mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
T4's system is faster in play, you don't have to calculate half penetration damage, or 10% damage, all you have to do is not roll some dice 
How do you prefer your body-armor rules to work?
- Thread starter Golan2072
- Start date
Ganidirsii O'Flynn
SOC-12
OK, I base my opinion here on two things: a couple of years of wearing kevlar in the US Army and alot more years designing and using armor for a medieval re-creation group (the SCA).
1. Armor actually makes you easier to hit and only mitigates damage taken.
2. The human body is generally not designed to easily accept another several centimeters of hardshell on it. This can me made more tolerable by having armor custom fitted, but that takes additional time/expense (in d20 terms, masterwork). While you can in fact do several interesting stunts (cartwheels, etc.) while wearing fitted armor, it is nevertheless very fatiguing and claustraphobic to wear, and most people have an almost uncontrolable urge to get the helmet and torso section off if they are not actually expecting immanent combat. This urge can be lessened with training, but for most folks, the weight and encumberance of armors is a factor in it's use.
3. Armor only mitigates damage. Armors can only rarely actually stop an assault on the body with no consequenses to the person wearing it. This is on the order of a tactical vest or helmet stopping a punch or swung baton. Anything more than this does increasingly more damage to the wearer, though not life threatening damage in most cases. The fact is that several pounds per square inch of pressure applied to any armor is going to bruise, cause muscle sprains, cause stress injuries on joints or organs, and otherwise be quite annoying to the wearer. But this damage is most often not immediately life threatening, though in some cases it is (impact related heart arythmia [sp], blood poisoning due to bruising, etc). Simply put, an opponent in armor requires some extra work to kill, but not that much more, really. Once you defeat the material technology, there is only a soft bloody bag behind it. And that bag bruises pretty easily.
As a personal note, I have a fiberglass shin from getting shot while on Active Duty. There are pins VERY close to my knee and somewhat farther away above my ankle. And yet, the only times I've ever been hurt wearing medieval type armors was when I was wearing borrowed gear. Well, ok there was the Gopher Hole Incident. But I came back on my shield (really!)...
4. There are several portions of the body that are difficult to armor and are almost immediately fatal if penetrated, and severely debilitating otherwise. These are: the jucture of the neck shoulder (brachial artery), the armpit (there is only lung tissue between an impact and the heart and aorta at the armpit), and the groin area (femoral[sp] arteries). These areas are almost impossible to armor effectively, though deflective armoring techniques can dramatically reduce the dangers involved.
So, taking all that into account, the system that most realistically portrays armor use is, IMHO, the RuneQuest 3rd ed. system. Hit locations (and hit points) are divided up into Head, Chest, Abdomen, Left and Right Arm and Left and Right Leg. The heavier the armor, the more points of damage can be resisted. So, for example a bandit wearing Hardened Leather with Padding might have 3 pts of Armor and 4 Hit points in his Right Arm. So, in order to injure that limb, an opponent must first hit the limb and then do more than 3 pts damage. Once an individual reaches zero hit points in that hit location, it is useless until healed. HOWEVER, the body also has a given number of Fatigue Points and each layer of armor deducts from those FP. Once you pass zero Fatigue, you begin to loose accuracy in your blows (a negative modifier to your Attack rolls). Once you reach negative-the-starting-value (you have 33 FP, and you reach -33), you are exhausted and may no longer fight.
But all this adds alot bookeeping and more steps in a combat round...
So, as usual, we are back to the gritty realism versus dynamic play arguement.
But there you go.
1. Armor actually makes you easier to hit and only mitigates damage taken.
2. The human body is generally not designed to easily accept another several centimeters of hardshell on it. This can me made more tolerable by having armor custom fitted, but that takes additional time/expense (in d20 terms, masterwork). While you can in fact do several interesting stunts (cartwheels, etc.) while wearing fitted armor, it is nevertheless very fatiguing and claustraphobic to wear, and most people have an almost uncontrolable urge to get the helmet and torso section off if they are not actually expecting immanent combat. This urge can be lessened with training, but for most folks, the weight and encumberance of armors is a factor in it's use.
