My group has just bought SR4 and will be playing it shortly. We played 2nd and 3rd edition (some of us even 1st). We have 2 quick questions for you gurus...

1) Orthoskin cannot be combined with Dermal Plating, per both descriptions. However, there is no mention of whether or not either one can be combined with Mystic Armor, the Armor spell or Troll's natural armor. If you had a Troll Adept (1/1) with Mystic Armor 4 (4/4), and Orthoskin 3 (3/3) wearing an armor jacket (8/6), would his B/I armor really be 16/14?

2) Orthoskin, Mystic Armor, the Armor spell & the Troll's natural armor all say they stack (are cumulative) with worn armor. Dermal Plating doesn't make mention one way or the other. Does Dermal Plating stack (is cumulative) with worn armor?

Thank you for your time.

REFERENCE PAGES:
Orthoskin bioware (SR4, p.339)
Dermal Plating cyberware (SR4, p.333)
Mystic Armor adept power (SR4, p.188)
Armor spell (SR4, p.202)
Troll's natural armor (SR4, p.73)

1) yes
2) yes

But remember, unlike as inSR3, an armor rating of 16 doesn't make you invicible.

Why stop there? Theoretical Troll (assuming 5 magic and less than 1 point ess used) with full armor could hit 20/18 and pretty much soak normal rounds fired by anyone who isn't a gunbunny.

Of course, I'd really recommend a pain editor (after start), because everything short of a tank round is going to be S damage.

And you'll be paying at least 30 BP for a magic of 2 to have Mystic Armor, 5 to be an Adept, 40 BP to be a Troll, and 18 to pay for the Orthoskin. That's 93 BP, or almost half of your starting BP and 90,000 nuyen, or a little less than half of your maximum starting cash.
But maybe you don't want to be versatile.

Wait, isn't adept armor limited to [Magic] ranks?

You'd have to take Magic 5, then, so that you'd have 4 left over after chrome.

However, you could drop adept and just blow cash... bone density, bone lacing, and reaction enhancer are just as good as armor for reducing damage (reaction is actually better, because it increases the chance of 0 damage), and synaptic boost both does that and lets you kill people faster.

You won't be able to max everything (especially booster), but you can still munch it out.

That looks close to me, except he does have to get Magic 6 that is then reduced by 2 for the essence loss. FYI, they did post some updated numbers somewhere that deal with the Sample Characters be inaccurate to the rules.
This character is going to be doing A LOT of sitting around during Matrix Actions, Astral stuff, any neogotiating or legwork, any travel, that kind of thing. But if that's what the player wants then it's not wrong.

They've released a lot of errata on those sample characters, so get them from the website before you go basing decision based on them.

Second, you have a major oversite with this character: essence loss affects your Magic rating. Essence loss reduces the Magic that you have purchased. So, if your character is down to 4.25 Essence, they have lost 2 points. You have purchased a Magic of 4, so that should be reduced to 2. You will need to purchase a Magic of 6 in order to have an "effective" Magic of 4 with 4.25 Essence. That will chew up another 35 BP (remember 25 BP for the max of 6) for this character.

Under SR3, Dermal Plating and Orthoskin overrode the Troll's natural armor, that makes Trolls much more powerful now.

I think I would house rule that for SR4 too, at least for the dermal. My thinking is that we are replacing the natural dermal structures with manufactured ones.

You forgot to bring your helmet and ballistic shield for (IIRC) a total of 23/18.

furthermore, the attributes did all add up to under 200 if you took out, edge, magic, and resonance.
WIth my group, most characters start out with the standard issue jacket and helmet. pretty reasonable as long as they don't have to do anything like go into a posh hotel (happened in the last run, I stayed in the car)

Imp.Phy.Attr/Reaction 1 would cost 2 points, not one, since you are raising it over the racial maximum. He would be better off getting 2 points of Combat Sense instead. Although to have a magic of 4, he will need to actually buy it at 6, as others have said.

Under SR3, trolls did get to add their natural dermal armor to things like dermal plating (as looking at the archetypes will demonstrate), so I don't think SR4 would be any different.

And this is why the man invented APDS ammunition

The oh-so sad thing about having 9 body and 16/14 armor is that you're not invincible, at least not on the level of an SR3 tank troll. 25 dice is good, but it's not even close to good enough. Eating bullets just isn't where it's at now, the name of the game in SR4 is dodging. Case in point:

Every 3 dice amounts to an average 1 hit, so against a weapon with AP 0 you're looking at 8 hits. That's certainly enough to absorb all but the best shots from small arms, but in the case of a full narrow burst from an ExEx Ares Alpha, you're looking at 17 DV with -3 AP. You are likely to take 10 DV from that, not exactly sitting pretty. Your opponent doesn't even need to be a great shot to geek you with a full narrow burst, the only difference between a normal person and a tank is that the tank might survive and be able to limp away.

