question about armor and damage

[existence]

Hi,

I'm new to LAW, and I'm really enjoying it. The rules sure pack a lot of goodness into just a few pages.

The only thing I'm a little confused about is armor and damage.

If armor reduces damage to zero or below, does the target take zero damage? Or is there always a minimum of one damage dealt?

Thanks!

[chrisrice]

I'm fairly sure if damage is reduced to zero then you take no damage. I don't remember anything about "always taking a minimum of 1 damage" or anything like that.

Ok, the LAW rules say "damage is reduced by the cumulative rating of the armour worn." That's it. No caveats. No minimum damage.

[araman]

I've always played it that if damage - armor = 0 or less, then no damage to the defender.

[existence]

Thanks guys.

I think what mixed me up was this line in the rules:

"Damage (D)
A character hitting a foe rolls the number of dice
indicated by his weapon's damage rating. He
then adds or subtracts any modifiers. This total is
the number of damage points he delivers
(minimum of one)."

The "minimum of one" is, I think, intended to apply only to the subtractions that some weapons entail (i.e., the cutlass does 2d6-2 damage).

Say I hit an enemy wearing leather armor and carrying a small shield. That gives the enemy an armor rating of 3 (2 for the armor, 1 for the shield).

I hit with my cutlass. So that's 2d6-2 from the cutlass, minus another 3 for the armor of the target. So, 2d6-5. I roll a 5. So, does the target take 0 or 1 point of damage? If I'm understanding the quoted rule above, then the "minus 2" part of the cutlass damage cannot cause the damage to fall to 0, but apparently the armor can.

I reckon I'll just play that it does reduce to 0, makes sense, but I do think that bit of the rules clouds the issue a bit.

Thanks again for the help!

[wolfsbane]

I think a Weapon that has hit (your Character passed their AdjDX) scores at least one point of damage, armor subtracts from that.

[mister frau blucher]

Sorry I missed this thread!

Yeah, as the rules state, weapons will always do a minimum damage of 1. So if you hit with a cutlass, and roll a 2, and then subtract two from it to equal 0, you will still do 1 hit.

But armor will subtract from this, and can cause your strike to do 0 points.