3. Armor only mitigates damage. Armors can only rarely actually stop an assault on the body with no consequenses to the person wearing it. This is on the order of a tactical vest or helmet stopping a punch or swung baton. Anything more than this does increasingly more damage to the wearer, though not life threatening damage in most cases. The fact is that several pounds per square inch of pressure applied to any armor is going to bruise, cause muscle sprains, cause stress injuries on joints or organs, and otherwise be quite annoying to the wearer. But this damage is most often not immediately life threatening, though in some cases it is (impact related heart arythmia [sp], blood poisoning due to bruising, etc). Simply put, an opponent in armor requires some extra work to kill, but not that much more, really. Once you defeat the material technology, there is only a soft bloody bag behind it. And that bag bruises pretty easily.
As a personal note, I have a fiberglass shin from getting shot while on Active Duty. There are pins VERY close to my knee and somewhat farther away above my ankle. And yet, the only times I've ever been hurt wearing medieval type armors was when I was wearing borrowed gear. Well, ok there was the Gopher Hole Incident. But I came back on my shield (really!)...
4. There are several portions of the body that are difficult to armor and are almost immediately fatal if penetrated, and severely debilitating otherwise. These are: the jucture of the neck shoulder (brachial artery), the armpit (there is only lung tissue between an impact and the heart and aorta at the armpit), and the groin area (femoral[sp] arteries). These areas are almost impossible to armor effectively, though deflective armoring techniques can dramatically reduce the dangers involved.
So, taking all that into account, the system that most realistically portrays armor use is, IMHO, the RuneQuest 3rd ed. system. Hit locations (and hit points) are divided up into Head, Chest, Abdomen, Left and Right Arm and Left and Right Leg. The heavier the armor, the more points of damage can be resisted. So, for example a bandit wearing Hardened Leather with Padding might have 3 pts of Armor and 4 Hit points in his Right Arm. So, in order to injure that limb, an opponent must first hit the limb and then do more than 3 pts damage. Once an individual reaches zero hit points in that hit location, it is useless until healed. HOWEVER, the body also has a given number of Fatigue Points and each layer of armor deducts from those FP. Once you pass zero Fatigue, you begin to loose accuracy in your blows (a negative modifier to your Attack rolls). Once you reach negative-the-starting-value (you have 33 FP, and you reach -33), you are exhausted and may no longer fight.
But all this adds alot bookeeping and more steps in a combat round...
So, as usual, we are back to the gritty realism versus dynamic play arguement.
But there you go.
It's certainly possible to armor those locations (not sure what you're talking about with neck shoulder, since the brachial artery is in the arm; perhaps you mean the carotid artery?) we routinely apply cloth to all of them, which is a (very thin) armor. It's just thick or rigid armor causes issues; cloth or mesh can easily handle it, jack can do so with some effort, but plate requires extensive and complex articulation. Striker Battledress-14 is equivalent to 5cm RHA but is actually only 3.5mm thick, which is a manageable thickness as long as the shell can deform slightly to compensate for breathing (the area of a human is ~1.8 square meters, so that's 6.3 liters of bonded SD, or 95 kilograms of armor. Just Disbelieve unpowered combat armor with the same armor value).
Arthur Denger
SOC-12
Ganidirsii O'Flynn
SOC-12
Hey, Anthony and Arthur.
Anthony: You're right. It is the Carotid Artery. My GF pulled her copy of Grey's Anatomy and helped hammer my incorrectness home. I am now suitably chasened... Historically, lower neck/upper shoulder armor was mostly mail (chainmail), which is notoriously suseceptible to piercing damage. Deflective techniques in plated styles later on did help somewhat.
Arthur: I would suggest that you simply use the combat system of whichever Traveller system you're playing. They are generally well-balanced to the skill/task engine that your version of Traveller uses. Insofar as authenticity goes, we gamers are taking the incredibly complex variables of combat and distilling them down to a few rolls of dice. No skill or task system can be accurate without uselessly complicating the simulation. Many systems try to duplicate the experience of combat as accurately as possible, but combat in those systems is slloowwwww. Take a look at Aftermath, The Morrow Project, or Harnmaster as examples.
Most systems have a mechanic for unusual extremes of luck or skill. These are adequate to reflect the variables of combat without unneedfully slowing down the game. Essentially, don't worry about it.
Anthony: You're right. It is the Carotid Artery. My GF pulled her copy of Grey's Anatomy and helped hammer my incorrectness home. I am now suitably chasened...
