Hi,
I heard some time ago that there were optional rules for armor degradation. I just don't remember where they were. Can anyone tell me where they are?

Or better yet, sum them up here.

Arsenal Page 44-45

Aw... Thanks but it's not really what I hope that rule would be. Oh well, time to think of a new one!

Seems like a pretty good rule. Simple, reasonable, not crippling.

Proposed house rule:

"At the player's option, a piece of armor may instantly reduce one attack's damage by an extra 4 levels (or by the armor's protection rating, whichever is lower), as though the player had rolled an additional 4 successes on the soak roll. That piece of armor's protection is permanently reduced by 4 (both ballistic and impact). If the armor's protection is reduced to zero or less, the armor is destroyed."

… How is the player controlling their armor? :/ That seems pretty metagamey. Let them use Edge (which is expensive), instead of cheap armor.

If anything, I would make it so that even if the armor "stopped" the attack (converted to stun), there was a small chance of it degrading. While it did keep the bullet/blade/whatever from penetrating and dealing physical damage, the attack might have weakened the armor anyways; Gel packs rupturing, ceramics/plates breaking, fibers being pulled out of place or any other stress on the armor caused by the attack.

The proposed rule makes more sense if the armor has an ablative coating to it, would make it kind of a limited use hardened armor, probably only available for the heavy duty / military full body armors, it wouldn't be player's choice, but it could auto reduce a set amount of DV, up to a point. Say it can do 8 DV total, but a max of 4 at a time or something, so it wouldn't be foolproof against panther cannons, but would help against automatic rifle fire and the like. Have it even take effect with non-elemental stun damage, but from the same DV reduction pool.

I have to agree with Yerameyahu, the current rules are adequate and actually work quite well.

Players only exist in the metagame, and players don't have much armor at my table.

Characters exist in the game, and they tend to have more armor.

Don't confuse yourself: edge isn't something characters control, either. Players have all the toys.

Whether you nitpick his choice of words or not, I still don't see the logic behind the character being able to suddenly make their armor absorb a considerable amount of damage at the cost of the armor getting severely damaged.

The character can't, just like the character can't decide to get really lucky and roll twice as many dice as he usually would be entitled to roll. (In fact, the character seldom rolls dice at all.)

Your players are doing it wrong then.

Nifft, you're not making sense. I said the player is controlling the armor. You then said the *player* is the one controlling Edge, and *then* you said that the character doesn't roll dice. It sounds like you fully agree with me.

You shouldn't try to use fancy words like "metagamey" if you can't distinguish between players and characters.

If you can make that distinction, you should have no problem realizing that the player controls things which the character never could.

There's no need for the tone. My point remains exactly the same, but I'll restate it if it helps: the player should not have control over the armor. Especially for so powerful an effect. It is introducing a new and illogical metagame element, akin to Edge you buy and wear. I did not say that all metagame elements (like Edge) are bad. Just yours.

It's a traditional response when some little forum troll tries to pull sophomoric "it sounds like you fully agree with me " cruft.

Armor degradation suits both realism and game-ism, since armor becomes a limited resource, and since armor really does suffer from being put to use. Putting the onus on the player suits both game-ism and "storytelling" -- player agency -- which some players seem to like.

It sure sounds like you think you can do better, though! I look forward to seeing your ideas.

My my, I wonder where all that's coming from.

I already *did* better: I said use the existing option. It's passive and balanced. I'm fine with armor degradation. I'm not fine with a weird activation power. I'm sorry we don't agree, but you can handle it like a normal person, instead of lecturing in circles. If you want that in your game, I'm not stopping you or anyone else.

Personally I can't stand armor degredation rules in any system and would never use them as a permanent rule. They add too much accounting for too little benefit IMO. I did have some critters with acidic claws whose touch reduced armor's protective value, but it was a one-time thing and it allowed armor degredation to be another tool in the "make the players worry" arsenal instead of something else we can forget to use (like knockdown).

I hear that. Weapon degradation is even worse; ever play Final Fantasy Legend? Bleh.

Still, if you *did* want it, I like the Arsenal rule well enough.

Indeed, it is functional and easy.

We eventually decided on the players adding 5% of their weapon and armor costs onto their lifestyle expense to cover routine weapon and armor maintenance. Solvent, oil, pads, etc for cleaning the weapons. Stitching, webbing, armor plates, etc for maintaining the armor. We tried to nickel and dime it all but ended up taking the global coverage route. Although if they sustained catastrophic damage to their armor or critically glitched their gun/blade and damage resulted, that was not covered in the maintenance.

