Hello. I am a veteran shadowrunner, but new to 4th edition, and I am hoping to get a few things confirmed about the first character I constructed, and what dice he is going to roll when he gets shot.

Question 1: My character is a troll. He gets 1 die of natural armor. I can't find the page that details whether that is ballistic, impact, or both.

Question 2: Armor and Encumbrance. A character's armor is compared to Bodyx2 to determine whether he takes agility/reaction penalties. Is the +1 die of natural armor included in this calculation, or is it left out since it is 'part of the troll'? What about the armor bonus for cyberware like aluminum bone lacing?

Question 3: Form Fitting Body Armor, from Arsenal, pg 48 seems too good to be true. Stackable armor, plus half the encumbrance seems excessive. Am I reading my rules right? My troll has a body of 9, an armor jacket (8/6) aluminum bone lacing (0/1, and +2 body dice to resist damage), a full suit of form-fitting-body-armor (6/2) and a helmet (1/2) This gives him a grand total of 11 + 15/11, not counting the natural armor (pending an answer to question 1). Is that really 26 dice to resist a bullet wound, or am I messing up somewhere? Are there elements of this equation that are not compatible with each other?

Thank you for your assistance. Drinks on me if we meet in the sprawl.

Question 1: Both.

Question 2: The natural armor shouldn't count towards encumbrance; I wouldn't count bone lacing either, but I don't know if there is an official rule you can point to about it.

Question 3: Omae, you just figured out why people roll Trolls. Yes, your math looks good to me, and I have seen similar builds on other Trolls. Even more interesting is if you consider cashing in that dice pool for automatic successes on soak rolls at 4 per success...you can basically ignore weapons that hit for 6DV. Melee against your guy? Futile. Critters? Laughable. 9mm? Not gonna cut it. Ruger Super Warhawk with DV6 and AP -2? Maybe if you get some net hits, dude. You are a Troll. You are Mighty!

2. Natural and 'ware armor does not cause stacking penalties because it's part of the body.

3. Form Fitting armor seems unbalanced to me, but it doesn't seem like it's wrong. It's not the only item that almost everybody buys because it's so awesome.

Missing the custom fit armor and custom fit FFBA so that they go against Body X 3 instead. Then include the Securetech stuff for another 2/6 stackable armor. Now -that- is broken. Though with a body of 9 you don't really need it.

But you seem to be doing it right.

We don't do custom armor at my table and still I had an elf throwing 30+ dice for Damage Resistance Tests. It's all about stacking.

For a troll, you should also look into doing Chainmail, Form Fitting, and a Ballistic Shield. For very little effort you can get a really high AC.

After you get your armor to a comfortable level, get a car, armor it, and put in a rigger's coccoon. That's another up to 40/40 armor. It's actually fairly easy to get over 100/100 armor, although you're in a vehicle to do so (and vehicles are not neccessarily "evening wear").

The downside being vehicle wrecks are oh so nasty.

20 vehicle armor with a 10 body is not that easy to wreck. And don't turn this into another e-peen contest. It's possible, it's legal (that is, RAW), and it's easy for the GM to avoid ("You guys need to go through the sewers. No, you can't take your car through the sewers."). It can be blown up with effort, but the chances of corpsec pulling it off are slim to none.

Most stacking armor pieces (Like PPP or a Helmet) add 1-2 armour while the Form-fit is in a special magical category where it stacks for massive +6 ballistic AND causes less encumbrance where no other armour stacks. I am not too fond of that since it makes _everyone_ able to wear 12+ ballistic armour, rendering all small arms nearly useless. In the long run, this means that the fulcrum shifts completely over to Direct combat spells and dartguns (that ignore armor with 2 net hits, dealing 10S per shot if you use Narcojet).

Form-fit is also dirt cheap and "invisible" making it a must have for _everyone_. Since my players require RAW I simply added Formfit stats to every npc, but my suggestion was to simply set it as "not stacking" and put it in line with other armours. Highest of ballistic and impact counts, total for encumbrance. You may add PPP, helmet or shield if you like but Form-fit is more than good enough as "invisible armour you can always wear", it doesn't need the godlike status it has now.

The security companies in my game have made dartguns their new main weapon since Form-fit made their regular pistols useless.

Formfitting Armor is a little bit like Smartlink
where Smartlink gives a plain +2 Bonus to everybody FF Armor give +2/+4/+6 Dice to Ballistic Armor or 0/+1/+2 to Impact
Sorry but I don't understand why You're so Upset with the Armor when Smartlink does virtually the same (Raising the Pool)

@Dances with Trolls
My troll has a body of 9, an armor jacket (8/6) aluminum bone lacing (0/1, and +2 body dice to resist damage), a full suit of form-fitting-body-armor (6/2) and a helmet (1/2) This gives him a grand total of 11 + 15/11, not counting the natural armor (pending an answer to question 1)
Thats Right
+1/+1 for his skin is a total of +16/+12
(and would be no Hindrance for someone with KON of 6)

he who also dances with Trolls
Medicineman

Full form-fitting body armor, which includes gloves and a hood, is not exactly invisible. Most of my characters wear the half-suit, instead.

