Life on Waste World can be tough. Deadly situations arise every day. Lethal weapons are deployed with little or no provocation. Terrifying monsters and killer robots stalk the wild lands. Death comes swiftly to those who are incautious. However, some people seem to be able to live through this maelstrom of violence and even thrive. When the bullets start to fly and the mutants start to bite, they are tough enough to take the knocks and keep going. Damage that would fell lesser beings merely slows them down. How do they do it? They use the following rules. Read on and you too can learn their secrets of survival.
In order to be able to use this option you must be truly physically tough. You must have a ST greater than zero. If you do, then simply by spending a point of ST, you can shrug off damage. This means you can ignore one critical hit roll that is about to be inflicted on you. You must spend the ST point before your attacker makes his critical hit roll. When you do so, you simply cancel his critical hit roll. The critical hit becomes a mere glancing blow. It hurts you sure, but it won't kill you.
It is entirely optional for you to spend the ST point. You don't have to. If your opponent inflicts a mere +1 crit on you, you can choose simply to take it and save your strength for later, possibly larger crits. In any case you cannot reduce your ST to below zero.
Of course, spending that ST point has a downside. Until you recover the lost ST it is as if, in every way, you no longer possessed that ST. You recover LF at a new rate calculated according to your new ST. Your BLF and MR are reduced to this new level. Your ST based damage modifier is reduced as well.
Even the toughest take time to recover from the damage a fight can inflict. If you spend a ST point to shrug off damage, you will regain the lost ST at the rate of one point per day. You don't need total rest but any form of violent or strenuous activity will prevent you from regaining that lost ST until you get the time you need to recover.
If you have the robotic body disadvantage things are a bit harder. You can only recover lost ST by being repaired. This costs 100 credits per point of ST cumulative and takes one hour of work by a qualified Robomancer. If you have systemic autorepair you will regain ST like a normal character and at the same rate.
Certain drugs make it possible to raise your ST above what it would normally be. As long as they raise your ST to above zero, you can spend these ST points in exactly the same way as you would natural ST. The difference is, of course, that you will not recover the ST when the affects of the drug wear off.
I wanted these rules to simulate the way tough guys in movies and comics can keep on coming at you, even after you've unloaded a clip of ammo into them. The shrugging off damage rules allow this to happen. They mean you have to wear down and weaken tough guys and massive monsters before you can start inflicting damage. As such they are meant only for heroes such as the PCs, important NCs and big, strong monsters. Nameless extras should not get the benefit of them.