Having low health means you get extra damage done to you? How low does health have to be for that to kick in?
It's a sliding scale, really. The short version is that the attacker makes an attack roll, defender makes a defense roll. The attack hits if the attack roll beats the defense roll. The attack does extra damage if the attack exceeds the defense roll by more than the defender's health attribute.
The long answer gets really messy, because LCS has convoluted mechanics for calculating combat damage.
1. After the attack hits, the game starts keeping track of a value called
mod, which begins at 0.
2. The defender makes a roll on their health, average result about equal to their health attribute, and adds this to their defense roll. The game takes the difference between the attack roll and the new health-included defense number and adds it to
mod.
mod is not permitted to go below 0 due to this, but a high health stat will ensure it stays at 0.
3.
mod is then reduced by roughly 1.5 times the defender's armor value in the location hit, though this armor bonus is itself mitigated by armor penetration from the attacker's weapon. Armor, unlike high health, can make
mod go below 0.
4.
mod is mapped to a multiplier for the attack damage. It's an uneven scale, but the bounds of it are that
-8 mod or lower maps to dividing the attack's damage by 32, and
+10 mod or higher maps to multiplying the attack's damage by 3. So an attack with low base damage can't blow your brains out in one hit, no matter how accurate, but thick armor can reduce even assault rifles to pea shooters.
The biggest impact of getting a bunch of bonus
mod points from attacking with a tremendously accurate roll is that armor will have a much harder time reducing
mod below 0, so you're more likely to do full or better damage. A precise attacker will be able to punch through armor. So having a bunch of health will both prevent you from taking extra damage when hit, and make it much harder for your opponents to find kinks in your armor.
Regarding the unique CCS safehouses: anyone tried those maps I posted? I know I gave the DEB&G a front with its Business Front in mind.
I haven't, but I've been meaning to. Thanks for reminding me.