Form-fitting body armor, Arsenal p48, says : When determining encumbrance, however, add only
half the rating (round down) of form-fi tting body armor to the
ratings of other armor when comparing them to the wearer’s Body
x 2

Mil-Spec armor compares to Body x 3.

Will a Half-Body FF suit (4/1) when combined with Med. Mil. Armor (14/12) with Mobility Enhancement R2 (reduces penalties for encumbrance per rating) leave my Body 4 character encumbrance-free?

"no other armor can be worn with military armor"

Bah. Knew I had to be missing something. Guess I'll roll with the gelpacks until I can afford a military helmet.

Thanks much.

The big advantages I see with milspec armor is the mods and the immunity to darts and other 0 DV attacks.

btw, remember, that you will need Mobility Upgrade to reduce both ballistic and impact armor encumbrance

Bod 4=> can carry 12/12 without encumbrance
Medium Milspec with military Helmet and MobUpg 3 => 16/14 encumbers like 12/12

War! also has an option to help out with that. The other big perk is that you can get cybernetic-style bonuses while wearing it, without having to sacrifice any Essence. Things like Strength boosts, Articulated Arms, Gyromounts, Hydraulic Jacks, etc.

They're more than worth it if you can find an excuse to not only get a set, but have somewhere to wear it. It's all but useless in most shadowrunning scenarios, though.

Each point of Mobility upgrade reduces one point of encumbrance penalty, 1 point of encumbrance penalty comes from 3 points of armor in the case of mil spec. So the way I see it mobility 3 on 16/14 medium makes it encumber like 7/5, only since your getting 3 for 1 encumbrance instead of 2 for 1 its the same equivalent encumbrance of non-milspec armor rated at 4.66/3.33 .

Incorrect.

Military armor uses Body x 3 in place of the standard Body x 2 to determine when encumbrance penalties apply. Encumbrance penalties are applied for every 2 (or partial thereof) points above this limit you are at. This second part is not a factor of Body, and thus is not reduced by Military armor, outside of the Mobility Upgrade modification.

Thats not nearly as simple, but it looks like that is how its written. So both sets of numbers are wrong.

This ^^^^^^^^^

a skilled shadowrunner is supposed to be good at infiltration and never been seen. nobody will notice you to comment on your fashion style in the first place. but in case one gets noticed and is on a quick run out, I consider milspec a nice safety feature.

because of the Running bonus of Mobility Upgrade ofc!


@encumbrance
SR4A: If either of a character’s armor ratings exceeds his Body x 2, apply a –1 modifier
to Agility and Reaction for every 2 points (or fraction thereof )

16/14 armor has 6 points of armor exceeding the Bod4x3 limit of 12/12....

Indeed it does... so a -3 to both Agility and Reaction... It gets harsh fast...

Errrrr, yeah. If you say so mate.


And, again, War! introduces a set of rules to help with that.

War!, p. 161, YNT SoftWeave Armor: "All armor types are available as SoftWeave armor, which modies the cost and Availability of the base armor. For purposes of armor allowance, reduce the highest armor rating of worn armor by the wearer’s Strength (so, for example, an armor vest would encumber someone with Body 2, if the armor vest was SoftWeave and that person had a Strength of at least 2, he could wear it without penalty due to armor encumberance). SoftWeave is also available for military-grade armor."

Considering that you can bolster your Strength via the armor, this option can make it as comfortable as standard armor for relatively average-attributed characters. For example, a character with Body 4, Strength 3, and military-grade armor featuring this and a Strength boost of, I don't know, +2 could wear your 16/14 armor with ease.

He'd still be at 11/14, so encumbered by two points.
Softweave only substracts from the highest rating.

I'll have to get with my DM on that part...I think we've just been basing encumbrance off of the highest value, rather than stacking ballistic and impact encumbrance.

Unfortunately, I don't have the option to buy SoftWeave...we peeled two sets of armor off some unfortunate fellows who died unexpectedly of natural causes. I'm trading one of them off to get the other modified and fitted, so I kinda gotta work with what I have.

Fair enough, I completely overlooked that part of the rule. But the main point remains; it allows characters other than hulking trogs to wear that type of armor with a minimal penalty if one at all.

Yeah, that's how I've understood it: encumbrance is added from both B and I, and Softweave only affects the single highest one.

Indeed...

Mobile upgrade 3 encumbers like 10/8. Kinda. It offsets 3 points of encumberance penalties, which is basically the equivalent of 6 extra points of armor.

EDIT:


Your GM is especially nice. Read second paragraph of Arsenal's section on MilSpec armor, page 50, and you'll note that what your doing is heavily hinted at as being basically impossible.

The utility of milspec depends entirely on the sort of game you're running and the sorts of missions the team is taking. I can imagine all sorts of scenarios where milspec would be usable.