Note that automatic successes are NOT supposed to be used for things like combat, or any other situation where there is a chance of failure. Although with a high dice pool, you will generally get more hits by rolling, any ways.

High armor doesn't really make small arms fire useless, though. Bursts can really do some damage (and even if you convert it to stun, that isn't always a good thing - most combat builds will have a physical damage track that is bigger than their stun physical damage track).

gloves and hood are not needed to get full 6/2 armor from FFBA (full-body version)..

Stun is generally more versatile. It does not only allow for a non-lethal outcome with all benefits thereof (less murder cases, criminals are less likely to chase you for knocking one of their men down than they are if you had killed them, you can interrogate/torture or steal more from stunned targets and you can always execute them before running away if you really wanted them dead) including the fact that it very hard to get more stun boxes than physical ones.

So, I didn't really mean it made small arms useless. It made burst fire even more important, if not using shotguns (that go impact and form-fit only adds +2 impact armour). I just dislike it's magical must-have status. At least smart link is hackable/jam-able/detectable. Maybe I've scared my players with technomancers instahacking but they are reluctant to using anything wireless when on critical missions because they can't protect their stuff and rather loose the +2 bonus than loosing the ability to use the gun at all

why stop there..for body 9..
Armor Jacket (8/6)
FFBA (full-body) (6/2) (counted as 3/1 when counting penalties)
Vitals Protection (PPP system) 1/1 (discreet version)
Leg and Arms Casing (PPP system) 1/1 (discreet version)
Shin Guards (PPP system) 0/1 (discreet version)
Forearm Guards (PPP system) 0/1 (discreet version)
Helmet 1/2
Adding Troll's natural 1/1
(if making troll Changeling and taking Dermal Deposit-metagenetic quality previous numbers would be 2/2)
adding couple cyberlims w/armor 3..
All nice RAW legal

All nice RAW legal
Yes but now you're on the dark Road to Powergaming. (You can ask Stahlseele: he's got some experience playing TankTrolls)
Because If you play this Troll the GM is likely to come up with exeedingly tough Enemies that might Kill your Teammates
for Collateral Damage (I hope I'm using the right Words ?)

Hokahey
Medicineman

i know that..
i was just trying to point out how easily trolls get HUGE armor numbers..

3 shots of Narcojet (10S each) is enough to take care of those trolls, dartguns do ignore armor after all. F12 overcasted stunbolts is another classic. That is what mages use anyway since it is guaranteed one-shot (unless you have 9+ willpower or extra stunboxes through teh adept power)

Narcojet is countered with Chemical protection, so no go..
usually trolls have weak willpower, so mages rule there..
what is why 1st rule of SR fight is: Geek The Mage First!!

Of course, most of that armor won't help against a well placed called shot, which is exactly what the called shot rules are for. Even with the penalty, you're statistically better off to call the shot than to just blast through the armor. Of course, this is when being a troll really helps! Called shots have become pretty common at my table.

Calling shots to bypass armor? Why is that statistically better, except for ensuring you do Physical damage?

The +4DV for -4 dice to hit, that's a good tradeoff, but I don't see the bypassing armor being good for much? Is there some binominial spreads at work here, because the expected results seem to be the same for a hit, but with less chance of hitting.

The called shot to ignore armour rule seems heavily broken to me. The reasoning behind it is somewhat sound but statistically it only means you miss. The only reason to use it is on surprise attacks where the troll don't roll any defence and even then, -15 or worse on your roll means non-min-maxed characters won't have a chance to hit even in ambush.

The +DV is usually the best if in combat, but ignoring armor can be effective in certain situations. Surprise is one (aiming can partly offset the penalty) and especially when using flechettes and the like which normally would give a bonus to armor - not every corp sec guard has APDS. At my table, both players and the opposition make extensive use of stealth, so surprise is actually pretty common.

It's not RAW, but I've also house ruled that you only take the called shot penalty for the heaviest armor worn when staking armor, baring helmets and the like, and that natural armor/implants can't be bypassed and don't apply penalties to the shot. It realistically shouldn't be any harder to hit an exposed area regardless of what the character is wearing underneath the armor. So form fit plus armor jacket would be -8 rather than -14.

Edit:
Edge is also relevant here. Less dice total means less dice you can re-roll to bump up your total soak hits and fewer chances for 6s.

