Well, there's the SR 1st Edition approach.

Armor values were lower, but they represented automatic soak roll successes rather than power reduction.

OTOH, weapons had variable staging. Rather than requiring 2 successes to raise or lower a wound level, it depended on the weapon. Assault cannons had a damage code of (IIRC) 10D4, meaning it took 4 successes to stage up or down damage, and that weapons with a staging of 1 were both easy to resist but potentially very lethal if they had a high power.

In SR1, I was quite happy with armor jackets and Body values of ~4-5, sometimes backed with helmets, as standard runner armor. After my first session of SR2 (using a SR1-->SR2 translated character), I had my PC run out and grab heavy security armor.

This is indeed the rules mechanic and the excuse for it. Do not be fooled into thinking that getting hit square in a plated vest (NIJ level III or higher) with a shotgun lead slug is lethal, or even very dangerous, IRL.

My house ruling is that a character gains one bonus die in the Damage Resistance Test for every point by which armor modifies Power below 2. Armor 7 vs 7M SMG = +2 dice on DamRes Test. Regardless, armor which doesn't drop the DamRes TN below 4 (and thus make DamRes a better use for CP than Dodging) is not very useful for people with very low BODs.

On the other hand, Body should be very important for anyone who might expect to end up in a combat situation. Since SR doesn't have fatigue (fortunately, some might say), it's a good thing there is at least some reason for most characters to get a decent Body.

There is? I was not aware of this. NIJ has repeatedly stated that no police officer has ever died from being hit by a firearm in a vest that stops the projectiles within the NIJ standard error parameters (can't remember the backface deformation standards right now).

NIJ has stated even more often that no police officer has ever even been incapacitated after being hit in a vest that is rated to protect against the specific type of projectile with which he/she was hit.

Giving SR armor ratings for RL armor types is meaningless if you do not completely rework the Powers (and preferably introduce several other factors into the determination of penetration of SR firearms) of SR guns. Utterly meaningless. Consider the 9M of the Heavy Pistols against the 7S of small-caliber sporting rifles, for starters.

Apart from the above -- the perfect, or near-perfect if the shotgun story you related is true, performance of NIJ standard armor -- you've got the fact that killing a human with a 2" temporary depression of soft tissue in a very restricted area is, errm, difficult. Were this not the case, Asps would be a heck of a lot more lethal.

When such an attack does not result from "being stopped by soft armor" or magic, it is always considered Stun in SR. I don't necessarily agree with that, but it goes to show how even SR designers don't really believe that a relatively minor blunt trauma is very lethal.

If it's a sudden two-inch depression in the ribcage you've got shattered rib bones plowing into your lungs and other internal organs resulting in massive internal bleeding.

Bones can break with as little pressure as 8 PSI. I'd hate to imagine the force a full-bore shotgun blast can have against even a protected ribcage.

Broken rib bones, perhaps. Massive internal bleeding, not very likely. The dozens of police officers that have been hit by shotguns at very close ranges while wearing vests without sustaining significant blunt trauma testifies for that. Google for "Kevlar Survivors' Club" Shotgun.

It also depends on the guage of the shotgun and type of ammunition. 12-guage 00 Buckshot will cause significantly more damage than 16 guage birdshot. The former is the equivilant of being hit with 9 .33 slugs at almost exactly the same time. A 12-guage slug, on th eother hand, will simply destroy a conventional kevlar vest.

Here are some interesting links.

http://www.univrel.auburn.edu/multimedia/p...web/thomas.html

http://www.chuckhawks.com/shotguns_protect...ction_field.htm

http://www.dupont.com/kevlar/pdfs/24-357_I...US_Officers.pdf

http://www.polfed.org/0103vest-quest.pdf

Well, I try. Found out long ago that many people are not particularly interested in the RL stance, so there's no point going on about that alone.

Fortunately it is the case that a single, 8.4mm, 54gr lead ball @ 1300-1400fps is easily stopped by an NIJ level IIIA vest with very little backface deformation. After all, that's 40% the weight of and much softer than the 124gr 9mmP FMJ @ 1400fps that the IIIA is guaranteed to stop with proven zero-lethality blunt trauma.

Regardless, I'm not ruling out the possibility that a police officer might have been killed by the blunt trauma of armor stopping a shotgun blast. Like I said, the spine could probably be seriously damaged by that. Or the hit could have occured very high near the throat, pushing something into the trachea.

I've often wondered about that. Anyone got actual data on 12G slugs vs level IIIA vests?

12G 2-3/4" 1oz slug:
18.5mm diameter 437gr 1500fps, 2185 ft-lbs, ~8.13 ft-lbs/mm^2

.44 Magnum SWC:
10.9mm diameter 240gr 1450fps, 1120 ft-lbs, ~12 ft-lbs/mm^2

The .44 Magnum puts almost 50% more energy per unit of area -- which is a rather decent indicator of armor penetration when projectile construction is similar. Compared to a lead slug with a very blunt head, I'd assume the .44 Magnum would penetrate flexible body armor better or at least as well. The "SMG 9mm" which NIJ level IIIA is tested against puts ~8.46 ft-lbs/mm^2 and is an FMJ ogive.

On the other hand, I assume you can get 1oz 12G slugs to muzzle velocities well beyond 1700fps, especially the 3-½"s. At 1800fps (~3146 ft-lbs, still only ~11.7 ft-lbs/mm^2), I doubt any wearable flexible west could reliably beat the NIJ backface deformation criteria, so rating any flexible vest against 12G slugs is meaningless.

[Edit]Just realized what an abomination the unit "foot-pounds per square millimeter" is, and how I should have either used inches or Joules instead. Can't be bothered to go back and change the values. Anyway, the units aren't important because the point is to compare the values.[/Edit]

Well, the page I linked too states that an officer was killed when a 12 guage slug drove pieces of his vest into his abdomen. That suggests that it didn't actualy penetrate, but it deformed the vest with so much force that pieces of kevlar tore off and penetrated the officer's abdomen.

http://www.radix.net/~jchang/armorfaq1.txt

According to this FAQ, level III is rated to stop 12 guage rifled slugs, but IIIA is not.

Indicates that whoever wrote the article doesn't know what types of projectile threats penetrate body armor the best. 12G slugs penetrate far worse than even 7.62x51mm FMJs, let alone armor-piercing bullets.

That vest being torn apart thing sounds really silly somehow. When you look at pictures of penetrated flexible body armor panels, there's always just the one hole where all the strands have snapped. I do not doubt that the blunt trauma from being hit by a shot slug to many flexible body armor vests could be very dangerous and even fatal, however.

Would not surprise me. The same principle at work that makes a .340Wby 225grain Soft Point a rather bad performer against big, tough game at short distances, but allows the same loading to totally fuck up the human thorax. I dare not say much more about this, because there's simply too much physics at work there for me to say anything smart.

When facing 5.56x45mm M855 FMJs, you might pray for even a measly leve II vest, to slow the bullet down enough to stop it from fragmenting. But if you were being shot at with 7mm RemMag solids, you might be better off without any armor than with that level II. Etc etc.