Injury to Unliving, Homogenous, and Diffuse Targets

The Wounding Modifiers and Injury rules assume a human, animal,
or other ordinary living being. Machines, corporeal undead, swarms,
and other unusual entities are much less vulnerable to certain damage
types:
Unliving: Machines and anyone with Injury Tolerance (Unliving)
(p. 60), such as most corporeal undead, are less vulnerable to impaling
and piercing damage. This gives impaling and huge piercing a wound-
ing modifier of ¥1; large piercing, ¥1/2; piercing, ¥1/3; and small pierc-
ing, ¥1/5.
Homogenous: Things that lack vulnerable internal parts or mecha-
nisms – such as uniformly solid or hollow objects (e.g., melee weapons,
shields, and furniture), unpowered vehicles, trees, and walls – are even
less vulnerable! This includes animated statues, blobs, and anything
else with Injury Tolerance (Homogenous). Impaling and huge piercing
have a wounding modifier of ¥1/2; large piercing, ¥1/3; piercing, ¥1/5;
and small piercing, ¥1/10.
Diffuse: A target with Injury Tolerance (Diffuse) is even harder to
damage! This includes swarms, air elementals, nets, etc. Impaling and
piercing attacks (of any size) never do more than 1 HP of injury, regard-
less of penetrating damage! Other attacks can never do more than 2 HP
of injury. Exception: Area-effect, cone, and explosion attacks cause nor-
mal injury.
Example: Edmund Zhang empties his 9mm machine pistol (2d+2 pi
damage) at an approaching zombie. He hits three times. After sub-
tracting the zombie’s DR 1, he scores 8 points of penetrating damage
with the first bullet, 7 with the second, and 10 with the third. The zom-
bie has Injury Tolerance (Unliving), so the usual ¥1 wounding modifier
for piercing damage drops to ¥1/3. Rounding down, the three bullets
inflict 2 HP, 2 HP, and 3 HP of injury. The zombie had 24 HP, so it has
17 HP left. Undaunted, it shambles forward. Edmund should have
brought an axe or a flamethrower!