I know this is a bunch of extra rolls, and slows the game down a bit, but it really seemed to make sense to me. I was not sure what kind of modifers hardened armour should get, but I think that double barrier rating seemed a little much for me.


Armour degredation. When a piece of armor gets hit with a bullet with an unmodified damage level of M or greater, the armour will have to resist the power of the weapon, or degrade. Damage level greater than M add an additional +2 modifier to the target number. The armour rolls a number of dice equal to the ballistic rating, with a target number equal to the power of the weapon. The resistance test should be rolled each time the armor is hit, whether or not the wearer takes damage. Only 1 success is required for the armour to keep its integrity.

Example:
Ace fires a heavy pistol (9M) with regular rounds at Duece who is sporting a brand new armoured jacket and hits him (5/3).

After resistence tests, Duece checks to see if his armoured jacket’s ballistic rating degrades. He rolls
5 dice with a target number of 9. The rolls are 2,2,3,4,7 which yeilds 0 successes, so the ballistic rating of the armour is reduced by 1, and is now 4/3.

Modifiers:
APDS - Power / 2 (since it is meant to pierce through but not destroy.)
Explosive = Power +2
S damage level = Power +2
D damage level = Power +4

Layered armor:
The inner pieces of layeres armour will use all of its dice resist a TN equal to the power of the weapon minus the ballistic rating of the outer armor.

Example:
Ace fires a heavy pistol (9M) with regular rounds at Duece who is sporting a brand new armoured jacket (5/3) and armoured vest (4/2) and hits him. Duece rolled 2,2,3,4,7 which yeilds 0 successes, so the ballistic rating of the armoured jacket is reduced by 1, and is now 4/3. The vest will use 4 dice with a target number of43, (The ballistic rating over the outer armor will be reduced for the next shot, but still absorbed most of the shot) The rolls of 1,2,4,6 yield at least one success, so the armour does not degrade.

Helmets: For simplicity and speed, helmets will be ruled to not degrade unless there is a called shot to the head.

Have you ever played Champions? In it there is a Disadvantage for Armor called Abalative. If an attack excedes the defences of the armor, the armor aquires a activation roll. (Basicly you have to roll less than or equal to 14 on 3D6 or the armor does not work) and every time the armors protection is exceded, the roll gets one worse.

Basicly, whenever the armor's defence is beaten a hole is blown in the armor and there is a chance the armor will not protect agianst the next hit.

Since an armor's defence is a factor of it's coverage it Shadowrun, lowering it's defence may be approprate, but agian it may be a bit drastic as even good armor only has 5 or so points of protection.

You could rule that whenever you take damage through your armor, it's defence drops due to the hole. No extra roll. Since you alwies take at least one box from a hit (brusing and such) you could rule that 2 or more boxes are neccary to qualify as a penetrating hit that reduced protection.

Just some ideas