"Chain Torque" is sort of a misleading term. Torque is the twisting or turning effort around a shaft tending to cause rotation. So, torque is the force placed on the sprockets, not the chain. Chain pull is the force the chain sees, a linier stretching, if you will.
12t sprockets are a mistake in our sport. They have been tried and failed to perform without accelerated wear of chains.
Look at it like this: If you have a 4:1 ratio using a 13/52 combo and another using a 12/48, then they both accomplish the same amount of work to make the rear tire spin around one revolution. The thing is that the 12 tooth front has to work much harder than the 13 tooth to get the job done.
Imagine 13 guys carrying a telephone pole. One of them drops out and the pole is still being carried, but the load that the 13th man was carrying has now been distributed in equal amounts to the 12 others, making their job harder.
(on the whole scope of things 13/52 you have a total of 65 teeth, or workers...12/48 uses a total of 60 teeth, or workers...5 less workers to accomplish the task)
This extra work required by the 12 teeth does not really make the sprocket wear any faster, actually it places more stress, or chain pull, on the chain. This extra force does two things, it accelerates the wear on the chain, which in turn is what causes the sprockets to wear faster...AND it indeed effects the suspension damping effect, due to a different tension being placed on the working side of the chain. I would imagine graphing out that force difference would be quite a math task, and it probably means squat to the average spode, but it (running smaller CS sprockets) does in fact change things with suspension as well as chain tension.