Little confused with how Penetraing now works

[Mister Astounding]

They made a big change to how Penetrating works in 3rd Ed. As per the the main book:

"Your effect overcomes Impervious Resistance to a degree;
the target must make a resistance check against an effect
rank equal to your Penetrating rank. So, if a rank 4 (Penetrating
2) effect hits a target with Impervious 9, the target
must resist a rank 2 effect (equal to the Penetrating rank).
If the effect were rank 6, the target would have to resist
the full effect anyway, since its rank is greater than half
the Impervious rank."

So, in above scenario, if the player fails the resistance check against the Penetrating 2...what happens then?

[Murkglow]

Rather then answering your question I think it might be better to explain more about how Penetrating works. In 3e Penetrating is actually really simple, for every rank of Penetrating the attack has, that much of the attack ignores the existence of Impervious on the target.

So say you have a Damage 5, Penetrating 2 effect and your opponent has Impervious 10. Normally Damage 5 would be completely blocked by Impervious but thanks to Penetrating, 2 ranks of that Damage ignore the existence of Impervious and work normally (they work exactly the same as a normal Damage 2 effect). If the Damage 5 effect had a full 5 ranks of Penetrating then all 5 ranks of the Damage effect would ignore the existence of Impervious and all 5 would work on the target normally.

Does that clear it up?

[Greyman]

So, in above scenario, if the player fails the resistance check against the Penetrating 2...what happens then?

Just as Murkglow said. It's exactly the same as what happens when normal Resistance 9 faces effect rank 2. If Impervious trumps the effect rank (ie. it's twice the effect rank) then the Resistance is checked against the rank of Penetrating (if any).

Impervious Resistance 9 vs Effect 4 (Penetrating 2). 9>8 so Roll d20+9 vs DC 12. Fails on die roll of 1 or 2, which is a first degree failure. Conditions and circumstances may affect the result, as usual.

Exception: Impervious Toughness 9 vs Damage 4 (Penetrating 2) rolls d20+9 vs DC 17, and fails by one degree on die roll of 3 to 7, and by two degrees on a die roll of 1 to 2. Previous damage will affect the DC, as it normally does, etc.