So we just finished playing an adventure this afternoon and the final encounter was with an Elder Lindworm. Did anyone check how overpowered this thing is? Hardened Armour 12 plus Immunity to Normal Weapons plus Mystic Armour 12. The example worm in Running Wild has a magic of 9 which means its INW gives it 18 points of Hardened Armour plus the 12 points it gets just for being an Elder Lindworm. So 30 points of Hardened armour? Really? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)
Is there some rule I'm missing that says these don't stack? The one in the adventure was statted out with an 11 magic which means it was packing 34 points of Hardened Armour. The 12 points of Mystic Armour seem almost superfluous at this point.

sounds quite resistant to a lot of things. do the players get advanced notice they'll be fighting such a creature?

because if they do, there are definitely options that can deal with them comparatively easily (comparatively being the operative word, here).

with the right toxin (contact based/DMSO highly recommended), you'll have a much easier time dealing with one. again, noting that i said easier, *not* easy.

with all that said... these things are kinda supposed to be nasty. if you spring one on your group by surprise, with absolutely no warning about what they're up against, i would expect many groups to die (and the ones that don't either make a habit of packing around large quantities of DMSO capsule rounds, or just have access to nice fast vehicles that let them escape before they die).

Nasty sure. More armour than a great dragon though? Why? Are they supposed to be stronger than the Greats or something? 30+ points of hardened armour is just ridiculous. You need a stupidly powerful weapon to hurt these things. Even knowing you are going up against it you don't expect them to pack more armour than a dragon.
They look to me more like whoever designed them doesn't understand how Hardened Armour and Immunity to Normal Weapons stacks up or just what sort of power you need to cut through the armour. A Panther XXL with AV rounds needs 15 net hits to punch through. A gauss cannon can do it with (a lot) less but who the hell has one of those?

Did you have to fight it?

Hmmm….strange. But isn´t it always that way, that if 2 boosts give the same benefit, the higher one applies while the other one is ignored? Seems quite appropriate to rule it this way.

ItNW does indeed stack with physical armour. It's one of the reasons people complained so much about Possession. Have your buddy the Voodoo magician bring a F6 spirit to possess your vehicle tricked out for combat, and you can easily surpass the Hardening of this creature.

Yeah, I hope the team had some warning!

Well warning or an ~20 dam Smoke/Sound unarmed adept.

they're more armoured than great dragons. not nearly as threatening in other ways, imo.

but really, these guys *are* typically trained by great dragons and such. they're not going to be a pushover.

@Shortstraw: Yes we had to fight it. We were hired to stop some sort of theft ring and bring down the leader. Guess who/what was leading the thieves. This is a published adventure, not something the GM just threw together, FYI.

@pbangarth: Our Voodoo magician died a long time ago. His replacement is not a possession tradition. Also, that is cheesy as hell and we try to steer clear of that sort of non-sense. After seeing the Elder Lindworm though, it is clear not even the designers are steering clear of it. Bad designers! Bad!

@Jaid: My point has nothing to do with who trained them. I don't see how training gains them hardened armour. Seems it is biological, they grow it as they get bigger. My point is more of why aren't they kitted out with only one or the other of the armour types? Why both? Why not 4 or 6 or 8 points of hardened armour for the regular lindworm and then the elders get the +12 boost, much like dragons. Did I mention all these things are also always mystic adepts? That just seems a bit too much, like they are trying to out-dragon the dragons.

Our GM ignored some of the armour so we had a chance to hurt the thing. We fought it, we won and then we switched sides since it seemed more in the right than our Johnson (moral runners? whaaaaaat?). If the gm had run with it as written we would all be meat pies digesting in its stomach.

