What is the difference between penetrating damage & unavoidable damage? It seems obvious to me that unavoidable damage is the absolute final word in damage you must take, but everything I've seen so far suggests there isn't anything that gets past penetrating damage, either. Can someone please show me what makes these different at all?

Any power that Ignores damage(not reduces) like invincible does not take Penetrating damage. There is nothing that doesn't take unavoidable damage

deadpoolwins has this spot on - I can ignore penetrating damage if I have an ability that allows me to ignore damage.

Unavoidable - can't be reduced, can't be ignored, it just ... happens.

That sounds incredibly arbitrary. "Reduce" and "ignore" seem pretty much synonymous here, but if that's the way the rules are, I'll go with it. Thank you.

In this case it's pretty straight forward - for game terms, reduce and ignore are different effects. Penetrating damage is specifically that cannot be reduced, whereas ignoring is different.

This is why paying attention to wording on powers is important.

From the rulebook page 10
Here we see that the only effect that penetrating damage has is that it cannot be reduced. However there are severeal other effects that still works on it.

Unavoidable Damage on the otherhand cannot be affected by almost any effect at all.

But as the unavoidable damage status affects damage dealt there are still effects that can prevent the whole or parts of the unavoidable damage from being taken by affecting damage taken or the actual turning of the dial. However those effects are not common so most character will just take the unavoidable damage.

Get used to it my friend. Heroclix is a game where exact wording means an awful lot. Even if logic tells you otherwise!

you think THAT's arbitrary - you ain't seen nothin' yet.

"the highest point figure on your opponent's force"

"a figure on your opponent's force with the highest point value"

... are NOT the same thing. First one requires a single figure with that point value. Second permits ties.

Get used to it my friend - this is a game where very small changes in wording can have large consequences.

One more: outwit - counter a power the target character possesses. Many recourse: target character "can use" a specific power. Not the same - you can't outwit something they "can use", only something they "possess".

I'm fully aware of the logistics of rules. I judged for Magic, Dragon Ball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, and have extensively played many tabletop games. This has often led to frustration as different games interpret the same rules differently, and I've seen many truly corner-case scenarios. I accept what the rules are. That doesn't stop me from calling out when something looks rotten. However, I do note the ability to transfer penetrating damage, and the inability to do so when unavoidable. That much makes a lot of sense to me as a concept.

Cool . . . .

this question was thoroughly answered .
I'm now looking forward to my next HEROCLIX match .

( * Insert sinister laughter here * )

Proteus on his last click can avoid unavoidable damage as long as it is not from a close attack

Not really. He doesn't avoid anything. He doesn't *TAKE* damage. That's the difference. As already outlined above, terminology matters.

At the OP, I fail to see what is "rotten" here to call out: some effects do X, other effects do Y. If you are as familiar with games as you claim to be, this is an extremely mild difference in terminology.

Besides Proteus which other characters can not take unavoidable damage?

Depends on what exactly you are looking for. For example:



Whenever she would take damage (for any reason, unavoidable or otherwise), Wolfsbane has a chance to change to a different click instead.

Or this:



Hulk can remove Titan tokens instead of taking damage. So long as he's got Titan tokens to remove, unavoidable damage doesn't matter.

Basically, if a character somehow alters the way it TAKES damage, it can probably circumvent unavoidable damage in some way.

The more you play the game the more you understand that there is a LOT of abilities and powers that let you ignore damage, so penetrating damage isn't at all that amazing.

Unavoidable IS amazing. Nothing can really be done about it. Characters that have unavoidable damage abilities or powers are usually pretty damn good.