[Typhus]

Has it ever been defined how *much* stopping power armor represents in prior editions?  So for example, if on average a heavy pistol should "always" breach a vest (average rolls assumed all around), that's a balance point to work from.  If it should "only sometimes" breach a lined coat (ie on a good roll) that's also a point to work with in terms of scaling up.  I know it's an abstracted system obvs, but what would anyone speculate is the "normal" for the world of SR? 

If I am balancing weaponry against armor, what would you consider as a baseline to work with?  Not numbers per se, but in terms of expected outcomes?  Personally I feel like a lined coat should have a decent chance of mitigating all of an average light pistol attack, but heavy would be more likely to allow a small amount of damage on average.  Assuming single shots here.

[adzling]

Historically Shadowrun has always abstracted armor to some degree however it has always had an effect until 6th edition.

You have to consider a few factors when writing armor rules for RPGs including what type of armor it is, what parts of the body it covers and what type of damage it can stop.

Some level of abstraction is required in a game like shadowrun that has no hit locations so bear that in mind (you can't just take the specifications of what an armor type stops in isolation).

Shadowrun 6e's inanity has recently forced me to take a hard and long look at such stuff.

You can find tables of bullet foot pounds and compare that to the various ballistic armor types (NIJ iii-a, NIJ IV, etc) to see what type of bullets can typically be stopped by typical armor types.

Once you grok the data you'll laugh uncontrollably at 6e's mechanics (or lack thereof) for armor to stop bullets.

[Noble Drake]

...it has always had an effect until 6th edition.

It still has an effect, it's just one that is even more abstract than any version of Shadowrun before. Specifically, where SR3 armor would adjust the target number for your Body dice roll to resist the damage being done to, SR6 armor adjusts the odds that you have an Edge point you can afford to spend to re-roll one of the Body dice you roll to resist damage being done to you.

Fact-izing aside and moving on to the question on what kind of base-line to establish to re-balance weapons by:

I'd use an armor vest as the baseline for armor performance since it is the most basic form of item that exists solely for its bullet-stopping properties.
And I'd probably set the "yeah, it basically always stops that" at a heavy pistol from the 2nd range category.

Why? Because real-life "bullet proof" stuff is a whole bunch of math and science and the above provides a relatively accurate (over-) simplification and doesn't completely defy the expectations that players are likely to have from seeing someone get shot while wearing a kevlar vest in TV show or movie.

[penllawen]

SR6 armor adjusts the odds that you have an Edge point you can afford to spend to re-roll one of the Body dice you roll to resist damage being done to you.

So that’s a 33% chance of removing one point of damage - as long as you didn’t already earn two Edge points during this combat turn, that is. That’s a one-third chance of stopping one-third of an Ares Predator shot. Or nothing at all if you’re at the Edge cap. And as long as your armour is 4 points above the attacker’s AR value.

Contrast that to a rating 9 armour jacket in SR5, which has a 98% chance of stopping 1 box (always, regardless of what else has happened in the turn.) It has a 35% chance of stopping 4 boxes - fully half the damage of an Ares Predator. 

“Armour has no effect in 6e” is hyperbole, but only a little bit.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

OTOH if there's a tie between attacker's and defender's hits, the defender has a 2/3 chance to avoid all damage entirely by spending an edge point.  The mechanical impact of 1 point of edge varies by context.

What's new to 6we is that armor is not going to make you bulletproof.  It's a big change from prior editions (5e especially) but it's not really all that unrealistic.  Even IF bulletproof vests were actually bulletpoof (and they're not)....

[penllawen]

OTOH if there's a tie between attacker's and defender's hits, the defender has a 2/3 chance to avoid all damage entirely by spending an edge point.  The mechanical impact of 1 point of edge varies by context.

Sure, fair point. And roughly how often is that gonna happen, do you imagine?

Don't forget to factor in all the times your samurai already earned their two Edge by firing their big gun at goons on phase 25, meaning they got no Edge from armour when the goons fired back on phase 9.

What's new to 6we is that armor is not going to make you bulletproof.  It's a big change from prior editions (5e especially) but it's not really all that unrealistic.  Even IF bulletproof vests were actually bulletpoof (and they're not)....

Before the release of 6e, did anyone on this forum ever post about 1/2/3/4/5e to say something to the effect of "I think armour is way too good!"? "I just wish it did less!"? Who was asking for this change?

