Disintegration and object toughness

[limelight]

somebody walk me through this example:

Matter guy wants to target the floor underneath a villain to have him fall through. He has Disintegration 8.
The floor is cement with steal reinforcements: what is the toughness of the floor? how do you figure the toughness if the floor is two feet thick or more? does he make a roll? I'm certain the floor makes a save.

What i did was give the floor Toughness 12 and reduced it by 8 so I rolled a DC23 Toughness save will d20 roll +4

[badpenny]

You have it right. The material/object only makes the save after it's Toughness has been lowered from the Drain. A character could resist a Toughness Drain, an object does not.

I also wouldn't spend a lot of time or worry on dealing with thickness, etc. Just set a reasonable challenge for your players and get on with it. Which it sounds like you did.

[FuzzyBoots]

FWIW, the core book has a section on object toughness (I want to say approximately page 167) under the heading of "damaging objects". There's a table for the Toughness of an inch thickness of various materials with the advice to raise the value by one as you go up the progression scale. I don't have the figures in front of me, so we'll assume concrete with steel is Toughness 8 for the nonce. Two feet is 24 inches, or approximately 7 ranks up the Progression, so you'd wind up with 15 assuming I picked the right base Toughness.

That said, badpenny is absolutely right that 90% of the time, you just pick what sounds like a thematically valid value. The table just exists to provide benchmarks.

[Cinder]

I want to say approximately page 167

Nailed it. The Section "Damaging Objects" begins on page 166.

The thickness rule states:

The Toughness scores given on the Substance Toughness Table are for approximately one inch of the material. Heavier objects lower their thresholds on the Toughness Saving Throw Table (see page 70) by 1 per increase in thickness on the Time and Value Progression Table. So one level of increase means the object is “disabled” if it fails the save by 11 or more and destroyed if it fails by 16 or more. So a foot-thick stone wall has Toughness 8, but it must fail a Toughness save by 13 or more to be disabled, 18 or more to be destroyed. This means heavy objects can generally suffer more hits and heavier damage before they’re disabled or destroyed.

assume concrete with steel is Toughness 8

I agree with this as stone is 5 and steel is 10. Average of 7.5 rounded up to 8.

Let's assume the floor is about two feet thick (although it is probably less). That is four steps up the T&V Progression Table. So the Toughness save chart for the floor looks something like this:

Fails by 9 or more > > > > “Injured” - -1 to further saves
Fails by 14 or more > > > > “Disabled” - hole punched in it
Fails by 19 or more > > > > “Destroyed” - duh

Disintegration 8 used on the floor:

1. Roll an attack.
2. Hitting the unattended portion of floor
- Defense = 5 + the area of floor's size modifier
- For a five foot square of floor Defense = 5 (5 + 0 [for medium])
3. Object automatically fails its save.
4. Object's toughness is reduced by 8 to 0.
5. Floor makes a toughness save on a DC 22 with +0 (the new toughness save bonus)
6. Find result:
- on a roll of 1 -2 = destroyed and atomized
- on a roll of 3-8 = a hole is punched in the floor.
- on a roll of 9-20 = -1 to future toughness saves.