None of that changes how grossly overpowered the armour is on these critters. I'm guessing no one else has run anything with them in it before now. Or maybe all the games that have featured one also feature adepts with 20 damage sonic attacks (just cuz you can doesn't mean you should). Of course being mystic adepts, the lindworms can also take advantage of that sort of cheese...uh I mean optimization.

most any sort of adept should have a relatively easy time getting through the armour, actually.

either a weapon focus (regardless of rating) or killing hands will go right through immunity to normal weapons, because neither of those are normal weapons. technically, so do a number of natural attacks (because they're listed as critter powers), but most GMs will rule otherwise for stuff like claw and bite attacks. however, elemental attacks from spirits will generally disregard it (once again, they're not normal weapons, they're magical elemental attacks).

against those sorts of attacks, it's "only" 12 points of hardened armour. not exactly nothing, but not impenetrable either.

there are options to take it down. and while the thunderstruck is certainly an effective one, it's not necessary; there are perfectly viable options for harming the lindworm, elder or otherwise, some of them available to any character.

if you had reason to know you would be fighting one, you also had a chance to make those preparations required to win the fight. it's only bad if there was no chance of being able to prepare (including the option to run away temporarily, make the necessary preparations, and come back).

also, my point had nothing to do with great dragon training adding any hardened armour. my point is that great dragons consider training these things to be worth their time. of course they're a big deal. just like anyone else significant enough to garner a great dragon's personal attention for an extended period of time.

BTW…what about Magic? I think from all the possible ways of attacking, this is the most promising one. Negates ITNW, negates armor and in SR4 his max rating in spell defence shouldn’t be much higher than 6. Don’t know if he has some kind of immunity to magic, which would raise his defence dice to essence*2 (IIRC), but even then, it is just dice. Throw in some edge, hope for him not to throw in edge….et voila.

You are talking 15+ magic defense dice on the critter (WIL 9 (Bod 14) Counterspelling 6 [6 edge]).

No, no, contact vector chem tech in buckets is the best answer to such a problem.
Because of how the rules work, it goes directly into physical and then deadly overflow.

@Shortstraw: so what? It is still the best option and if you play a professional mage, you should be on par with the critter dice-pool-wise. Better that way than dealing with his physical defense.

@Stahlseele: depends. Acc. to the book, even contact vector-toxins are resisted with half impact armor if you apply them through close combat. If you want to get your wished result, you would need to cover this thing with a gas grenade or something similar. This thing can be killed, but it is definitely something you can´t do without proper preparation.

Buckets!
Soak that sucker in Hyper!
And then Gas-Grenades with Pepper-Punch.

I thought Wyverns were badass but lindworms are even worse...

Sadly we had left our buckets of chem-tech out in the sun and all the chemicals evaporated. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Is there any rule where it says armor stacks? In fact, in the basic armor rules, it kinda mentions that armor doesn't stack, doesn't it (which is why you shouldn't wear an armored jacket with an armored vest)?

It seems like the ItNW takes precedence at 18 and if you sling magic then you're looking at the reduced value of Hardened Armor or Mystic Armor of 12, instead of completely ignoring their defenses and going straight to Body.


Nope, Possession increases the ratings, which means you add their Force to the armor of the vehicle, but you don't add the ItNW to the armor.

Aside from vehicle armor being hardened armor, so being functionally the same as Itnw?
So even though technically it does not stack, in practice it so totally does.

Possession adds to the "rating" of creatures that are possessed too. ItNW still applies.

Yes, and like all other instances where you have multiple armor values, the highest ones apply.

That rule only states worn armour doesn't stack.

In the legal world we call that a "precedent."

if you treat that as a precedent for all armour, it completely wipes out any usefulness from several augmentations, not to mention makes troll natural armour completely pointless.

In the legal world, half the arguments lose. Some of those losses come from attempting to apply precedent to cases outside of the defined parameters of that precedent.

This would be such a case. ItNW is not worn armour. It is a magical state of being. Rules applying to worn armour, in particular regarding the way differerent pieces of clothing interfere with each other's ability to inhibit damage, do not apply to ItNW.