[Herr Brackhaus]

OK, I've updated the calculations for Hardened Armor, so check out the original post for that (now labeled 1). I've also added separate charts (see end of this or OP) for 2) hardened AV (RAW) vs hardened AV (does not ignore DV <= AV), 3) as 2 but with condition monitors of 8+Body, and 4) as 2 and 3 but for spirits, just for laughs.

All I can say is that while I have been playing Hardened Armor wrong (i.e. modified DV <= modified AV still damaged spirits), I think RAW Hardened Armor is just too strong. A Force 9 Spirit is nigh-invincible if you follow RAW where all DV is completely ignored unless it exceeds modified AV, with pretty much the Barret M122 with APDS rounds or an AV rocket the only thing that's able to even hurt it, and even then it would take one really good hit or two solid ones to take it out.

With that in mind, I also added a couple sheets of calculations comparing a possible houserule for Hardened Armor that would apply to vehicles, spirits, and character armor alike, where the only change is to remove the line about DV not exceeding Modified AV. As the charts will show, Hardnened Armor is still powerful, but it doesn't scale quite so exponentially and it means smaller caliber weaponry can chip away at such well-armored targets and eventually take them down, as opposed to the RAW version where you absolutely, positively need an AV rocket to deal with high AV targets. Again, this is just my preference so feel free to use or ignore, but just keep in mind that a Force 9 spirit, which in the grand scheme of things is powerful but hardly even close to what a min/maxed summoner can conjure, becomes an almost unstoppable force under RAW.

House Rule 1.1: Hardened Armor does not ignore modified DV that is less than or equal to modified AV
Reasoning: Hardened Armor as per RAW is just too strong for my taste; a Force 9 Spirit or an Ares Roadmaster with Hardened Armor become practically invincible to everything except AMRs and AV rockets. To my mind, this is a little overkill; with this houserule high-body, high-AV targets are still extremely resilient (more so when combined with house rule 2 that simplifies condition monitors), but with enough firepower they can now be harmed by non-APDS sniper rifles, assault cannons, HMGs, and lasers. It'll take volume of fire with these kinds of weapons to harm them, but given enough rounds (or beams) on target they can at least take such a target down eventually.

If nothing else, at least you now have a handy chart of all the comparisons

For reference, these are the updated tables:
1. Updated analysis comparing Vehicle AV to Hardened AV, with Hardened AV correctly (as per RAW) ignoring modified DV <= modified AV: http://i.imgur.com/VWd7D1Y.jpg
2. Updated analysis comparing Hardened AV (RAW) to Hardened AV that does not ignore modified DV <= modified AV: http://i.imgur.com/NG940yQ.jpg
3. Updated analysis same as 2 but with simplified condition monitors (8+Body) for drones and vehicles both: http://i.imgur.com/rc88ZkK.jpg
4. Updated analysis combining 2 and 3 but for Spirits: http://i.imgur.com/iQ6sbMw.jpg

[falar]

All I can say is that while I have been playing Hardened Armor wrong (i.e. modified DV <= modified AV still damaged spirits), I think RAW Hardened Armor is just too strong. A Force 9 Spirit is nigh-invincible if you follow RAW where all DV is completely ignored unless it exceeds modified AV, with pretty much the Barret M122 with APDS rounds or an AV rocket the only thing that's able to even hurt it, and even then it would take one really good hit or two solid ones to take it out.

I'm pretty sure this is by design. Spirits are supposed to be hell-on-wheels unless you've got magical countermeasures. Remember that their power (Immunity to Normal Weapons) is just Hardened Armor for Normal Weapons. This means that anything magical totally bypasses all armor and is only resisted by their body stat.

An adept or a mage can make pretty short work of even a high-Force spirit. Other than that, they're supposed to be holy-nine-levels-of-hell-get-out-run-like-the-wind-cry-like-your-momma-found-you-with-your-hand-in-the-cookie-jar-and-she's-got-a-good-birch-branch-ready scary. It's why you bring a mage or an adept to a spirit fight. Just like you bring a decker or a technomancer to a Matrix fight.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Oh, it's absolutely by design, I just feel it's too overpowered. Immunity To Normal Weapons is clearly not immunity, full stop, as it can still be breached with enough force (no pun intended), so my personal preference is to make the power a little more in line with their general powerlevel. Again, just my personal preference, and the numbers I've put up might show why I've decided to do this. Even if you keep Hardened Armor as per RAW, the analyses could be valuable just in terms of understanding how much damage the various objects and spirits can take.

