A long while ago, a lot of discussion where going on about how useless combat with "primitive" weapons is if some-one is wearing "non-primitiv" armour. Especially the Flakk-Armour came under fire (everyone wears it, double armour against knifes, swords etc.)

While I do not want to revive this discussions, I wanted to introduce a new type of armour every GM can introduce into his world to "push back" the dominance of flakk (and give this little low-grade bladeboys a chance a new).

Ballistic Armour
Ballistic Armour is designed to stop bullets. It is light, cheap and readly available. This makes them a favorite of everyone who has to equip a high number of armsmen but does not want to spend to many gelt on it (enforcers, some pdf´s, smaller houses, etc).

The stats of "Ballistic Armour" are indentical to the "Flakk Armour" given in the core rulebook, expcept for the following modifications

1) Lightweight
Weight is only 75% of the Flakk-Armour Counterpart

2) Cheap
Price is only 80% of the Flakk-Armour Counterpart

3) Ballistic Armour
The material has been designed to stop bullets. Stop. Against any non-projectile attack, the armour counts as "primitive".

"Why should anyone use this if he/she can buy Flakk Armour?"
The main reason for this item is as an GM-Tool. Based on the fact that it is cheaper there is a "reason" for the guards/combat npc the pc are facing to wear "ballistic" instead of "Flakk".

personally our group just did away with the whole primitive thing, we found it slowed everything down far too much, and made melee useless you were able to carry one of the more powerful (and obvious) melee weapons.

darkstar952 said:

That's why you dont use standard melee weapons that you begin with, you upgrade them to mono.

Varnias Tybalt said:

And that solves the problem does it, just mono everything? The whole primitive weapons and armour system as written in the rules is just crap and overly complicating. It was a nice idea, but unfortunatly just wasn't properly thought out and exicuted well.

But back on topic, the idea of ballistic armour could work. i just don't see me ever getting my players to use anything except guard and mesh armours.

darkstar952 said:

Pretty much, yeah. But only where it would be fitting for mono weapons to be used of course. Like the weapons that acolytes arm themselves with. Only a fool would run around hoping to beat enemies wearing armour with primitive weaponry. You use a mono-blade, chainsword or a power weapon. Primitive weapons are just a desperate resort. This is the forty-first millenium after all, and ranged combat is going to be prevalent. If you necessarily have to get stuck into melee combat, then make sure you have weapons that can at the very least injure armoured opponents.

darkstar952 said:

That's your opinion. I can't say that I have had any problems at all with these rules. It's very simple really. Just keep in mind that advanced armour have double AP against primitive attacks. How hard can it be?

Lol I can see the cries of outrage from marine fanbois when their Armour 10 TB8 warriors of doom get taken down by catachans wielding axes because the primitive value was removed...

Personally I think that armour points are too compressed. You wouldn't need to the primitive rule if weapons had higher APs. Knives with Pen2, axes pen 4 etc. Flak armour points =10 etc. It ends up amounting to a similar thing except you don't have to worry about doubling and halving and you have a wider variety of Pen values and armour values to describe different weapon and armour types with, instead of the very narrow 1-8 we have now.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

Hehe, well if the Catachan's have axes with mono upgrades, their weapons will cease to be primitive and even the Armour 10 TB 8 warriors of doom like the Astartes will feel it. Still they might not be killed outright, but it will cause a few cuts for the Apothecary to make himself useful with.

Still I do agree with you that a system with a more broad spectrum of PEN values and AP values than the system we have now would be more simple to use. Although it is a rather traditional method, and I have seen bugs in similar systems before. But the way things are now I think that power armour are a bit too wimpy than they are described to be. Most enemies and monsters that are hard to kill usually rely on having Unnatural Toughness and a ridiculously high Toughness value rather than relying on armour, which even the most standard cell's of acolytes often are able ty bypass when they have power swords and firearms with high PEN values.