[CigarSmoker]

@Penllawen

You seem to ignore the opposition side. When you wear no armor and have 3 Body its easy to earn Edge against you. And 1 Edge earned means the PR1 oppoent can try a Knockout melee attack Edge Action.
Wearing no armor is SR6 is a bad idea.

Further you could argue why does Torso Armor grant Edge when you use the "Called shot" Action to shoot the targets eyes ? So you could argue SR6 armor is still too good [advocatus diaboli speaking]

[DigitalZombie]

I actually like the change of armour in 6th.

Like in Dnd you could have a monk/barbarian/arcane caster with no armour. And they were still effective. The paladin and fighters etc were also effective in  their platemails... until you had the stupid random encounter in the middle of the night at the inn. Suddenly the naked fighters and paladins were #%@$.

I mean if you look at many action movies then the protagonists would often fight without any armour. Bruce willis often just used a wife beater as armour, but he was still effective.

Edit: to answer OP.
Maybe something the likes of of adjusted DV isnt higher than your armour bonus, then the armour stops the bullit cold.

This means you would need a modified DV of 5+ to get through an armour jacket.
Problems naturally arises with cyberlimbs and their 15 armour ratings, and stuff like that.

[Sphinx]

Personally, I think an armor vest should stop a light pistol round and an armor jacket should stop a heavy pistol round -- assuming average results from average dice pools.

For the purposes of 6E, someone (can't recall who or when) suggested a house rule that if the armor rating is equal to or higher than the modified damage rating (i.e., base DV plus net hits), then Physical damage converts to Stun, while Stun damage would be ignored. I'll probably go with that.

[Typhus]

Sorry to have inadvertently started another 6e armor debate thread.  That was not my goal.  In fact, part of the reason for my question was so that I could work out a starting point get that particular mechanic out of the 6e rulebase.  That's part of why my question was not tied to any given edition.

Regarding using a vest as a baseline to stop a pistol bullet, that seems like a reasonable start point, but would need to be not 100% effective due to the coverage area being smaller. 

I suppose I could also think of it that way for things like a lined coat, which might not have any better stopping power, just greater coverage, and thus better overall protection. So a lined coat should be more likely to stop the bullet, even if conceptually it has no better density that a vest.  An armor jacket by comparison is a heavier armor, harder to breach, but with a little less coverage.  So thus you still get a higher rating with that overall.

Playtesting to get final numbers right is always needed, but
I'm looking to divine a theoretical baseline, in-universe.  Does a vest compete with a pistol?  The answer of meeting expectations is a good one to consider.  With the thoughts above tho, I think the lined cost is my new baseline armor balance point.

[Michael Chandra]

Personally, I think an armor vest should stop a light pistol round and an armor jacket should stop a heavy pistol round -- assuming average results from average dice pools.

For the purposes of 6E, someone (can't recall who or when) suggested a house rule that if the armor rating is equal to or higher than the modified damage rating (i.e., base DV plus net hits), then Physical damage converts to Stun, while Stun damage would be ignored. I'll probably go with that.

Might want to make an exception for special damage types like Electric.

[Xenon]

As others already said, Shadowrun don't even use hit zones which mean the concept of armor is already seriously abstracted. Why would a vest prevent any damage at all if the shooter take a called shot to hit you in the head? ;-)

In SR6 they take this a bit further. it is now assumed that everyone will have some armor. But rather than resolving things like armor rating and armor penetration they decided to simply roll it into base damage values. This is the reason why damage values are much lower in this edition. Amor from that vest / coat / jacket or whatever is already factored and rolled into the base damage value of the attack.

Ares predator V in SR5 had a base DV of 8P
Ares predator VI in SR6 have a base value of 3P

Ingram Smartgun X in SR5 had a base DV of 8P
Ingram Smartgun XI in SR6 have a base DV of 3P

AK-97 and FN HAR in SR5 had a base DV of 10P
AK-97 and FN HAR in SR6 have a base DV of 5P

It is assumed that targets in SR6, not always - but in the above specific cases, have enough armor (before applying Body) to reliably soak 5 damage (or maybe 4, since unlike 5th edition in 6th edition the attacker will hit on a tie).


If it makes you feel better you can always just house rule that attacks against a naked target no longer have to factor in this default armor 'tax'. That attacks against naked targets instead will use unadjusted SR5 base damage values.


