I use these two house rules. I'm curious what you think of them.
Note that I only have the core rulebook, so these are based on just that book.
* On page 161, under Armor and Encumbrance, ignore the first line “If a character is wearing more than one piece of armor at a time, only the highest value (for either Ballistic or Impact) applies.” Instead, you can stack armor, up to a maximum of Body X 2, counting the higher of the Ballistic or Impact rating against that limit.
I’ve categorized the armors into three categories: Inner, Middle, and Outer Layers. You can only stack armors from two different layers.
Inner Layers: Actioneer Business Clothes, Armor Clothing, Armor Vest
Middle Layers: Armor Jacket, Leather Jacket, Urban Explorer Jumpsuit
Outer Layers: Camouflage Suit, Chameleon Suit, Full Body Armor, Leather Duster, Lined Coat, all Helmets, all Shields
A Leather Duster is a full length leather coat. It has B2/I2, Avail -, and costs 400¥.
Clothing, since it’s B0/I0, can be any layer you want, and stacks with everything (including itself). The Feedback Clothing upgrade can only be applied to the Inner Layer, and the Shock Frills armor modification to the Outer Layer. Armor modification ratings do not stack, use the highest rating per mod.
For example: My character has Body 4, so I can stack a maximum of 8 armor (Ballistic or Impact). I choose an Urban Explorer Jumpsuit (B6/I6), over which I wear a Leather Duster (B2/I2) for a total of B8/I8. I suffer no encumbrance penalty.
During a run with my Body 4 hero, I am captured and stripped of my armor. When I break out, I acquire Armor Clothing (B4/I0), and an Armored Jacket (B8/I6). That would normally be B12/I6, but it only counts as B8/I6. I suffer encumbrance penalties as if the rating was still 12. I exceed my (Body X 2) by 4 points, so I get a -2 encumbrance penalty to Agility and Reaction (and derived stats like Initiative).
* For the techies out there, I made this change: You can run a number of programs concurrently equal to your System rating. For every two programs (or fraction thereof) running over System capacity, Response is reduced by 1, to a minimum of 1. For example: if you have System 4/Response 4, running up to 4 programs is no problem, running 5 or 6 drops response to 3, 7 or 8 = Response 2, 9 or 10 = Response 1.
Why?
The armor stacking is because it's hard to be a hero out there, and since I don't allow the form fitting armor or PPP system, I thought it would help.
As for the System/Response rule, it gives a slight advantage to the hacker, and I think the math is easier.
Thanks