Horseman with 8 armor
Rigger Coccoon.
That's 28 armor that anyone can "wear" and can be taken into most buildings nowadays. Especially if you give the Horseman Walker Mode to make it more maneuverable.

EDIT: The vehicle armor is "stackable" and does not count towards encumberance either.

@ people who houserule things out of existance - learn to learn and adapt, don't geek something because you can't defend against it. That's poor GMing.

..Thank u for pointing that out..
Poor Gm's have houserule banned lot of things, couple of i have seen:
Magic does not exist
dragons does not exist
no smartlinks
no ex-(/explosive) rounds

one of the worse excuse of gm: only one race allowed for PC's: Human
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif)

Troll tanks are fun for Spirits of man to Fear.

Stone, paper, scissors....

spirits of man have immunity to normal weapons when materialized, but what about Burst of Stick and Shock rounds,
would them disrupt/kill spirit? ( the are not "normal" weapons.. IMOO)

Normal means non-magical. Bullets are bullets, regardless of what they do.

Double posted for some reason.

Still AP -half is great against ItNW.

FFBA just has a really poor set of rules. Why does this armor suddenly stack? An armor vest and an armor jacket don't stack, but FFBA and an armor jacket does? That's pretty strange. And with the half encumbrance thing, all it leads to is a piece of armor that everyone has to use - and nobrainer choices are boring and serve no purpose - and everyone getting +2/+1 armor at the same encumbrance.

If I wanted the effects of FFBA in the game, I'd just add +2/+1 to every piece of armor instead, much simpler.

In my game I drastically increased the cost and availability of FFBA, I also was considering having it become ruined after being damaged X number of times.

The main book I have says its just fine for resisting damage.

How many dice are the people doing these called shots willing to drop to bypass that much armor?

Ya, I just don't get how you short out the nervous system of a creature that doesn't have one.

Sometimes it isn't a case of being willing to loose the dice, sometimes it's the only option. Not every grunt has access to automatic weapons and APDS. Sometimes all they have is a semiautomatic pistol or a shotgun.

In the case of NPCs, they often loose all of their dice, but my PCs often use the rule against heavy opponents just for the chance at a one shot take down. That's what edge and the long shot rule is for. Yes, I give NPCs, even grunts, edge. I usually run group with professionality of 3-4, so 3-4 edge for the group. I'll trade the limited dice pool of a typical grunt for edge dice without the target getting armor any day. That's 3 or four chances for a group to score a shot that really hurts. Either way, the use of anti-armor called shots tends to come up only during situations where the target can't dodge effectively, such as surprise, from unseen opponents, or against wounded targets. Stealth, surprise, and ambushes are pretty common in my games - my players have learned not to fight fair if they don't have to.

My group started out with older versions of SR (some of us go as far back as SR1). In older editions called shots were way too powerful, especially because of gear (smart link 2) that lowered the penalties to the point that they were basically a sure thing. For SR4 we've tried several variations on the RAW - treating all called shots as -4 die pool made anti-armor a little too good and the RAW was a little too hard (and lead to edge only shots against any significant armor). We currently modify the RAW by not counting stacked armor against the die pool penalty for the shot - so armor jacket plus form fit is still only -8, we make an exception for things like helmets. This means that PCs can usually still have a few dice left without having to go just for the long shot test. Grunts basically have to rely on dumb luck and the long shot rule. Edge is usually used on the shots either way. Usually people just go for the +4 damage, unless their target has really heavy armor or they are loading ammo that gives an armor bonus.

Sometimes you want to scare the PCs with physical damage and the chance for actual death, or the players really want to kill someone rather than just dropping them. That's when the anti-armor shot is really useful. Keep in mind that it only takes a couple of good hits to kill someone without armor, especially when you use ammo like flechettes that normally add to armor. A heavy pistol with flechettes is 6P even without any net hits. That would take 18 body to completely negate, assuming an average roll, ignoring the use of edge. It gets even nastier for rifles and shot guns. One of these hits usually means taking damage and using edge, which isn't fun for a PC. Two or three can be fatal.