I can see why they wanted a change.

People have been discussing that it is very hard to challenge a character that have 30-60 soak dice and pretty much never take physical damage (unless you bring in attacks that risk one-shotting if another player character happen to take the hit).

There have also been concerns that the body attribute don't contribut enough, that it is overshadowed by armor rating. Many characters in 5th edition settled for Body 3 while it seem as if many characters in 6th edition go for body 5.

(Also simply rolling that many physical dice at once actually start to take both unnecessary time and effort)


I can also see why people are concerned that maybe they made it too abstract since now your armored jacket will no longer, in average, soak 1 box more than an armored vest (like it did in 5th edition).

But this, I think, is where the edge system is supposed to comes in. While both the vest and the jacket might reduce the base damage of a heavy pistol from 8P to 3P there will also be cases where the jacket might also provide you with a tactical advantage (or prevent that your opponent gain a tactical advantage) that you would not get with the vest.

Game mechanic wise lower armor protect more in 6th edition, armor jacket is basically as effective as ever and stronger armor no longer soak more than what you would expect from the jacket in previous edition. It is now very hard to build an immortal tank (but is that a bad thing? Honestly not so sure about that...

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

It's honestly not that different than prior editions... the really prior editions.

1st Edition: Heavy pistols and rifles tended to do "M" damage, which is 3 boxes. Light pistols and small melee weapons, did "L", which is 1 box.
2nd Edition: Ditto. (the difference being, the Staging value was deleted and everything stages on every 2 net hits)
3rd Edition: Ditto.

4th edition began the era that resembles current rules mechanics: static target numbers of "5" and staging moves to every net hit goes up or down 1 box, rather than every two goes up or down the scale of L/M/S/D. But, even in 4th edition damage codes resembled the raw #of boxes in 1-3.

5th edition is the lone outlier in SR's history of having DVs the way it did, which necessitated armor being obnoxiously effective to compensate. 

6th world edition goes back to more "historical" damage, and so obviously armor can't work the way it did in 5e.  Nor can it work the way it did in 1-3, since TNs are pegged to 5 now.  So it's either work the way it did in 4th, or invent something new.  Something new was invented.

[Noble Drake]

Before the release of 6e, did anyone on this forum ever post about 1/2/3/4/5e to say something to the effect of "I think armour is way too good!"? "I just wish it did less!"? Who was asking for this change?

I didn't come posting about it on the forum or anything (at least not that I remember), but way back in SR3 I frequently found myself thinking "It'd probably make combat feel a little more threatening for players if they couldn't stack their armor to the point of their damage resistance dice being effectively automatic successes unless I've got their opposition using anti-vehicular weapons on them... but at least it takes 2 successes to stage a wound down"

And in SR4, I also didn't post about it that I remember, but on more than one occasion a player had their character deliberately drop a grenade at their own feet because they felt certain their character would survive - and the character didn't even take damage one of the times because "eh... I've got a lot of dice already between body and armor, but sure, I'll add edge and re-roll 6s"

So I guess you could say that I was asking for this change.

[Xenon]

A vest only cover the [upper] torso but should probably stop a light pistol round and most of a heavy pistol round if it happen to hit the vest. Averaging it over the whole body and you probably end up with an abstract value which is roughly half of the damage a light pistol deals.

A coat covers a lot more of the body but is possibly less bullet resistant. When averaging it over your whole body you probably end up very close to the armored vest.

The armored jacket (at least how i imagine it) would probably reduce the damage roughly one box more than the other two alternatives.

I think this is pretty well presented in the rules as is (in both editions). In SR5 both vest and coat have an armor value of 9 which reduce a heavy pistol from 8P to 5P while jacket have 12 which, on average, reduce the same bullet from 8P to 4P. In SR6 the damage code is already reduced to 3P. The jacket have higher DR which in turn increase situations where you will either gain an edge or prevent the opposition from gaining one.

Where SR6 falls flat (when taking 'realism') is when you start talking extremes.
Naked targets are very hard to one-shot.
Cybered up targets wearing full combat armor are very easy to hurt.

But from a game design point of view I am not sure if this is inherently bad. Unlike the naked paladin the muscle of the team will not instantly die just because he don't have his jacket on, instead he will become more Bruce in Die Hard. And on the other spectra a cybered up street tank will now have to play a bit more tactical and not just wade through hordes of enemies without risk of taking any damage at all.