Variable Armor against Different Weapons?

[hdan]

Has anyone played with trying to "thematically adapt" CT's system by which different armors protected differently against different weapons?

A straight port is pointless and ill-advised, but I was wondering if something inspired by the CSC's AP rules might be useful. (To wit: semi-AP (SAP) ignores 1/2 damage dice in armor value, AP ignores damage dice armor points and Super-AP ignores 2xdamage armor points.)

I came up with a mildly complex system involving "penetration/protection power" for all weapons and armor, and using the difference between those to generate Armor Piercing and Armor Deflected values, but it seemed like more trouble than it was worth by the end.

Still it might be worth defining some weapons (like clubs or generic melee weapons) as "less piercing" than bullets, and allowing armor to be twice as effective against them, or something like that. A guy with Mesh should probably not have to worry too much about getting stabbed or punched.

Or should I just make my players buy decent armor, and accept that Mesh and Jack are little better than "anti-brambles and thorns" armor?

 

[F33D]

I tend to do case by case and by gross TL. An arrow (fired from a regular bow) does nothing vs. high tech Combat Armour. Early firearms (19th century or <) the same. That kind of approach.

 

[hdan]

I tend to do case by case and by gross TL. An arrow (fired from a regular bow) does nothing vs. high tech Combat Armour. Early firearms (19th century or <) the same. That kind of approach.

That's probably the best way to go. Trying to build a comprehensive system gets ugly in a hurry. Well, not so much ugly as "replace the rules"-y, which though I talk a good game about house rules and such, isn't really my style in practice.

I'll probably just allow double armor against "primitive" (stone age a early bronze age) versions of existing weapons when it comes up, on the assumption that the "standard" is set at roughly modern material sciences levels, and higher tech items already include the bonus in their higher armor values. That way a flint arrow will kill you just as effectively as an iron tipped arrow, but only if you're not wearing armor.

I'm sure this is just my wargaming roots showing, and none of my players would even care about stuff like this. <shrug> I should probably take my 12x3Aux and group-move back to camp.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I compare TL values of weapons with TL values of armor, using the Mongoose weapon and armor tables as a baseline. I also do "Poor, Fair, and Good" conditions for my armors. Some high TL armor could be rather used and junky and not provide the full TL protection (I'm not a fan of armor that doesn't degrade). But if players get real nit picky about this kind of stuff, I've probably invited the wrong gamers to my table.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Define each type of armour as protecting against Blunt/Piercing/Energy attacks. Most modern armours would be high on Blunt/Piercing and low on Energy.

For each weapon decide what type of attack it makes. For weapons that do multiple types of damage (Shock Stick) divide the Dice of damage up between the attack types, such that the total weapon damage remains the same.

Now you can use Armour Piercing etc. for each attack type and Armour type.