[X] My Assistant

[FrankTrollman]

I just noticed that my name was invoked. Sorry, my name-sense must be weakening because that's like a day ago.

Anyway, Hardened Armor is weird stuff. The more of it you have, the less likely you are to be injured and not killed. Indeed, at the limit of very high hardened armor ratings (say 24+) there is no purpose to be served in even owning a medkit as any weapon that can hurt you at all will kill you.

This is because the minimum DV that can hurt you increases by 1 for every point of hardened armor you possess, but against any weapon that might harm you each point of hardened armor is only worth 1 damage resistance die. So for every 3 points of hardened armor you possess, the minimum attack you care about goes up by three and the damage you actually take from such an attack goes down by only 1. If you've got a 24 point hardened armor shield you ignore the vast majority of weapon attacks (anything with a DV of 1-24). But if you actually get hit with the DV 25 weapon that might damage you, the hardened armor will only reduce that to 17 DV physical - so you're pretty much just dead right off.

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Hardened Armor and Regular Armor don't add together for their particular checks. Wearing an armored jacket does not increase the minimum DV needed to make you care if you happen to be Destro, and having hardened cyberlimbs doesn't increase the DV that an armored jacket will convert to stun. But if for some reason you have both hardened and regular armor you do add both to your damage resistance roll.

It is difficult to find armor that stacks. It is no accident that the 4th edition "Armored Jacket" has the values that the Jacket + Form Fitting Body Armor + Forearm Guards combination gave you in previous editions. But there are still pieces of equipment that grant such bonuses - Orthoskin for example.

And if you do get Armor and Hardened Armor remember that they are different totals. Armor converts Physical to Stun unless the DV exceeds the Armor value. Not the "Armor + Hardened Armor value" just the Armor. Hardened Armor negates all damage if the DV does not exceed the Hardened Armor value. Again, not the "Armor + Hardened Armor value" just the Hardened Armor.

-Frank