The one who shot himself apparently suffered a rifle shot through the spine at around the same time. Don't mess with assault rifles even if you're wearing 3 layers of level III-A vests, sooner or later you're going to get killed.

Their armor was just layering taken to the extreme in SR terms. How many layers of armor can you wear in SR4?

atleast two. problem is that they dont stack. you only get the highest value for ballistic and impact. but the whole armor stats add together when calculating penaltys...

Well, here locally we have a Salesman who sells his Bullet Proof vests at conventions, shows, ect. In order to sell more vests he has taken to allowing a Police Officer to actually shoot him on stage with a .38.

He says that he has suffered a couple of broken ribs and the like, but that the stunt increases his profits enough that the pain is worth it. (Before anyone asks, no, I'm not a Gun Guru, and I have no idea what 'class' of vest he was wearing other then it was his 'high-end' model for Police.)

1) He's an idiot.
2) It's probably a level III-A vest, and seeing as how he can choose the gun and the cartridges he should not even be bruised much as long as things go as planned and the cop doesn't shoot him in the face.
3) He's an idiot.

Have you actually seen that happen? Why would a police officer, of all people, let that kind of shit happen, let alone taking part in the insanity?

police is allso people, and people love getting their 15 min of fame...

Police are people?

That flies totally in the face of my Smokey and the Bear youth.

I guess he glitched his soak roll.

People are people wo why should it be?

Sorry, 80's music flashback.

Smokey the Bear? The one who told you that only you could prevent forest fires? Or didja mean Smokey and the Bandit?

It was a confused childhood.

Looking at stuff now, I was thinking (at least until we find out what hardened armor really does), something along the lines of armor has a threshold based on the optional 4 pts in a skill gets a 'hit' result. In this case, change it so every 4 pts in armor gets you a threshhold. In ADDITION to the damage resistance roll. So assuming for the example a relevant attribute of 4 and say a 4/0 armor clothing set, you'd automatically reduce hits by 1+(4+ armor dmg resist roll hits). If you were wearing full security armor it'd be automatic reduction of hits by 3 +(4+armor dmg resist roll hits). At the moment I don't have a good idea on how AP would factor in on that, maybe every 5 points of AP (gun + ammo as applicable) lowers thresshold by 1? But otherwise reduces normally for dmg resistance. So in the above example, say someone using a -1 AP gun with -4 APDS ammo shoots the guy in the 4/0 clothing. He'd get neither protection due to threshold nor from regular dmg resistance. For the dude in the 12/10 armor, they'd see their threshhold drop to 2, but their dmg resistance armor drop as normal to 7.

I'm thinking its 'fair' since just by hitting a target with 1 net hit with a base hvy pistol that's 6 points they have to soak.

thoughts?

edit: woops figured that if I put an attribute at 4 I should actually include it in my little equations.

And man...is it just me, or are 4th ed burst fire weapons much more monstrous in potential chewage than 3rd ed?

Combat has become more dangerous in 4th edition overall.

well, if someone specializes in damage soak... you get body 5, up to 4 extra dice from bone density, 1 from toughness, 2 from dermal, 8/6 armor jacket, another 1/2 from a helmet... thats 21 right there. 23 if you get body up to 7. +3 if your an orc, or +5 if your a troll. another 6/4 from a balaistic sheild. and if your an adept, you can add mystic armor (up to 4 points of it, on top of the bone density/dermal) and a point more body.

so we can have a human with a soak+armor of 34/31. thats going to average 11 soak against guns. for a troll, its 39/36, which averages at 13 successes.

shooting that troll with an ares predator, assuming one hit on his reaction, you would need to roll 8 hits in order to do 1 stun on average. rolling 24 dice to attack, even with smartlink and specialization, is very difficult to do.

a heavy machinegun firing from its tripod in a narrow burst with EXEX ammo on the other hand, comes to 17 DV with -7 AP. defenders armor is 21-7= 14, so its P. if the attacker has 6 dice in his pool and a smartlink, he scores about 2 hits. less one for reaction, thats 18 DV against a probable 11 sucesses. 7 P damage, per hit.

so, as the rules stand now, its easier to shoot a maxed-out troll who specializes in soak, than it is to soak a very very big gun. (the adept would be better off with more reaction to dodge). in fact with even one hit, its very difficult to survive machinegun fire at all. a mere 20 soak would be dead in the first burst.

What? Getting hit with multiple bullets at once kills you? Preposterus!

robert was faster...