Shockingly deadly to those without makes sense, in my eyes. If you go into combat without armour, it's because you're not prepared for combat in the first place, or because you've opted to take little/no armour to allow for maximum maneuverability, meaning you'd largely be relying on zipping from cover to cover and using Evade.

I don't see that as a horrible thing, although balance would have to be handled very carefully.

Fair point, I suppose. I still think that ultimately, reduding pen to weapon traits for specific weapons would increase ease of damage calculation a ton, and would arguably make the game more enjoyable by making armour more of an appealing choice.

It would make things simpler and it would make armour more appealing in a lot of circumstances.

My feeling though (and this is off the cuff without running numbers), is that Pen lets you scale the danger of weapons in a more nuanced way. Suppose I want Shuriken catapults to slice through even power armour the way they can in the fluff. Well fine, I can give them a damage rating that takes power armour into account and makes it able to do that. But for every other character on the battlefield who isn't wearing Power Armour, the Shuriken Catapult is now a weapon of terrifying DEATH. (Okay, more of a weapon of terrifying death, but you get my point).

With Pen, armour is a really useful thing that most characters will want but some will not for character / agility reasons. Without Pen, armour is something you have to have because either weapons are scaled to be dangerous with armoured characters or they're not.

Given how gungho most people seem to be about making the system lethal, this could be a good thing. The unarmored dude is going to get wrecked by a weapon. The armoured dude will be able to survive it. Getting shot somewhere with little armor will seriously hurt. This seems like a fair compromise between lethality and allowing players to be prepared for the worst. Add some subtlety penalties for any armor over 2 and I think you've got a pretty good system going. Choose to protect yourself (and actually be protected) or choose to remain subtle.

If there's one issue where I would agree with the "Lethality Team", it's for the idiot who runs into a firefight unarmoured and expects to walk away alive.

I like that not wearing armour is deadly. I like that I can make my players terrified if I catch them without their armour on.

There's a point in the difference in survivability between someone in Power Armour and someone without, but I don't think it's that big a deal: Flak Armour is pretty easy to get and is only 3 AP worse. That's not enough to make encounters completely unbalanced. Differences like that could easily come from just the variations in Toughness (or the roll of a damage die).

As for different types of damage: It's an interesting mechanism, but my ultimate goal here is to reduce complexity. I don't think that's achieved by adding even more numbers on to the system, even if it's relatively simple as knasserll suggests.

It might complicate things but why couldn't armor be strong or weak against certain types of weaponry?

Eclipse Phase does this quite elegantly and it's actually not that complicated. All armour has two values for Kinetic and Energy. So for example: "4/7" Excellent armour against lasers, etc., but only so-so against people with knives, bullets, etc. Very simple.

It would potentially add a very interesting new tactical element to equipment and weapon choices and it would really highlight the different technical levels of armour. For example, Mesh could be good at both Energy and Kinetic. Light Carapace as good or slightly better against Kinetic, but worse against Energy weapons. Suddenly you have two types of armour that are roughly equivalent in some circumstances, but the advanced nature of one is clearly apparent.

As it stands with armor, once the PC acquires carapace, there is no reason to ever go back to flak (unless one has a high AB). If there was benefits and weaknesses to each type of armor, it would certainly keep all types of armor more relevant than they are now. I really like this idea. It would make preparing for an encounter much more strategic and important, especially if the system is going to be more deadly.

I would not remove Pen, but limit its numbers definitely.

I would only give a high Pen (>3) to restricted Weapons, effectively (and in this order:

> Plasma Weapons

> Power Weapons

> Melta Weapons

I would not remove Pen, but limit its numbers definitely.

I would only give a high Pen (>3) to restricted Weapons, effectively (and in this order:

> Plasma Weapons

> Power Weapons

> Melta Weapons

This makes sense but I must ask you to consider adding hellguns to this list as plasma has the damage to punch thru armor but hellguns rely on the afore mentioned tight beam to do the job.

Maybe snipers also.

Honestly, I still think Pen could be wholly removed, with a few traits like these to account for the weapons where armour penetration is important. (The numbers for vehicle armour are stuff I thought up in ten seconds, don't take them seriously)

Melta

At half range or below, ignore the target's armour. When used against vehicles at this range, armour is not ignored, but instead reduced by 15.

Penetrating

This weapon halves the effectiveness of armour on the target (round up). When used against vehicles, it instead ignores 5 points of armour.

