a point. I was actually on your side about Soak at the start of this. You should consider why your possibly one proponent has jumped ship. It sunk quite a while ago. You're gurgling water while claiming the boat is still afloat.

For your sake, I hope you are actually sitting at home laughing repeatedly as you type these responses as your friend pats you on the back complementing you taking Troll to a new level of mastery.

12 hours ago, Daeglan said:

In real life nothing is actually binary. Real life is analog.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

20 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Who says that the hard plates of Vader's armor don't have the Cortosis quality?

FFG does. Page 42 in Allies and Adversaries for Darth Vader under his equipment, no Cortosis quality on his armor. It's not even superior. It's got +1 defense though. Which, hey, might be from those shoulder plates. Anyway, just wanted to add that in, now you can go back to hammering your head against a wall.

@Tramp Graphics

How would you explain what is happening with a personal shield generator, which gives no soak but has a defence rating.

Or how do you explain deflector shields on a ship? For the shields to do their job, they actually have to be narratively hit with a projectile. Successfully hitting, but doing no damage, bouncing off harmlessly.

1 minute ago, CloudyLemonade92 said:

How would you explain what is happening with a personal shield generator, which gives no soak but has a defence rating.

Or how do you explain deflector shields on a ship? For the shields to do their job, they actually have to be narratively hit with a projectile. Successfully hitting, but doing no damage, bouncing off harmlessly.

I think that PDS are broken and should have some Soak or Armor added to them (see "Personal Deflector Shields 'Fix'" thread), but Tramp has already answered this question (I think I was the one who brought it up) by saying something along the lines of "the shield bubble is bigger than the ship, so the turbolaser can hit the shield and yet not make contact with the target."

1 minute ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I think that PDS are broken and should have some Soak or Armor added to them (see "Personal Deflector Shields 'Fix'" thread), but Tramp has already answered this question (I think I was the one who brought it up) by saying something along the lines of "the shield bubble is bigger than the ship, so the turbolaser can hit the shield and yet not make contact with the target."

Oh I see. 🤔

13 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I think that PDS are broken and should have some Soak or Armor added to them (see "Personal Deflector Shields 'Fix'" thread), but Tramp has already answered this question (I think I was the one who brought it up) by saying something along the lines of "the shield bubble is bigger than the ship, so the turbolaser can hit the shield and yet not make contact with the target."

But are they broken sinnce they actually fixed how defense works. Because for a while we didnt get an actual fix for defense because they hadnt worked out what the fix is. Which now is defenses that give a rating dont stack but defenses that give +defense do up to a max of 4 defense

So if you have 2 items 1 1 defense item and 1 2 defense item and 2 items with defensive +1 you would have a 4 defense 2 from the 2 defense item + the 2 defensive items. a third +1 fefense item would do nothing.