So if I have two cyberarms, each with Armor 2, that gives me +4 cumulative armor, right? Does this armor count against encumbrance limits? SR4A doesn't seem to have answers to these questions.

No one really knows for certain, but here is what you will generally be told: Yes it gives you +4 cumulative armor, and no it doesn't count against encumbrance limits, but many people house rule that it does to prevent tanks.

Tank? A character all chromed up like this would be a frekking 50ft wall-width bunker

and after having lost huge parts of his own body and essence which could have been used for other more usefull stuff AND having paid enough money to buy any weapon that can take him down too, i think that's okay too . .

Yes, with one caveat: gamemasters may choose to only apply a cyberlimb's attributes, including armor, to tests directly involving said cyberlimb (p.343, SR4A).

Oh dear. Here we go.

Y'know, for called shots and things. Highly situational.

Yes, I know what you meant. There is another thread in which a long .... discussion had evolved regarding what constitutes an 'attribute' of a cyberlimb and whether it is right to average values across the body. I fear the discussion and some of the acrimony therein may regenerate here.

Of course it will. Because Armor is not an Attribute, and if i only have to deal with the armor in the given location, then i am just going to go for the eyes, nose, ears and mouth, as those can get not armor. And so on, and so on.

What? Strike the vulnerable spots on a person, where they either aren't armored or are signficantly more prone to injury? Munchkinism! It'll never catch on! I want som realism!

To say it again, in SR you can't target a specific location. The system does not support it. What you can do is bypassing armor which infers the same penalty whether your target is wearing a heavily armored codpiece or a lightly armored coverall, or aiming for a spot where more damage is likely. You cannot decide which location this is. It might be the eye ("no" armor) or the heart(most likely to be armored). Otherwise everyone will do face/headshots since the best the defender can get is 2 armor which will be negated with all but the weakest weapon and ammunition.

The armor value is a combination of protective value of the material and the amount of body it covers.

To me Cyberlimb armor should be added without encumbering and not averaged. The disadvantages of the limbs are bad enough as they are. If someone wants to be a tank, let him. If you really want to change something about that it should be IMHO the inconsistency between the description of a melee attack and the rules for using a cyberlimb for it. It would make a lot more sense to use the average strength than the value of a single limb.

Apparently you've never had a player with a cyberskull. And with the right "other" enhancements the face is probably the worst place to shoot one one.

I had a player with a chrome skull look with protective eye visors and no external openings for a mouth or ears. Eating was a bitch (used the decker food couches and IV systems to eat) and he ran off of 2 internal air tanks.

Still he wanted to be indestructible. *shudder*

That is pretty badass, i will give him that O.o
Sounds a bit like Karl Ruprecht Kroenen. From Hellboy 1. Not the real one.
Still, protective eye covers only give 1 point of impact armor, if any at all . .
Just as per the rules of course . .

In that case, he gets 1 point of impact armor for damage to the eyes, and 2 points (3 if he bulk modifies his skull to freakishly large proportions) of ballistic and impact armor for everything else on his head, unless he bulk modifies his head, in which case .

I'd much rather shoot that 3 points of armor than the 8 from an armor jacket, stacked with 4 from FFBA any day of the week.

There are no hit locations in SR! In your example the character gets 1+3+8+4=15 armor unless the shooter takes a -15 penalty to avoid armor.

I’m quite aware that there are no hit locations in SR4 and of how Called Shots work. I’m pointing out that if they did, the limits on how much armor you can put on a cyberlimb would make cyberlimb armor worthless. Fortunately, there are no hit locations, so the armor on the limb adds to the whole total since it increases the amount of protection that you have.

Then we are in agreement.

I have to agree with Dakka. The rules are pretty clear about the called shot issue and armor. One thing that I don't think it allows but should is to be able to reduce the effectiveness of armor instead of totally negating it. For example, the cyber limbed sam with 15 total armor, making a called shot and only trying to bypass 6 points of armor and taking the-6 to your dice pool, or however much you want to depending on your existing dice pool.

hit locations aside (and yes, I remember that thread *shivers*) a character like this could almost be considered a cyberzombie or jarhead,

The limbs weren't cybered as they were "replaceable and not vital to survivability". He just had the skull and torso. Then he stacked on PPP and regular armor and a helmet. His armor value was in the mid to high twenties if I remember right.

Under SR3 Rules, Cyber-Limb-Armor WAS indeed, averaged . . which greatly contributed to the general Suck of those in that Edition.
Something the Cyber-Head did was to generally lessen the Damage Niveau by one level. So no matter how much power it was, even if it was 100Light Damage to the head, there would not have been any damage, as the head would have scaled it down to 100NOTHING Damage to the Head. I don't think the Torso did something like that, and i am pretty sure the limbs did not.
But back in SR3, getting Armor up was easy, and it actually made surviving stuff WAY easier too . . You could without too much trouble get your Armor to be 10/10 without too much encumberance either, and by then, only things like full auto shotguns and the such were a threat to you . .

Actually Dakka has it wrong... look at option 4.
"The gamemaster may also allow other specific effects for called shots if he chooses..."

That's nothing but a reiteration of rule 0. It doesn't list for example shooting the tires out on a vehicle... but that's an obvious use of called shots. There's no reason someone couldn't target someones cyberlimb w/ a called shot. What's remarkable is that they saw fit to STRESS the use of GM discretion in this case.

The book actually encourages the GM to use common sense for targeting and does allow for partial bypass of armor. It just doesn't explicitly say it. It's simply a matter of the GM eyeballing it and providing an appropriate penalty.

