So, when my group first read the rules, we didn't look to closely at penetration. We figured it broke the armor, rather than just ignoring it. Even after discovering out screw up, we still play with it like that. So for example

I'm wearing Enforcer Light Carapice (5 to all I think) with toughness bonus 4 (total 9 everywhere)
I get shot in the chest with an autopistol. We'll say it has pen 2, which I think it does.

So, when applying damage to the body, I would reduce my armor during the attack, and for all subsequent attacks, to 7. But only on the body. If I get hit in the chest with the same pistol 2 more times, the first shot reduces my armor to 5, and then the third reduces my chest armor to 4. Why 4? Well remember how Light carapice is a 5 armor and my toughness is 4? While the penetration still ignores the damage reduction for toughness, it doesn't destroy toughness (I'm still as tough as I ever was) but it has shreded my chest armor.
This does not apply to power weapons/armor. Use Trade Armorer to fix the broken area. If all the areas lose their armor value, there isn't enough left of the original to put anything back together.

In brief.
Armor, but not toughness, is removed after each shot equal to the penetration value. Pen still ignores toughness, but does not destroy it. Use Trade Armorer to fix damaged armor. Let me tell you, it makes the combat go so much faster.

As far as I know, Pen never counts against TB. And I think a standard autopistol has a Pen of 0 (could be 2 with special ammunition).

Does it not? Hm, well we've been doing that wrong.
As for the autopistol, I just picked a weapon/number combo out of my hind quarters for demonstration purposes, but thanks for the input.

Yeah, Pen is supposed to only work against armour, as per the RAW.

Your rules sound fun for the first couple levels, but be aware that this can quickly get too deadly as soon as the group progresses beyond enemies armed "only" with lasguns and autorifles. There are a lot of high-Pen weapons in the game whose job is to overcome the higher grades of armour, which could easily result in all AP being stripped from your players with a single shot. Best take a look at the weapon tables and perform your own analysis.

I've toyed with the idea of armour reduction myself, but was more concerned not with speeding up combat, but rather to simulate the "wear and tear" of repeat combat encounters with little to no maintenance for the gear in-between. For example .. any time you roll a 10 on the damage die, the target loses 1 AP from their armour, down to a minimum of half the original value. This damage can be repaired by a skilled armourer (who may well be another player character) during downtime with a successful Crafting test.

Good to know.

As for the armor reduction, we toyed with the idea of changing it to, if the pen is higher than the combined armor/toughness value, drop the ap by 1. We're still in the >3000xp range, so it hasn't come up much yet.

As for the armor reduction, we toyed with the idea of changing it to, if the pen is higher than the combined armor/toughness value, drop the ap by 1.

That would be an even easier approach - although that might, on the other hand, limit it too much. Even an ordinary vest of flak armour (AP 4 + TB 3+) would be left unharmed by anything below a plasma cannon or meltagun, and let's not even delve into stuff like Space Marines in power armour. Technically, the wearer's body having any effect on how well the armour can resist damage also sounds a bit strange.

This being said, it all comes down to individual preferences in terms of how quickly (or slowly) armour should degrade, and under which instances. There are a lot of different ways to approach this, all depending on where you want the sweet spot to be.

Well, have fun in your game - the early levels are the most fun!

Or you could use the rules for cover, which is every time a damage goes through the armor, its value is reduced by one. That way it would at least take AP hits before the armor on that body part becomes useless. Each hit after the first one will be more deadly though.

Or you could use the rules for cover, which is every time a damage goes through the armor, its value is reduced by one. That way it would at least take AP hits before the armor on that body part becomes useless. Each hit after the first one will be more deadly though.

This.

And then have your GM read the rules... seriously. It really helps.

At least then you will know what rules you would rather house rule and vice versa.

So, when my group first read the rules, we didn't look to closely at penetration. We figured it broke the armor, rather than just ignoring it. Even after discovering out screw up, we still play with it like that. So for example

I'm wearing Enforcer Light Carapice (5 to all I think) with toughness bonus 4 (total 9 everywhere)

I get shot in the chest with an autopistol. We'll say it has pen 2, which I think it does.

So, when applying damage to the body, I would reduce my armor during the attack, and for all subsequent attacks, to 7. But only on the body. If I get hit in the chest with the same pistol 2 more times, the first shot reduces my armor to 5, and then the third reduces my chest armor to 4. Why 4? Well remember how Light carapice is a 5 armor and my toughness is 4? While the penetration still ignores the damage reduction for toughness, it doesn't destroy toughness (I'm still as tough as I ever was) but it has shreded my chest armor.

This does not apply to power weapons/armor. Use Trade Armorer to fix the broken area. If all the areas lose their armor value, there isn't enough left of the original to put anything back together.

In brief.