All of them, which I why I used lots of mutants, robots, and monsters that had ways around weapon degradation. Still weapons do only have soo much usage before they start to degrade. Guns will get clogged up with carbon and swords will dull their edges, hopefully basic maintenence is considered part of a characters lifestyle and downtime unless the character specifically doesn't have the resources or the mental facilities to do so.

I'm not a big fan of armor degradation, but it depends on how you want to play the game. Generally speaking armor should be able to take a couple of hits without losing significant protection, but armor does degrade and need maintained. Ceramic ballistic plates in particular are not meant to withstand constant fire, and need replaced after they've been hit, which should in no way require the armorer skill. We do have to throw realism out though because if a round does penetrate your armor, you are generally in pretty big trouble.

As far as the proposed house rule of purposefully sacrificing armor, it doesn't sound too bad, but expect a little metagaming out of it. I imaging players in that game would be more likely to wear a cheap top layer of armor, and keep a few spares at home in order to be able to take advantage of this rule.

Player 1: This is my super uber form-fitting body armor, its got all the mods.
Player 2: ...and what are all those?
Player 1: Those are my discount armored trechcoats, I get a good deal on them because of my black market pipeline armorer contact.

I apply the -1 to the rating of ballistic and impact armor if the attack is physical, regardless if the the level of armor reduces it to stun.

I agree that weapon, armor, and all gear having degradation is *realistic*. I just also agree that it's not usually fun. It depends on the specific game, but I'd avoid it in general. The Arsenal rule is common/severe enough to do something, but also rare/mild enough not to be a huge pain. It's not realistic, sure.

At my table, if a person is shot at, and the dodge fails, The bullet has hit the armor. If one or a billion bullets hit the armor, the armor is degraded by one Ballistic at the end of the combat. Likewise with melee (falling, etc.) and impact. If a player glitches on a roll that armor dice have added to, the armor degrades by one after the roll, of appropriate type.

For instances of more than one armor item, The largest value of the items (but appropriate type:Ballistic/Impact) will reduce first. For example, a untested lined coat will degrade before a untested gel pack.

My problem with the current rule is that, while it may be adapted for Shadowrun, it might not be adapted for a homebrew (which I'm doing).

That rule is indeed nice, but it doesn't allow what I originally wanted it to do. You see, I want to be able to throw some good "boss" battle once in a while. The kind of character that is wearing the kind of armor that would stop the most powerful of weapons. The battle would be about wearing out the armor and then eventually wounding the guy behind it. Unfortunately, the optional rule in arsenal seems to be effective with low to "reasonable" armor rating, but the moment you go with super armors it doesn't seem to work anymore.

I thought that I could maybe write a rule about targeting the armor with the specific goal of damaging it.

Also, I'm certainly not giving control of their armor hardness while they already have a luck stat. I'm not allowing my players to tweak luck twice in two different ways.

Try giving him hardened armor and a weakness? Maybe even some kind of temporary hardened armor if you want to go that route. An "adept" power (not available to players of course) that works like attribute boost. Hardened armor x for y turns or something, but find a way to keep the big guy from being able to use it every time it wears off, like limiting it to once per day, or have a downtime equal to the time it's active, giving them a window of opportunity to hit him.

You're right, that doesn't sound like Shadowrun. For one thing, he'd take stun from attacks that didn't beat his armor, and SnS would do it regardless. More importantly, the Shadowrun way for getting through an impenetrable defense is *not* to. Find a different way instead: toxins, magic, spirits, social engineering, maybe a nice trap…

Sounds like the way to get past super armor man is to shoot the floor out when he's standing over 7 feet or so of water. Or find the heater and dehydrate him to death. That might take awhile.

You could give him a vehicle with lots of smart armor so the rating can go down over time, though you'd have to change the smart armor rules some to make it go down (since a glitch on high rating armor is unlikely).

Or invent a new type of vehicle armor: ablative armor. It's just like normal armor except the rating drops over time and you can start with more of it.