Sniper

This weapon ignores Pb points of armour on the target.

Honestly, I still think Pen could be wholly removed, with a few traits like these to account for the weapons where armour penetration is important. (The numbers for vehicle armour are stuff I thought up in ten seconds, don't take them seriously)

Melta

At half range or below, ignore the target's armour. When used against vehicles at this range, armour is not ignored, but instead reduced by 15.

Penetrating

This weapon halves the effectiveness of armour on the target (round up). When used against vehicles, it instead ignores 5 points of armour.

Sniper

This weapon ignores Pb points of armour on the target.

This idea seems the most simple. It essentially gives armor a boost while still keeping to the fluff on the more dangerous weapons. I would also add to that list certain types of ammunition.

Nah...to be honest, I really almost like the current Pen-stats as they are.

Besides the too high Plasma Pen there is no real game breaker so far, just maybe some minor modifications.

Against certain weapons, armour is useless - thats ok with me.

Also the armour values are quite ok. An average armour of 3 gives yet some protection against common Weapon.

You have to take into account that most of the high Pen weapons are rather rare and old weapons, which are not in everybodies hands.

I'm not worried about gamebreaking at all. I'm worried about simplifying the game by removing a stat that, honestly, doesn't bring a lot to the game that couldn't be gained through occasional exceptions for very specific weapons.

Why does everybody always want to simplify everything ;D

I myself like complex games with a variety of rules.

If I liked simple games, I could play paper-rock-scissors...

I'm not worried about gamebreaking at all. I'm worried about simplifying the game by removing a stat that, honestly, doesn't bring a lot to the game that couldn't be gained through occasional exceptions for very specific weapons.

Exactly.

Arguments for keeping Penetration shouldn't be about "that it's alright as it is". Arguments should tell us why we need it. What does Penetration do for us?

It certainly has downsides (complicating the math). That's practically indisputable.

What are its strengths? It can model some weapons (very few) better. Alright - we can handle that with a Special Quality. There's no reason to have a Penetration of 0 listed for every other weapon in the book.

What good does Penetration do?

Why does everybody always want to simplify everything ;D

I myself like complex games with a variety of rules.

If I liked simple games, I could play paper-rock-scissors...

Complexity for the sake of complexity is a terrible argument. If that's what we wanted, let's make damage reduction the square root of (Tb + 1d5), rounded up.

Complexity is allowable if it serves a purpose and it can't be handled in a simpler way.

As an engineer, I feel compelled to include this classic:

Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Yeah, and I'd rather keep the complexity out of equations I'm liable to be doing more than 20 times per major encounter.

I'm with Tom Cruise on this one. I vastly prefer differentiation through traits rather than through the weapon stats. It makes the guns more flavorful and lets you have more wiggle room on the fact that in the fluff all of these weapons are meant to be massively devastating and allowing this to be reflected more narratively than by just giving them huge damage numbers. Otherwise you end up with a lot of the guns feeling "Samey" while also being unbalanced.

If I liked simple games, I could play paper-rock-scissors...

Off topic but that can make tag down right macavelein.(sp)

I'm all for removing pen from weapons and leaving it to special qualities. But that's just me.

I fear the Special Qualities. Because I disagree with you guys on what complexity is. To me, a single universally applied rule, is very low complexity. While piles of Special Qualities - essentially exceptions to the way the universal rules work - are very high complexity.

But by complexity, I mean: does bad, bad things to the pace at the table.

Still, I agree with you all on the issues with penetration, and I don't exactly have any better suggestions.

I've been vaguely considering replacing damage & penetration with a weapon strength score. Maybe giving weapons 5 strength per d10 damage they had. And maybe letting them ignore 1 point of armour value per 5 strength. I need to be much, much more familiar with the system before I can do anything so drastic to it, though.

Then again, I've also been vaguely considering throwing out the shiny new injury system and just saying that any damage suffered causes 10 points of characteristics damage to toughness and to two other characteristics based on hit location.

And, of course, I've been plotting the gruesome ritualistic murder-sacrifice of the toughness bonus mechanic to Tzeentch, in the hopes of changing FFG's ways. Not that Daddy Nurgle isn't cool & stuffs, but Blubber of Invulnerability really has got to go. Penetration & general armour value weirdness is nothing compared to the aggressive stupid of TB.