Historically, lower neck/upper shoulder armor was mostly mail (chainmail), which is notoriously suseceptible to piercing damage. Deflective techniques in plated styles later on did help somewhat. Arthur: I would suggest that you simply use the combat system of whichever Traveller system you're playing. They are generally well-balanced to the skill/task engine that your version of Traveller uses. Insofar as authenticity goes, we gamers are taking the incredibly complex variables of combat and distilling them down to a few rolls of dice. No skill or task system can be accurate without uselessly complicating the simulation. Many systems try to duplicate the experience of combat as accurately as possible, but combat in those systems is slloowwwww. Take a look at Aftermath, The Morrow Project, or Harnmaster as examples.
Most systems have a mechanic for unusual extremes of luck or skill. These are adequate to reflect the variables of combat without unneedfully slowing down the game. Essentially, don't worry about it.
Mail is not actually notably susceptible to piercing damage; properly riveted or welded mail is quite hard to punch through with a piercing weapon. The big weakness of any flexible armor is crushing damage; hit a mail-armored neck with reasonable force and you can crush the windpipe just fine without ever penetrating the armor.
Making armor that is normally flexible, but turns rigid on impact, is something of a holy grail for armor design. Shear thickening fluid armor has potential, but I suspect it's still fairly thick, and it wouldn't breathe at all.
Making armor that is normally flexible, but turns rigid on impact, is something of a holy grail for armor design. Shear thickening fluid armor has potential, but I suspect it's still fairly thick, and it wouldn't breathe at all.
This comports with my experience watching the Discovery channel and seeing that shark chainmail they use. Or better yet, the shark suit tester episode of Dirty Jobs.
Larry Niven postulated such armor, I think it was called Implast. Good enough precendent for me for a Traveller game.
Hmmm... So, basically, you're saying that, unlike the way CT handles it, realistic armor SHOULD add to encoumberance? Unless, ofcourse, you're dealing with very high-tech armor, ofcourse (either self-powered or built from very low-weight-per-tensile-strength materials such as spidersilk).
Arthur Denger
SOC-12
My personal grievance with CT armor and combat is the weapon vs armor matrix that makes new weapons and armor hard to add without a lot of work or linking them to another weapon or armor. I lean towards armor absorbs damage since it becomes easy for certain armors to be impervious to certain weapons (don’t attack a man in combat armor with a knife). Armor reduces Hits would also work, but the armor should be rated with a fixed modifier against all weapon types. (ie. assume reflective armor is backed with ballistic cloth).
Ganidirsii O'Flynn
SOC-12
Sorry I was away for awhile...came down with a nasty flu.
E2-4601 and Arthur, high tensile strength materials do help in mitigating damage, but you must also figure in the inertia of the incoming strike. Why the lance was so brutal in medieval times is the same reason that anyone with a Kevlar vest doesn't want to get shot: the pounds/kilos per square inch/centimeters are more than the body is able to stand without some kind of consequences. High on the list of those concequences is Life Threatening Injury.
Anthony, in regard to the effectiveness of piercing weaponry upon mail armors, I'll direct you to the archeological finds for the Battles of Visby (or Wisby) and Towton. Further, I point out that for over half of mankind's armor-making period(s), mail was in use. And in every one of those eras the killer weapon was a piercing weapon, be it an arrow, spear or lance. But you are absolutely right in saying that concussive force is a major factor for bodily injury in combat. See above commentary for E2-4601 and Arthur.
There are basically only 5 ways to injure a person:
Bash: Concussive force; baton, mace, ball-and-chain
Slice: Applying a sharp edge to the skin in order to separate it; Some swords, almost all knives, a great many pole arms
Chop/Hack: A strike to deeply separate tissues, be removed and struck again; Axes, nearly all swords, pole arms
Pierce: A thrust deep into tissues seeking immediate access to vital organs; Spears Arrows, most swords
and
Energy: An attack meant to inflict extreme environments upon the body; Lasers, Grenades, NBC, Fusion and Plasma.
Some weapons use combinations of these elements... Ballistic damage is energy and piercing, for example. But all these threats contribute to the design of protective gear. The fact is that whether it be a tank, a battleship, or an infantryman, you cannot perfectly armor an object without severe restrictions to its mobility, sensory input, and combat effectiveness as a whole. You have to make trade offs from among Firepower, Mobility, and Protection. Guess right and you're a genius. Guess wrong and you've got alot of angry widows to explain it to.
Again, I think that most games systems allow for all this stuff. We have in Traveller unlimited energy in Fusion power, advanced computing to assist a weapon user, advanced training, and so on but it all comes out in the game as:
"Roll 8 or better to hit."