Now, a cybered adept with a little more brains can have reaction 8 utilizing boosted level 2, combat sense 3, improved dodge 3, and dodge at 6 for 22 dodge dice. You could push it even higher than that, but I'm just taking these numbers from a very well rounded and dangerous build I made. Regardless, 22 dodge dice gets you about 7 hits on average, which is actually less than the tank gets from his damage resistance right? Nope. The best (and I mean very best) attack pool you can get is 10 agility (elf modified maximum) and 12 in your skill of choice (6 skill + 3 improved ability + 1 reaction enhancer + 2 specialization), or 22. You are stasitically likely to dodge a shot from the best marksman who has or ever will live, and you haven't even maxed out your combat sense. Anything that comes your way has a very small chance of hitting you, as long as you're not surprised. The point is that no attack gets more than 22 dice (aside from situational mods) and thus no more than 7 average net hits, while a weapon's DV can be pumped to 17 with a free action by just switching the gun to full auto mode. You can twink out to where you can be assured of 7 hits every time, but not 17. Tanking is the loser's path, plain and simple.

PS If you were going to suggest that my dice pools are smaller than they could be, note that you can't actually take 6 improved ability on anything, check the errata.

Actually, one of your pools is smaller - the elf modified max for Agility is 10...but if you get Exceptional Attribute (Agility), it becomes 12. And you could have Aptitude (Firearms skill of your choice) to grab another in skill. Plus, of course, smartlinks, tracers, and firing wide bursts to drop up to 9 dice off the dodger's pool, but we'll call those situational.

not with that kind of success rate
you miay be able to full dodge until tey run out of ammo
o better yet if ya gort more init passes full dodge until they run out of passes then kill them

Of course, dodging doe not protect you from area of effect attacks or spells.

Dodging DOES protect from grenades and similar area of effect attacks

actually, i think it does, at least for grenades and elemental manips (or whatever they're called in SR4). as i recall, you get something like a -3 dice pool modifier.

Lessee...if you assume a maxed Reaction character (10, with Exceptional Attribute: Reaction), with Combat Sense 10, utilizing maxed Full Dodge with a specialization against Ranged (12, with Aptitude: Dodge), you get 32 dice to dodge.

Now, say you're being shot at by a maxed Agility (12, using an elf with Exceptional Attribute: Agility), with maxed out Automatics with a specialization in Assault Rifles (9, with Aptitude: Automatics), with a smartlink (additional 2) and reflex recorder (1 more), firing tracer EX-Ex on full auto (another 3) with the wide burst option (-9 dice to your pool) from an Ares Alpha with gas vent 3 and shock pad (-3 to his pool for recoil), you end up with a pool of 23 while he's got a pool of 24.

You could, of course, both use Edge, but he'll end up slightly on the better end of that one, what with having a higher pool to begin with. Note that this isn't an adept shooting at you - he could cram in another 2 dice if he were. Now, while you're both going to be almost equal, he's still got a very slight advantage on you, and if he hits, you're taking 8P with a -3 AP modifier.

The good news is, you'll survive that. The bad news is, now he sees just how Neo-like you are, and fires the grenade launcher. The worse news is, now his buddy with the gyro-stabilized Ultimax HMG-2 is gonna open up on you too.

Wide bursts are the wonderful mechanic that was added to balance out Neo-like bullet dodgers.

I am *so* a fan of wide bursts.

I've got a couple of dex monkeys in my game. These are guys who have been dex monkeys since the beginning of time. Guys who gleefully discard armor, hit points, or anything resembling a solid physical build in favor of simply not being where the blow is. Guys for whom the answer is always "I get out of the way." It's this... attitude, I guess, that grates and grinds and pisses me off after a while, the way it's played and presented.

They hate it when you knock 9 dice out of their die pool. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

And of course, if they can't hit you, they'll just switch to a new target. The first guy fires, sees you catching bullets in your teeth and batting them aside like flies, then tells his buddies to shoot everyone else (and uses his second action to shoot someone else). You've just used on one bullet at the expense of your next action.

Or they'll vector all their fire to the guy standing in the middle of the street occasionally twitching to avoid it, rather than all the other guys hiding behind cars and poking their guns over dumpsters.

All those -1s for each incoming attack? Yeah, they're rude.

Why would they spend time firing at someone they can't hit and who isn't firing back instead of firing at people they can hit? If he's the only target, sure, dump it all at him and watch those dice disappear. Otherwise you shoot someone that is trying to hurt you, either dropping him or making it harder for him to hurt you because he's wincing in pain.

