Armor Troubles Options

[Prime Mover]

So my 4th edition team is coming along nicely, negotiated good price on last two jobs and have free room and board for next 6 months. So they went armor shopping, spending a wad on some decent armor with full set of enhancements, fire resists, nonconductive the whole nine yards. Now heres the problem, the Troll adept with quickened spells and decent armor already now becomes even more near invincible. Meanwhile the mage who really needs the armor upgrade after a few nasty close calls can't wear his armor without some nasty encumbered penalties. He's asking flat out How much would it cost to have someone B/R some kind of system to enhance the armor just enough to counter the problem. Or customize the armor to move better.

I keep having to argue, why in 2070 are the armor composites so heavy and ungainly? Anyone else dealing with same problems? Any fixes?

[Jaid]

is the mage's body 2 or something like that?

what exactly do you mean by "decent armor"? because an armored jacket with a helmet (total of 9/8 armor iirc) isn't all that bad, and can be worn if you have body 4 with no penalty. a vest or the urban explorer suit is not far behind and can be worn with no penalty if you have 3 or better armor.

[Moon-Hawk]

I think the theory is, with a fixed target system, if armor values weren't capped by Body then large armor values make the difference between a character with Body 1 and Body 6 negligible. As is, they peak (without penalties) at 3 and 12 dice, respectively. In other words, the guy with Body 6 is still six times better at resisting armor than the Body 1 guy, whether they're both naked or both wearing their maximum unpenalized armor.
At least, I assume that's the logic behind the rule. I don't really know.

My house-rule, by the way, is to limit armor based on Body+Strength, rather than 2xBody. All-in-all it doesn't change much, but it makes Str less of a dump stat.

But the fact remains, very few people can wear an armor jacket without penalty. And you can forget about full body armor. Of course, obviously you shouldn't be t-shirt-and-jeans comfortable in FBA, but you have to be a pretty darn impressive specimen of a human to even move in the stuff.

As for fixes, nothing spectacular really springs to mind. I put my house-rule, but that's not really a fix, just a difference. I'm not even convinced it should be fixed, but it does seem a bit sketchy.

[Gelare]

First off, you might want to reduce the awesome of the armor that troll is getting. I don't have any specifics, but I'd be willing to bet at least some of those armor properties in the book are mutually exclusive. As for your mage, what he needs to do is get some new tricks. His options include:

Increase Body
Armor
Heal
Improved Invisibility
Making spirits do all his dirty work
Six ranks in Dodge with a specialization in Ranged Combat, plus Increase Reflexes so he has enough IPs to do stuff.
Shatter enemy weapons
And stuff.

[Buster]

Mundane armor is for sissies. If the mage was from a possession tradition and had the Channeling metamagic, he'd be pimp-slapping the troll back and forth across the street.

With a possession spirit, the mage would have (Spirit Force * 2) rating Immunity to Normal Weapons as well as +(Spirit Force) to Body, Agi, and Str running 24/7 for free.

If it's a high force spirit, he'd also get cool special effects like glowing eyes, shadowy wisps, or a big red S on his chest. A Mask spell would hide all that comic book bling, so no problemo.

[Aaron]

I don't mind my players taking lots and lots of armor. The gunman in my game got hit squarely with a rocket and managed to take no damage once. But I could ace him with a stunbolt. There's always another angle.

Speaking of other angles, has your magician considered a sustaining focus or Quickening combined with an Armor spell and a little karma?

[Buster]

Quickening is a runner's worse nightmare. Unless they happen to have Masking + Extended Masking metamagics and every wardcrafter's astral sig, they're going to trip the alarm on every Ward they stumble through.

Sustaining foci get around that problem, but cost a fortune in nuyen and karma.

[Whipstitch]

Eh, armored jackets shouldn't really be any easier to wear, imo. 4 body isn't too hard to achieve for any race; it's average for a dwarf, the bare minimum for an ork and below minimum for a troll. I'm not all that terribly concerned about FBA either; 4 body is enough to wear it while only recieving a -1 agility/reaction penalty. For someone with too low of a dodge skill to reliably dodge bullets to begin with, that could turn out to be a fair trade. It does suck that it takes an essentially maxed out human to wear FBA with the matching helmet at no penalty, however; I wouldn't mind seeing that get cleaned up somehow.

