Does the armor and encumbrance rule count if you only wear one piece of armor like an armor jacket? I have a Body of 3, does that mean I take a minus 1 to agility and reaction if I wear an armor jacket (8/6)? Or does it only count if I layer armor?

R-Caine

Yes, it does.



It means you take the Agility/Reaction hit, even if only wearing one piece of armor. Note that the penalty is higher than -1 in that instance. The penalty would be -3.



Note that the actual penalty is calculated in a different manner than whether there is a penalty or not in the first place.

i always considered this penalty to be a typo, at least tit is way over the top imo.

Moved to appropraite forum. Shadowrun Missions is for the 'Missions' set of adventures and the Commandos group. The Shadowrun forum would be appropraite for rules questions.

There is an optional rule on page 44 of Arse, about ignoring encumbrance when wearing a single piece of armor.

Note that I ddn't have Arsenal when I made that last post, so that book was not taken into consideration. That being said, there is nothing in Arsenal that would change my response, apart from Optional Rules.

Actually he is only getting a -1 since only the ballistic is exceeding his Body x 2. The rule says if either exceed it, and if they do by how much. Not add both together and see if they go over.

Did you even read the example and the rule I quoted in full?

Dude with Body of 3 wearing an armor jacket 8/6.

We compare the rating of either armor against twice the Body. So we have impact armor equaling twice Body (so no problem there), but the ballistic armor exceeds Body times two (by 2, but it doesn't matter how much it is in excess).

Now, as a totally separate calculation, we take the ballistic armor (because that was the problem child), and see how much it exceeds the character's Body (not Body times 2, just Body!). Every 2 points (or part thereof) that the armor exceeds Body incurs a penalty of -1. In this case the ballistic armor exceeds the Body by 5 points, which translates to a -3 penalty.

Encumbrance is quite the sucker if you do the math right.

exceeding your body limit on armor is a bad idea in general. body 3 would be better off wearing the stuff from arsenal. ffba full suit, and either an aces high jacket or a steampunk overcoat, plus the PPP forearm and shin guards. result is 6/6 for stacking purposes, but a total of 9/7 armor with room for 9+6 points of armor mods. and thats without any optional rules. definetly better than an armor jacket.

of course, an 8-body ork can stack up 17/14 with ease. in SR4, body really is a very important measure of your overall survivability. less body is less armor, and more bleeding when you get shot.

OK so I have a player with the following load out.

Body 1 -> Raised to 4 using a Quickend Increase Attribute

Wearing an armor jacket 8/6

With a Quickened Reinforce Spell on the jacket (Force 6)

Increasing the jacket to 14/12

Does he now have a problem?


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(FYI - he also has a Armor 4 spell using a Sustaining Focus 4 Item making it 18/16 + 4 for body)

I wont even go into the Sustained combat sense... sigh

i don't think so... i was under the impression that magical/cybernetic armor didn't count against encumberance rules.

I was not disagreeing with you, just pointing out a new optional rule that might help the OP or others wearing a single piece of armor. As this thread seems to have been moved from the SR Missions Forum, it probably does not matter to the OP, as I do not think SR Missions uses any optional rules.

Maybe the thread should not have been moved, or a new thread asking about this optional rule be asked in the SR Missions Forum.

I would not allow Reinforce to work on worn armor, unless the armor is stiff and inflexible, like maybe plate mail. Reinforce is cast on Barriers. The Reinforce spell lists increasing the Structure Rating, armor doesn't have a Structure Rating. Go To the table describing Structure Ratings, SR4, p.157, and notice that there is nothing on that list that moves like cloth or plastic or anything flexible. Densiplast is listed and Kevlar Wallboard, but neither of those allows movement.

If the player insists on keeping the spell, doing a little rule lawyering or whatever - I would have a 1 meter hole blown in him 10cm according to the rules for barriers when the spell takes 6 boxes of damage.