In Episode 01 of my Universal Damage System series for Unreal Engine 5.4, I’m setting the foundation for a damage framework that’s actually modular and scalable—because “damage” gets complicated fast once you move past subtracting health. In my inventory/interaction system, we’ve hit the point where equipment needs to mine rocks and chop trees, but I don’t want a system that pigeon-holes you into one specific workflow. I want something any actor can access from anywhere: equipment, AI with just a mesh weapon, projectiles, environmental hazards like falling trees—whatever. In this video I walk through the core goals: custom trace shapes using collision volumes (so we’re not dependent on sockets/meshes), separating “can be hit” from “can take damage,” and building damage as data (arrays of mixed damage types like slash + chop). I also lay out how I’m handling damage types (pure, physical with blunt/pierce/slash/chop/mine), elements (kinetic, explosive, fire, shock, ice, poison), resistance categories (immune → very weak), and why I keep game-wide base values in data tables as a single source of truth. Finally, I explain why damage calculation needs to be swappable via objects—sometimes you want a simple calc, and sometimes you need to combine player stats + weapon stats + temporary buffs. This system is standalone, reusable, and designed to migrate into any project without rebuilding it from scratch.