the death of Ballistic/Impact ratings. It's kind of flown under the armor that this bit of granularity has vanished with the coming of SR5. While guns got a lot more granularity with the spread of damages and accuracies within the same class of weapon, picking armor lost that decision-making. Combine it with the death of encumbrance and the only deciding factor in which piece of armor to wear is the environment you're wearing it in.

I, too, was kinda bummed about it, but with melee damage coming into line with ballistic damage and the lack of directions to go with the split, keeping it was counter to the KISS principle. The fact that it wasn't missed at the tables I GM'd at Origins was just another nail in the coffin.

I know I certainly won't miss it.

I will... Oh well, it was fun...

Goodbye, B/I ratings. And good riddance. The B/I ratings were the most confusing aspect for players I introduced to SR4 to grasp, along with the encumbrance = Body*2, and having to track the encumbrance separately for Ballistic and Impact. And really, with Arsenal, it boiled down to FFBA Full Body Suits + [(Body*2)-3] worth of armor with SecureTech PPP to taste. That is -really- too much bookkeeping just for armor. I will not miss it.

See I liked them-but at the same time, I can live without them. I kinda liked customizing armor for specific character types and such.

I actually DON'T miss armor stacking though. The reason why I stacked armor was because armor ratings were lower, and yes, I like to survive. So I'll stack it. It seemed plain out *smart* that someone who had the chance to stack armor for better survivability *would stack it.* It's not about 'being all about the numbers', it's 'If I had a chance to give myself an edge more, would I take it?' Now they brought base armor up(which was a great idea, IMO) and made it so you don't have to stack it anymore. If you NEED that extra bit, throw on a helm or grab a riot shield or something. That works well enough.

The new system feels refreshingly simpler, and while it was kind of cool to have different armor values in SR4 with the Arsenal armors, like bike racing armor having high impact but only moderate ballistic, the new single value just streamlines things.

No more worrying about things like new players mixing up the two values, mixing up how to stack armors, confusing which type of armor protects against a certain unusual weapon or ammo type, mixing up certain uneven armor bonuses like those between different varieties of bone lacing, et cetera.

~Umi

Cleaning up armor was such a bright spot. Making it just have a rating (effectively) also allowed the capping of add-ons. So, now, when you have an armored jacket, you can't just go ahead and go "Blanket protection at rating 6. Screw you, environment!" ... You gotta make choices. Do I take the fireproof long coat or the electric-resistant armored vest? Well, I think Lone Star is around and I'm an Ork, so tasers will be on the way. Vest it is.

It won't be missed.

Not really for me. With as much gear and options in SR4a, I've made and seen made many characters that had nearly identical B/I armor ratings anyway. This streamlining of a single armor attribute is nice.

Though it was nice for punishing characters who relied on their FFBA too much.

But i too won't miss it. If there is ever an obvious reason why an armor-item should behave differently, it can still have extra rulings.

tl;dr: If you have to use separate rules often: use multiple rules. If it only appears sparingly: use a general rule and specific rule-exceptions.

Thank god. I understand what they were going for, but honestly the whole Ballistic/Impact system was a mess.

I like it, it alllowed the system to realisticly represent the fact that some types of armors are more resistant to bullets then knives(or vise versa.)

I wish they had kept it and just allowed full stacking up to some Body and Strength based limit, so you could for example combine armored clothing with an armored coat for extra protection while outside and then leave the coat at the door of the restaurant when going to a meet.(or to use ingame brand names for SR4, a face could wear Zoê Second skin for a meet and add Aces High aviator jacket on top for extra protection while traveling to and from the meet)

Now that there's only one armor value i wonder how their going to handle adding back a wide selection of armors in Run and Gun, or do we just end up with a very small list of different armors(witch would suck quite a bit)

Getting rid of the natural split actually opens the door for a lot of armor upgrade options down the line:

StabProof™ armor underlay that provides +Rating protection versus bladed objects like knives, swords, arrows, flechettes etc.

BullitSTOP™ armor coating that diffuses the energy from bullets and provides +Rating protection against normal ballistic rounds.

HighImpact™ armor padding that adds +Rating protection versus clubs, sticks, fists, and gel rounds. Commonly used by bikers for those times they can't help but run into a lamp post.

Do you not just apply the single item with the highest armor value? I would. Then you could have the above situations.

Bye bye chainmail

While we're on the topic of Things People Miss but Should Really Stay Dead, I miss the old old SR1 damage codes. 5M3, anyone?

Hey, so long as we can customize other, better armor to have a chainmail appearance? I'm totally okay with actual chainmail either no longer being available, or, even better, being made available as a low protection single-value armor that costs next to nothing.

If someone wants chainmail in the Sixth World, any two-bit fabrication shop should be able to put a suit together out of modern densiplast or plasteel rings. It won't be amazing armor, but it will work decently and it will have that authentic look and feel for all you Neo-Norse Odin worshippers out there. And if you want something a little more protective, get a suit of full body armor customized to have the appearance of chainmail.

~Umi

OR wear your faux chainmail over real bodyarmor. Best of everyone's world!

I miss hit locations.

OK not really, but they're fun to think about.

RE: Stacking, at one point armor limit was changed from Body to Str *3, a vastly improved thing, IMHO. That fell out in playtesting I think, so that weenie people could still wear heavy armor, due to how lethal things got. SR5 is spooky when your Str 2 Face capped at an Armored Vest. Str a dumpstat? Not anymore! I didn't see the feedback, but it must have been too big of a change. I, personally, didn't care about armor stacking since that simple rule didn't care about where your armor came from, only how much there was. When you started going all Stormtrooper-like, you started racking up penalty dice.

Feel free to toss it in as a houserule if you want combat even more dangerous or if your players all start dumpstatting Strength.




And this is something I'm hoping for, bigtime. Crashpadding, that stops damage generated by falls and punches, is very much on my want list.

The one *sad* thing from the new armor is that it took away cinematic punching. A normal Str 3 person with no augmentations is going to hurt anybody in armor, which takes away the classic "Unarmed hero jumps a gunman, wrestles a bit, punches his lights out, takes the guy's rifle, and starts moving up the train to hunt the boss" type of thing. Unarmed COmbat Adepts and Trolls just hit too hard to let them ignore armor like a proper punch to the chin should.

Alas, alas.