Yeah, they had that in Rigger 3, right?

they did p131 Rigger 3

Hmm, sounds like you want ablative armor: armor which will soak up damage boxes directly, rather than negating damage. The difference is that it's much harder to one-shot-kill a guy with a ton of ablative soak, and it's more rewarding for a team to work together to punch through his massive damage track, rather than all coming down to who is packing a panther assault cannon.

This was the design decision that D&D 4e went with initially. The idea was that, instead of the wizard's one-spell-kill in 3.x, everyone would contribute to victory by chewing through the same damage track. Of course, they went much too far in this direction, to the point that it was a tedious grind and everyone got cancer anyway... but the idea has some value, so long as you use ablative defenses sparingly.

An occasional boss fight sure sounds sparingly enough to me.

So, here's how I'd do that if I were to do it: give the boss guy some kind of special magical or technological defense, basically a personal force shield or a prototype personal mech-armor. It functions as armor of whatever type is appropriate, plus it gives him another 12 damage boxes. Once those 12 are chewed through, the armor penalties are too annoying for him, so he ditches it (read: sheds those 12 boxes worth of penalties), and now you can target his real damage track.

Cheers, -- N

Thanks for these ideas, but I specifically just want him to have a really high armor rating. I'm difficult.

You can have that. You just can't have attacks not do stun, unless he's possessed by a spirit (for ITNW).

I assume that if you shoot someone in a large power suit with a puny pistol, he won't even feel it at all.

Mostly, I want to think of a way for someone with a little pistol and TONS of bullets to eventually be able to get past the armor, by "digging" in. If you have a weapon that deal about 5 damage and the opponent have 15 armor, its hard to reach high enough to degrade the armor by one. Yet, in my head, even the smallest of pistols should punch a hole, even if small.

Also, let's forget magic, I'm really looking for a way for guns to get rid of large armor ratings.

I'm only talking about the RAW, not how you should play your game. In SR3, power armor had 'hardness', but that doesn't exist in SR4. Enough armor can certainly have a large ability to *soak* damage, so a weak attack (downgraded to stun) certainly *could* be reduced to 0 DV by the Damage Resistance roll.

Fluff-wise… no, weak bullets shouldn't make a hole at all in most body armor. There is no existing mechanic for 'digging in', though it's certainly something you could just house rule. The simplest would indeed be to degrade the armor for any attack (instead of only Physical-damaging attacks, in the Arsenal rule). This would have other complications for you to house rule (vehicles, for one), but that's not a deal-breaker.

In the RAW, a lot depends on net hits, and some other factors. While not 'easy', a 5P pistol can indeed hurt Armor 15 with a lucky roll, a high DP, and specialty AP ammo. SnS would still be the normal choice for exactly this scenario, though. Even if he's got shockproofing and a Pain Editor, it would probably be effective.

--
So, like everyone said before: what you want doesn't exist in SR4. You'll simply have to house rule that (at least part of) this guy's armor is ablative (that is, wears off), and there's nothing wrong with that. Just don't let the players figure it out too fast. It wouldn't be fun for them to know that all they have to do is plink him for a while first.

Solution for you:

Buy an Iron Will exoskeleton from Attitude. Armor it up with the Vehicle Mod rules. Blam, there you go.

Of course, if your opponents keep seeing this powersuit showing up, don't be surprised if you start seeing them use heavy artillery and airstrikes when you head out on a job.

It's not subtle, hell most shadowrunners won't wanna touch this type of thing with a ten foot pole, but occasionally "not subtle" is okay.




-k

Aren't most ceramic armor good for a bullet or two only? (in real life i mean)

No clue. Probably?

yes and no. it depends on the type of ammunition used, as well as the composition of the other materials in the armor.

I assumed that body armors, especially the most effective ones, were actually quite brittle, so to absorb and "spread" the energy from the impact.
My second assuption is that if a single bullet couldn't do any effect at all, the minigun type of weapon would have been useless. Yet it's not.

Of course, these are only assumptions on my part and I can be very wrong.

As for my problem, I'm thinking of simply putting a "damage" cap to each armors, to check how much power is needed to damage it.

The whole burst-fire/armor/damage system of SR4 is based on the idea that "the minigun type of weapon" doesn't pierce armor any more than a single bullet, actually. That's why Narrow Bursts specifically don't beat armor.

If you're talking about reality, miniguns (by which I'm assuming 'sustained automatic fire') aren't really used to *pierce*. They're used to inflict multiple hits, and to saturate (both of which are modeled in the SR4 burst rules).