Why Creatures Resolve Damage Differently

Player characters roll AF / DF / EF vs TL and resolve hits through a discrete band of outcomes, Deflect, Solid, Clean, Punishing, each with its own DR-erosion behaviour. Creatures don't roll to defend. Instead, creatures absorb incoming damage through a layered stack: Grit → DR → HITS. The flow is deterministic, the bookkeeping is ephemeral (Grit resets every round), and every point of damage the party deals contributes to wearing the creature down.

This chapter is for the GM. Players do not need to read it.

The Damage Stack

Incoming damage against a creature resolves through three layers, in order:

1. Grit; a per-round threshold the party must break through.
2. DR; typed damage reduction (if the creature has any), eroded by every hit that reaches it.
3. HITS; the creature's HP track.

damage → fills Grit
       → (breakthrough)
       → absorbed by DR (DR erodes by 1)
       → overflow to HITS

1. Grit (the threshold)

Every creature has a Grit value. At the start of the creature's turn, its Grit pool is full. As the party deals damage during the round, Grit fills toward its threshold. Once total damage equals or exceeds the Grit value, the threshold is broken for the rest of the round; further damage spills through to DR and HITS.

Key properties:

• Every hit contributes. A 2-damage pistol shot and a 20-damage railgun slug both add to Grit. No damage is wasted.
• Any player can contribute. Grit is a shared pool. The whole squad is wearing the same creature down.
• Grit resets at the start of the creature's turn. Pressure must be concentrated within a single round to break through.
• Breakthrough is permanent for the round. Once broken, later hits this round go straight to DR/HITS with no re-gating.
• The breakthrough hit spills. If a hit is big enough to break Grit and leave damage over, the overflow continues into DR/HITS that same hit; nothing is wasted.

Higher Grit = more rounds of concentrated fire required before you see meaningful damage. This is intentional. Mooks have low Grit and fall quickly; bosses have high Grit and feel like a wall until the squad coordinates.

2. DR (damage reduction)

If the creature has DR (typed or untyped, via properties or armour), each hit that reaches DR after Grit breakthrough is absorbed up to its value. Any damage beyond DR spills into HITS.

Creature DR always erodes by 1 when it takes damage. This differs from player DR: players only lose DR on Solid / Clean Hit outcomes via their AF roll. Creatures have no AF roll; any hit that engages DR erodes it, including chip shots that deal zero HITS damage. This rewards late-round shredding after the threshold breaks.

DR erosion persists across rounds. Once degraded, DR does not recover until the creature is repaired or healed (per your fiction and scenario length).

3. HITS (overflow)

Whatever damage remains after Grit and DR lands on the creature's HITS track. When HITS reach zero, the creature is down.

Worked Example

Creature: Grit 10 / DR 5 / HITS 6

Round 1: One attack lands for 20 damage (single hit).

 20 damage
  −10  Grit 10 → 0 (BREAKTHROUGH, breakthrough on this hit)
 = 10 remaining
  −5   DR 5 absorbs 5, DR erodes to 4
 = 5 remaining
  → HITS 6 − 5 = HITS 1

End of creature's turn; reset:

 Grit 10 (reset)  |  DR 4 (persists)  |  HITS 1 (persists)

Round 2: Party lands three hits: 4 dmg, 4 dmg, 3 dmg (12 total).

 4 dmg  → fills Grit to 4/10    (no breakthrough, no DR engaged)
 4 dmg  → fills Grit to 8/10    (no breakthrough)
 3 dmg  → fills Grit to 10/10 BREAKTHROUGH, 1 dmg spills through
           DR 4 absorbs 1, DR erodes to 3
           HITS overflow = 0

No HITS damage this round, but DR is now 3 and the creature dies to any chip shot next round. The squad still made measurable progress.

Setting Grit When Statting a Creature

Grit caps at 8. Even bosses top out here. Beyond 8 the squad starts losing rounds to filling the threshold with no HITS progress; that's not the feel we want. If you want a fight to feel tougher than Grit 8, raise DR or HITS instead.

Rough guidance inside the 0–8 band:

The cap keeps Grit doing its job: a coordination meter the squad actively pushes on, not a wall they stare at for three rounds. If the fiction calls for "this thing is a wall," express it with high DR and high HITS; those layers handle sustained toughness. Grit is specifically the "break the composure this round" beat.

