All right, I'm new to this forum, so this might be the wrong thread to post this in, my apologies to you all. I have the option of, for my first character, choosing 2 different types of armor:
The Lined Jacket
or:
Well, a combination of Form Fitting Body Armor, Biker Armor, and PPP (a la Arsenal). From what I understand of the rules, they should both be viable options, as neither will encumber me (Body 4)
In case it's relevant, I'm playing a Fire Support+Face combination with proficiency in Close Combat. Human, trying to remain technically "legal" as of the start of the game, just in case my GM wants my first encounter to be with some Lone Star agents.
I thank you for your time, and eagerly await your suggestions.

I'd suggest the lined jacket from a purely non-numbers perspective. It may not protect you quite as well as the other stuff, but I figure a Face needs to not look like he is from some biker gang or about to go into the middle of a combat zone (Even if he is about to go into the middle of a combat zone)

You might want to try a combination like Armored jacket and Form fitting body armor. It'll combine the inconspicuous look with something a bit more protective overall.

The great thing about form fitting body armor is that it can be worn with other types of armor. I have a Chaos Mage with the following: Lined coat, half suit FFBA, and PPP. His total armor is 11/7

I would recommend armor vest + FFBA + forearm guards + a normal longcoat, maybe leather.

That way you have the defense, you have the concealibility, you have the cool factor, and if you get into a situation where a longcoat would be questionable you can remove it while maintaining defense.

If you need heavy gear for when you know the shit is gonna hit the fan, I suggest a dark blue camou suit with a helmet. And accessories if you choose.

FFBA is your best bet, it's a great investment since you can wear it underneath normal clothes too. Even underneath your Actioneer Business Clothes. With Body 4 that's Armour 8 before you get encumbered.

In any case, buy FFBA and then select everything else. As a Face you'll get great use out of it.

When my BOD 4 mage expects trouble, he wears FFBA Full suit, all PPP items except the helmet an an Aces High Jacket. That's 11/9 and no encumbrance. Kind of a houserule but if he doesn't wear the hood and gloves of the FFBA (working like the half suit) it's still good armor and totally concealed.

I hate FFBA. I hate FFBA because in every edition, it's been an absolute must-have item in the same way a Perfect Defense Combo is a must-have in Exalted. I disallow FFBA because of that, but if your GM uses it, any armor combo you use should include FFBA. Period.

And Dakka Dakka, why don't you stack an Armor spell on top of all of that? You could reasonably expect 17/15 armor with no encumbrance.

Because I don't like the glowing "Geek me first, I'm the mage" sign. Increase BOD and/or Combat Sense (or Deflection) are on my wish list. The mage already knows Improved Invisibility, which should also help with survivability.

Is Armor *EVER* better than Deflection? You know, apart from the distraction factor.

The main drawback to deflection is that it only works on ranged attacks.

The advantage of Deflection is that it is used to defend against attacks not to resist damage, the drawbacks are that you don't get any bonus against melee attacks and the spell does not work if you are surprised. Come to think of it combat Sense (Spell) mitigates those problems.

Although my previous post may have sounded otherwise but my first choice would be Increase BOD, corrected. In addition to the soak dice you are also allowed to wear more armor under the influence of the spell.

The Spell category may also be a factor for the choice of a preferred spell. Combat Sense is a Detection spell, Increase [Attribute] is a Health Spell, Armor and Deflection are Manipulation Spells

Ahh, yeah. I tend to forget about the glow, because it's never really an issue when I have it up: I'm either Improved Invisibilitied, or Chameleon-Suited.

A chameleon suit would do nothing to stop a magical glow, and the jury is out on whether or not invis would stop it.

That's certainly AN opinion, but not fact.

You cast armor, you glow. You toss a chameleon poncho over you (who are glowing) and now the Poncho glows? Opinion, not fact. I glow, and then I cast invisibility, and... for some mystical reason, the glow is not also invisible? Also opinion.

Well, armor creates "a glowing field of magical energy around the subject", so regardless of what kinda clothing/armor you are wearing, you would still have a field of light around you. So yeah you'll be colored just like the brick wall your against, as long as people don't notice that part of the wall is conspicuously glowing. As for invisibility, it makes it so you can't be seen, it doesn't mention anything about hiding spell effects. If you cast flamethrower while invisible I would expect to see a gout of flame in the air, even if it comes from nothing. Likewise is an invisible target has armor, then there would be an otherwise empty glowing spot.

