To be fair, I think that particular criticism has more to do with how cyberlimb armor stacks rather than averages out. Whether poor FFBA is a bad idea or not is almost another issue entirely.

Of course, they couldn't buy hits at all, given that being shot at is hardly classed as a "non-stressful" situation.

Its nice and pretty extreme to have 9 automatic hits on DR, but thats no immunity to firearms. Think automatic shotguns, Full Bursts etc.

I want my jetpack!

sorry, no jetpacks available. but there is the sparrow on page 112. basically the same style vehicle as seen built but not flown on mythbusters.

I just wanted a jetpack. Is that too much to ask?

Obviously!

I did some quick population projections based on Wiki data and assuming a population growth rate of ~1%, 25% Vitas deaths in 2010 and 10% in 2022, and then 2% deaths at each of the Crashes and/or other disasters and the 2070 population is ~7.8 billion.

Current world population is projected at 6.6 billion. So this is up ~1 billion. Perfectly doable with the majority of the industrialized world existing on modified foodstuffs.

Sounds about right to me.

The Moonlight Aerospace Phoenix is large enough to take rocket boosters... what if I do not want to use them for lift-off, but for acceleration/speed?

1). Get a smallish vectored thrust drone.
2). Hold on.
3). Very tightly. (alternately straps could be useful here)

don't be ridiculous. you get the drone some arms, and make *it* hold on to *you* =P

(honestly, why bother having robots do all the work for you if they're not gonna do all the work for you? )=P

(note: strictly speaking, you can take any vehicle you like and apply the 'lighter than air' mod to it. not that it makes much sense, mind you, but it *is* an option (nothing limiting it to flying vehicles only, for example). so, combine that with, say, the ares-segway PMV and re-flavor as needed, and presto! a jetpack =P (note: whether or not it actually uses jets, i highly recommend installing fake ones because after all, who wants to have a personal LTA vehicle when you're aiming for a jetpack? they're polar opposites or something i'm sure =P )

just build something out of a segway, some of those hover cyber-feet, the lighter than air mod and a vectored thrust drone . . should be pretty much spot on i'd say *g*

at that point i would say one is moving into sparrow territory anyways.

hell, take the stats on that, but redo the image from "lift fans" to jets and be happy...

maybe that alternate model from "entertainment systems" is built that way. it got the name anyways (jetman)

the sparrow is a vectored thrust vehicle, according to it's description iirc. it never did use 'lift fans' in the first place, afaict.

Just be a possession tradition mage with air spirits, and buy a red cape and blue FFBA.

(note: whether or not a spirit's ability to fly is a "power" it can use while possessing isn't clear.)

heh, oops, lift fans may be a bit wrong. ducted fans are many more correct. but thats me going by the art, and we know art isnt trustworthy, right?

All I know is: Dikote is gone?! Excellent news, I can now commence with sleeping soundly at night.

And I coulda swore FFBA was in the MRB, and didn't have any special encumbrance/stacking rules.

Alas, one stupid thing dies, another lives to annoy once more...

I don't know.... when you think about how much 30 armor is your character would basically look like a walking block of metal. I mean two more armor and your PC is basically a blast bunker (Sr4 p.157 Barrier Rating Table.) If you just have a high Bod and not a really high Str then I doubt the PC would do anything but make troll sized imprints in the ground until the party could find some kind of industrial winch to carry him around. You could have the industrial strength winch troll!

"Damn it we are taking too many hits bring in the Winch troll!"

"Right boss."

"Oh and don't forget to cast the AOE taunt spell." (shutter)

i'd say because armor has nothing to do with strength but body when it comes to limits(i could be wrong here, posting from work) it has nothing to do with the actual weight of the armor(which, in SR4 is seemingly irrelevant ANYWAY) but more with the stress of sweating your soul out maybe *g*
also: now i wanna build the wrecking-ball troll and have a mage cast levitate 6 on him or movement from a spirit *g*

Movement might increase your speed but you don't actually hit them any harder... darn magic.

