Quoted. For. Truth.

An interesting side point of this thread would be how much armouy you think EVERY runner SHOULD have?

IMHO anyone running with too little armour is a danger to his team, because even if he thinks he'll never be shot at, that might still happen, and then his team will have to carry his sorry carcass to the hospital.

But what number is the sweet spot? What would you tell players?

Personally I think being able to withstand an un-modified assault-rilfe round should be the baseline, because wide bursting then becomes a good way to hurt but not kill players. That is, 19 dice for damage resistance.

What do you think?

I don't think there's a sweet spot for every runner.

Arsenal screwed that up with PPP (0/1) items (look ma! no encum!*) and FFBA's (el-cheapo encum) items. suddenly people were adding 4/3** to their armor for a single body worth of encum. Post Arsenal, I'd team that up with a body of 4 and any of the 6/4 pieces (Armor Vest, Chameleon Suit, Ulysses, Actioneer (1 pt lower) for meetings).

Now WAR! has come along with Softweave, creating the Softweave Armor Jacket so cheap that I can't understand why they're not sold in vending machines. 990 for a 8/6 duster that anyone could wear. That was the top-end once upon a time. Now it's so easy to wear even the homeless should have it.


From a certain perspective, for certain types of play, if he's being shot at, he's already made a bigger mistake than his armor choice. And given the frequency of our table selling each other out, I'm not making bets on that hospital trip. I expect the last words someone to hear is "I'll make it painless. Tell me a vital spot I can end it where I won't damage any of your 'ware".

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*most armor has less impact than ballistic. The PPP balances it out, effectively costing 0 encum.

** Personal note: I'm a half FFBA person. I'm comfortable with the thought of torso/groin/thighs coverage if I feel there's a chance of something going wrong. I consider booties, gloves, and a hood going too far. I leave that for the guys in the SWAT armor, who I also consider as going too far. SWAT armor attracts attention. It's great if you're trying to disguise yourself as a SWAT member but otherwise leave it in the safehouse. I like to wear armor that makes social sense, which means I usually have a suit of some sort and some street armor for getting dirty. But that's just me. YMMV.

ITS Gonryu. Full-auto grenade launcher. When you use the rules in War!, your base hit will do 55P damage *before* factoring in successes. You can pick it up with Restricted Gear.

Why stop at one?
Use multiple (Fire)Arms.

You and I appear to have the same philosophy for Armor selection. I am all about socially acceptable limits for Armor...

While I believe that realistically you are right about mucking up when the going gets rough, I think from a fun point of view I want combat to happen. Also, I find in-party fighting to be quite stressful, usually, because that's where munchkins can really show up their (ill-begotten) strengths. (And I don't even normally use that word.) So we tend to sacrifice some realism for a bit more fun - but that is subjective of course.

We're on the same page where social acceptability is concerned, however, all the addons make it possible to basically not compromise and still wear fashionable stuff.

My runners tend to have a suit of armoured business clothes with an overcoat for social occasions and normal business, and an inconspicuous full-body armour like the urban explorer jumpsuit with a helmet (and ruthenium, of course) for those tougher missions. I don't think using real full-body suits or security/milspec armour is viable as a runner. You would just end up painting a huge target on your back.

I personally aim for about 8/6 worth of armor. Maybe a little more, if I can support it. It's that threshold that a reasonably large gun (assault rifles) will be doing physical, but smaller guns will likely be doing stun.

looking at what the rest of the team can potentially wear to not die in a hail of gunfire:

Body 1 can at best wear an FFBA half-body suit with shin guards. (4/2)
body 2 can at best wear a full suit of FFBA with a helmet and shin guards. (7/5)
body 3 (the average) can wear the ffba full suit with an overcoat and a securetech helmet (9/7)
body 4 can wear the ffba full suit with auctioneer business clothes, and securetech helmet, shin, and forearm guards. (11/9)
body 5 can wear the FFBA full suit with greatcoat, and securetech vitals protector, helmet, and shin guards (13/11)
body 6(normal human max) can wear the ffba full suit with an armor jacket, helmet, shin and forearm guards, and leg casings (15/13)

and thats where the armor for most human starting characters caps before cyber or magic, just using the rules from arsenal. you can stack another point or two in there with the armor mods from War!, depending on strength.

now, style and other factors are a separate matter than just basic armor encumbrance, and most people dont walk around in optimum body armor. at body 4 your looking at enough armor to reasonably survive a gunfight. the average human will probably only have 6 ballistic armor, which means a heavy pistol with good ammo will bleed him out fairly quickly. the best unaugmented human is going to still bleed when a sniper aims for the head. which starts to put the 'bulletproof' augmented builds into perspective.

with Dwarves, you see more body 6. Orks are more likely to hit body 8. above body 8, it gets increasingly difficult to add more armor to reach your potential capacity. this is an interesting dilemma, as i would expect some corp to build heavier custom troll armor by now as its a simple matter to hire some trolls, use personafix to make them loyal, and implant wired reflex and skillwires to solve the issue of training.

It is trivially simple to get Armor to 20+...
However, it is Socially Unacceptable to parade around in such armor.

11/9 Armor is perfectly acceptable for Armor, even for the Troll...

That was pre-War! Softweave changed all that. Someone with War! please recheck my math but I' pretty sure Str 3, Body 3 can wear a softweave armor jacket (8/6), ppp shin & forerarm (0/2) and half FFBA (4/1) for a total of 12/9 at no encumbrance. I'm not even going to bet that's the "non-shenanigans" cap.

Use TWO Shields

Only the softweave armor jacket can be worn with str 3 and body 3.
Max armor rating without encumbrance is 6 and with the strength 3 that jacket counts for encumbrance as 5/6

As for max armor for slower body persons:
Heavy Military Armor + helmet (18/16) with Mobility upgrade 2 can be worn by character with a Body of 5
Softweawe version of the above can be worn by a strength 3 Body 4 character, but can't be gotten in chargen
Red Samurai Armor + helmet(15/15) can be worn by someone with body of 4.
Light Military Armor + helmet(14/12) with Mobility upgrade 3 can be worn by a character with Body 3, but this one requires 2 resricted gear qualities.

Ah. My misunderstanding. Good to know.

I'd like to build a guy/girl that looks as inconspicuous as possible but can soak as much bullets as possible.
I can see four ways.
-Bioware-Adept: Mystic Armor, Supernatural Toughness (Stun), Orthoskin, Pain-Editor (my favored option so far)
-Mystic-Adept: Mystic Armor and Armor Spell (can have Counterspelling as well)
-Cyberlimbs: Synthetic with Armor Upgrades (sets of all scanners very fast)
-Cyber/Bio: Orthoskin, Aluminum/Titan Bone Lacing (needs high grade 'ware, illegal)
add high Body, maybe Ork with Human Looking quality or a dwarf

any better ideas?

The trouble with the mystic adept route is that the armor spell glows. So it isn't exactly inconspicuous.

On the 'ware, I will point out a quirk in the rules. Both dermal sheath and bone density augmentation are completely legal - you don't even need a permit for them.