Whether a hit staggers should not depend on how big the hit was.

THE PROBLEM

Almost every hand-rolled poise system picks the reaction from the incoming hit: a heavy weapon flinches everything, a light one flinches nothing. The result is that pressure stops meaning anything - an enemy one point from breaking answers a hit exactly as an enemy at full strength does, and trading blows becomes a coin toss instead of a decision.

WHAT IT IS

A poise pool per actor, and a break decided by the OVERSHOOT - how far past zero the pool was pushed. The same twenty-two points of poise damage does nothing to a fresh enemy and knocks down one that had five left. That single rule is what makes wearing an enemy down worth doing.

NO CHAIN-LOCK

Breaks come in tiers, each with its own stagger length and its own immunity window - and the immunity covers the stagger itself. Four attackers who each land the smallest possible break must not be able to hold an actor on the floor forever, and here they cannot: poise damage inside the window is ignored entirely rather than accumulated, because a pool drained during a stagger would break again the frame the window closed.

HYPER ARMOR, WITHOUT THE USUAL MISTAKE

A hyper-armor window scales what arrives at the POOL and says nothing about health damage. A boss that shrugs off a flinch while it swings should still bleed. Folding the two together is the most common way this feature is got wrong.

AND THE RECOVERY RULES ARE DELIBERATE

Every effective hit resets the regeneration delay, including chip damage that breaks nothing - otherwise a stream of small hits lets the pool refill underneath it. A hit that arrives as nothing does not reset it, or a hyper-armor scale of zero becomes a way to hold an enemy down forever. And nothing regenerates while an actor is staggered.

WHAT IT DOES NOT DO

It does not animate anything, does not read or write health, and is not an ability system. It tells you an actor broke and how hard; what plays is yours. It is not replicated - replicate the break event, which is an index and a number.

Unreal Engine 5.8, one runtime C++ module, Win64, no GameplayAbilities dependency. Blueprint-first throughout. Seven automation tests over the rules. A demo level with three dummies and one moment worth the whole plugin. Full source included.