You are not thinking BIG enough. You want smartskin, trauma-dampener, suprathyroid-gland and platelet factory... even IF they do damage, they don't do very much.

Also change Troll to Fomori (for protection against magic and +1 body *g*) And fit in some Nanosymbionts, bio-symbionts and that wriggling symbiont for + dice on healing.

That is what i have build... in combat (with a PPP-System, armor, smartskin active) i throw 30 dice against balistic and 34 against impact (17/21 armor) and if i get damage i get one box converted to stun and that ignored.

And that character isn't even optimized for armor... he is optimized for recovery... he can pretty much just eat a pig and a sack of sugar (Suprathyroid gland and symbiontes) sleep 8 hours and be good as new tomorrow after having shot into oblivion (25 dice-modifier+medicine dice for healing)

WAIT... no... not back into the powergame-punishment cellar.. NOOOOOO............

You are all noobs...

to maximize armor you should take a suitable number of FFFBs. For example, if you have Body 3 you take 2 FFFBs, with Body 6 you take 4 FFFBs and so on. Nowhere is said, that you can only wear one of them at the same time..

but serious in my opinion the form-fitting armor is too good, too. My favorite house rule is, that you only get half the armor if you combine the form-fitting armor with an other pierce of armor. Then it is well balanced with all the other addon stuff like ppp, gel packs and so on.

cya
Tycho

Rofl!

I houseruled the FFB special rules out of existence. No stacking.

That is what I will do too. The FFBA is still a good piece of armour and it is cheap and easy to conceal and is a perfect option for the poor sods that have less than 3 body so removing the stacking special rule for that armour (no other armour have that stacking bonus NOR the half encumbrance feature) and it is not even restricted to wear it!

Horseman with 8 armor
Rigger Coccoon.
That's 28 armor that anyone can "wear" and can be taken into most buildings nowadays. Especially if you give the Horseman Walker Mode to make it more maneuverable.

EDIT: The vehicle armor is "stackable" and does not count towards encumberance either.

@ people who houserule things out of existance - learn to learn and adapt, don't geek something because you can't defend against it. That's poor GMing.

..Thank u for pointing that out..
Poor Gm's have houserule banned lot of things, couple of i have seen:
Magic does not exist
dragons does not exist
no smartlinks
no ex-(/explosive) rounds

one of the worse excuse of gm: only one race allowed for PC's: Human

Troll tanks are fun for Spirits of man to Fear.

Stone, paper, scissors....

spirits of man have immunity to normal weapons when materialized, but what about Burst of Stick and Shock rounds,
would them disrupt/kill spirit? ( the are not "normal" weapons.. IMOO)

Normal means non-magical. Bullets are bullets, regardless of what they do.

Double posted for some reason.

Still AP -half is great against ItNW.

FFBA just has a really poor set of rules. Why does this armor suddenly stack? An armor vest and an armor jacket don't stack, but FFBA and an armor jacket does? That's pretty strange. And with the half encumbrance thing, all it leads to is a piece of armor that everyone has to use - and nobrainer choices are boring and serve no purpose - and everyone getting +2/+1 armor at the same encumbrance.

If I wanted the effects of FFBA in the game, I'd just add +2/+1 to every piece of armor instead, much simpler.

In my game I drastically increased the cost and availability of FFBA, I also was considering having it become ruined after being damaged X number of times.

The main book I have says its just fine for resisting damage.

How many dice are the people doing these called shots willing to drop to bypass that much armor?

Ya, I just don't get how you short out the nervous system of a creature that doesn't have one.

Sometimes it isn't a case of being willing to loose the dice, sometimes it's the only option. Not every grunt has access to automatic weapons and APDS. Sometimes all they have is a semiautomatic pistol or a shotgun.

In the case of NPCs, they often loose all of their dice, but my PCs often use the rule against heavy opponents just for the chance at a one shot take down. That's what edge and the long shot rule is for. Yes, I give NPCs, even grunts, edge. I usually run group with professionality of 3-4, so 3-4 edge for the group. I'll trade the limited dice pool of a typical grunt for edge dice without the target getting armor any day. That's 3 or four chances for a group to score a shot that really hurts. Either way, the use of anti-armor called shots tends to come up only during situations where the target can't dodge effectively, such as surprise, from unseen opponents, or against wounded targets. Stealth, surprise, and ambushes are pretty common in my games - my players have learned not to fight fair if they don't have to.

My group started out with older versions of SR (some of us go as far back as SR1). In older editions called shots were way too powerful, especially because of gear (smart link 2) that lowered the penalties to the point that they were basically a sure thing. For SR4 we've tried several variations on the RAW - treating all called shots as -4 die pool made anti-armor a little too good and the RAW was a little too hard (and lead to edge only shots against any significant armor). We currently modify the RAW by not counting stacked armor against the die pool penalty for the shot - so armor jacket plus form fit is still only -8, we make an exception for things like helmets. This means that PCs can usually still have a few dice left without having to go just for the long shot test. Grunts basically have to rely on dumb luck and the long shot rule. Edge is usually used on the shots either way. Usually people just go for the +4 damage, unless their target has really heavy armor or they are loading ammo that gives an armor bonus.

