Big, Heavy, Large, Insane Amounts of Armor, Is there a limit Options

[Apathy]

I've got pcs that want themselves and their vehicles to be undentable. With this in mind they layer on 8/8 or more in personal armor and ridiculously high amounts of vehicle armor on their trucks and drones (6 - 10 points hardened).

Is there any effective limit to what they can put on at chargen?

Also, if I remember correctly, the extra weight associated with adding armor makes handling tests more difficult. Is this correct, and what does it do exactly?

[sidartha]

I don't have R3.5 so I'm not exactly sure but I think in R3 there were rules under the customizations how armor affected handling. I do know that the Cargo and Load restrict how much armor you can have.
As far as people look in the main book under the equipment section as I remember most of the rules for personal armor being there.
Third thing, Load up the opposition with APDS rnds "Where's your armor now!!" :P

[Austere Emancipa...]

Every 6 points of Vehicle Armor (or part thereof) adds 1 to the Handling ratings of a vehicle. R3, p. 131 under Armor (Vehicle). Nothing serious, really.

Just remember that Grand Dragon ATGMs are dirt cheap and easy to get for anyone who really needs one. And against people with heavy armor but not that special Body, just use shotguns.

Curious: How did they get 8/8 armor on themselves without problems with the Quickness cap? Or are they all sammies/physads with extremely high QUIs?

Vehicle armor is indeed really fricken heavy, though, which should definitely be kept in mind. (Body^2) x 5 kilograms makes armoring trucks slightly problematic at times.

[Apathy]

sidartha: Thanks, I hadn't thought about checking load ratings (doh!)

As far as the personal armor goes, I'll let them do that, and mainly punish it as a social issue ("I'm sorry sir, you can't come in like that. Would you mind visiting the coat check girl?")

APDS rounds wouldn't fit in for the recent runs (swarms of bug spirits), but they might come in handy later.

[Apathy]

[Austere Emancipa...]

Still, could I see the numbers? Just comparing to the numbers you usually see in the Armor Min/Max threads that seems a bit much. So either I'm missing out on some minmax goodness, or there might be a flaw somewhere.

You can also interpret the body armor rules in SR3 so that you only get protection from the 2 pieces of armor with highest ratings. Many do.

[Zazen]

[Shockwave_IIc]

But thats only ballistic no? still a point mind.

[Austere Emancipa...]

So it seems, Ballistic only. Achieving 8 will require the total Ballistic rating for this purpose to be higher than 6, however, assuming there are more than 2 pieces of armor (which is probably the case, because I'm not aware of any legal canon armor with a Ballistic rating of 6).

Which is a non-issue if you limit it to the 2 highest ratings.

[A Clockwork Lime]

I'm pretty sure armor is no different -- you always round down, so you have to beat Quickness by two points to get the penalty, not one.

In any case, since vehicle armor comes in ratings, you can apply the "max rating of 6" that all starting characters have to abide by. And they can only do it as a customization to a vehicle (designing a vehicle is technically a GM-only function in Rigger 3), so they have to make sure the vehicle has the available CF and Load for the armor. If they're not using Concealed Armor, they're also going to run into a lot of problems with the law if they go anywhere outside the Barrens. Who knew Lone Star would have a problem with an obviously heavily armored van rolling around Downtown?

And as others pointed out, a single Great Dragon ATGM will take down most heavily armored civilian vehicles. 20D Anti-Vehicular rockets tend to do that.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Great Dragons actually take down any and all vehicles they can hit, except perhaps the tanks in SOTA (don't have that book). Those things practically laugh at any armor of less than rating 20.

The QUI penalty for layering armor is calculated by adding together the total Ballistic ratings of all worn armor and comparing that to the char's QUI. For each point the total exceeds QUI, you get +1 on tests and all the other penalties. There's no division there, so even a single point above QUI gives you a penalty of 1.

[A Clockwork Lime]

Unless there's errata that I'm unaware of, it's every 2 points it exceeds Quickness as per page 285 of Shadowrun 3rd Edition for the Combat Pool penalty, which is what I was meaning to point out. Sorry for not making that more clear.

And yeah, it will take out most vehicles. But military/police vehicles can more easily be bumped up to Armor 20 if they really need to, including Ares Roadmasters.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Well, to be exact, you'd need an armor rating of 30 to make a real difference. 6D or above and a vehicle is pretty screwed DamRes-wise.