[Riley37]

[gknoy]

[Prime Mover]

So far been low karma low cash campaign and the chance to get decent B/I and put the resists on armor would be another bonus saveing some sustaining die and avoiding the troubles with quickening.

Gonna stick with RAW but was wondering if had been problem with any other archtypes or had come up for anyone? Low powered campaign, hacker or even rigger types looking for decent protection?

Current campaign is a mix of vets and newbies and as our new folks are catching on I'm racheting up the action, few weeks and this will probably be moot point. But it came up at the end of our last session and was stuck in my head.

[Whipstitch]

Never really been an issue for me, since 20 points gets you access to chameleon suits and 30 bps allows an armored jacket, which isn't that bad of a deal considering you're also getting damage resistance dice and some much needed boxes on your condition monitor as well. The only time affording Body has approached being a real problem for me was the first few times I took a crack at making a TM. Other than that packing on at least enough to wear a lined coat hasn't been an issue.

[Riley37]

[Crusher Bob]

The main problem I have is that the armor seems to give too great a penalty. If we assume an 'average soldier' with 3s in everything, putting on a armored jacket gives him, erm, is that a -5 penalty (8 - 3)? Even if we base the penalty calculation on body x2 that's still a -2 penalty or a 1/3rd reduction (pools drop from 6 to 4) in just about everything interesting.

Here's a system of armor penalties I threw out earlier that conforms more to my prejudices:

[Irian]

Personally, I think, that most (esp. motorcycle and armor) helmets in 2070 will include devices or designs to prevent problems with hearing and/or seeing, but probably not smelling (because normal people don't need that sense often). Sorry, it's 2070 after all, so I think modern helmets will not impair hearing or seeing (perhaps even quite the contrary: They'll include vision enhancements, etc.)

[Crusher Bob]

Yes, and those cost extra. Note that one of the points is to emphasize the disparity between teh haves and the have nots. For example, a high end 2070 helmet might be completely sealed and with a bunch of eyes stuck onto the outside. You connect to the helmet and you get a full 360 view, with grid guide interface and everything.

[Irian]

The enhancements will surely cost extra (simply integrate them into the helmet like you would do with goggles), but as it's nowhere stated that helmets impair vision or hearing, I assume that all helmets are designed not to do so. And that's already included into the price :-)

[Whipstitch]

[Fortune]

And I wouldn't necessarily call someone with a Body of 3 an 'average soldier'.

[Raizer]

I've house ruled the following in my gaming campaign:

Armor (Encumbrance)
• A Character may only have a combined (Ballistic and Impact) Armor Value equal to 2 times their Strength and Body. For every 2 full points that the combined armor value has over that number, they suffer a -1 modifier to Agility and Reaction.

Armor (Modifications)
• A character may only put a total amount of armor modifications into armor equal to the combined Ballistic and Impact Rating.
o Please note that Shock Frills counts as Rating 3.

[Gort]

Depends what army you're talking about. If you're talking a conscript, body 3 is a good number to use. A professional soldier would probably have more, assuming his job was active enough to require it. (I wouldn't expect a fuel-truck driver to have a high body, for instance, but a commando or rifleman probably would)

[Irian]

If 3 is the human "norm" than I would think that most trained people have Body 4, something that simply comes with training. So most "trained" security personal (not just otherwise unemployed people with pepper spray) would have Body 4 (when I GM).

[AbNo]

Well, there's also something to be said for the often... sedentary nature of a Sec Guard's job.

Even if they are carrying daily gear.

And don't even let me go into the connection with Mc.Hugh's selling Star-shaped donuts. :rotfl:

[Whipstitch]

A pretty fair chunk of security guards end up walking a minimum of a mile or two per shift, so there's not actually much reason for them to be any more sedentary than most service and office professions. Generally speaking the guards at the local Minneapolis convention center are in better shape than a lot of the fat office workers stuck filling seats at the seminars. Honestly, I'd expect security guards to be more commonly equipped with armored vests anyway; at only 600 :nuyen: they offer a lot more protection for nearly the same price as armored clothing while still being a full 300 :nuyen: cheaper than an armored jacket. They also can be worn under a standard uniform easily without being intimidating, convert light pistol rounds to stun and just about anyone who isn't truly feeble can move around in one without penalty. Armored Jackets are probably so common on the streets thanks to popularity with gangers, a demographic that's likely to have a disproportionate number of big metas as members. I would bet just about everyone else in most areas just wanders around with armored clothing and tries to avoid trouble in the first place.