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So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

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Wed, 2012-07-11 02:10

NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture

So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

And while building some nice NPC (recycling old character designs)... I realized: Second skin, Smart Skin, Armored Clothing, and Armored Vest can be stacked up... And everything can be modded (except Smart skin. How do you add Reactive/Ablative/Etc armor to a thin pool of nanomachines?) You can make characters with over 40 armor... Comments?

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As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.

Wed, 2012-07-11 05:48

Decivre

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

NewAgeOfPower wrote:
And while building some nice NPC (recycling old character designs)... I realized: Second skin, Smart Skin, Armored Clothing, and Armored Vest can be stacked up... And everything can be modded (except Smart skin. How do you add Reactive/Ablative/Etc armor to a thin pool of nanomachines?) You can make characters with over 40 armor... Comments?

There's a reason the armor cap was added in the last errata update. Now, no morph can have a higher armor rating in either form than their own durability. It means that high durability combat morphs can have massive amounts of armor, while low-durability non-combat morphs probably won't be able to compete because of some whacky interaction. But everybody has a cap, so they can't increase armor infinitely.

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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Wed, 2012-07-11 10:15

Decimator

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

Armor does very little against the biggest threat in the game. Also, when dealing with characters with that level of armor, there are a few ways to attack the armor itself. Minimissile loaded with liquid thermite: Liquid thermite deals 3d10+5 damage to armor(in addition to the unfortunate person inside it) for 3 rounds. So you can reasonably expect it to knock off 30 points of armor all on its own. Hit them again, and it'll burn all the way through. Disassemblers: Disassembler swarms do straight damage. They eat through the armor first, then eat whatever is inside. Unlike liquid thermite, swarms keep going for days. Saboteurs: While a saboteur nanoswarm doesn't directly threaten a biomorph, it does threaten everything they carry. Hitting Mr. armor with one of these means their equipment starts to quit working. Sheer volume of fire: Critical hits ignore armor. If somebody is really heavily armored and they wade out into massed fire, they'll probably take a critical hit. Social issues: If a guy in SWAT gear walks into your workplace, people are going to respond differently from if he's wearing a suit and tie.

Wed, 2012-07-11 10:51

Geonis

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

I will also point out aimed shots can bypass armor completely, or partially if you deem it appropriate. For your example, not shooting them in the chest would reasonable ignore the armored vest. The mods can get quite expensive, more so than the base armor and also have a host of temporary/diminishing uses as well as preparing time before it is active in some cases. The reactive armor has 5 charges, each use of the charge inflicts 1 damage to to wearer and recharges at the rate of 1 per hour.

Wed, 2012-07-11 18:23

NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

Decimator wrote:
Armor does very little against the biggest threat in the game. Also, when dealing with characters with that level of armor, there are a few ways to attack the armor itself. Minimissile loaded with liquid thermite: Liquid thermite deals 3d10+5 damage to armor(in addition to the unfortunate person inside it) for 3 rounds. So you can reasonably expect it to knock off 30 points of armor all on its own. Hit them again, and it'll burn all the way through. Disassemblers: Disassembler swarms do straight damage. They eat through the armor first, then eat whatever is inside. Unlike liquid thermite, swarms keep going for days. Saboteurs: While a saboteur nanoswarm doesn't directly threaten a biomorph, it does threaten everything they carry. Hitting Mr. armor with one of these means their equipment starts to quit working. Sheer volume of fire: Critical hits ignore armor. If somebody is really heavily armored and they wade out into massed fire, they'll probably take a critical hit. Social issues: If a guy in SWAT gear walks into your workplace, people are going to respond differently from if he's wearing a suit and tie.

In a previous campaign, as a player, I managed to build a biomorph with 80 DUR. Having armor cap out at DUR limit means nothing. Yep. I think I posted something about how dumb good Liquid Thermite + Gel munitions was. Going to be using it soon. Of course, it got nuk'd by the GM (although I was able to acquire another one a few months later) Yep. Looks like I'm going to be making Crit Ninja (High Mox) NPCs for boss fights. Although, Armor Clothing with a stack of mods, plus Second Skin with a stack of mods, plus some Smart Skin and Bioweave (Light) pushes you to 31/28... And none of those scream 'scary terrorist dressed in SWAT gear'...

—

As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.

Wed, 2012-07-11 19:01

TadanoriOyama TadanoriOyama's picture

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

Since some of those mods involve active nanoswarms and/or explosives, I bet they actually do. Remember this is Eclipse Phase, anyone who cares to look around them will be able to determin exactly how much resistance that individual is surrounded by due to the wash of data.

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Wed, 2012-07-11 21:08

Decimator

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

One other item to keep in mind is superthermite charges. Even as shaped charges, these still only deal 6d10+15 damage apiece. However, you can use multiple charges for cumulative effect. This means that if you were to spend 5k credits on a shaped bomb(much cheaper than any decent morph), you'd be doing enough damage to turn the most heavily armored fool into a fine red sauce suitable for putting on pasta. Oh, and there's no reason you can't conceal said bomb inside some innocuous puppet-socked robot.

Wed, 2012-07-11 23:33

NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

Decimator wrote:
One other item to keep in mind is superthermite charges. Even as shaped charges, these still only deal 6d10+15 damage apiece. However, you can use multiple charges for cumulative effect. This means that if you were to spend 5k credits on a shaped bomb(much cheaper than any decent morph), you'd be doing enough damage to turn the most heavily armored fool into a fine red sauce suitable for putting on pasta.

Cumulative charges apply against armor only once?!?!?! Holy crap, you can blow up warships with a few thousand credits in superthermite... Jovian Battlefleet... BOOM for the price of a few morphs...