It's the same with fantasy, with cyberpunk, with sci-fi, and with post-holocaust-anime-ninja-undead-in-sailor-suits . At the end of the day, combat is supposed to be anticipated, exciting, and more than alittle scary for Players, not CSI: Regina.
E2-4601 and Arthur, high tensile strength materials do help in mitigating damage, but you must also figure in the inertia of the incoming strike. Why the lance was so brutal in medieval times is the same reason that anyone with a Kevlar vest doesn't want to get shot: the pounds/kilos per square inch/centimeters are more than the body is able to stand without some kind of consequences. High on the list of those concequences is Life Threatening Injury.
Anthony, in regard to the effectiveness of piercing weaponry upon mail armors, I'll direct you to the archeological finds for the Battles of Visby (or Wisby) and Towton. Further, I point out that for over half of mankind's armor-making period(s), mail was in use. And in every one of those eras the killer weapon was a piercing weapon, be it an arrow, spear or lance. But you are absolutely right in saying that concussive force is a major factor for bodily injury in combat. See above commentary for E2-4601 and Arthur.
There are basically only 5 ways to injure a person:
Bash: Concussive force; baton, mace, ball-and-chain
Slice: Applying a sharp edge to the skin in order to separate it; Some swords, almost all knives, a great many pole arms
Chop/Hack: A strike to deeply separate tissues, be removed and struck again; Axes, nearly all swords, pole arms
Pierce: A thrust deep into tissues seeking immediate access to vital organs; Spears Arrows, most swords
and
Energy: An attack meant to inflict extreme environments upon the body; Lasers, Grenades, NBC, Fusion and Plasma.
Some weapons use combinations of these elements... Ballistic damage is energy and piercing, for example. But all these threats contribute to the design of protective gear. The fact is that whether it be a tank, a battleship, or an infantryman, you cannot perfectly armor an object without severe restrictions to its mobility, sensory input, and combat effectiveness as a whole. You have to make trade offs from among Firepower, Mobility, and Protection. Guess right and you're a genius. Guess wrong and you've got alot of angry widows to explain it to.
Again, I think that most games systems allow for all this stuff. We have in Traveller unlimited energy in Fusion power, advanced computing to assist a weapon user, advanced training, and so on but it all comes out in the game as:
"Roll 8 or better to hit."
It's the same with fantasy, with cyberpunk, with sci-fi, and with post-holocaust-anime-ninja-undead-in-sailor-suits
. At the end of the day, combat is supposed to be anticipated, exciting, and more than alittle scary for Players, not CSI: Regina. Gani,
That is now a part of my Bon Mot File, along with suitable attribution of course.
If I may be allowed to paraphrase, it ranks right up there with the one that states that "Traveller is about adventure in the far future and not accounting in the far future".
Have fun,
Bill
Scott Martin
SOC-13
Inertia is not equal to energy. Energy, not inertia is the killer in both the case of the lance and the bullet. Inertia (force) is only really a consideration for massive, slow objects (like a club or a sword) especially when they are, say, accellerating someone's skull faster than their brain can keep up (AKA getting a concussion) Rigid armours can be designed such that a significant portion of the armour must be accellerated before the wearer (as in later 15th century armour with a close helm or great bascinet) so even this is not really a protection issue.
To demonstrate why *force* is not really an issue with projectile weapons, the area that an impact plate covers in a modern bullet proof vest is much greater than the area over which a rifle stock rests. I think that you'll agree that it is preferable to be the one *behind* the rifle, and the person firing the rifle is guarenteed to have more *force* punching them in the shoulder than is applied to that bullet-proof titanuim plate. If you can borrow a copy, take a look at "The Knight and the Blast Furnace" by Dr Alan Williams for an analysis of armour protection based on medieval materials and incidence angle: all of these are based on *Joules* AKA energy, not Newtons AKA force or inertia.
Properly constructed armour made of high tensile materials would effectively eliminate some classes of damage (like small arms) entirely. The reason that armour is not generally used in the modern era is because it's cheaper to equip a squad of men with light anti-materials weapons than to effectively armour a single one against anti-personell weapons, and there are a lot of things that are more useful for a trooper to lug around (Entrenching tools anyone?) than that armour weight. Riot squads can and do wear armour, as do tactical squads.