Does it say how far away the field is? An inch? Three feet? Fifty? No. So it's really up to the GM to interpret. My group's assumption that armor spells do not interact poorly with ruthenium or invisibility is that in no published adventure does a PC gain a bonus to detect a be-armored and be-invisio'd enemy. I should also note that Invisibility may not make any note of hiding spell effects... but it also doesn't say it DOESN'T hide spell effects. It also doesn't make any explicit note of hiding light sources. So logically, if I'm invisible and using my commlink with it's built in screen, I should also be casting shadows and light all over the wall. Or if I'm carrying a glow stick, shit around my invisible self should glow. Or, heaven forfend, if I am using flame aura, I should make light and be unable to use invisibility.

But we think that's dumb, so it doesn't.

Part of this undoubtedly comes from the fact that in earlier editions, Armor didn't have a glow and now it does - or at least none of us remember it causing a glow in 2nd Ed. But part of it also comes from the fact that we tend to err on the side of people having refined spells to make them more convenient. Over 20 years of game-time, someone's probably going to have invented an Invisibility spell that also hides flame auras (but not the heat, sure), spell glows, and glow sticks.

For my characters I almost never use FFBA. If I do I only use the shirt. It is similar to the reason why I almost always use armor vests.
-dusters should be worn open so they can billow porperly
-constantly wearing a buttoned-up duster indoors raises suspicion
-vests have the same B/I rating
-can you really imagine wearing a skintight bodysuit under your clothes ALL the time?
Granted that these reasons have no game mechanics, but this game is about pretending to be someone else.

The person who is targeted by the armor spell glows, so it does not matter if you wear a chameleon poncho. Your face is not covered, so it will glow. even if the target had ruthenium coated skin, the eyes would still glow.

I do understand your argument about Invisibility but it opens a whole other can of worms. Can the invisible person use a flash light? how about the eye light system? Will the light shine? Can he use it to see better in the dark?

Any chameleon poncho worth it's salt will also include some booties and a face cover or drape, or whoever sold it to you need a punch in the face. Just sayin'.

Oh man, that is totally my favorite argument of all time, the good old 'it doesn't not say it'. You know what else invisibility doesn't specifically not do? It doesn't specify that it doesn't kill all enemies within 200m when you cast it, so it must do it, right?

Personally I would think that invisibility in fact does not cause all light sources to not emit light. After all, if that was the case you'd be unable to use a flashlight, you'd be unable to make use of that glow-stick (Why are you carrying a glow-stick if not for the light?).

If it creates a glow around you which cannot be covered by putting on normal armor/clothing, why is it that chameleon clothing can suddenly hide the glow? It isn't like the clothing projects a sphere of 'can't see me' around you, it just changes how it looks. So yeah, it could change to look like a brick wall, but it wouldn't be any different than putting on a normal shirt that happens to look like a brick wall as far as any sort of glowing aura is concerned.

It did not. In Shadowrun 1 and 2, Armor did not glow - it knitted tissues together more tightly - but Barrier did. In SR3, Armor glowed just as Barrier [in SR3, Physical Barrier and Astral Barrier] does. [The workaround in SR3 was to use Anchoring to only have the spell come on in the vicinity of a bullet, preferably a speeding bullet.]

At our table, neither spell has ever glowed, although we toyed with it a bit when SR3 came out. We abandoned it, and have not found it unbalancing to our game, if for no other reason than the same conditions apply to our opposition. Sometimes spell-made Barriers will glow for effect when struck, but generally, we treat them as invisible.

But we are also very flexible with the rules at our table, which many people do not seem to be.

If you were a professional criminal in the future, what would you buy? I'd think owning all of the above wouldn't be absurd, to keep your options open, and maybe some fancy-dress stuff besides [if you have Arsenal]. Sometimes you need armor to be noticeable, sometimes you don't; sometimes you need to look unprotected, sometimes you don't. Why not invest in a range of armor types?

For my part, form-fitting would be a part of any ensemble I was wearing in which I expected someone might try to shoot at me; it's reasonably comfortable, doesn't look out-of-place [without the hood and gloves, natch], and moves with you, rather than against you: ask anyone who wears a bulletproof vest or even a stab vest how much they'd prefer something form-fitting and not bulky! Irrespective of the mechanical benefits such armor might provide, from a roleplaying perspective, I can't imagine anyone who ever gets shot at not investing in a suit of it.

