Hardening Options

[Garrowolf]

I use a form of the old Hardened Armor rules with a twist or two.

Hardening
Some armors have a hardening rating representing hard plates. This has the following effects:
· If the DV is less then or equal to the Hardening then the attack just bounces off. There is no stun roll made.
· It reduces the AP of any attack up to the rating.
· It adds it’s rating to both the ballistic and impact ratings (reduced by how much it is counteracting the AP)

Hardening is noted after the Ballistic and Impact in parenthesis. Cyberlimbs can have a point or two of hardening if they have armor. Hardening is not available in civilian armors. Security armor can have up to a 4 with a security license. Military armor goes up to a 6. After that they use Hard Suits or vehicles instead.

Ex: Full Body Armor becomes 6/4(4)
An attack with a heavy pistol 5p -1ap looses the AP on the hardening and leaves 6/4(3) so add the ballistic plus left over hardening (9) to body test.
That heavy pistol with APDS would become 5p -5ap so the armor becomes 5/4(0) as the -5 removes the hardening and one point of armor.
But a light pistol doing 4p 0ap bounces right off the hardening. A knife doing 4p would also skip right off.
Of course this is without rolled successes for simplicity. That would still matter.

This would also work for vehicles the same. The hardening would limit what could effect it so sometimes you wouldn't even need to roll.

[Ryu]

Your hardening effects of:
· It reduces the AP of any attack up to the rating.
· It adds it’s rating to both the ballistic and impact ratings (reduced by how much it is counteracting the AP)
combined result in "if the attack penetrates the hardening, the rating of the hardening is added to both ballistic and impact rating". No need to compare harding vs. AP first if the difference is applied to armor rating either way.


That said, I like the idea of hardening as a third armor rating, allthough I´d prefer hardened armor ratings along the lines of "MilSpec Full Plate, (6) Bal+4/Imp+2". Compare DV to hardening first, if attack passes use modified armor value.

I´d compare hardening with ammo and aiming modified DV, ignoring fire rate and net successes.

[Eryk the Red]

I would say that you shouldn't ignore net attack hits when determining the DV to compare to the Hardening rating. Personally, I wouldn't like that the only chance you'd have of shooting around the armor (when you don't have the power to shoot through it) is to make a called shot. That's just personal preference, though.

[Garrowolf]

I could see the called shot thing if called shots were the norm in your game. Theoretically the extra successes means that you are hit a vital area anyway. Now I thought of an interesting idea with trauma plates maybe effecting extra successes but I can't think of a good system for that without going to an all hit location game.