Armor, but not toughness, is removed after each shot equal to the penetration value. Pen still ignores toughness, but does not destroy it. Use Trade Armorer to fix damaged armor. Let me tell you, it makes the combat go so much faster.

Can't say I'm a fan of this. Mechanically it makes wearing armor really pointless. Most basic armor will be destroyed after only a hit or two. Even the best armor will be destroyed after only a handful of hits from even pretty low pen weapons. Armor will rarely survive even one combat if there are any weapons better than an auto or stub weapon and even those can be given special ammo with pen values. Even las weapons can be fired with a pen of 2.

Why would you not have power weapons cause the same effect? Power weapons are the only weapon in the game with rules for destroying equipment already and yet you left them out. If anything power weapons should be one of the best things for it. Does power armor completely ignore ap then? I think power armor not being as easily reduced is a good idea.

It also seems like it would cause a lot of extra bookkeeping for everyone to keep track of all their armor locations and would slow the action down having to constantly look for someone to repair it or for the group armor to make all the needed armorer rolls.

From a fluff standpoint it also feels wrong to me. Until you hit critical damage most hits are meant to be grazes, hits that impact the armor and leave bruising underneath but don't get through, small cuts/burns etc. Nothing major. Even the low level criticals tend to just wind the target or knock them down. So the armor being torn to shreds to the degree this does before critical damage is sustained feels odd.

If it works for your group though then that's great.

Yeah, Pen is supposed to only work against armour, as per the RAW.

Your rules sound fun for the first couple levels, but be aware that this can quickly get too deadly as soon as the group progresses beyond enemies armed "only" with lasguns and autorifles. There are a lot of high-Pen weapons in the game whose job is to overcome the higher grades of armour, which could easily result in all AP being stripped from your players with a single shot. Best take a look at the weapon tables and perform your own analysis.

I've toyed with the idea of armour reduction myself, but was more concerned not with speeding up combat, but rather to simulate the "wear and tear" of repeat combat encounters with little to no maintenance for the gear in-between. For example .. any time you roll a 10 on the damage die, the target loses 1 AP from their armour, down to a minimum of half the original value. This damage can be repaired by a skilled armourer (who may well be another player character) during downtime with a successful Crafting test.

If you want quicker and/or more lethal combat, however, feel free to take a look at this idea inspired from GW's own d100 game "Inquisitor".

I like the idea of tying armor integrity essentially to righteous fury. Either that or maybe to critical damage in general.

As for the armor reduction, we toyed with the idea of changing it to, if the pen is higher than the combined armor/toughness value, drop the ap by 1.

That would be an even easier approach - although that might, on the other hand, limit it too much. Even an ordinary vest of flak armour (AP 4 + TB 3+) would be left unharmed by anything below a plasma cannon or meltagun, and let's not even delve into stuff like Space Marines in power armour. Technically, the wearer's body having any effect on how well the armour can resist damage also sounds a bit strange.

This being said, it all comes down to individual preferences in terms of how quickly (or slowly) armour should degrade, and under which instances. There are a lot of different ways to approach this, all depending on where you want the sweet spot to be.

Well, have fun in your game - the early levels are the most fun!

Perhaps make it something like, "every time armor takes a hit with pen equal to or greater than its armor value it loses 1 point of armor value until repaired". This would not count toughness bonus at all and would be on top of the normal as written rules for pen. Or rather than 1 damage you could tie the amount to how much the pen exceeds the armor value.

This would allow for really good armor to remain pretty much undamaged against relatively low pen weapons but it would get chunks blown off by weapons actually designed to get through it. For example the Arbites carapace armor (AV5) wouldn't really be damaged by the Pen 2 of a hand cannon just would be a little less effective, however when shot with a hotshot las pistol (pen 7) not only would the armor not provide any protection but there would be a hole or burn damage or something thanks to how the pistol is optimized to cut through armor like a hot knife through butter.

What I'd personally love to see from any armour damage system is a mechanic to tally "attrition", that is continuous combat exposure having a slow degrading consequence ultimately leading to the armour requiring repairs to maintain its full protective qualities. The tricky thing is, of course, doing so without it bogging down combat too much, so the simpler the better.

I am especially concerned about higher AP armour, as this is where attrition should have the most obvious effect. Low grade armour isn't that protective to begin with, but I'd like for stuff like carapace and power armour to get "battle damage" where people may feel an incentive to have it repaired, but where it's also not crippling if you don't fix it immediately.

This means that going by Pen isn't really an option, as few weapons have a Pen capable of punching through power armour. It also doesn't seem very realistic when the attack itself still had enough force to penetrate the armour even where Pen alone did not suffice. Also, the static nature of Pen in attacks would lead to every single shot that hits reducing the armour. This would be realistic, but at the same time too punishing as I would not want a suit of armour getting ruined in a single encounter.