The other factor is that you often can't wound an armored opponent with your base die pool vs their base die pool, at least on an average roll. You have to hope for an extreme case where you get many more hits than they do. That means they have to roll really bad. Statistics (and common sense) tells us the more dice you roll, the less likely you are to fall within one of those extremes. Especially when a single point of edge means your opponent can re-roll all his failed dice. The fewer dice he has the more likely you are to get an extreme case - and the less he can re-roll - which is often the only case where you can do any damage. Remember that an edge based re-roll is almost like doubling the number of dice you have to roll so a difference of 4 dice is almost like 8 dice.

From the main book, pg. 55, emphasis mine:

Actually they are required... they are part of the Full Body Suit... if you are not wearing your Gloves, Hood and Booties, then you are not wearing a FULL Body Suit, you are wearing the HALF body suit, that may cover parts of your extremities (Lower arms and Legs)...

For the description, see page 48 of Arsenal...

You may not agree of course...

Keep the Faith

Fixed.

Four-to-one is statistically worse than rolling the dice, but you can't glitch.

That part wasn't in mine. Are you using SR4A?

Hmmmm, to be ecatly If you're not wearing Gloves and Hood your wearing More than 1/2body but not quite Fullbody
So if you go this road you should give it a Protection of 5/1 , 5/2 or 6/1
How would you handle a Trenchcoat thats worn open ?
does it protect less than a closed Coat ?

HokaHey (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
Medicineman

My armor bypass called shot rule (while not even kinda RAW): determine how much coverage the armor gives, and impose penalties on that. If you're "bypassing" armor, and all the dude has on is a heavily bullet proof biker jacket, then shoot him somewhere else. "Bypassed."

I also like the benefit that armored longcoats provide less armor than armored jackets, but are harder to bypass (specially when buttoned up). Armored vests, on the other hand, are unto like ninja armor (but without the stacking), but only protect the torso, if the opponent calls for a bypass.

I use the normal bypassing rules for Full Body Armors.

2 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

Once again someone tries to introduce Hit Locations to SR. It does not work, or more precisely it creates more inconsistencies than it removes.

"Full-body suit cover all body (ALL BODY, NOT HALF BODY) including exteremes AND it comes with hoodies,gloves.."
it said nothing those must be worn to get full armor

look at Synergist Business Line: long Coat,shirt and slacks, do i really must wear all to get armor from alone
weared Longcoat.
somehow i do not think so..

How can something cover all the body, if the hands and the head aren't? I think Medicineman's houserule is pretty good.

The Synergist Long Coat is made out of less bullet resistant materials than the Lined Coat. So if you only wear it with normal clothing, all you get is 4/2. Combined with the Synergist shirt and slacks this upgrades to 6/4.

Yeah, hit locations tend to cause more problems than they solve. More realism does not automatically lead to better combat rules, especially in a success based damage system. I tried using hit locations back in SR3...and it basically meant an awful lot of book keeping for very little benefit.

Taken to the extremes it can get silly really fast - try explaining how that troll completely resisted all the damage from that shot that hit him in the eye. So you have to separate "regular" hits that just do damage from "critical" hits that also do injuries. How does this work in a success/soak system? How are the injuries different from the normal wound penalties, etc, etc...The RAW intentionally leave the specifics of injuries, damage, and healing pretty vague.

Hit locations also had another unintended consequence. Smart players refused to enter combat unless they were in full armor, ie protected on every location. How many of your PCs are mixing armor anyways? The only locations not covered by a jacket plus duster are the feet and head, and there were already called shot rules if you want to aim there.

So it was kind of a waste of time for us. Which was a shame. But hey, if it works for your group then go for it. It just didn't work out well for us.

And yet the book says its great to trade in hits, especially for vehicles with LOTS of armor and body dice.

Thats a pretty lame explanation.

cya
Tycho