[falar]

I think it's mainly overpowered because it's fairly easy to summon up and bind Force 8 spirits as a player. And then you've got basically an unstoppable juggernaut on your side unless your opposition also brought a Force 8 spirit and then it's mainly a question of which spirit acts first.

I'd be tempted to say something like every spirit you have bound whose Force exceeds your Magic has some sort of upkeep - either in it trying to break loose, or you have to feed it karma or reagents to keep it complacent and happy in your service.

[Malevolence]

Some of your numbers seem off to me. For example, on sheet 1, the Holdout vs. Normal AV Roto-Drone, you have 0 damage taken. But there should be 8 DV being resisted by 10 dice, for an average soak of 3.3, leaving 4.6 damage taken. Same sheet, SMG w/ Explosive vs. Hardened AV Roto-Drone, you have 0 damage taken, but it should be 10 DV resisted by 9 dice, with 3 auto hits from the 5 adjusted hardened AV, for 6 hits, leaving 4 damage taken. It looks like your algorithm might be soaking the damage before comparing the DV to the adjusted AV.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Thanks for the heads up, I'll double check the numbers.

ETA:
Yep, in the formula for the check on ignoring modified DV if <= modified AV, I'd added Body to the value to check against. Fixing it now.

[Sendaz]

I'd be tempted to say something like every spirit you have bound whose Force exceeds your Magic has some sort of upkeep - either in it trying to break loose, or you have to feed it karma or reagents to keep it complacent and happy in your service.

I recall one table used a houserule where your limit on bound spirits in Force was Mag x Cha and still total number capped by Cha.

So if you were Magic 6 and Cha 6, you could have up to 6 bound spirits with each being up to 6 force each as your Spirit Force Pool was 36 to represent how much you can control.

But if you had the same stats and decided to push yourself a bit to call and bind three Force 8 spirits that's 24 Force out of your Spirit Force Pool so you could have 2 more Force 6 spirits but your Spirit Force Pool wouldn't be able to cover anymore unless you dismiss one to 'free up' some of that Spirit Force Pool even though normally you could hold 1 more due to Cha.

[falar]

I recall one table used a houserule where your limit on bound spirits in Force was Mag x Cha and still total number capped by Cha.

I like it! I really like it! It makes me think of the Focus rules, which rules that are like other rules are generally cooler feeling to me. IIRC, Focus rules are no more than Magic foci and total Force of no more than Magic x Magic.

EDITED: I was wrong. It's just a flat Magic x 5 for total Force. Although a maximum Force of Charisma x 5 in bonded spirits would also make sense.

[Sendaz]

I recall one table used a houserule where your limit on bound spirits in Force was Mag x Cha and still total number capped by Cha.

I like it! I really like it! It makes me think of the Focus rules, which rules that are like other rules are generally cooler feeling to me. IIRC, Focus rules are no more than Magic foci and total Force of no more than Magic x Magic.

EDITED: I was wrong. It's just a flat Magic x 5 for total Force. Although a maximum Force of Charisma x 5 in bonded spirits would also make sense.

The Cha x 5 is probably more balanced, but Mag x Cha allowed for more improvement over time as you Initiated and raised your Magic.

Maybe a compromise of (Cha + Initiate Grade) x 5 to determine your Spirit Force Pool?

[falar]

The Cha x 5 is probably more balanced, but Mag x Cha allowed for more improvement over time as you Initiated and raised your Magic.

Maybe a compromise of (Cha + Initiate Grade) x 5 to determine your Spirit Force Pool?

With a metamagic, yeah. The metamagic gives you the + Initiate Grade part.