Yes you could make the point that Str has nothing to do with armor, but when you are basically wearing hundreds and hundreds of pounds of metal I think its pretty ludicrous to not back it up with the strength to actually move your arms. I mean looking at it in terms of what barriers rate as a steal beam one square meter has an armor rating of 16. I don't know that is mainly a GM choice on if you need to back up wearing hundreds of pounds of armor with some Str, but at that point its relative. I still think a troll with like a 13 body and a five strength would have difficulty moving in that kind of armor.

Metal? Most likely layer upon layer of Kevlar or it's 2070 equivalent. Other than a cermic insert to defend against blades and the like, nobody is going to actually wear plate mail on the street.

You know, even a troll with Body 12, Fully Cybered, wearing Heavy Military Grade Armor, AND Form Fitting Body Armor would still be dropped by a Stunball.

I really dont see why CGL has to start this arms race. Also, I believe that most of the Armor presented in the book should probably be dropped a bit in rating. This may just be me, but I really dont want to have to face the enemies we would face if we had Hardened Military Grade Armor.

The thing is, each level of DV is equal to approximately three levels of defense.

So wearing layer upon layer of kevlar means you are a walking bunker... ack. 30 armor means you just pretty much on average shrug off grenades, mines, I mean you might as well be on the mine field diffusing squad and with edging a reroll have a pretty good possibility of taking an anti vehicular rocket. Sorry if a troll was wearing layers of kevlar (which is really bulky because it catches bullets) that troll would look like either the michilan man or stay puffed marshmallow man, or maybe just a big ball of kevlar.

I'm not following where you are pulling your figure of 30 from. Can you tell me what combination of armor(s) you are using to arrive at that number, and maybe I can get a better grasp on the Michelin man problem.

As far as I am concerned, I am discussing wearing one layer of Form Fitted Body Armor underneath one other layer of clothes-type armor like an Armor Jacket. There is always the option of throwing other, non-clothing-type armor things on top, such as helmets, shields, implanted armor, or even cyberlimbs, but none of that seems to qualify, to me at least, as layering up a person to look like the stay-puff marshmallow dude.

Let's see..high end FFBA: +4, Dermal Sheath 2: +2 ballistic armour, +2 Body for DR tests, PPP: a total of +4 Ballistic armour, Helmet: +2 Ballistic, IIRC, Riot Shield +1 ballistic armour, Aluminum Bone Lacing: +1 Ballistic armour, +2 Body for DR tests, so we are talking about +14 armour, +4 Body for resisting damage. Assuming a pair of cyberarms, we can expect maybe another +4 armour each, so we get +22 armour, with an Armoured jacket's 8 Ballisic armour.

So, of that 30 armour, and +4 body for DR, only 17 count towards encumbrance, so a Troll with a 9 Body could wear all that. Ouch..that is kind of scary...

Edit: Note, all numbers are off the top of my head, and, I think, perfectly legal at chargen..these can actually get higher..

30 Armor... lets be generous and add 9 body.... on average 13 boxes of damage reduction. Thats really good. One would need an automatic weapon to kill that. Or aim with a shotgun.

FFBA 3 + Full PPS System + one layer of choice (Suggestion of Full Body Armor + Gel Packs) = at least close to the max. for said body 9 char. Not even remotely close to the Michelin man, even if combining FBA with the PPS seems a bit wrong. The missing 12 points of armor would have to come from cyberlimbs dedicated to armor. Hardly inconspicuous, but at least "inside the body" and not layered on top.

Fine. And that is pretty much what I described ... a cybered-up person wearing only the two pieces of armor, one of which is specifically designed to be worn effectively with other clothing-type armor. Not exactly the Michelin Man, which is entirely my point.

Wow, you know, in checking your math I realize I misunderstood FFBA on my initial skim. It adds it's full value to your armor but adds only half for encumbrance. Is that right? I guess I thought it was full/full, or half/half, or half/full (any of which would be fine, since you could just as well just wear a single tougher bit of armor in the first place), but full/half lets you wear more armor than you could without using FFBA. That's pretty significant, and does sort of make FFBA into a must-have for runners.

