Can figure out how to migrate post so I'll repost this the old fassion way.

I incorporate damage to armor in my game.

When a piece of armor takes a hit if the damage is greater than the combine value of TB and AP then the it takes what I call a Punch Through (PT). It has a total of six (6) PT's before it's useless unless it's Primitive then it only has three (3). After the first three (3) PT's it becomes Primitive armor. This shows that even though it's been damaged it still offers some protection. If it take three more PT's or starts out as Primitive then the armor is useless and offers no protection.

I do allow my PC's to try and repair the damage, but once it passes the last PT there's no point.

Exmaple. Damage=10 Pen=0 TB=4 AP=5 TB+AP=9 10-9=1 or 10>9 therefore 1 PT.

Too much math and book-keeping.

I'd like to use something like this: If damage (e.g. dice roll + Strength) is more than double the armour's value then it is damaged and loses 1 AP on that location until repaired. Only count damage once per location. Factor in primitive/non-primitive as normal, and an ordinary knife is unlikely do much damage against flak armour.

-K

Greater than AB and TB combined? So... in other words, if the charachter takes damage? You'll go through armor mighty fast that way.

Not to mention making the armor's survivability dependant on the toughness of the charachter wearing it makes no kind of sense. That suit of carapace that has survived a long time being worn by the arbitrator with TB 5 becomes suddenly much more flimsy when donned by the psyker who likes his corpus conversion?

Texas_Ben said:

Didn't think about that. How would you incorparate damage to armor?

If you make it double the AP that limits a lot of weapons that can cause damage to the armor and you end up with guys who run headlong into battle with little fear of loseing it.

The game doesn't incorporate agility into the types of armor so I went with durability of it instead.

It would take a lot of additional book-keeping, but you could give each armor a TB, and treat the armor's AP as HP for the armor. Allow me to elaborate:

Let's say you are wearing Stormtrooper Carapace, which is AP 6/all. Lets say that you have assigned that type of armor a TB of 10 (Makes sense for me, armor should be tougher than flesh I think, but I digress). The character takes a hit on the arm for 17 damage (ouch!) The damage would be reduced by 6 by the armor, the character would suffer damage as normal after TB, and the armor would subtract it's TB from the damage taken (but not to the character)... The total damage exceeds the armor's AP value and TB, and thusly the armor's AP to that location is reduced by the amount by which it's AP and TB are exceeded, in this case, by one point to the arm.

Let's say the same character took an identical hit (17 damage), but was wearing much less durable guard flak, which is AP 4, and let's give it the arbitrarily assigned TB of 6. This time, the damage to the armor is only reduced by 10, and so the armor would take 7 points of 'damage'. Since guard flak only provides an AP of 4, that part of the armor is effectively destroyed until it can be repaired by a charachter with the Trade (Armorer) skill.

I think the system I have outlined above does what you are looking for... in fact it is more or less exactly the system you yourself described, but the armor uses it's own "toughness bonus" (decided by you, the GM) rather than that of the charachter's, and it allows for the armor to gradually degenerate over time or all at once due to a massive hit by using it's AP as a sort of improvised hit-points, rather than the rather arbitrary "six hits" rule, and also allows the armor to shrug off hits (as far as this is concerned I think it's important that the TB armors get should be much higher than that of characters, since armor is generally metal or ceramic or high-impact plastcs, and characters are generally squishy and fleshy)

How about simply giving the armour a number of "hit point" similar to a character on each location.

Something simple like the AP value x the AP Value of the armour.... You can keep track of the damage done to the armour next to the armour table on the character sheet, then when the character takes a hit the amount of damage the armour take is equal to its its AP value.

Example, Guard flak AP4 can take 4 hits of AP4 or more if it takes less damage then the AP of the armour.

That way better armour stay intact longer, weaker armour take damage quicker. You could expand this by saying primitive armour taking non primitive damage takes double damage.

Only problem is that from my own physical experience of taking real hits in Chain and Plate it can take one heck of a lot of damage before it becomes inoperable. I do Full Contact sword fighting in plate, and about all you need to do is a little light hammering out of dents now and again with the occasional strap replacement when something goes really wrong!

Everything in a game like this is a simplification of the real world rather then a re-creation of actual mechanics, but something simple like the above would have the effect of reducing players armour in a playable sense....

I normally do something like what kjakan said.

If more than double the armour's value is caused it becomes damaged. Each time it is damaged the armour is reduced by 1 pt on that location. So the heavy armours have a higher survival than the lighter ones. It would take 8 damaging hits to completely destroy power armour on one location.

Hellebore

I'm reminded of the armour system used in GW's Judge Dredd RPG. Armour gave you a per-centage chance of negating damage, but a successful save reduced the armour's effectiveness by 5%.

(IRC) In the second edition of the Mutant Chronicles RPG armour also worked as a "save". If you got hit you'd roll 1d10. If the roll was equal to or less than the Armour Points on that location then two things happened: damage was reduced by the number rolled on the dice, and the Armour Points was reduced by 1. It's worth noting that this system allowed for 10+ armour points and a hit from a standard pistol would deal 1d6 points of damage, or 1d6+2 for an assault rifle.

-K

You take "TB" (Toughness) into account on if/how bad a given set of armour is damaged.

This means that two sets of flak armour with identical quaility would suffer different from blows with identical "strength" if one is worn by a weak little worm of a hiver and the other is worn by a big brute of a feral worlder.

Isn´t making to much sense to me.

How about doubling the AP in your calculation instead of taking the wearers TB into account?

Anyway, I prefer "rule of thumb" when it comes when a given set of armour needs repair or not

- minimizes the "book keeping" for everbody involved
- allows me to throw in "needed repair" whenever I deem it necessary for the story.

We are using a Rule that is more than simple: our Head. If one of us got the luck to get hit by a twin autogun he starts to think about what could had happend to his poor armor. It work good. And there are no difficult rules.