Since we are in the Armoury chapter, has anyone noticed any armour imbalances in relation to TB? I know that this was a topic a while back but would like to get the feedback for FFG if there is indeed a problem.

I know someone mentioned some time ago that AP + TB at higher levels became unbalanced and i've noticed that many weapons become useless at that point. Any thoughts?

What if there was a threshhold for minimum damage? (IE: Unless your armor exceeds the damage by 10 or more, there's a minimum of 1 damage). That way massed lasgun fire can still drop armored orks, but hellguns are several orders of magnitude better.

I think the twin problems of Toughness vs Armour is that its easy to get a toughness bonus equal to your armour, doubling your protection, and penetration doesn't affect toughness making high toughness actually better than good armour.

I know someone mentioned some time ago that AP + TB at higher levels became unbalanced and i've noticed that many weapons become useless at that point. Any thoughts?

At high levels, AP+TB does get to such insane levels that lasguns and primitive weapons can barely harm characters, but I'm actually OK with that. I think high-level characters in power/carapace armor should be basically immune to such lowly weapons.

One thing that does concern me a little is the ease with which characters can get really good armor and Toughness early in the game (relative to DH1). Arbitrators start with either light carapace or a carapace breastplate and Administratum characters can requisition such gear at character creation, while everyone else can begin the game with Guard flak. By contrast, my group's DH1 characters didn't start with anything stronger that a flak combat cloak, and by the time they reached rank 4 nobody even had carapace armor. If you use the 25+2d10 starting stats, it's quite easy to have TB+AP=8 at character creation -- to do this in DH1, you basically had to make a Guardsman or Noble-born character and roll extremely well for your Toughness score.

I haven't had a chance to test low-level combat yet (my Untouchable test used 5000xp characters), so I'm not sure how all of this will play out in practice. However, I definitely plan to look into the matter once I finish my final exams

It's as rough as you think CiW. I'm running 25+2d10 with the players at 1500xp after three games. They all (with the exception of one character) have IG Flak and the IG based character has a soak of 9 all over. The Arbitrator is 10 chest, 7 arms/legs and 4 head (carapace chestplate & flak greatcoat, bare head for stylistic reasons) and the Psyker is 7 all over. It can be pretty hard to hurt the guardsman and even the arbie if he takes a chest shot.

Bear in mind I'm still flinging hive gangers at them, but they waded through a three-man mundanely corrupted Arbitrator 'Hit-Squad' with no casualties or serious injuries.

I'm inclined to think that RAW it's too easy for characters to get IG flak from the start and many players will do so for the long term benefit and uncertain nature of acquisitions.

Armour needs a more serious downside - especially heavier armour with 4+

Otherwise anyone will just take armour with 4-6 almost anytime.

Make it heavier, more encumbering and limit you agility (thereby limit ag, movement and init also).

I also liked the beta1 armour packages where most armours had a weaker spot somewhere by default.

I'm not convinced that simply increasing it's weight is enough, particularly in groups (like mine) that disregard carry weights and use a more 'if it's sensible' approach to it. Increasing weight would have bugger all effect but by all means do it, but do other things as well.

I'm attracted to the notion of Ag caps and the like. That seems to be an appropriate alteration.

Ag caps (a a level where players feel it - not a cap by 50 or something) + decreasing of carrying limits. That combination would be fine.

Maybe a guard flak should have an ag cap of 40 and Stormtrooper carapace ag capped at 35.

Otherwise, every jumping-around assassin will do so in heavy armour, not caring about body gloves at all.

Ag caps (a a level where players feel it - not a cap by 50 or something) + decreasing of carrying limits. That combination would be fine.

Maybe a guard flak should have an ag cap of 40 and Stormtrooper carapace ag capped at 35.

Otherwise, every jumping-around assassin will do so in heavy armour, not caring about body gloves at all.

Exactly this. The assassin in thin armour is a very common 40k trope, it would be good if it was supported by the rules.

I'm all for the idea of hits that get past armour always doing 1 wound as well. In fact exactly this idea was voiced by a member of my gaming group earlier this week and we were all behind it.

Maybe hits that at least score 3 DoS do 1 damage at least ?

So DoS do count somehow ?

Maybe hits that at least score 3 DoS do 1 damage at least ?

So DoS do count somehow ?

For me it's enough that the attacker can use the DoS to upgrade a damage dice (already making it more likely that the damage will go past toughness and be a real hit when DoS is high).

It might just be better to make the 1 damage thing always happen.

Mh...I am biased towards that idea...not against it tough.

DoS could in general act as a kind of "proven (DoS)" for standard attacks.