But only for runners with a high body - most of the characters in my group were already near, at, or slightly above the limit before encumberance comes into play. Only the troll and the max-body ork will get to wear ffba without additional penalty.

Hmmm, maybe, but you're assuming they keep their old armor, and I'm assuming they downgrade it. Example:
Runner has body 4. Hardly high-end ork or troll. They're wearing some kind of standard 8/6 armor from the core book, say an armor jacket. If they add FFBA3 and replace their armor jacket with actioneer business clothes they're getting 5/3 + 6/2 for a total of 11/5 armor, but their encumbrance is only 5+6/2=8, so they're still in happy.
(segue into new point, not necessarily part of original argument) True, in this example they've lost a point of impact armor, but they've gained 3 points of ballistic, and as long as ballistic is their limiting factor they can easily shore up that impact rating with that PPP system and get up to 11/9. (note the 9 is not a problem here, either, because their impact encumbrance is 3(jacket)+2/2(FFBA)+(1+1+2)(PPP system)=8.

I'm just saying, previously a character with body 4 could easily get 8/6 with worn armor, and now they can get 11/9, and the huge boost to ballistic is due to FFBA, while the PPP (and the FFBA a little) boosts the impact. But as others have said, that's only equivalent to damage improving by +1DV, which the new selections of weapons and ammo will probably generally do. Is it power creep? Yeah. Is it a lot of really bad power creep? No.

downgrading current armor counts as additional penalty, if a minor one.
Especially if you have to gimp impact to get there.

I don't follow. I just went from 8/6 to 11/9, and using FFBA is a vital part of that transition, and you're saying that's a penalty/gimped? How is gaining +3/+3 without encumbrance penalties over what was possible (without penalties) before gimped? We're not talking about high-end Troll-tanks, that was an example for a Body 4 character, which is average to low-end for a runner, depending on your game.

edit: I know I used PPP in there, but without using FFBA at all the best improvement from your old 8/6 you can get with PPP and no penalties is 8/8, which is not nearly as drastic as 11/9.

you could add the ppp to your current armor now too.

Indeed, that thought had occurred to me.

Let's look at this a different way. Let's forget about specific armors and just assume that with the vast selection of armors available (including PPP) one could mix and match armors and get their maximum unencumbered armor value. This being Bodx2 for both ballistic and impact.

By using FFBA3 you can use a different set of armor valued at Bx2-3 / Bx2-1, then add FFBA3, thus your encumbrance becomes (Bx2-3+6/2) / (Bx2-1+2/1) which simplifies to Bx2 / Bx2, still the maximum unencumbered level, but the actual rating of the armor is Bx2+3 / Bx2+1.

So here's the bottom line: Use of FFBA3 and clever armor selection adds +3/+1 to basically any character with at least an average 3-4 Body rating to begin with. Characters with extremely low Body rating (1-2) can't really add as much, but can still pull off a similar less powerful version of the trick with FFBA1 & FFBA2.

I'm not saying it's horribly unbalanced, because Arsenal introduces some new weapons which will generally lead to a fraction increase in DV. I'm saying that it's a tiny bit of power creep, but it's a balanced power creep, and at worst it's a difference of <= 1 box of damage, so who cares?

The only thing I'm arguing with is the assertion that the benefits of FFBA really only apply to very high Body characters who were previously unable to approach their armor limit. I believe I have demonstrated that it is not true, and that through careful armor selection one can, through use of FFBA, achieve higher unencumbered armor values than are possible without it. I'm not saying it's a problem, I'm just saying that it's there.

I'll run with that. +3/+1 is nice to have.

Overall though it's not nearly the must-have the radar or ultrasound cyberware is: spots invisible, allows targetting through walls, etc.

No argument here.

