There are vehicles with Armor, and then there are armored vehicles. A leather jacket counts as Armor. The plastic bodywork of a car counts as Armor. To be an armored vehicle in the classic sense that it's resistant to at least some forms of attack, however, it means the vehicle has a lot of Armor.

In the SR5 book, it appears that Armor 15 is about the point that you can start calling a vehicle an "armored vehicle." That's about the point where you can start shrugging off rifle fire and unaugmented melee attacks.

If you push things up to Armor 20, even max-augmented humans with combat axes will have a hard time breaking through. At Armor 25, the max-augmented Troll falls off the curve, and you're into light military-grade armor -- this is where the Panther, HE Rockets, and AV Rockets start to become necessary.

At Armor 30, just about the only useful weapon anymore is the AV Rocket or lots of high-yield explosives.

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Moving along, there are two questions you need to ask yourself:

1) Should a max-augmented troll with a combat axe be able to injure a dragon?

2) Should an Ares Roadmaster be tougher than said dragon?

They have the same armor (though the dragon's is Hardened, but that doesn't make a world of difference here).

Vehicle Armor is Hardened too, or did that change in SR5?

1. Yes, but then I think Dragons are way to tough now and should be adjusted down, so... After all, sans Magic, a Dragon should be no more tough than any other Dangerous Big Game Animal. *shrug*
2. Yes...

It's not Hardened, no (wasn't explicitly so in SR4 either), though vehicles are not impacted by Stun damage - but they don't get Hardened Armour's autohits.

Vehicle armor was never hardened. Vehicles in SR4 were simply immune to stun, which was effectively the same but not the same thing.

Ahhh... Got ya, I see where you went there. Thanks...

Yep, Yep... My mistake... And now that there is explicit resolution for Hardened Armor in SR5....

Quite. One of the things I do like.

Well there's your problem. You want the physically, mentally, and magically most powerful beings of any age to compare unfavorably to Lone Star's favored riot control bus when it comes to soaking a polearm.

That's an incredibly severe thematic issue.

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Otherwise, here's some math regarding bows and bullets.

A pretty standard hunting arrow fired from a pretty standard hunting bow might have a momentum of about 3.17 kgm/s.

Comparatively, a pretty standard 9mm round would have a momentum of about 2.9 kgm/s.

Comparatively, a pretty standard .50BMG round would have a momentum of about 38.98 kgm/s.

Note: kgm/s (momentum) turns into force when it decelerates at/in the target. Assuming that these projectiles completely transfer their energy to the target over similar times (which is a horrid assumption in real life, but I'm not starting a physics class here), the higher number means the more energy delivered to the target.

Here's the speculation:

If you extrapolate a modern bow to a trollbow, doubling the draw weight, doubling the mass of the arrow, and using one of the fastest speeds for a modern arrow ever clocked, you end up with the arrow having a momentum of about 39 kgm/s.

Looking at the biggest baddest bow in Shadowrun, it's a rating 14 bow with 16P -4AP, which is in the ballpark of the heaviest sniper rifle. We're talking about projectiles generally accepted as capable of punching through engine blocks.

Oddly enough, the standard bow/arrow coming in at close to the 9mm means that a rating 4 bow (6P -1AP) compares pretty damned closely to a light pistol (6P --AP) in both the game and real life. With the trollbow occupying the same region as a sniper rifle, that means that the bow calculations are pretty damned consistent with reality.

Ignoring factors like equal deceleration when hitting resistance, but hey. Close enough for the abstract nature of the rules to kick in and blur the lines in favor of simplicity of use.

"Combat Step 27: Calculate the average density of the Lone Star detective's torso."

I actually don't have a problem with the end damage of melee and bows in SR5, I have an issue with how it is obtained. By making it so heavily strength based I think it does make things a bit weird on the realism side, it also scales like crap and torches a bunc of different character concepts like the old mystic unarmed bad ass.

I'd prefer 1+1/2 strength like recoil mod for base damage and then put the bulk of the damage in specialized gear/magic. If you ave a cyberarm with hyperosnic swings designed for bad ass cutting action, or a plasma axe, vibro throwing knives, or critical strike I don't have an issue. A wider range of builds fit, and super science arm beating gun in damage does nto bother me, just being strong and with an axe does.

Still I think vehicles need a boostin damage resistance. I actually loved SR1s vehicle armor, it came in 4 levels, each level auto soaked a damage level, light-deadly. So level 4 armor found on tough vehicles auto soaked 10 boxes of damage. At the very least it should be hardened, but I would not mind if they just made its armor auto successes.

Yep. I think the ones with relatively low armour the value was just representing the impact the steel body was having in combat, not armour specifically.

However Eric, I'm not sure where you got the impression that cars in Shadowrun are fragile. I was always under the impression that given that 1/2 of Seattle is a constant warzone (gang rivalries, UCAS activities, Megas doing what megas do) that most vehicles were now designed under the assumption that they will cop a bullet from time to time.

It's also kind of funny that the direction of the cobversation has gone down the path of 'should a troll with augmented stregth be able to wreck a car?' when my original example was 'Should a human with 6str be able to do it?' I'm with Tym on the realism front, however I don't support that the game needs to reflect that.

My point has always been 'stop having issues with the matrix when you don't have issues with anything else which as equally as far fetched' Tymeaus being someone who is at least consistent by noe liking anything

It's probably a holdover from 2nd/3rd ed., where most cars didn't have armor, since I never got to play 4th ed. It's not that I think the cars are especially fragile, but if you can get past the skin, there's a lot of easily breakable components inside. Weapons that are good at punctures or penetration, or that have mass on their side, will be able to get to those components.

A stout blow with an axe will do much more gross physical trauma than a single gunshot. It's just that IRL, gunshots are enough to put down anybody equipped to deliver a stout physical blow with an axe, and so combat turned to favor people equipped to deliver gunshot wounds instead of those equipped to deliver stout physical blows with an axe.

Facing a troll with literally superhuman stamina and a hide capable of bouncing small-caliber rounds entirely without need for any body armor whatsoever, on the other hand, may be quite a different kettle of fish.

I like a Few Things in SR5...