Say you're running in the Chicago CZ and can somehow get your hands on milspec, who's going to stop you? You don't even have to base your campaign there, any mission into a feral zone or city where there is little or no law enforcement can accommodate judicious use of milspec. Sometimes it will still attract the wrong sort of attention but often you can get away with it.

My group had a mission in Seattle where they were called in on short notice to safeguard an extraction target after the original extraction team got kacked. They knew that a corp strike team was going to try to retrieve the target, so they went to worst part of the Redmond Barrens, picked a defensible squat and put on the milspec armor.

You could even use milspec in many cases in B and C security zones if you're working at night in industrial areas that don't see much foot traffic at night. You wait until just before the op to suit up or you use a spirit's Concealment power to blend in.

Summary point is that you certainly can't use milspec all the time for all missions but you will be able to use it often enough to be worth the investment; if you can get your hands on it, that is. And that's even without FFBA worn under it.

Concealment is good, as are Ruthenium Polymers and Physical Camoflage.

Read above, FFBA cannot be added with MilSpec. Technically a shield can't either.

You missed the sarcasm smiley. I meant that milspec is valuable even though it is clear that you cannot wear FFBA under it.

Sarcasm is easy to miss on the interwebz. I interpreted your sentence incorrectly. Boy, isn't the english language fun without simply things like social and body-language cues?

I can't figure out if the Ruthenium Polymer coating option is a no slot item for milspec armor. The book is clear that on non-capacity based armors it counts as an unrated modification (under Maximum Armor Modifications, Arsenal pg 44), but capacity based armors use strictly the listed slot value (under Armor Suite Capacity, Arsenal pg 44), and Ruthenium Polymers along with a few other options like gel packs, specifically called out in the first section, do not have listed capacities.

There are two different ways to upgrade armor in Shadowrun - one is capacity, the other is armor modifications. Armor Modification is an optional rule that is for armors without capacity slots. Amor Capacity (interestingly) is also an optional rule that is only for armors with capacity. As MilSpec armor has a capacity rating, it falls under the Armor Capacity O-RAW and not the Armor Modification O-RAW, making Ruthenium Polymer coating a no-capacity upgrade for it.

Ruthenium is basically just a paint job, whereas options like Insulation or Thermal Dampening require (sometimes extensive) physical modifications. I wouldn't give Ruthenium a Capacity anymore than I'd require a player to take up Capacity if they wanted to paint on some symbols, decorate it with feathers, or otherwise spruce it.

Correct. But on armor that doesn't have Capacity (and is still suitable for ruthenium polymers; IE: FFBA full armor), it works against their Armor Modifications limit.

Thats what it looked like to me as well, just wanted to double check.

Now the only issue is not being able to add a chem seal or vision mods, because they increase the availability of the item they are installed in, and heavy mil-spec is already at the availability cap for the restricted gear quality.

I wonder if that's for a reason; it's as if you're not really supposed to have heavy mil-spec.

Pshaw, I need it for my rediculous sniper adept elf with neoteny build.

Honestly I don't consider the military armor to be that much more bulky or out of place than other armors, Full Body Armor or SWAT armor plus FFBA gives about the same protection as milspec, its just takes a couple more body to wear unencumbered.

MilSpec armor in 4th Edition is basically power armor. It is more bulky and and out of place than other armors, even SWAT and security armors. It's more vehicle than body armor.

...and an Ares Roadmaster looks close enough to your generic mobile powered armor delivery van in most animes right?

And full-body police/military (not mil-spec) *is* already way out of place. I'm just teasing, because you can do whatever you want in your game, but it's definitely crazy.

How broken do you think it would be to use both rules at once?
That is to say, regular armored clothes and light armor can have a few modifications, while actual big bulky riot(and better) armor that's designed to bulky and effective has even more room for stuff like commlinks and sensors?

I mean, from a balance perspective. It'd basically be a reason to spring for high-end armor, and not get caught with it.

Either way you cut it, high-end military armor can hold a lot of things. I personally run with both: armor can have modifications up to the rating * 1.5, as well as capacity where applicable.

I figure one represents modification to the armor material itself (since it's typically things like fire resistance, but also includes gel packs and shock frills), where the other represents physical space allocated by the shear bulk of the armor.

And it gives that high-end armor more of a draw, as the B/I ratings aren't all that impressive when you can stack various armor sets (Armor Jacket, FFBA, SecureTech, etc.) for equivalent B/I values.

For vision mods just add trideo cameras into the helmets.


I use both O-RAW at the same time at my table. I had assumed that armor without capacity uses Armor Modification rules and armor with capacity used Armor Capacity rules, much as drones use Drone Modifications and weapons use Weapon Modifications.