Just like Ancient suggests... common sense applies... someone wants to shoot someone in the leg so they have a harder time running away? They want to shoot them in their gun arm.. .they call the cyberlimb, the GM eyeballs and applies appropriate modifiers.

Just to add to the complexity of the discussion, cyberlimbs add boxes to the damage track. As far as I can tell, nowhere does it say this applies only to shots at the cyberlimbs.

Actually shooting a tire is in option 4 as an example, but nowhere does it say that you should not use all of the armor if you aim for the tire or the limb.

I don't think you want to do that, especially not to allow only armor of the targeted body part to protect the traget. Then only Headshots will happen since the highest armor you can get on a head is 7 IIRC. This can completely be negated by a sniper rifle with APDS. ExEx also does a great job

I agree with that, as long as the entire armor applies.

This could and would mean that you need a damage monitor for each and every cyber limb of it's own, if that box only applied to attacks against that certain limb.
The extra boxes come from the simple fact that you are not getting hurt if your cyber limb is hit, but the cyber-limb is being damaged. Which you can simply ignore.
At least, untill it stops working.

Disagree strongly... common sense is that if you're bypassing all the armor is -10 dice for -10 armor. Then a partial bypass using option 4 could easily bypass a fraction of the armor for a smaller penalty. EG: -4 dice to ignore 4 of the same 10 points of armor. Option 4 to me clearly encourages a DM to make such calls.

Also cyberlimbs and full body tests still apply... if the character is behind heavy full cover with only their smartgun and arm exposed... it's not a full body test anymore. It's perfectly appropriate for the GM to only apply damage to the arm and it's worn + cyber armor. It's not something which only comes up with called shots.

Similarly, vehicles... called shot to hit a 'weak' spot in the armor... doesn't mean there is no armor, could mean that the armor is thinner there than in the front. They common train snipers today to go for these spots on armored vehicles... not because there's no armor but because it's weak in those locations.

IMO: one of the failings of the system is that it doesn't really do a good job of saying... well yes you can disable his gun arm or his leg if you do this. It only provides a vague guideline on called shots, and no guidance for what is an appropriate level of damage/guidance... (EG: if I do 5 points to the leg... how much is it impaired?)

With all but the weakest weapons this option makes total avoidance of armor useless. You could take the -4 and reduce the other 6 dice with the weapons AP. With the normal avoidance rule you have to avoid base armor not the modified value.

To simulate this situation the target gets extra defense dice (SR4A) or the attacker gets an additional penalty(SR4). And it is still a full body test.

Now why does the target still get a resistance roll? I guess BOD is just the rest of the target's damage resistance.

This is a problem with option 4 of the called shots.

Okay Dakka... here's where your entire position is weak.

I'm calling you out on this. Tell me where in the entire book it says that damage resistance tests are always resolved as full body tests. It's not stated once that I could find. If you can't back up that core foundational assertion then your entire argument is baseless.


As for the first... would you rather called shot for damage... +1 damage for -1 dice... that accomplishes the same ends only better. So your argument about bypassing armor is pretty weak as the second option is even stronger for partial bypass... +4 damage is worth about 12 points of armor for only a -4 penalty. So that's another reason I see partial bypass as not a huge problem from a GM perspective.

As for the second... Correct defender gets extra dice on reaction... but it is only a partial body test. The only relevant text is under cyberlimbs where only the limbs in question for the test are involved in any test. (EG: you're using a bow, average both the arms and the torso... you draw high poundage longbows w/ your back muscles not your arms). If the situation is such that not all the limbs are involved in the damage resistance test, then their ratings would not be added in.



I can come up with numerous examples where they wouldn't.

Big troll is slamming door shut, street sam stuffs cyberleg in door to stop it from closing. You would not use full impact armor from other cyberlimbs to resist the crushing damage. How do you justify using a full body test?

You're arguing the rules contradict common sense, when they don't. (not saying there aren't areas where they do... but this isn't one of them).

There is only one place where it actually says not to use "full body tests", which isn't even a game term IIRC, and that is with Cyberlimb Attributes. There are there kinds of Attributes: Physical, Mental and Special. Armor is not one of them.


I agree. It was just and observation that it makes this option more powerful, than it was possibly intended to be.

Yes, you the average or even minimum of the Attributes involved, as above. Even RAW however contradicts this in the example of punching someone with a cyberarm.

I can only justify it by the rules since, as I said before, Armor is not an attribute. The guy would however only use the Body of his foot. With a foot this isn't that bad but now think about a Cyberskull, which should be at least somewhat protective. There is however almost no room to fit in Armor or BOD, so by your ruling it is actually easier to make a killing headshot on someone with a cyberskull than without. Now this is silly.

There is another problem with your ruling: unless you add additional houserules, 11+ boxes of damage to the cyberfoot would kill the guy, which is a lot easier if only partial armor is allowed.

Here's my question, I'm using APDS rounds in a Barrett Sniper rifle. This gives me a total AP of -8. If I make a called shot against the aforementioned target, would I need to take a -7 or -15 penalty?

According to RAW -15. The Modified Armor Value is only mentioned in damage resistance tests.

Welcome to why no one ever calls a shot to avoid armor.

Now, I would be happy to take a -7 penalty for -7 armor on a called shot while using my Barrett with APDS.

Or you could take a -4 and get +4 damage, which effectively is worth 12 points of armor. Heck, assume they roll well, -4 dice for effective -8 armor (still a better option).

-15; it makes sense.

Instead of counting on your gun/ammo to penetrate the armor, you try to circumvent its protection outright. Your penetration abilities don't matter in this case.




OTOH, you could also argue that you're aiming at a "weak" spot on the armor that's only "worth 8" armor. But that only works if you can take a partial penalty to partially negate armor (I don't think you can, RAW).