—

As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.

Thu, 2012-07-12 10:04

Decimator

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

Warships already carry weapons that powerful:

EP Rules wrote:
If you absolutely must know the DV of a spacecraft weapon, treat it as a a standard weapon with a DV multiplier of x3 for small craft (fighters and shuttles), x5 for medium craft, and x10 for larger craft.

However, to actually destroy a destroyer, since you're talking Jovian warships, you would need more than a few thousand credits. Destroyers have 30 armor and 2,000 durability. They also have a wound threshold of 500. There are plenty of vulnerable things inside destroyers, most notably the antimatter bottle, but then you have to be [i]inside[/i] the destroyer.

Thu, 2012-07-12 10:30

#10

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

Eclipse Phase isn't really a combat game, and there's no real attempt to make combat 'balanced'. Honestly, this is okay. It reminds me a lot of CP2020. The focus isn't on combat, but on all of the dirty things you CAN'T combat with guns alone. However, as a GM, you still have a problem on your hands. And unfortunately, with armor outpacing guns by such a margin, it's a painful problem. What I'd recommend doing is looking in the fanzine The Eye for the rules on crew-served or vehicle-mounted weapons and use that. By the time you have that much armor, that's just what they'll need to throw at you. Your other problem is the party will be unbalanced. That's a normal GM issue. If your party is okay with it, no trouble. What I'd recommend is trying to help everyone else to get to that same high level, so you can hit them with heavy weapons with impunity.

Thu, 2012-07-12 12:11

#11

TadanoriOyama TadanoriOyama's picture

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

There's also a cut the gordian knot solution if armor stacking becomes a problem: increasing weapon penetration or weapons that bypass conventional armor. Technology is supposed to be advancing quickly in AF10, if something is presenting a consistant problem than a solution probably isn't going to be long off.

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Thu, 2012-07-12 12:58

#12

Jaberwo

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

Am I the only one who thinks that adding the same mods to more than one layer of armor is questionable? Our group has this unwritten houserules: You can only wear one additional/unobtrusive armor under normal armor. You can wear two additional/unobtrusive armor pieces and nothing else, but they become noticeable. Modifications can only be added to the outer layer and usually only to normal armor (ask the GM). Certain mods can't be used together, for example Ablative Patches and Reactive Coating. Generally everything that needs to be the first thing on the surface to work. Build-in or implanted armor can be worn with everything.

Thu, 2012-07-12 13:01

#13

CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

Nope, my group follows almost the exact same rules. Only because we ended up getting into an arms race to high armour values, though.

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Thu, 2012-07-12 13:51

#14

TadanoriOyama TadanoriOyama's picture

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

Some of them certainly don't pass a very basic logic test. Reactive armor, for example, involves (in very very rough terms) strapping tiny explosives to yourself and using the blast they create to lessen incoming damage. Appying that to each layer of your layered armor seems like a good way to break your own ribs, or at least tear the outer armor layers. Likewise the image of strapping additional armored plates to second skin or smart skin suits just seems face palm worthy. My general house rule is that if you apply mods to an inner layer of armor it no longer counts as it's default form, meaning it begins to conflict with the other armor layers and forces the normal penalties.

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Thu, 2012-07-12 21:20

#15

NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

In my quest for more Transhumanist Horror, I've devised some interesting forms of matter- posting it in Homebrew http://www.eclipsephase.com/ether-exotic-material-eyes-only-my-players-k... Unfortunately, its too rare to really be used in weapons...

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As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.

Sat, 2012-07-14 16:22

#16

Thantastic Thantastic's picture

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

I'll echo what others were saying above - it's easy to fall into an arms race with ludicrous armor-stacking. It's fun to play transhuman tank once in a while, but if it's getting out of hand at your table add in other threats that show people armor isn't always where you should be focusing first for defense: infosec vulnerabilities, problems with ego-napping/forking, lots of trauma (from walking through battlefields watching others get torn to shreds and getting to the point of anti-vehicle weapons and super thermite charges being used against you has got to be pretty stressful)...there are a lot of things that GMs can include that are viable threats that can take attention off physical combat. Without routine validation that nothing can harm them, most players will lessen their focus on min-maxing their armor kit.

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Wed, 2012-07-18 10:23

#17

Gerzel

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

NewAgeOfPower wrote:
Cumulative charges apply against armor only once?!?!?! Holy crap, you can blow up warships with a few thousand credits in superthermite... Jovian Battlefleet... BOOM for the price of a few morphs...

You have to get the charges to the fleet first. Also those charges are demo charges and assume that someone is taking the time to place them properly not sending them in a warhead. If you were standing on the outside of a Jovian battlecruiser yeah that's "all it would take," but getting there is going to be a bit of a problem.

Wed, 2012-07-18 16:35

#18

TekHed

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

YEah this game lacks granularity when it comes to differentiating between scales of armor. For example, Star Wars has character scale, speeder scale, walker scale, fighter/starship scale, and capital ship scale...

Wed, 2012-07-18 17:14

#19

Decivre

Re: So, I'm planning on GMing... Holy crap Armor Stacking!

TekHed wrote:
YEah this game lacks granularity when it comes to differentiating between scales of armor. For example, Star Wars has character scale, speeder scale, walker scale, fighter/starship scale, and capital ship scale...

So agreed. As it stands, there is only one scale, and the game tends to fall apart as you shift from it. That's probably why the devs have acknowledged that space combat and large scale combat as a whole is best kept to plot, rather than trying to run it mechanically. I've always found that to be the case; trying to run a battlefield on a personal scale is a numbers nightmare.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]