Aye, if there's a mass amount of folks, you prioritize, take out heavy hitters of course like mages and the machine gunner, but you also go for easy to take out guys also. So you avoid wasting shots and actions on the wannabe neo and make sure to take out all his buds. Then concentrate fire on him afterwards when he's all by himself twitching in the middle of the street.

Let's see.

Davy Elf with 8[12] Agi, 7[10] automatics (adept), +2 AR spec, +2 smartlink, +1 enh. art, +1 reflex recorder fires a twinked alpha at full burst, gets 25 dice.

And Neo Elf loses 9.

Put another notch on Betsy.

Or, just have the mage stunbolt Neo. How many points did hit put in Will, again?

From the point of view of your average squaddie shooting at targets half a block away, the dude twitching like a fiend in the middle of the street *is* the easiest target. God knows why you can't hit him, but it's either him or the yahoos hunkered down behind cars, and between your MG gunner keeping them suppressed and your grenadier dropping airburst explosives in their general direction, they're probably covered.

The point is, they don't KNOW they can't hit him. Characters don't know what the dice pools are doing, they know what they see. You give me a bunch of armed targets to shoot at, and one of them is standing in the open, he's going to be the first one I shoot at, because he seems like the easiest target. Now, one of them starts shooting fireballs out of his ass or blasting a flamethrower in my general direction, that's another thing, but when it's just a bunch of people shooting, the guy in the open is the easiest, best target.

He's armed but he isn't a threat. He's doing cartwheels, not shooting at you. And if you see someone dodging bullets better than what you think is metahumanly possible (because he's got magic and beyond normal metahuman speed and agility) then you'll know you can't hit him. You won't know his pool, but you don't have to know the dice involved to know that somebody who is doing the lay backwards as bullets fly past Neo stuff isn't an easy target.

Meanwhile you've got people shooting guns at you.

I think we're envisioning the scene a little differently. Senor Twitch (or, since I've got more than one of them, maybe I should say the Brothers Twitch) get as much of their "not getting hit" stuff redlined as they can, without pulling the Full Dodge thing. High Reactions, Combat Sense... whatever they can come up with to add dice to that first check. So what you end up with is a bunch of players running for cover, then the Twitchies walking straight down the block unloading with their weapons of choice, because the character build (in their mind, at least) is unhittable. If they were Full Dodging all the time, I wouldn't care where they were standing... people probably pay more attention to muzzle flashes and tracers than they do to the couple of crazies breakdancing in the road.

By the way, BigD... enhanced articulation has narrowed the range of skills it applies to. You'd have to reread the description to determine which ones, but I know it doesn't apply to shooting anymore.

In that situation I would shoot at them, probably with a few guys doing two wide long bursts each. Or just leave if I couldn't hit them that way.

It depends on the opposition's resources.

Take off and nuke'em from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

It depends on how your GM reads the dodge vs. explosives rules. You may be able to sidestep the blast.

D'oh!

"I acrobatic dodge so I'm clear of ground zero"

Sounds like time to call in the Drop Bears...

save the drop bears for later. first we try the old standby, the orbital bovine...

Those get dodged too.

And did I mention that my character is based on the SR game, so I get to teleport?

I wonder if vision penalties should apply to Reaction (is it called Dodge Pool?) in the Opposed test.

Right, stop that, that's silly!

I'd like to point out that dodging and being tough are not mutually exclusive. A cybered adept set up to dodge can still have 6 body with 8 ballistic armor pretty easily, enough to mean that the wide full bursts which can actually hit you won't take you out of comission. My whole point was that dodging beats soaking in SR4, not that dodging is invincible. There is a finite limit to the dice an attacker can throw at you- they cap out at around 8 probable hits, which is also where a maxed out dodge pool caps out. Those are decent odds, provided you're not an idiot who stands still without taking cover while being shot at. Damage resistance, however, caps out at maybe 10 probable hits, while DVs can go as high as 17 from guns available in chargen. Soaking power is definitely good, but it seems to me that when choosing a focus for an adept, dodging ability is far superior to toughness.

I have this image of a Neo elf making all these cool moves in front of a fedora-wearing PC... who then looks at Neo and blasts him with a powerbolt.

of course, all it would take is a force 1 drain attribute to take this character out of action. 1 hit to bring Charisma (or the other one) out of action. with the high reaction it would be tricky the hit him though.

Force 1 anything is almost gauranteed to fail. All they need is a single hit to negate the entire spell.

ah, thats true, forgot about that damn resist roll. Still, one net hit will do him in.