I've noticed that, as it stands now, any armour can basically be destroyed in about three hits of a power sword, up to and including power armour. This is pretty silly. I think the best way to fix this, is to make the 'wrecked' result not actually mean the armour becomes useless. Instead, it should apply some heavy penalties.

I'm thinking something along the lines of reducing agility (wearing bent, damaged armour wouldn't be easy to move in), and reducing the overall armour given by a point or two. This means your carapace chest plate or light power armour isn't totally destroyed by a power sword, it's just compromised to the point it may be more inconvenient to wear it than to not.

Thoughts? This topic could also be a decent place to discuss what Item Status does to equipment in general, especially with respect to the power field's powerful new ability.

Thoughts: three power sword hits that slice through your chestplate is going to make it pretty useless eh?

Why add further bookkeeping complexity?

As you say; This means your carapace chest plate or light power armour isn't totally destroyed by a power sword, it's just compromised to the point it may be more inconvenient to wear it than to not.

So a simple ''wrecked' means its destroyed or so damaged it's more trouble to wear than throw away', makes sense and keeps things simple (in a ruleset already apparently heavy on bookkeeping??).

Status in general

I like the idea and i think it's really a part of 40k's core themes (decay in all things). I like the idea of PCs having to struggle to keep their basic kit together and running. I like the idea of the Tech Priests being a key part of the game and actually having some core effect in terms of technology. I like the idea of PCs being able to keep their gear going by prayers and supplications, at least until they can get that powersword-cleaved breastplate to a Tech Priest to 'heal it's spirit properly. I like the idea of trying to achieve that without too much bookkeeping.

I suspect that may be a pipe dream.

I just find the idea absurd because unless we're looking at some silly Ghosts'n Goblins level armour loss, having an inch thick or more of ceramite on your body is going to help block some hits, regardless of if it's got some holes in it.

On a related note, any thoughts on how status should actually affect gear? It's barely influences anything as is, until things break beyond repair.

There is the Weapon Modification called "Reinforced" that gives a 50% chance to ignore the status reduction.

This one should also be made available as armor modification or maybe this rule should be an integral part of power armor and the like.

Yeah, Power Armour being rendered irrelevant in a few blows is questionable as hell. It'd be more interesting if like, breaking power armour didn't reduce the armour value significantly, but instead depowered the armour. That would be WORSE than lack of armour, but it'd make a hell of a lot more sense (and be more interesting).

Fluff-wise it isn't that questionable. Considering that in the Table-Top game Power Weapons also completly ignore Power Armor and till 5th Edition they ignored even Terminator Armor.

But yeah, in the RPG there should be armor modifications available in my opinion.

I can even understand they slicing through it, but I'm really struggling to envision a scenario where a sword can manage to damage a full suit of ceramite to the point that it provides absolutely no protection (without slicing the occupant to pieces in the process). It just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense from a logical standpoint, in my mind. Disabling the systems would make more sense. Hell, include a chance to rupture the power supply, if we want to get really mean.

Keep in mind that the rules read "any armor on a hit location struck." It seems reasonable to me that a power sword could render a section of armor useless in a few blows.

Oh, that's a point, I didn't notice that. Does that mean we're having to track armour's quality on every location? That seems a little annoying, but may be worth it for balance's sake.

Keep in mind that the rules read "any armor on a hit location struck." It seems reasonable to me that a power sword could render a section of armor useless in a few blows.

That's how I interpreted the rules. Some critical effects also mention reducing the quality of armor on the location struck by the attack, which further supports this interpretation.

This does make bookkeeping very annoying, and means that applying positive/negative modifiers to checks based on armor quality gets incredibly complicated.