When 2 items clash, a few things are taken into account in a specific order. First the 'breakable' item is determined. Which item has a lower ST is the breakable one. If items have the same ST, they both are breakage and you can note 2 breakage rolls.
After the breakable item(s) is determined, an open roll is taken. What this means is that if the 1-100 roll comes up 95 or higher, a second roll is taken and ADDED to that first roll. Should the second roll also be 95+, a third is taken and added to the previous two. This trend continues as high as the variable declaration will allow it, probably 32k, then it'll roll and be into the deep negatives. You'll never see that but just incase anyone was wondering.
The term catastrophic failure is pretty misleading. Two things can happen to the breakable item in a clash. 1 it can break. This is what they mean by catastrophic failure. This breakage 'renders the [item] useless.' The second is degradation. I'm positive that degradation, which affects the integrity of an item is applied to both ST and DU.
Here is an example of a clash.
Alfador swings a sword at you!
AS: 0 - DS j23kjk2 whatever
items clash
ST/DU: 90/200 vs ST/DU: 50/200... droll = 225, your shield shatters!
The reason your shield would've broken is because Alfador's swords ST is higher than your shields ST. This means Alfadors sword cannot break this clash. The droll determined that your item took a 225 hit. This exceeds the 200 DU of your shield, thus it breaks, 'catastrophically.' Let's say your shield had been at 50% integrity. It only would have taken a 101 droll to break your shield. That's how integrity plays into the game.
If you still have questions, please post em, I'll get to them asap.
Sonic
I editted this to correct my lack of certainy that integrity affects ST too. After reading the whole announcement on breakage I realize that this post seems like just an iteration. I posted it because I assumed that they wouldn't go into detail on the mechanics behind breakage. My mistake.
[This message has been edited by Alfador (edited 10-08-2001).] reg