Is there a limitation, other than the cap for mods, for milspec armor. Can it be like SPARTAN armor or the Starcraft 2 Marine armors?

What kind of load out would emulate these kinds of armors?

If you are asking for a shield generator and 80x the strength of a human... nope.

Also what OTHER limitation than the caps for mods do you need? It has fixed armor values, can take a few mods... can take a few special mods, like a bit more strength or mobility, articulated weapon mount. That's it.

It's good but not INSANELY good. You get what you pay for.

If you want something bigger you need an body 10 walker drone with a crapload of vehicle-upgrades and vehicle armor. But that is not a "suit" of armor anymore *g*.

Limitations for armor mods are generally stated in the mod's description.

Quick and dirty Spartan MJOLNIR armor: (at least as far as Shadowrun rules allow)

Heavy Military Armor with Helmet

Gel Packs, Strength Upgrade 3, Mobility Upgrade 3, Chemical Seal, Fire Resistance 6, Insulation 6, Environmental Adaption (hot, cold, space), Hydraulic Jacks 6, Magnetic System, Gyromount

Probably a tricked out commlink built in.

Ballistic 19 / Impact 15, costs around 60K nuyen, availability 20F

You may have to adjust because I think everything fits in the 20 capacity of the suit but I haven't double checked. To get a force field you'd need an Armor magic spell, but once you throw magic in the mix things start getting complicated.

Be warned a lot of Shodowrun games, milspec armor tends to attract attention like crazy, and usually not of the good type. It's like someone showing up in heavy armor in real life - all the wrong people will be very curious as to why you're wearing tank armor.



-k

Mmm, mini mecha. Daddy wants.

maybe obviousness and conspicuousness.

My mage got one and learned physical mask afterwards to disguise the armor

Why use physical mask when fashion is so much easier?

Yeah, Fashion probably shouldn't extend to mil-spec armor. Even if it does, you can only change the "cut, color, pattern, and fit" of your full-body metal suit; not material, weight, body coverage, radar-reflectivity, etc.

Fashion means the armor is still visibly bulky and heavy.

With Physical Mask the armor at least can APPEAR to not be that way.

You'll still have rather heavy sounding footfalls, though.

Quite honestly I do think that Fashion should have a limitation that it cannot alter the gross physical structure of anything, just the style. So Fashion on Mil-Spec armor would mean that it still looks like Mil-Spec armor, just very stylish armor.



-k

Wow you guys are good. Are we saying then that the Marine armor in StarCraft 2 is more of an anthro vehicle?

You could probably alter it to look like a sports mascot costume- that's basically just putting fake fur on the outside. Not that it would be any less conspicuous that way...

The closest you could probably do is that, take a Tomino Walker Drone, add in a pilot compartment (Perhaps two-three slots, one for a rigger cocoon and one-two as "Special Equipment"), and an extra entry/exit point. Use the Vehicle Modification rules from Arsenal for the rest, and remember you can put some cyberlimb enhancements in the mechancial arms.

As before, this would be the kind of thing the military uses, not shadowrunners.



-k

Well, I know that, this kind of thing would be something to steal, or encounter on a run gone WAAYYY bad.

This is kinda fun. Since you mention it, KarmaInferno, *mil-spec* is already something for the military and not runners.

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The SC2 armor is right between armor and vehicles, because it's your basic 'manual power armor'. In SR4 rules, if it existed, I think it would be clearly a vehicle, albeit one that requires a metahuman pilot. Piloting it might be a Pilot Exotic (on the grounds that it's an exotic item, and you 'drive' it with mostly normal movements), but the point of feedback-style power armor (Starship Troopers?) is that it basically moves with you. In order to handle all the extra features, I'd go ahead and require a Pilot Exotic.

As for stats, you'd have to start from the ground up. It's not a Tomino, but it's not mil-spec. Balancing a wholly new item is icky, but it could be fun in your game. The fact that it doesn't exist in the setting means it's a late-stage prototype or something, I guess?

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MJOLNIR armor looks lighter and thinner than the SC2 stuff, but I think that's just a trick of the proportions. It's actually 1000lb of DNI-controlled (always Jumped-In) exoskeleton (vehicle?) with a piggybacking AI (Agents, I think, for SR4), and you have to have skeletal augmentation to use it (I'd also say maybe a datajack is required, but technically trodes in the helmet would be fine). It doubles lifting capacity and multiples reaction time times 5 (I think the Jumped-In bonus is good enough here).

The armor has gelpacks, autoinjectors, and a power supply. The helmet has all the normal mil-spec upgrades. Magnet strips on the back to hold weapons. Shields (no way to put this in SR4). Etc. It might be *simpler* to treat MJOLNIR as normal mil-spec, but it'd be nice to keep the DNI/skeleton requirements. That's what I'd do, anyway.

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So, would either of those work? If they're vehicles, they don't take stun, but you could require Hot-Sim (dumpshock); also, the 'passenger' could still take damage from major attacks. Attackers can technically just target the 'driver' directly. Hmm. If they're armor (esp. MJOLNIR), then you don't have that issue.

Actually it'd be closer to the Physical Barrier spell. If dropped, X rounds later it gets "re-cast."

And for the exo-suit:

Basic Exosuit
[8 Slot Total] Dodge Guardian [8R, 14,000]
[2 Slots] Walker Mode [4, 4,000]
[2 Slot] Mechanical Arm, Full Arm [6, 4,000]
[2 Slot] Mechanical Arm, Full Arm [6, 4,000]
[1 Slot] Turbocharger [4, 5,600]
Av: 8R
Cost: 31,600

It's an external frame for a character that they "pilot" by standing inside and having it respond to their movements, much like the HULC today. Now all you need to do is get Heavy Milspec armor sized for the exosuit as opposed to sized for your character.

That'd be great for the Armor Lock ability, but Mjolnir armor also has a personal skintight forcefield that moves with you.




-k

Uhhh... there's nothing that says when you cast Physical Barrier it's immobile. It's LoS(A), which means it affects spherical area around an object you look(ed) at. What about a book? It forms a 4-meter (you can withhold dice to change diameter) wall of force around that book there. So... if you pick up the book and move it, the globe also moves.

So the Pysical Barrier-like effect would simply be a "skin" that surrounds the target but otherwise functions like the spell; IE: gives you armor, gets damaged, and reforms damage done to itself.

Bleh, if you're going to ruin it with magitech…

It'd just be an effect that resembles the spell. It doesn't really fit the feel or mood of Shadowrun though, but that's how you'd do it.

By RAW armour capacity is an optional rule so you could legally stack as many items as you can in any armour. Or if you read it one other way you can stack as many as the base mods in as you can and up to capacity in the milspec only mods.

Well, armor mods and mil-spec Capacity *are* different and separate.

Both are arguably optional. Though I'm on the milspec cap RAW and armour mods are optional.

Okay? *shrug* I only said that they're different things. Armor Mods use armor mod rules, Mil-Capacity uses Mil-Capacity rules, whatever they happen to be.

This stuff is great!

How about the Crysis armor, according to RAW, if what I am getting is correct and the rules are optional, you could make armor with a font of several capacities and rotate those mods in and out like the Crysis armor. Is that even feasible?

I dunno Crysis, but you can install and uninstall mods/capacity items. It's not fast, like a modular limb or a slide-mounted weapon mod. You could adapt the weapon slide-mount rules for some armor capacity items, within reason. Basically, it 'wastes' a mod slot (~capacity) and costs more.

Crysis armor would be more like armor that has an autoinjector and nanohives/bioware glands in them to change out what's currently in the person's system.

The rules presented for Shadowrun don't really fit it though.