For your specific examples, I'll point out that the defenders at Wisby were conscripts (with a large percentage of old men and boys) wearing armour that was obsolete for the period (in a period where armour was making a MASSIVE transition) and faced one of the most "professional" armies in Europe at the time. Mail doesn't stop crossbows any better than a kevlar vest stops heavy calibre "anti-material" rounds. Using Wisby as an example of armour protection is a bit like saying "gosh, that Kevlar vest you're wearing isn't much use against a 50 cal or a Rocket Propelled Grenade is it?"
Lances were effectively eliminated from the field by the 16th century with "Heavy" cavalry (read "Rich bastards") using wheel lock pistols, and "light" cavalry going to sabers or spears (the latter being known as "lancers") and major injuries and deaths in jousts, while not unheard of, were relatively uncommon.
If you're seriously interested in medieval armour technology, I'd suggest that you get a membership to the armour research society (link) I would have suggested that you check out arador,com, but they lost their discussion boards without backup a few years ago, and I'd now consider them dead in the water, and www.armourarchive.org has more misinformation than information.
Rigid armour is a completely different animal than non-rigid types, and much of the armour used in the 15th and 16th centuries would stop pretty much any battlefield weapon available, including taking a crossbow bolt to the head without breaking the wearers neck. The majority of the (armoured) casualties at Agincourt drowned in the mud after their horses threw them (armouring a horse is expensive...) and the French eventually took to dismounting and marching at the English to eliminate the threat of archers.
Well, they also used guns a lot more than the english: "Ultima ratio regum" and all that
There are some useful texts available discussing how to penetrate period armour (from period sources) so you may want to take a look at the library at http://AEMMA.org/ for (translated) original sources from the 15th century on (Fiore de Liberi and Talhoffer are some of the more commonly referenced sources)
Scott Martin
Straybow
SOC-14 1K
Already here, maybe about 10 years. Armorers found that kevlar fibers were weaker when woven than if laid out straight and developed a material to take advantage of that. Each layer is made of unidirectional fibers; each layer is oriented in a different direction; pads are about 1-1½ cm thick made of scores of layers.Originally posted by Arthur Denger:
I would have to think that at higher tech levels, kinetically polarized cloth armor must be available. This material does not negate or absorb an impact, but channels the energy outward away from from the impact point, lessening the damage. Obviously it would have a different level of effectiveness for melee or low energy (e.g. snub) weapons than for an assault rifle or VRF gauss gun at the same range. Most probably, this technology would be combined with other materials (reflec, hardshell, etc.) for optimal protection.
In a solid material, a force or shock wave spreads out as it is transmitted through the thickness. The angle of expansion is tied to material properties and typically is less than 45°. This material spreads out the force over a far wider area.
The unidirectional fibers carry the energy away from the point of contact as a longitudinal shock wave. The speed of the shock wave through the kevlar is many times faster than the velocity of the bullet. This dissipates most of the energy of momentum transfer as heat energy throughout the volume of the material. The remaining impact force is spread over the entire surface of the pad.
They simulated skin and flesh using aluminum foil over soft clay. The vest stopped a 12 guage slug fired at about 3m range, without the clay beneath deforming enough to cause the foil to break. This corresponds to mild bruising on flesh. The vest similarly stopped 7.62mm AK47 and NATO rounds, and 5.56mm NATO rounds. I can't remember if they tried AP rounds.
Straybow
SOC-14 1K
I have to agree with you over Scott Martin on this point for the lance, but not the bullet. The effectiveness of the lance is in transfering the momentum of the rider and his mount to the target. Or the reverse, for the pike set against the charging knight.
Tourney lances used a blunted tip, but would be almost as deadly against mail armor. Only rigid armor can spread the force out over a wide area.
For the arrow, one did not need to penetrate armor. A massed volley would be effective as arrows strike unarmored faces and necks, hands and forearms, or feet and legs. Likewise for hurled spears and javelins.
The stand-off attack is also asymmetic as it does not place the attacker in danger of the defenders' hand weapons. An archer can deliver many arrows before the enemy closes to hand-to-hand combat.
Broadhead points slice the flesh open and cause substantial tissue damage and bleeding. But they don't penetrate armor. Bodkin points would penetrate mail, but would not do severe damage to the wearer. Granted, you still don't want a pointy thing sticking in you.
