hey there.

say, when a lightsaber strikes you , it ignores soak. so when you add the cortosis Attachment, to an armor what happens to your natural soak that you have from brawn or talents like endure? do they also profit from cortosis , do they count in as well?

it would make a huge difference when you can only count on the soak gained from your armor against lightsaber damage.....

my guess is, that you gain all sources of soak (one armor, talents + brawn ) back once you have a cortosis coating on your armor. it enables cortis "overall". correct?

im curious

The cortosis quality protects all your soak from the pierce and breach qualities.

"Armor with the Cortosis quality makes the wearer's soak immune to the Pierce and Breach qualities." AoR p169

Btw, there is even the option to add the Cortosis quality to your skin

As a reminder, its not that lightsabers "ignore" soak, but rather that by having the Breach quality, they cut through most personal scale soak values.

If you somehow managed to have Brawn 6 and armor with soak 5 (for a total personal Soak of 11), you would soak 1 point of damage after being hit with a lightsaber.

As far as I'm aware, wearing armor with the Cortosis quality makes the wearer immune from Breach (and verified seeing SEApocalypse's quote above), which applies to the character as a whole, not just the armor. The system isn't so crunchy that you consider armor soak separate from Brawn soak, but rather that armor -adds- to your personal soak value (which by default is equal to your Brawn stat).

So yes. Cortosis armor is freaking badass against lightsabers. High soak+a few ranks of Parry mean that many lightsaber hits will not even inflict a single wound. Which means they can't make use of that dangerously low Crit Rating. So, feel free to take the occasional hit, as long as your enemy hasn't rolled any Advantage. Save that Strain for the hits where he would crit, but you put the kibosh on it with your mad skills and sick armor.

@The Grand Falloon shows here why Cortosis Armor can be Sundered. Only Cortosis weapons can't be Sundered. So if that big bad is taking no damage, break his armor with 3 Advantage, then cut him up.

1 hour ago, GroggyGolem said:

@The Grand Falloon shows here why Cortosis Armor can be Sundered. Only Cortosis weapons can't be Sundered. So if that big bad is taking no damage, break his armor with 3 Advantage, then cut him up.

Are you allowed to sunder armor, though? The rule says "one item openly wielded by the target (such as a weapon, shield, or item on a belt)." Weird that armor isn't mentioned if you're allowed to sunder it.

2 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

Are you allowed to sunder armor, though? The rule says "one item openly wielded by the target (such as a weapon, shield, or item on a belt)." Weird that armor isn't mentioned if you're allowed to sunder it.

As far as I'm aware, there hasn't been a good statement saying it is or isn't possible to Sunder armor. Personally I'd say its just petty, and bogs the game down.

Edit: Checked the EotE Dev Response thread, there is a statement saying its possible to Sunder armor that has Cortosis, but I coulda sworn I've seen a pretty strong argument that they might of just forgotten/not realized when asked that Armor isn't in the list of things that can be Sundered. The question posed to the dev was only looking at the wording in the Cortosis quality, instead of cross-referencing it with the Sunder rules.

Well, with a lightsaber the only time you'd really need to worry about Sundering armor is if it's Cortosis armor.

Provided the GM isn't being a **** and giving all his NPCs Cortosis armor, then it really shouldn't be that big of a deal. And if the GM is giving all their NPCs Cortosis armor and thus forcing the PC to sunder that armor in the hopes of dealing damage with their lightsaber or vibro-ax, that's less an issue with the rules and more an issue of the GM being petty by handing out what should be a fairly rare item as though it were penny candy.

Tbh I'm more concerned with my players getting Cortosis armor so I'm glad to know there's ways in the rules to deal with it without something like nuking them from orbit. Gotta keep the game just challenging enough...

thanks gents, good informations and interesting stuff. have a good one.

It is possible to sunder armour; it's only weapons that are resistant; simply because a weave isn't as resistant as a solid covering of a given material. Narratively it's encouraged; even if much of the armour is saber proof, there will always be weakness's that have not been plated. Lets say, Jango work cortosis, but Windu kept sundering it (repersenting by more and more things going wrong with his armour) until eventually he opened up his neck to a quick slice.

Where/what are the penalties for damaged armor, since the usual ones for damaged gear probably don't apply.

16 minutes ago, Rossbert said:

Where/what are the penalties for damaged armor, since the usual ones for damaged gear probably don't apply.

Here's how I'd handle it (hypothetical as it's yet to come up in my games):

Minor damage - setback die to all checks requiring significant body movement, but still get benefits of the armor
Moderate damage - increase difficulty of all checks requiring significant body movement, but still get benefits of the armor
Major damage - armor is now useless; no penalties but no soak (or other) bonuses, though can be repaired
Severe damage - armor's toast, so no benefits provided, but no skill check penalties either.

I know it's possible to Sunder armor, because the devs have said as much, but I haven't found what happens when you do. I've noticed that when the devs answer questions, they tend to be extremely short answers, and don't always address the sub-questions that have been asked.

26 minutes ago, The Grand Falloon said:

I know it's possible to Sunder armor, because the devs have said as much, but I haven't found what happens when you do. I've noticed that when the devs answer questions, they tend to be extremely short answers, and don't always address the sub-questions that have been asked.

Could you point to where the devs have made this statement? We've had this discussion at our table and have house-ruled that armor can be sundered, but official support is always better.

31 minutes ago, The Grand Falloon said:

I know it's possible to Sunder armor, because the devs have said as much, but I haven't found what happens when you do. I've noticed that when the devs answer questions, they tend to be extremely short answers, and don't always address the sub-questions that have been asked.

