Ive found the armor rules to be...politely put ( and no offense to the FFG crew)..Broken. examples like this one shouldve been covered more thoroughly in the rules for things to begin with ( Cmon now....all the GMs KNOW how creative the players can be to find ways to buff their PCs abilities using the rules and limitations to defeat themselves and driving us GMs nuts sometimes...). I use a totally different method of armor factors ( same AF but different setup for protection )...As for the subdermal armor along with regular armor...id say yes it would stack but with 1 change...the subdermal armor value would stop that number of levels of critical hit damage ( lowering the crit roll total on the charts when a crit was rolled) ..but till then...it wouldnt affect the total AF of the location . In other words it would only act to prevent/lessen critical hits to the PC not to buff his total AF for the locations covered. As for the mutation of a cyber rezed PC....no mutations period...too much metal and practically no flesh left TO mutate..so they would be effectively immune to mutagenic agents ( acids, radiation, warp events, etc....)..But still suceptible to insanity

As for the armor+machine trait....yes id say they do stack...afterall it just makes your PCs vital organs ( or gears in this case) that much harder to get to and ruin ) I take the GMs right to modify or throw out any rule that doesnt fit my games...i allow the armors to stack period ( afterall the more armor they have on the slower they move and the higher their AG penalty gets...in addition after a point...they are NOT allowed to even try and dodge reguardless of their skill level at it...I learned a long time ago as GM...i rarely tell my players a No outright....i simply say ok ( then my own conditions/limitations/penalties as i see fit)..and if they still want to do it...then i let them...and show them why they shouldnt within the same/next session using my NPCs and difficult abilities tests that they will most certainly lose to / fail when it comes the PCs turn...sometimes with serious consequences for the failure and make them burn a fate point or two to be allowed to see the error of their ways and correct it for future. Either way though..I maintain the balance of things. the more the benefit...the bigger the offset penalty for something else is...and the more often i will use said penalty test for the PCs in question.

revak said:

Are you sure they don't stack? I've always played the combat servitor having an effective armor of 10 IIRC, the listed armor is just the worn armor (Carapace). This makes a combat servitor a nigh-indestructible Terminator, which is sorta the point.

I had a tense combat in Tattered Fates as the PCs struggled to damage the servitors coming at them... they still came out on top though.. the combat servitors werent exactly fast, and had no ranged weapons...

of course roleplaying perspective dictates not wanting mutations...

hive mutant is only one option to gain the mutations (right from the start) corruption is another one and if a lvl 8 ech-priest with all the needed equipment gains the corpulent mutation there is no medical lab that suddenly says hey he is mutated instead of augmenting him we should kill him

That 'if' (if he is level 8, rapidly attains enough Corruption to qualify for two mutations despite previously passing purity tests, misses his toughness checks against them, rolls exactly the right ones and never has a need for a medical check-up ever again) is so large that I'd personally consider it neglectable from a balance point of view. In the same way, you could call a guardsman overpowered because he can one-shot a daemon prince - he just has to roll eight or nine consecutive tens on Righteous Fury.

well again this is offtopic here but

I didn't say it was overpowered or easy to get it was only a maxed stats array that has no point to actual role -playing and 2 examples of how to get them

maybe someone does a cool villain out of this? (for a bit of a PVP session you take one player assign him a ruleproof but a bit powerful character that joins the party and subtly works against them until they find out and slay him (if they can) btu only if you have a group that get's fun out of it (maybe the templar psyker player that has several month downtime can play the villain)

or just a npc...

or someone goes for a radicals powergaming group where such stuff is actually possible?

and the ascencion level Tech-priest dosn't rely on mutations to get Toughness 100 and unnatural Toughness *2