Oh, and did I mention I'd like to convert the entire system to an open-ended 2d10 roll over thing instead? Not that I'll ever have the time

We don't disagree on what complexity is, I don't think - but you're referring to something different than the rest of us.

The complexity that we wish to remove is the calculation of armour vs. penetration vs. toughness vs. damage.

The complexity you refer to is special qualities vs. basic weapon stats.

With that point, I do agree that special rules that diverge from the base is generally an increase in complexity (and a bad thing) - unless it helps more than it hurts.

If we were giving a special "Penetrating" quality to half of the weapons in the armoury, of course it would be a terrible decision. We'd be back where we started but with more page-flipping.

If, as some of us are suggesting, we only give Penetrating (or Melta, or whatever) to a handful of weapons, it's a different situation. You don't need to worry about penetration unless you have one of the special few. Just like you don't need to worry about Overcharge unless you have one of the few weapons that can do it.

Actually, I'd argue that having an uncommon special quality helps keep track of it, because you're much more likely to remember that your weapon has a cool special rule, than you are likely to remember that your weapon has a non-0 value in the penetration field that you usually never look at (because 90% of the armoury has a pen of 0, under our proposed changes). Thus, I as a GM won't have to constantly ask "what's the penetration on that?", because my players will be reminding me to take advantage of their special rules. They'll feel entitled to some awesome effect, rather than just stumbling through confusing rules because they have to.

You didn't offer much in the way of details for your "weapon strength" system, but at first glance it looks to introduce way more complexity than it simplifies. It sounds like Penetration, only less flexible and harder to keep track of.

If what you want is Toughness to matter less, removing Penetration is the simplest way to do it.

Keeping AP rather than a variety of special rules would be my preference. As a GM I find it easier to ask the player for a stat than remember more special rules ("Now let me see, what does that rule do again") and you don't want that during combat.

For the removing of AP and replacing it with extra damage, I don't agree. Some weapons would actually cause more damage to an armoured target than an unarmoured target. For example a modern firearm shooting medieval plate armour would actually cause more damage than it would if the person was unarmoured. Also it allows the option of having weapons that are threats to vehicles without having to increase its damage vs non-vehicles.

About Plasma Guns, they are supposed to be very dangerous to personel, a threat to vehicles, risky to use, and incredibly hard to get.

I like that its penetration is high. It makes it more capable against vehicles without increasing its antipersonal damage. It should be able to compete with Meltaguns, but it should be harder to aquire (than the Meltagun), and the Meltagun should have the edge in damage up close.

You could indeed replace Penetration quite well through a bunch of special weapon traits, e.g.:

> Armour-Piercing (X): light penetration with X = 1-3

> Armour-Penetrator : Armour only counts 50% (rounded up), but is at least reduced by 4

> Armour-Killer: Armour only counts 25% (rounded up), but is at least reduced by 5

Please change my default names, as I am no native english speaker and lack good terms for it ;D

Or change penetration outright:

Penetration Rating: A Weapon [or while we're at it psychic power]'s Penetration rating is the amount of Armour and Toughness Bonus it ignores when damaging a target. Generally speaking a weapon's Toughness Bypass is half that of its armour penetration. A weapon may not ignore more than Half [round remaining DV fraction up] of a target's total Armour or Toughness... Unless of course:

Armour-Piercing: An AP weapon is particularly effective at penetrating Armour: Any points of Armour or Toughness Penetration remaining after the half-DV limit would be reached may continue to be applied, but only against a target's Armour Rating if any.

Felling: Felling weapons blah blah... against Toughness Bonus instead of Armour Rating, but only 1/2 of Armour Penetration[round up] applies over to Toughness.

This would let us better adjust weaponry, though high toughness would still be preferable [twice as good] to bad toughness and some armour. We could have plasma that actually punches through things, rather than suddenly becoming really bad because it's somehow worse at distributing energy into stuff that doesn't just radiate and diffuse it near-instantly than it is at slagging the stuff specifically made to protect from all those nasty things like it and explosives.

With a Pen of, say, 8/4 Armour-Piercing, instead of 15, you'd ignore up to 10 Armour and 2 toughness off a Tb4 power-armour wearer, or up to 8 Armour and 4 toughness on a Space marine, or up to 12 armour against a vehicle. If it were also felling you could instead whack one of those "0 armour, high toughness" demons for up to 8 toughness.

Wording could use a little clarity, but I think this could work well.