There is also shock concussion, where a shock wave passes through flesh. The cyclic compression and expansion causes microscopic tearing in the tissues, similar to impact contusion. A large enough shock wave can crush internal tissues by the magnitude of force applied to the entire body surface. Casualties of shore bombardment by 16" shells in WW2 often had no external sign of injury except trickles of blood from ears and noses.
A bullet causes both piercing damage and shock concussion damage in the surrounding tissue. Otherwise it would do no more damage than a target point on an arrow.
Another type of injury is blast force, where the initial pressure front striking the body tears off limbs and acts like a broad impact weapon on the body. This usually occurs only close to the center of an explosion.
A related injury mode is the tearing of ligaments and tendons cause by hyperextension or hyperrotation of joints. Most armor is completely ineffective against this, and is how one defends against an armored assailant if weapons aren't involved.
Straybow
SOC-14 1K
T20 can use the D20 damage reduction mechanism in combination with Armor Class or in place of it.
The main function of armor is to change the type of damage inflicted. If the edged weapon does not penetrate only the blunt force is transmitted. Padding spreads out the force so the concussion is minimized and only the momentum is transmitted.
This is really hard to model in a game system. Where projectile weapons are concerned it amounts to all-or-nothing. Most modern ballistic armor is barely able to defeat handgun rounds. At the extreme of pistol round energy the target gets severe bruising. Almost any rifle can penetrate and deliver incapacitating damage.
I can't say I've figured out a good system, but penetration with damage reduction would be close enough for gaming.
The main function of armor is to change the type of damage inflicted. If the edged weapon does not penetrate only the blunt force is transmitted. Padding spreads out the force so the concussion is minimized and only the momentum is transmitted.
This is really hard to model in a game system. Where projectile weapons are concerned it amounts to all-or-nothing. Most modern ballistic armor is barely able to defeat handgun rounds. At the extreme of pistol round energy the target gets severe bruising. Almost any rifle can penetrate and deliver incapacitating damage.
I can't say I've figured out a good system, but penetration with damage reduction would be close enough for gaming.
That's the best general I've found so far in acutal play.
Another to try is to have two type of damage, call one stun, that heals more quickly and you can take more of it. Armor converting (up to a penetration maybe) damage that would otherwise kill or seriously injure into stun. You are still hurt, you just will recover a lot faster.
Supplement Four
SOC-14 5K
That's the best general I've found so far in acutal play. </font>[/QUOTE]I use the Armor Values for Striker (which were copied into MT later). So, each armor type has a base AV. The base AV of an armor is subtracted from the damage roll (reducing damage to the character).
But, I also use another DM to the damage roll in my game, based on weapon penetration.
I use the standard CT armor DM table as a penetration table. These DMs do not modify the attack throw, as in vanilla CT. Instead, they modify the weapon's damage vs. specific CT armor types.
All the details of my tweaked CT combat system can be seen HERE, but here's an example to give you an idea:
If you pick up an autopistol in my game, the weapon will do a base of 3D damage, modified by the two DMs I mention above (base AV, and Weapon Penetration).
So, the weapon will do different damage based on what it hits...
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">3D +1 vs. No Armor
3D +1 vs. Jack
3D -3 vs. Mesh
3D -8 vs. Cloth
3D +1 vs. Reflec
3D -2 vs. Ablat
3D -13 vs. Combat
3D -15 vs. Battle Dress</pre>[/QUOTE]What I like about this system is that it already uses CT numbers. You don't have to make things up. AVs are available in Striker (or MegaTraveller), and the weapon penetration DMs are the same as shown on the "Defender's Armor" table in Book 1. Just add the armor's AV to the penetration value, and you've got your modifier to damage.
For example, Cloth Armor is AV5. An AutoPistol vs. Cloth, on the table, shows "-3". Sum those together, and you get a modifier of -8. The AutoPistol will do 3D -8 damage when it hits a part of the target's body protected by Cloth Armor.
Simple as that.
FreeTrav
SOC-14 1K
I go with 'other' because it really depends on what the aim is during gaming - if the goal is realism, the rules will involve armor both impeding penetration and reducing damage; if it's cinematic and/or "let's get this scene moving", it'll more likely be just reducing the chance of hitting, possibly reducing damage if hit anyway as well. On the realism side, there may also be a need to "scale" armor values (e.g., Ship AV1=Vehicle AV 20=Personal AV50, or whatever) to account for things like the desperate character firing a .38 Police Special at a Type A that's getting ready to lift.
