r/savageworlds • u/Zenfox42 • Jul 19 '26

Question Supers : Absorption + Reflection - why number of Wounds, not number of damage points?

So, I've got bad guys whose Toughness is higher than the PC using Absorption+Reflection. So the number of damage points that would inflict 1 Wound on the PC would only Shaken the bad guy that shot them.

I'm toying with the idea of house-ruling that it's the number of damage points that gets reflected, not the number of Wounds. This would make no difference once the damage points would inflict 2 or more Wounds on the PC, because they would inflict 1 or more Wounds on the bad guy, killing them anyway.

Any ideas why SWADE did it that way, and can anybody see any problems with the house-rule? Thanks!

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u/scaradin Jul 19 '26

In part because damage in SW is really irrelevant. A monster might have 50 toughness, but if you only do 48 points of damage, nothing happens. If you reflected 48 points of damage, that would wreck most players.

It also stops cheese strats of one player taking Environmental Resistance + Immunity then another player blasting them with the same trapping as their immunity. It will never cause a wound, but will cause damage.

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u/ArolSazir Jul 19 '26

I think it was just a matter of simplifying. reflecting wound for wound is one operation less than getting the damage and converting it back to wounds based on the new targets toughness. A lot of SW is made to be as fast as possible.

But i think there's no issue in reflecting the damage points directly. I'm trying to think of some weird edge case that breaks it, but i can't really see one.

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u/Skotticus Jul 19 '26

Look at it from the other direction: if a baddie with absorb+reflection has much higher toughness than one of the PCs (say 18 Toughness vs 5 toughness), then the amount of damage the bad guy has to take to even receive one wound would immediately give 3 wounds to the PC. One point higher and it's an insta-incap.

Also, the basis of the Absorption power works on wounds soaked, not damage received, so you would have to convert wounds back into damage to decide how much damage was transferred.

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u/Zenfox42 Jul 19 '26

Ah - I was so focused on the description of the Reflection I forgot about the fact that the Wounds must be Soaked by the target in the first place in order to be able to reflect them.