It's as rough as you think CiW. I'm running 25+2d10 with the players at 1500xp after three games. They all (with the exception of one character) have IG Flak and the IG based character has a soak of 9 all over. The Arbitrator is 10 chest, 7 arms/legs and 4 head (carapace chestplate & flak greatcoat, bare head for stylistic reasons) and the Psyker is 7 all over. It can be pretty hard to hurt the guardsman and even the arbie if he takes a chest shot.

Bear in mind I'm still flinging hive gangers at them, but they waded through a three-man mundanely corrupted Arbitrator 'Hit-Squad' with no casualties or serious injuries.

I'm inclined to think that RAW it's too easy for characters to get IG flak from the start and many players will do so for the long term benefit and uncertain nature of acquisitions.

If I was running a game on the new system I'd use a subtlety hit for excessive armour in the same way as you would for heavy weapons. It's not subtle and attracts the wrong kinds of attention.

Subtlety penalty, Ag cap and carrying limits are the way to go

If that is done, I could even think about positive armour traits that make armour differ from each other, like the previously mentioned "Hardened (X)" (ignores X Pen), "Fireproof (X)" (X Bonus Armour against Flame) or Fearful Appearance (Bonus on Intimidate)

Subtlety penalty, Ag cap and carrying limits are the way to go

If that is done, I could even think about positive armour traits that make armour differ from each other, like the previously mentioned "Hardened (X)" (ignores X Pen), "Fireproof (X)" (X Bonus Armour against Flame) or Fearful Appearance (Bonus on Intimidate)

I like that idea, though would it be expanded beyond the examples above? As Guard flack in table top offer more protection against blasts.

just examples - but I really think armour needs some love in design

Whoa! I completely missed that they had removed the Ab caps from armor! I liked those; please bring them back FFG!

I know this isn't exactly the topic for it, but this is one of the reasons I don't like the influence system. The ease of acquisition of this kind of stuff creates problems.

I think subtley is the way to cope with it. To offer a counter example my current group are all at 2000xp, and no one is wearing much more than heavy robes or duster coats. We stole suits of carapace armour in order to sneak into a heretical stronghold (we needed something to make us look like guards and covered our faces with the helmets) but we ditched it all before the next mission because we didn't want to stand out as 'those clearly heavily armed and armoured guys' when we were trying to do our investigating.

For the same reason no one in the group is using any weapon that wouldnt be common amoung hive gangers or bodyguards, a shotgun here, a few auto pistols and a las pistol there. I'd say it depends on your players, but the truth is players will usually act sensibly if the GM makes the world react realistically to their actions.

but the truth is players will usually act sensibly if the GM makes the world react realistically to their actions.

This has been my experience, as well.

some players might - others will complain why the GM always tries to mock them. Depends VERY much on the players.

In my oppinion, clear rules are best for such things, as they provide a good framework to agree on.

I don't think agility caps are really the way to go. 40 cap for Imperial Guard armour, and 35 for Stormtrooper? That's ridiculous. It's light plates on top of a body suit, and made for quick movement in War. Power armour is the only place I can see it going that low.

Also, Carapace doesn't need to be unsubtle armour. It can be really thin and formfitting and easily fit under a cloak or robes without looking a mess. ESPECIALLY in the Imperium where every second person has a massive bionic array sprawling out of their hunchback, or robotic limbs or even just big guns themselves.

One problem I see creep up with Armor is that GMs can tend not to be aware of alternate combat tactics to challenge the players:

Often there will be a player with a gigantic amount of armor and toughness who always counts as lightly wounded. At this point, simply using direct damage weapons tends to not offer much of a challenge. It's even more of a problem if the other party members are not as heavily armored, and you don't want to just murder them by accident.

This is perhaps when you break out weapons that deal characteristic damage, fatigue, or test other characteristics for their effects.

So to that end, they may wish to include a strategy section for the GM on 'how to deal with hard targets', or similar.

You don't want to simply decimate players under a tide of Dark Eldar assassins-- merely have their opponents adapt realistically to who they're facing. (And any rules FFG includes for this could perhaps be welcome.)

some players might - others will complain why the GM always tries to mock them. Depends VERY much on the players.

In my oppinion, clear rules are best for such things, as they provide a good framework to agree on.

I guess this depends on what you see the role of the GM as being. I like to see myself as a director, not a facilitator. If the game becomes purely crunch theres a very real chance of it turning into players vs GM, which is the death of fun.

some players might - others will complain why the GM always tries to mock them. Depends VERY much on the players.

In my oppinion, clear rules are best for such things, as they provide a good framework to agree on.

I guess this depends on what you see the role of the GM as being. I like to see myself as a director, not a facilitator. If the game becomes purely crunch theres a very real chance of it turning into players vs GM, which is the death of fun.

It is not players VS GM.

It is more like the players are a quite confident type (what I do like in general) - clear rules give a good guideline for everyone to plan upon.