The default when auto-statting a creature is min(8, floor(health / 4)), which sits creatures in the right band most of the time. Hand-tune from there.

GM Design Guidance

• Show the numbers. Grit only works as a coordination mechanic if players know where the pool is. Narrate it openly: "you're at 7 of its 10, push it." Hidden Grit defeats the design; the system is asking the squad to coordinate, and they can't coordinate on a number they can't see.
• Call breakthroughs. When the party crosses the threshold, name it: "the plating cracks," "its composure breaks," "the armour gives." This is the narrative payoff the mechanic is engineered to produce.
• Late-round attacks matter. Once Grit is broken, late-round attacks shred DR for next round's push. Players who act late aren't wasting their turn; they're setting up the next breakthrough. If you see a player hesitating to take a "small" shot after Grit breaks, remind them: every hit erodes DR.
• Don't stack multiple gates. Grit is already one coordination mechanic. Resist the temptation to add "ablative shields" or "phase armour" on top. If you want a creature to feel tougher, raise Grit and DR; don't invent a third layer.
• Boss fights. For bosses, consider Grit values that reset and shift between phases. A Queen at full health has Grit 20. Drop her below half HITS and Grit drops to 12 (she's hurt, the squad has learned the rhythm). This models the "second wind / final stand" arc without new subsystems.

Why This Isn't Classic Hardness

Classic hardness / damage-threshold mechanics from other systems (D&D, Fallout DT, Shadowrun hardened armour) share one failure: a single attack that falls below the number does nothing. Players whose characters don't bring big-number weapons get cut out of armoured encounters, and rounds can pass with no state change.

Grit inverts this:

• Every hit counts toward the threshold.
• No single player has to overcome it alone; the pool is shared.
• The fight has a visible arc; the Grit meter fills each round, breakthroughs are celebrated, DR erodes permanently.
• No wasted turns. The support-class pistol fills the same meter as the sniper.

The name is honest: high-Grit creatures are gritty. That's the point. Scale Grit to the fight you want to run.

Threshold Erosion (Crit Interaction)

A creature's Grit threshold is normally fixed at the value listed in its statblock. The threshold erosion mechanic allows specific player abilities, most commonly the Crit Flare, Erode weapon trick, to permanently lower the threshold as the fight progresses.

How it works:

1. A player scores a Critical Hit against the creature.
2. The crit's damage resolves normally (Grit fill → breakthrough → DR → HITS).
3. If the player has an erosion ability (e.g. Crit Flare; Erode), every Wild Die that exploded in the critical attack (each die that rolled its maximum, chained explosions included) is subtracted from the creature's Grit ceiling permanently, 1 point per explosion, floor 0. The same dice that paid out bonus Hits also chip the ceiling.
4. Next round, the creature's Grit resets; but to the new, lower maximum, not the original statblock value.
5. Subsequent crits keep chipping the ceiling down. Erosion compounds across the whole fight.

This mirrors the way DR erodes by 1 per hit, but operates one layer up; on the squad-coordination layer instead of the armour layer. The fiction is the creature's composure breaking, not its plating: each crit is a lasting win the squad can feel.

Tracking: in the Foundry damage card, eroded Grit is shown next to base Grit (e.g. Grit 8 → 6). On paper, write the new ceiling beside the original.

Tuning notes for the GM:

• Erosion is gated by the trick; a party with no crit-build sees no erosion. That's intentional. If you want every party to wear creatures down, raise DR or HITS instead and leave Grit alone.
• A Silhouette or Heavy with stacked crit-rate can collapse a Grit 8 boss to Grit 0 by the back half of a long fight. That's the design; late-fight crits are supposed to feel like a structural win, not just damage.
• Erosion does not affect mooks (Grit 0 or 1; already below the meaningful threshold). It is specifically a boss-fight pacing tool.

Quick Reference

CREATURE DAMAGE RESOLUTION

  Incoming damage
    ↓
  ┌─────────────────────────────┐
  │ GRIT (resets at turn start)│
  │   fills until ≥ threshold    │
  └─────────────────────────────┘
    ↓ breakthrough (overflow spills)
  ┌─────────────────────────────┐
  │ DR (persistent, typed/untyped)│
  │   absorbs up to value        │
  │   erodes by 1 on ANY hit     │
  └─────────────────────────────┘
    ↓ overflow
  ┌─────────────────────────────┐
  │ HITS                         │
  └─────────────────────────────┘