My character has a body of 5 and max she could get at chargen(not using a shield) with out arsenal would be 9/8 wearing Armor Jacket+Helmet and with arsenal she now has 12/9 using Vashon Islands Steampunk line(Overcoat,corset,Knickers and a Blouse)with gel-packs+Form-fitting body armor half-body suit. Using PPP she could get 12/11 but those don't fit her style and with the +2 from her cyberhand she is at 14/11 and that's good enough.

so +3/+1 while being very nice isn't really game breaking as Moon-Hawk allready said, but he is right in saying that FFBA is not a bonus only for high body orks and trolls.
and of course that exra armor cost her over triple the original amount.

by the way do the armor modifications from different pieces of armor tack. and am i rigth when thingin that differnt componets of clothing lines don't all accept a total number of modification rating points equal to 6, and you just use the compined armor value of the whole outfit to calculate the amount of modifications you can put in. so in my characters case 7*1,5=10,5 so 11 rating points worth of modfications and not 4*6=24 rating points.

Aside from all this mechanical stuff the description of Hurlg (p.75) made me laugh. A lot. It's supposedly an incredibly thick ale the consistency of soup that is composed of a "combination of 160 to 180 proof alcohols." While incredibly potent alcohols is a fantasy trope this just makes no goddamn sense on any level since 180 proof alcohol is 90% ethanol by volume. This is ~5% less alcohol than the point at which it becomes impossible to get purer ethanol via a means of distillation and *long* past the point where you'd be able to charitably describe anything as a "thick ale". It could be a much less potent drink made by simply adding distilled liquor to some normal ale (see: malt beverages) but thats hardly what they're implying here. There are simply not words to describe how silly this is.

The description more-or-less matches medieval beer:

Would you consider that more or less believable than an alloy of gold, copper, mercury, and silver? No one says Hurlg can exist in the downcycle.
That extra 5% could easily be, ummmm, wait for it.....oh, I know, hagfish proteins! They're like, compact long-chain hydrophilic proteins that pack up really dense, but when they get wet they absorb water and turn into a thick slime that scares away predators. Or something. I don't know, someone who knows about hagfish can probably explain it better. Anyway, my point is, thickeners exist. You can make something thick and sludgy with only a tiny percentage of the mixture being thickeners. Is that my point? Do I have a point? Hmmm, doesn't seem like it.

That bit of armor everyone has now is easily balanced by distributing weapons that are already in the main book. I´ve experienced a strong collective restriction in weapon choices so far. The base for this restriction was how deadly autmatic fire is, and that the PCs are better off keeping conflicts at the pistol level. If you like to use the cool toys, a slight upgrade of protection tech is desireable.

I think that +1 hit on DR will result in weapon usage shifting one step up, Pistols>SMG>AR>LMG. Not bad IMO, but I think some will think different.

Yes but there is a notable difference between "stronger than most modern beer" which is usually 5-10% alcohol by volume and the proofs they quote. 15% alcohol is a 50% improvement over *very strong* beer. 20% is double the potency of very strong modern ale, and is half of what most modern liquor is alcohol-wise. They're claiming beer with more than twice the potency of modern hard liquor. It takes some pretty intense distilling to get to that level of alcohol concentration and the techniques you use are not the same as those for beer production. I have no problem conceptually with orcs and trolls drinking a highly potent throwback drink- I'm 6'3" and around 200lbs myself so I can appreciate the need to some extent. Conceptually and in general its a fine setting element, I'm just saying that the numbers used go so far beyond the point of artistic license that they become hilarious and imply that the author didn't know what they meant.

Not an ale in the traditional sense, more likely a fortified ale product created by adding neutral grain alcohol to ale or lager. Still, if you think that's funny you should know that the Original Recipe comes from Earthdawn and is a mix of grain alcohol and animal fats.

I wasn't saying the proof # made sense, just that the description as a whole wasn't too improbable.

And yet no one drank it in the downcycle. I still say it's low-grade alchemy.

Maybe I missed it, but did anybody mention how wicked worn armor is with the medium sized android? Stack on all the armor you can, then add all the "freebie" armor that doesn't count for encumbrance. It may not have the raw body of a troll and thus less max armor, but it is immune to damage that is converted from physical to stun.

hence why it's not unusual to see tanks even today being loaded up with some sand-bags for example O.o
Heck, it actually makes sense x.x . . did i miss that bit or are there no rules for more than 2 legs on an anthoform-drone? O.o
i somehow wanna try to build good old Sarpedon . .