That's what led me to look at the dice rolls; the 10 means that only 10% of all successful attacks would lower the armour's protective qualities, hopefully stretching it out over several encounters. In addition, I could sort-of justify this effect by declaring the 10 damage from the dice as a "brute force punch" leaving a considerable mark on the armour, whereas Pen works more like a small hole of focused, localised penetration only affecting the immediate impact area. The difference between APDS and HESH , if you will.

But really, I'm going entirely by gut-feeling here and a lot of people will have different priorities when looking at armour damage. I just happen to first think about fist-sized chunks of ceramite blown off suits of powered armour, so that's what I'd want to emulate.

What I'd personally love to see from any armour damage system is a mechanic to tally "attrition", that is continuous combat exposure having a slow degrading consequence ultimately leading to the armour requiring repairs to maintain its full protective qualities. The tricky thing is, of course, doing so without it bogging down combat too much, so the simpler the better.

I am especially concerned about higher AP armour, as this is where attrition should have the most obvious effect. Low grade armour isn't that protective to begin with, but I'd like for stuff like carapace and power armour to get "battle damage" where people may feel an incentive to have it repaired, but where it's also not crippling if you don't fix it immediately.

Armor attrition could be handled without reducing the protection of the armor. In the core rule book it is (quite poorly explained) governed by the quality. The rules for degrading quality are not very well fleshed out and low quality armor is not that bad (if you don't have a good Ag), but with a little work it could be done.

Oh, the books actually had rules for armour dropping in Quality levels? I'll need to re-check that! Ideally, I can somehow tie that together.

I don't think the Used Armour trait is sufficient to represent what I'm going for, but perhaps I can add Good and Best Quality as additional "stages". At the very least, there should be some interaction between these two systems. So, thanks for providing food for thought.

Oh, the books actually had rules for armour dropping in Quality levels? I'll need to re-check that! Ideally, I can somehow tie that together.

It's not really rules, just a little sentence or two about equipment degrading in quality under certain (not named) conditions. All really rudimentary and not fleshed out, but a good starting point. You'd have to write some rules that specify the conditions under which the degrading happens.

So.... uh... Lynata... when you write them, be a doll and post them for the rest of us plebs, yeah?

It might not be a bad idea to keep track of armor like you do comrade's health. After so many hits - completely up to the GM and most likely based on armor quality - you can tell the player's their armor has sustained "battle damage." They can either opt to get it fixed, perhaps even getting an upgrade if they go through some underground channels. Or, they can attempt to re-requisition a new suit.

Battle damaged armor can have something like -1 AP per mission until repaired or replaced. Once it gets to half its original AP, incur a movement penalty.

It doesn't all have to be bad, though. A character who makes it out alive with battle damaged armor, or who even wears it as a badge of pride, can earn more xp/renown/LR similar to how a PC who goes without a helmet in deathwatch gets rewarded. It's more dangerous, and probably stupid, but you look cool doing it!

It doesn't all have to be bad, though. A character who makes it out alive with battle damaged armor, or who even wears it as a badge of pride, can earn more xp/renown/LR similar to how a PC who goes without a helmet in deathwatch gets rewarded. It's more dangerous, and probably stupid, but you look cool doing it!

I like that idea! Consider it stolen.

Like Lyn said: nice Idea! (yoink! )

But I must resist the urge to make the Nervian 54th "The Skyclad".

No armor.

Great XP.

Glad I could help, gentlemen. Go forth and multiply.

Glad I could help, gentlemen. Go forth and multiply.

*BLAM* No Slaanesh Worship.

Glad I could help, gentlemen. Go forth and multiply.

*BLAM* No Slaanesh Worship.

Aaaaaaaawww! Not even a little?

Glad I could help, gentlemen. Go forth and multiply.

*BLAM* No Slaanesh Worship.

Aaaaaaaawww! Not even a little?

Everything is fun and games with cults. Sure, it starts out, you just get the tip of the iceberg, but eventually you find you're leading the whole Slaaneshi cult and then the Inquisition comes and you get shafted.

and you get shafted

Heh.

Glad I could help, gentlemen. Go forth and multiply.

*BLAM* No Slaanesh Worship.

Aaaaaaaawww! Not even a little?

Everything is fun and games with cults. Sure, it starts out, you just get the tip of the iceberg, but eventually you find you're leading the whole Slaaneshi cult and then the Inquisition comes and you get shafted.

Once you go Slaanesh you don't mind.

Glad I could help, gentlemen. Go forth and multiply.

*BLAM* No Slaanesh Worship.

Aaaaaaaawww! Not even a little?

Not even the tip.

Glad I could help, gentlemen. Go forth and multiply.

*BLAM* No Slaanesh Worship.

Aaaaaaaawww! Not even a little?

Not even the tip.

Tip of the what? (I see what you did there )