The only problem I see from a runner's perspective is that FFBA is tailored to your figure. So somewhere in the matrix there are your exact measurements. Depending on how omnipresent you decide cameras to be and how powerful you decide image recognition software to be in 2070, this could be a problem.

For the same reason that covering yourself in nanotattoos hides the glow - it covers you, and the shit you are carrying. For the same reason it hides a flashlight. It's under the cloth. Why does invisibility? Cuz it's a goddamn illusion spell, that's why. My point is simply thus: you cannot say "You can't do that, RAW sez X!" when RAW actually says Y, which is like X but not quite, as it doesn't talk give it more than a cursory mention that apparently is *visible*, but does nothing to impede stealth rolls - or it sure as shit doesn't suggest it does. Ergo, at the end of the day, the GM interprets what that means based on situation. You don't like it? Fine, that's great! But don't tell me the rules are keeping me from doing something when they do nothing of the sort.

I'm tired of the over-reliance on the letter of the rules, and people attempting to "correct" Dumpshockers with their opinions, rather than just give opinions.

And, for a second monkey wrench, what if some player makes an armor spell using spell design, and it DOESN'T have a glow? There's certainly no mechanic in the spell design rules that say, "Hey, that Manipulation doesn't glow! Take extra drain!" Although a GM that liked the glow could probably do so.

Fortunately, I took the Erased (10 pts) Positive Quality. Yup those pesky measurements are a thing of history!

Really, nanotattoos would stop the glow? The fact that your skin can change what it looks like will stop you from glowing? Now that I -really- don't understand. Nanotattoos don't cover "the shit you are carrying", but you may be talking about chameleon armor now (Your ranting became rather difficult to read). I can totally understand chameleon armor (Or poncho as you keep calling it, I guess you could get a poncho) stopping a flashlight that is held underneath it, though the flashlight wouldn't help you out very much at that point, because you wouldn't be able to see the light either (Also, if you have a poncho as opposed to actual armor, some of the light may spill onto the floor depending on how long the poncho is).

I've never said that RAW said X, I simply said that "RAW doesn't say not Z, so obviously Z" isn't a good argument. After that I really can't decipher what exactly your talking about any more, something about the armor spell not explicitly mentioning that the glow gives penalties to stealth maybe? Well, I'm not entirely sure, but I think that the stealth tables would indicate some kind of penalty for being illuminated. If not, your right, it is entirely up to the GM to determine any kind of penalties for such a glow. As for invisibility spell, I'm totally willing to believe that it would cover the glow of the armor spell (Or deflection or whichever glowing spell we're talking about), and a flashlight would also be up for GM interpretation, but it is my opinion that invisibility would not stop a flashlight you are holding from shining. It is also my opinion that invisibility wouldn't stop the glow from the armor spell either, but if you want to mitigate the disadvantages to using certain spells, that is up to you and your GM.

Edit: Hehe, nothing worse than having your measurements out on the 'trix I was kind of under the impression that form fitting body armor wasn't necessarily made to your exact specifications, but instead was made of a semi-elastic sort of material that is a 'one size fits all' sort of thing (Except more like one size fits two sizes)

I... uh... I mistyped the nanotattoos thing. I meant nanotatoos are hidden under a chameleon suit. You got me there.

The reason for a poncho over a suit, in my opinion, is the ability to hide bulkier stuff under it. You don't need to worry about a ruthenium backpack, you just get a normal backpack and throw on the poncho and pants. Just a stylistic thing.

Ah, that makes alot more sense then. Yeah, it hides your nanotattoos (Though you can just turn them off too) but your nanotattoos are only on your skin. My basic argument is that the glow of the armor spell doesn't seem to be impeded by wearing say regular clothing, or regular armor, or anything similar, so it seems that it is projected from some level beyond just the skin. Now, admittedly a poncho (I love that word in reference to stealth gear) is going to be a bit farther from the skin than a chameleon suit would be, so I could totally see it covering the glow, though you might still have a bit of problem around your head and hands where the distance between your cover and skin is smaller.

Hehe... Stealth poncho = win