For the CP penalty, it is indeed per 2 points. You add up those parts of Ballistic and Impact ratings that exceed the char's QUI, divide it by two rounding down and reduce that from CP. Ball9/Imp7/QUI6 leads to a 2-point penalty in CP, as per the 10th corrected printing.

[RedmondLarry]

There are two different penalties here. One is sum of Ballistic vs. Quickness to determine penalties to Quickness and Quickness-linked skills. Every 1 point counts here. The other is the penalty to Combat Pool, every 2 full points of Ballistic AND Impact count there.

The characters only get benefit from the two pieces of armor with the highest Ballistic Rating (and only half benefit from one), and the two pieces of armor with the highest Impact Rating (again, only half benefit from one). Plus they add helmets and forearm guards and shields at full value. However they get penalties from all pieces of armor, at full value, with the exception of FFBA or other things that have special rules. Helmets and forearm guards do count at full value for determining penalties.

It's very hard for someone to have 8/8 armor, without also having lots of penalties AND looking like something that everyone should run away from screaming the "North Hollywood Bank Robbers are here!"

Apathy, can you describe how they get the 8/8 armor?

As far as the Vehicle armor goes, at some point they start to look like those old Armored Cars that would stop at banks and Jewelry stores. Luckily those went away when we shifted to electronic currency.

[A Clockwork Lime]

Armor rating 30? How do you figure? Armor rating 20 or 21 (depending on how you want to read the rules) makes it completely immune to Great Dragon ATGMs. That's the perk of hardened armor. Anti-vehicular ammo doesn't change the fact that you still have to beat the Armor Rating to affect it, which is why loading up a Light Pistol with AV ammo isn't going to do you a lick of good on a vehcile with Armor 6.

Or is there (again) something I'm missing?

[Austere Emancipa...]

Holy crap, really? I never thought of it like that.

Well, as they say: Not In My Game.

[Shockwave_IIc]

[RedmondLarry]

Due to Shockwave's change to his post, my post is unneeded, and is hereby removed.

This post has been edited by OurTeam: Mar 29 2004, 10:22 PM

[Austere Emancipa...]

Well, so is this.

This post has been edited by Austere Emancipator: Mar 31 2004, 09:44 AM

[RedmondLarry]

Due to Shockwave's change to his post, my post is unneeded.

This post has been edited by OurTeam: Mar 29 2004, 10:22 PM

[Austere Emancipa...]

And this one too.

This post has been edited by Austere Emancipator: Mar 31 2004, 09:44 AM

[A Clockwork Lime]

Ah, in that case I guess it does require at least Armor 40-41 to stop a Great Dragon. Weird. I could have sworn that the entire point of AV ammo was that it didn't get manipulated by the fact that you were using it against a vehicle, unlike regular ammo. Stupid overcomplicated rules and piss-poor memory. :P :D

[Zeel De Mort]

8/8 Armour:

Armour Jacket (5/3)
Armour Vest with plates (4/3)
Hard Hat (0/1)
Titanium Bone Lacing (1/1)
Dermal Sheath 3 (0/2)

For a total of 8/8. Okay you'd look like an idiot with a hard hat on, but you guys just wanted to know how to get 8/8. :) There's one way to do it then, there are plenty of others.

Obviously you need a pretty high quickness to get 8/8 without penalty.

Or you could go for..

Winterised Coverall (4/4)
FFBA 3 (4/1)
Hard Hat (0/1)
Titanium Bone Lacing (1/1)
Orthoskin 3 (1/2)

For 8/8 and minimal quickness, but you'd still look like a tit..


[Edit] If you can't take cyber/bioware, replace it with a Large Riot Shield (2/3) and lots of quickness. Again, see above about not looking so great while doing so though. :D

[TheOneRonin]

Actually, 8B is not that hard to get to, even if it is a little cheesy.

Armored Jacket (5/3) + FFBA (4/1) = 7/3. Then toss in Orthoskin lv 2 (+1B/+1I) or Titanium Bone Lacing (+1B/+1I). Throw in both of those mods, and you get 9/5 with no penalties for Qck of 5 or greater. I don't know if it says this in the book, but I would assume that the bonus ballistic points you get from Orthoskin and Bone lace do NOT count against your total ballistic rating for quickness penalties.

I'd appreciate it if you guys out there could check my math and mechanics, but I think I'm dead on.

[Shockwave_IIc]

I always thought you got a minimum of 1 pt off of a second layer (assuming it had a value to start with)