As far as I can tell, they've only said you can Sunder armor because they were asked specifically about the Cortosis quality, and it specifically saying only weapons with Cortosis are immune to Sunder.

I posit that the devs are human, and humans are fallible. I highly suspect that when answering the question on Cortosis, they forgot that armor actually isn't in the classification of items that can be sundered. Thus they just answered with the obvious case, that since it doesn't say its immune, clearly it isn't. Whereas at the time of the initial writing, this was known (that armor can't be sundered), and thus needless to make Cortosis armor immune to Sunder, as by nature it armor couldn't be targeted by Sunder.

This explains the lack of the book saying what happens when armor is damaged, fits with the list of valid targets for Sunder, explains why Cortosis armor doesn't include immunity to Sunder, and prevents the game from going overly bonkers with weapons that do have Sunder.

4 minutes ago, Simon Retold said:

Could you point to where the devs have made this statement? We've had this discussion at our table and have house-ruled that armor can be sundered, but official support is always better.

Also we know armor can be damaged within the rules of the game. The Self-Repair Systems attachment from Special Modifications would make no sense if Armor couldn't be damaged/Sundered.

Plus there are options in the custom armor rules that apply when armor is damaged or repaired.

The flip side of this issue is what happens when your PCs have the cortosis quality on their armor. Plus a high brawn, high soak, etc. I had one PC attempt to take advantage of the fact Cortosis is a rarity 7, -2 on a core world, and rolled decently high to get some. I scoffed at the idea since I'm running SW:TOR era and the Jedi/Sith would be hoarding the stuff.

They have Cortosis, so they ignore Pierce & Breach. They can't ingore Planetary scale weapons, however. Use Missile Tubes, heavy Anti-Infantry weaponry, Thermal Detonators, Disruptor weaponry... Or just roll either 4 Advantage on a successful combat check with a weapon that has the Sunder quality and destroy their armor or 2 Triumphs, without the need for the Sunder quality (so a lucky roll with a Stormtrooper minion group could accomplish this) destroy their armor. Also, you technically only need 3 advantage to break their armor with the Sunder quality but 4 breaks it beyond repair. Also, you can give adversaries the Pressure Point talent and any other type of talent you think is necessary to present a credible threat to your high Brawn, high Soak, Cortosis armor wearing tank. If you really want to be ridiculous, use KWS Saber Dart throwers loaded with highly potent poison and just keep poisoning them from long range. Doesn't matter if their soak is uber high, if you succeed on the check then they are forced to succeed a Resilience check or they suffer the poison's effects. A non-lethal way of dealing with them would be to use Glop Grenades... if it hits, they are stuck for 3 rounds unless they can succeed a Daunting check if I recall correctly.

38 minutes ago, ASCI Blue said:

The flip side of this issue is what happens when your PCs have the cortosis quality on their armor. Plus a high brawn, high soak, etc. I had one PC attempt to take advantage of the fact Cortosis is a rarity 7, -2 on a core world, and rolled decently high to get some. I scoffed at the idea since I'm running SW:TOR era and the Jedi/Sith would be hoarding the stuff.

The stun quality ignores soak. Vehicle weapons are still terrifying. And so are vehicle themselves … thrown at you. Destroying the armor is an option, and so is just using a decent rifle that does enough damage to get past the soak even without pierce. And there are talents which ignore soak as well, and poison and gas and other things which require a resilience check instead. Lastly disrupter and other crit builds are nasty and care only little about depleting a character's wt.

On 1/30/2017 at 4:36 PM, Donovan Morningfire said:

Well, with a lightsaber the only time you'd really need to worry about Sundering armor is if it's Cortosis armor.

Provided the GM isn't being a **** and giving all his NPCs Cortosis armor, then it really shouldn't be that big of a deal. And if the GM is giving all their NPCs Cortosis armor and thus forcing the PC to sunder that armor in the hopes of dealing damage with their lightsaber or vibro-ax, that's less an issue with the rules and more an issue of the GM being petty by handing out what should be a fairly rare item as though it were penny candy.

Cortosis armor is no more rare than lightsabers. IF your group is running around encountering lots of lightsabers, it's really no different. Both are also ways of stocking up on some high-value loot too, if you've got a high enough Cunning/Streetwise to sell it off successfully.

• I will have to read more of the core books, my primary knowledge lies in F&D and I'm pretty sure some of what's mentioned isn't in there. As an example optical camouflage ins't in F&D but is in the other two core books. I'm getting to the point in game to ramp up difficulty since I've been pretty easy on my players to the extent of around 400 ee-ex-pees.

Thermal Detonators can be scary as all heck-word if you want to add some danger to the PCs. The most recent session with 1 group, an NPC incapacitated 3 of them with 1 Detonator... one is missing an arm and another is now blind.

6 minutes ago, GroggyGolem said:

Thermal Detonators can be scary as all heck-word if you want to add some danger to the PCs. The most recent session with 1 group, an NPC incapacitated 3 of them with 1 Detonator... one is missing an arm and another is now blind.

Funny story (to me at least): Bad guy on the PC's ship has a thermal detonator with a dead-man's switch and has taken several of the PCs as hostages. PC Mechanic droid decides to tamper with the life support to knock out the pirates and is counting on Bad Motivator to disable the detonator. The plan works--mostly--but the Mechanics check for Bad Motivator fails. The BOOM! was hilarious (again, to me at least). Three critically injured PCs (one of which died) and massive internal damage to the starship. Some plans really suck.