[Herr Brackhaus]

I think I've made a somewhat interesting discovery. While cleaning up the algorithm issue Malevolence pointed out, Hardened Armor functions exactly the same if you ignore DV less than modified AV or not. This is possibly a statistical anomaly (indicating that the algorithm needs to be able to account for variable dice rolls, which is a pain I'm not prepared to deal with).

What is clear is this: as long as hardened armor is involved and you operate on averages (i.e. any given dice has a 33.33% chance of scoring a hit), there is no functional difference between ignoring modified DV less than or equal to modified AV. Running the numbers indicate that (half AV + (AV/3)) will always exceed modified DV when modified DV is less than modified AV. So it's a moot point whether or not you use that particular part of the rules, at least from a statistical point of view.

Given the above, I've chosen to focus on the two things I've mentioned previously; normal AV vs hardened AV (with correct algortihm this time, I hope), and normal AV vs hardened AV with the condition monitor simplification house rule.

The results are relatively obvious. The previous algorithm was ignoring DV far too often as it had Body added to modified DV, so vehicles are much more squishy than they first seemed. Even something like an Ares Roadmaster will get shot up by a mere taser or heavy pistol with APDS given enough net hits and rounds on target. Drones are much worse off than I initially suspected, and can be destroyed by any weapon in the game.

When applying the unified condition monitor rules, however, the drones obviously become much more resilient. They don't take any less damage, but they won't be destroyed by a single hit in quite as many cases. If one combines this with the hardened armor rules, the situation is much improved for both vehicles and drones.

So, I stand by my decision to house rule vehicle armor as hardened armor and applying a flat 8+Body condition monitor on vehicles, drones and metahumans.

Thanks again to Malevolence for checking my numbers; always good to have someone peer review your work

Normal AV vs Hardened AV, normal condition monitor: http://imgur.com/ZMjqjJ3
Normal AV vs Hardened AV, unified condition monitor: http://imgur.com/ZMjqjJ3

[Marcus]

What I learned from that chart so far, Tasers are shockingly more effective at light drone destruction then I would have ever thought possible. However I suspect the range limitations may be more of an issue then that table reflects.

Otherwise this is pretty well what I expected, though I'm not 100% sure I'm reading that table correctly. Can you G-doc it?
I don't think I'm fully following what the first net column means.

But I am interested in reading more.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Tasers are surprisingly effective and have the added benefit of doing DV/2 Matrix damage. Ironically, this serves very little purpose as under RAW drones have a higher Matrix condition monitor than a physical one. I guess a hacker could fork two drones and you could hit them with stun damage as a one-two combo, but that is a really odd way of taking down a physical threat.

As for the table, it's really quite straight forward. The weapon, base DV, AP, and Mod AV columns should be self explanatory.

The next column is the base DV plus one net hit, resisted by modified AV. I.e. a standard damage resistance test. There are three possible outcomes:
Green cell: If the modified DV is less than the modified AV, the damage is ignored entirely (which doesn't happen until you get into the higher AV tiers)
Normal cell: If the modified DV is more than the modified AV, the modified AV plus body is divided by 3 for an average DV reduction, which is then subtracted from the modified DV and shown as damage taken
Red cell: as above, but if the damage taken exceeds the Condition Monitor Value, the result returned is Destroyed

The next columns are just as per the above, but with DV plus net hit, and hardened armor rules for the damage resistance test, and then normal armor plus five net hits, and then hardened armor plus five net hits.

So what you see is the effect of normal AV vs hardened AV with 1 and 5 net hits, respectively.

The second chart just shows what happens if you unify the condition monitors as 8+Body across the board, just like for metahumans.

[Novocrane]

Tasers are surprisingly effective and have the added benefit of doing DV/2 Matrix damage. Ironically, this serves very little purpose as under RAW drones have a higher Matrix condition monitor than a physical one.

Would it seem more accurate for electrical weapons to do full DV matrix damage, and 1/2DV physical damage?

[gradivus]

Tasers are surprisingly effective and have the added benefit of doing DV/2 Matrix damage. Ironically, this serves very little purpose as under RAW drones have a higher Matrix condition monitor than a physical one.

Would it seem more accurate for electrical weapons to do full DV matrix damage, and 1/2DV physical damage?

Yes, yes it would