Sometimes you want to scare the PCs with physical damage and the chance for actual death, or the players really want to kill someone rather than just dropping them. That's when the anti-armor shot is really useful. Keep in mind that it only takes a couple of good hits to kill someone without armor, especially when you use ammo like flechettes that normally add to armor. A heavy pistol with flechettes is 6P even without any net hits. That would take 18 body to completely negate, assuming an average roll, ignoring the use of edge. It gets even nastier for rifles and shot guns. One of these hits usually means taking damage and using edge, which isn't fun for a PC. Two or three can be fatal.

The other factor is that you often can't wound an armored opponent with your base die pool vs their base die pool, at least on an average roll. You have to hope for an extreme case where you get many more hits than they do. That means they have to roll really bad. Statistics (and common sense) tells us the more dice you roll, the less likely you are to fall within one of those extremes. Especially when a single point of edge means your opponent can re-roll all his failed dice. The fewer dice he has the more likely you are to get an extreme case - and the less he can re-roll - which is often the only case where you can do any damage. Remember that an edge based re-roll is almost like doubling the number of dice you have to roll so a difference of 4 dice is almost like 8 dice.

From the main book, pg. 55, emphasis mine:

Actually they are required... they are part of the Full Body Suit... if you are not wearing your Gloves, Hood and Booties, then you are not wearing a FULL Body Suit, you are wearing the HALF body suit, that may cover parts of your extremities (Lower arms and Legs)...

For the description, see page 48 of Arsenal...

You may not agree of course...

Keep the Faith

Fixed.

Four-to-one is statistically worse than rolling the dice, but you can't glitch.

That part wasn't in mine. Are you using SR4A?

Hmmmm, to be ecatly If you're not wearing Gloves and Hood your wearing More than 1/2body but not quite Fullbody
So if you go this road you should give it a Protection of 5/1 , 5/2 or 6/1
How would you handle a Trenchcoat thats worn open ?
does it protect less than a closed Coat ?

HokaHey
Medicineman

My armor bypass called shot rule (while not even kinda RAW): determine how much coverage the armor gives, and impose penalties on that. If you're "bypassing" armor, and all the dude has on is a heavily bullet proof biker jacket, then shoot him somewhere else. "Bypassed."

I also like the benefit that armored longcoats provide less armor than armored jackets, but are harder to bypass (specially when buttoned up). Armored vests, on the other hand, are unto like ninja armor (but without the stacking), but only protect the torso, if the opponent calls for a bypass.

I use the normal bypassing rules for Full Body Armors.

2

Once again someone tries to introduce Hit Locations to SR. It does not work, or more precisely it creates more inconsistencies than it removes.

"Full-body suit cover all body (ALL BODY, NOT HALF BODY) including exteremes AND it comes with hoodies,gloves.."
it said nothing those must be worn to get full armor

look at Synergist Business Line: long Coat,shirt and slacks, do i really must wear all to get armor from alone
weared Longcoat.
somehow i do not think so..

How can something cover all the body, if the hands and the head aren't? I think Medicineman's houserule is pretty good.

The Synergist Long Coat is made out of less bullet resistant materials than the Lined Coat. So if you only wear it with normal clothing, all you get is 4/2. Combined with the Synergist shirt and slacks this upgrades to 6/4.

Yeah, hit locations tend to cause more problems than they solve. More realism does not automatically lead to better combat rules, especially in a success based damage system. I tried using hit locations back in SR3...and it basically meant an awful lot of book keeping for very little benefit.

Taken to the extremes it can get silly really fast - try explaining how that troll completely resisted all the damage from that shot that hit him in the eye. So you have to separate "regular" hits that just do damage from "critical" hits that also do injuries. How does this work in a success/soak system? How are the injuries different from the normal wound penalties, etc, etc...The RAW intentionally leave the specifics of injuries, damage, and healing pretty vague.

Hit locations also had another unintended consequence. Smart players refused to enter combat unless they were in full armor, ie protected on every location. How many of your PCs are mixing armor anyways? The only locations not covered by a jacket plus duster are the feet and head, and there were already called shot rules if you want to aim there.

So it was kind of a waste of time for us. Which was a shame. But hey, if it works for your group then go for it. It just didn't work out well for us.

And yet the book says its great to trade in hits, especially for vehicles with LOTS of armor and body dice.

Thats a pretty lame explanation.

cya
Tycho