[Torg] A little assistance - knockback and strutural ratings?

[Kansas Jim]

Benjamin writes:

> To know under what conditions an attack knocks someone down off their 
> feet, or back.

There are no rules in Torg for determining knockback distance. For
cinematic (ie, 'realistic' TV and movies) knockback results you could
do something like subtract the character's weight value (typically 9-10)
from the result points of damage from attacks and read that through the
Power Push chart, then take that as the distance value they're knocked
back.

If the weight value reduces the damage RPs to zero or less you can say
it just staggers them back a foot or so. Something like a near-lethal
hit (10-15 RPs) would give you a push result on a normal person in the
+1 to +2 range, three to five feet is the kind of thing you often see
when someone gets shot with a really big handgun or is near a moderate
sized explosion.

For full-blown superhero battles, I'd say ignore the Power Push and just
read the RPs minus weight as straight distance value. A bone-crunching
punch in the 15 RP damage range would send a normal person flying ten
meters!

> And a list of the toughness ratings of many common materials and 
> objects, i.e. the wall of a house, a wooden door, a steel door, a foot 
> of concrete, etc.

About the closest we have to that are the example armor values listed in
the Cover rules. A human body is rated as the same level of armor
cover as wooden planks. Average human TOU is 8 but can normally get as
high as 13 so we could assume that a wall made of wood planks would have
a TOU in the 8-13 range. A heavy wooden door is rated as being +3 points
better armor than the human body/wood planks so thick wood doors and
walls might have TOU in the 11-16 range. A heavy steel door and a brick
wall are rated two points higher than the heavy wooden door so their TOU
might be in the 13-18 range. A reinforced concrete wall is +5 over
that so it might have a TOU in the 18-23 range.

-- 
Kansas Jim, Torg guru (ksjim (at) sdc (dot) org)
Torg website: http://www.sdc.org/~ksjim/index.html