If milspec allows you to have triple your body for encumbrance purposes, what happens when you mix it with regular armour like a ballistic shield or form-fitting body armour? Does all your armour follow the new triple rule or do you have to do some math to work it out?

You can work it out if you divide the milspec by three and all other armour by two (technically form-fitting gets halved and then halved again). Is that what you'd do?

You could ask your GM to allow you to pay extra to get the rest of your armors customized to you personally, that allows those parts to use the 3xbody too.
(thats an optional rule from the beginning of the armor chapter in Arsenal)

Encumberance is tricky enough to work out – ever tried GMing for a team of 8 and going through which particular configuration of armour they're each wearing every time they leave the house?

I'd say the regular armour nullifies the milspec advantage and keep it at just double. Unless you go with Max's suggestion, which is also good.

Alternatively, you could use a 3xBody total, count Milspec normally, and count other armor as 1.5x for encumbrance.

Actually i take that back, You cant wear FFBA with millspec-armor

Shield on the other hand only modifies the armor value of that Military-grade armor your wearing so thats fair game and still uses the bodx3 rule.

I saw this re not being able to wear millspec with other armor. I was looking at getting the samurai armor, but if I can get form fitting body armor and armor jacket( total 14/10), 11/11 isn't so good. Character is a troll so encumbrance isn't an issue. Of course the ,milspec armor can have other add ons, but even so.

What if you have milspec armour with helmet, shield and securetech PPP. They all count as addons so perhaps the 3x rule covers the armour as a whole.

What makes you think that you can wear PPP stuff with Milspec Armor? As Mäx already quoted you cannot wear any other armor with it.

Shields are a bit iffy since you don't really wear them. For them I'd use the normal BOD*2 since they are not custom-fitted. Also don't forget the additional -1 you get for using a shield.

Well, yes if your a troll with high body the millitary grade armor might not seem so good, but 15/15(red samurai armor+ the helmet) armor needing only body of 5(2 if the armor has mobility ugrade 3) to wear is nothink to coff at.
Nor is the Heavy military armor and a helmet, that 18/16 armor needing only body 6 to wear(only 3 with mobility ugrade 3)

And for a troll you can add gell pack, ballistic shield(+6/4) and the full PPP set sans the helmet(+2/3) making it:
Red Samurai 24/23 needing body of 8(5 with mo ugr 3)
Heavy military 27/24 needing body of 9 (6 with mo ugr 3)

Some GM:s might dissallow the addition of PPP, but i think most of them would atleast allow the shield.

I think you misunderstand how the penalties accrue if your BOD is not good enough.
The Mobility Upgrade only reduces this penalty.

Now look at the 15/15 armor with or without the mobility upgrade 3 of the above example:
BOD 5*3 =15 so you are good with or without the upgrade.
BOD 4*3=12 The Ballistic Armor exceeds the allowed amont of 12 by 3 as does the Impact Armor so each armor type adds a -2 (Round Up (3/2)) The character now is at -4, the Mobility Upgrade can reduce this penalty to -1.

With BOD 3 the character faces a -6 penalty.

@Tomothy: the quoted passage only means that PPP adds its protective value if other armor is worn as well. Without it all PPP would do is encumber the cahracter, just like wearing a lined coat over an armor jacket. It does not mean that the parts cease to be armor and get a free pass to be added to MilSpec Armor.

Becouse that is based on the normal 2xbody encubrance rule, i assumed the the military armor would change that so it's -1 for every 3 points(or fraction) so Mobility ugrrade 3 would allow the armor exceed the characters bodyx3 by 9 with out penalty.

And where does it say you calculte the encubrance seperatly for both armore types, i thought you just use the higher one to caculate the amount of encubrance.

Damm your fast Dakka, one post in before i managed to ask that and a reply in before i managed to edit my post into answer to your post

No idea how that happened. Someone please delete post #10.

@Tomothy & @DakkaDakka, I believe you're both mistaken.

The quote doesn't imply PPP can be worn with milspec, since it is simply stating an exception with regards to encumberance calculation. It's still another type of armour and therefore not compatible with milspec.

The quote also doesn't imply that PPP only protects in conjunction with other armour. It's saying that if worn with other armour it adds to the rating like a shield or helmet and aren't they excluded from encumberance calculations?

I never said or meant that, but, i added an "as well" for clarity.

@Mäx: Probably a fair houserule, but the rules don't say that MilSpec reduces the penalty if the allowed ammount is eceede.

AFB right now so can't quote, but I remember the text being a little unclear. I believe, though, that the first notion is the implied one.

So if you have a body of 3 and are wearing the following ratings (of standard armour types)

2/2
6/2
4/4

your armour rating is 6/4 whilst your encumberance penalty is [2+6+4-(2*3)]/2 + [2+2+4-(2*3)]/2 = 3 + 1 = 4

Not to go on about it, but you said (or at least implied) that PPP on it's own doesn't have any armour bonus. This could be argued successfully but it's not implied by the quote in question. In fact it seems to imply only that PPP is exempt from encumberance calculations, which should include wearing it exclusively.

We had this discussion before, no PPP is not exempt from encumbrance, nor are helmets or shields. The argument was, while PPP, and helmts and shield, may not be real base armor, encumbrance applies to all "armor items" which those items clearly are.

I'd go with '*no* other armor with mil-spec' pretty strictly. It's very clear and makes perfect sense.

Diss allowing a shield doesn't make any kind of sense.

It's already been shown in Arsenal that a shield does not count as armor. People can carry riot shields just fine in milspec armor - they do it today.

So, what exactly IS special about PPP? Seems to be just the boost in armour rating, in which case I imagine it would work out easier, cheaper and quicker to buy stronger armour in the first place.

What is special is that you can add it to existing armor. Without PPP 14/12 (SWAT Armor&helmet) is the best normal armor you can get. I know there are ways to get greater values than that.
The selling points are
a) you can add more protection to any but MilSpec armor, if you can cope with the encumbrance.
b)Everything but the Helmet is concealed by clothing or armor. If you wear headgear even the helmet can't be spotted.

I didn't mean the shield, I meant the crazy PPP stuff, as well as FFBA under the mil-spec. Y'know, *armor*.

Thbbbbbbpt. I can't look at the PPP stuff currently, being at work and all.

Why I might alow a PPP eqiuverlent in my games taking up your modifercation slots too. Because fluff wise millspec armor is meant to be the best of the best. but you can gett 22/24 IIRC form swat armor with out inculding a shieild. Sure its at body*2 but there are char that can carry that stuff and a pricely be better milspec alternative makes sense. that our just let it slot on PPP that costs a bit more. Playtesting needed there.

The only reason that one wouldn't be able to wear any other armor with MilSpec is because it's custom-fitted to the wearer - it won't fit if that wearer is wearing anythingels in addition.

However:

Now I don't see what would prevent somebody strapping on tailor-made PPP bits on top of their milspec armor any more than they could wear a shield.

It's just too stupid to be allowed.

This, plus the whole encumbrance rule being with BOD, doesn't make sense. I mean, the same stat used to prevent damage is the same stat used to see how much armor you can wear and the armor is also used to prevent damage, which makes BOD a VERY important stat.
In our games we've have changed to STR to see how much armor you can wear.