So at the beginning of the campaign, the party started a few ranks in and 1000 thrones. The tecky of the group picked up armour crafting skills and talents giving him about a 80 to roll against before buffs/pens, then he made best quality carapace armour with a shield giving him 12-15AP in various locations.

Part of this was due to a misunderstanding of the rules and his feverish defense that its cheaper to make something than straight up buy it. But hey I can live with it.

The problem is, he soaks pretty much all damage from any none heavy weapon, meaning combat is pretty stuffed.

I want to know ways to threaten him, without resorting to weapons that would out right kill him if they pen'd (MP lascannon for example) and still offer a fun gaming experience for the rest of the group. The only thing I have found is that an unarmed attack deals 1 level of fatigue, so he can be punched unconscious.

Any ideas?

I'm seriously considering adding gun servitors to my next combat and using launchers with krack grenades!

However, I think some sort of pro/con system would be better. Where he needs to weigh up the choice between using heavy or light armor

What about an undercover mission in which this big armor suit would make him look heavily suspicious (forcing him to ditch it)? Or barring that, something like an opposing Psyker, perhaps?

Cost of a workshop, materials, etc should have been higher. But it is what it is.

For now, think about:

1. Situations that make the armor a hindrance organically (water is a good tool. Can he swim in that armor? If he falls in he might have to ditch it).

2. Undercover mission like ColArana said. Entertain a formal ball or politico situation (nobleman's clothes, single wepaon only type affair).

3. Schismaticals are fun (CA, viral take over of his implants and techy armor!). Set an adventure into a data-crypt though so it doesn't just randomly appear.

4. Psyker enemy. Biomancers could probably transmute portions of the enemy off, or a telepath could attack his mind.

=D

The best way to deal with heavily armored walking tanks like that is to place them in situations where their armor is a hindrance. Treks through rivers and swampland, high-society soirees, and investigations on high gravity worlds are all very bad times to wear heavy carapace armor. Even in the course of everyday investigations, Acolytes wearing several hundred pounds of armor are sure to draw all kinds of unwelcome attention, and a party who operates so overtly might find that all the cultists have gone into hiding days before the PCs can find them. My players wear armored body gloves, flak coats and mesh armor 75% of the time for this exact reason.

If it's sensible for your enemies to have access to fairly advanced weapons, hellguns (hot-shot lasguns) are a significant threat to armored characters. They don't do a whole lot of damage but have incredible Pen so they won't kill anyone in a single hit, but they can pierce armor fairly reliably. Think carefully before placing strong weapons like this in enemy hands though, as your players will be able to loot them afterwards.

Hot-shot charge packs and krak grenades are much more common ways for cultist enemies to gain anti-armor powers. These are a little safer to put in the hands of enemies as they have very limited ammunition. A simple thrown krak grenade can mangle an armored character but probably won't kill your tech-priest in one hit.

Non-lethal weapons like shock weapons, stun grenades, and webbers can also work, as can jury-rigged traps that generate similar effects.

Hallucinogen grenades are also a fun little tool you can use.

Make armour degrade through use, he may try to argue for constantly maintaining it but then charges for materials and equipment will add up and he`ll learn that having he best stuff means having the most to lose.

Maybe a 20% chance armour on a location degrades from an hit.

-1 for Impact

-2 for Energy or Rending

-3 for Explosive

Double armour damage on critical hits or if the weapons pen is equal or greater than AP value.

Or you could teat all his armour points over a set level as ablative.

I present for your enjoyment this ol thread of inspiration: How to Royally Screw a Tech-Priest

Also, in addition to Water and other excellent tips in this thread, consider using webbers or other entangling weapons. Then hit him with fire

Warp weapons ignore all armour, so that's going to pose a challenge as well.

Wait ... how did he get an AP of 12-15?

A Best Quality Storm Trooper Carapace is limited to 7 AP.

I think of Dragon Scale Best Quality has 9, maybe a Shield which gives him +5 on the one arm and the body, ranging from 9-14.

Armor does not stack in DH, you only get the best of what you wear.

@segara82 Ah my bad, thats including his Toughness and a Shield I forget the name of.

Im liking these ideas! Ill have a play about and see what I can come up with. Trying not to be too ham-fisted else they could just cry bull and that i stacked the combat against him personally. Which isnt fair really. Fun, but not fair =P

Yeah, the 'stacking' armour options (Synford-Pattern Lockshield, Ballistic Surcoat, Leatherwort) from Book of Judgement really throw the game out of balance: standard Adversaries are no longer any threat, requiring every single scenario from now on to incorporate elaborate gimmicks calculated to overcome armour values potentially in excess of power armour.

Your two options are either to resign yourself to this situation for the rest of your campaign, or explain to your player that you screwed up and shouldn't have allowed armour values to 'stack'.

Or, you could just destroy his armour (check out the Daemonic Ammunition monster under the 'Eye of the Abyss' entry in Creatures Anathema : it has a special attack that dissolves armour) and then try to prevent him from replacing it...

Make armour degrade through use, he may try to argue for constantly maintaining it but then charges for materials and equipment will add up and he`ll learn that having he best stuff means having the most to lose.

Maybe a 20% chance armour on a location degrades from an hit.

-1 for Impact

-2 for Energy or Rending

-3 for Explosive

Double armour damage on critical hits or if the weapons pen is equal or greater than AP value.

Or you could teat all his armour points over a set level as ablative.

Gonna apply this to all the other players for fairness? If not it's just singling one person out. Even if so you radically change the economy and value of gear.

Yeah, the 'stacking' armour options (Synford-Pattern Lockshield, Ballistic Surcoat, Leatherwort) from Book of Judgement really throw the game out of balance:

The game was out of balance before. This game has never been balanced. But the GM can simply disallow certain sourcebooks and options, at any rate.

The main reasons to wear armour are subtlety and appearances.

We have several threads about subtlety,

and appearances i think do not require more since some have been listed in this thread already.

btw: Shields showed up first in the IH, teh Guard Shield with 6 Armor Points for cover. If you want to limit shields treat them as carryable cover.

As for your Techpriest?

Aim with high-pen weapons at his legs, unshielded arm and his back.

Use acid rounds, everything that goes against willpower, and such.

Edit: Explosives like the Limpet mine, firebombs, fire weapons in general (i bet he sucks at Agility) are also good choices.

So he stands out like a sore thumb with armor and shield, that blows most covers right from the start. I know if I was dealing with a guy like this as an enemy, and was not able to go to ground and avoid him. Ambush would be the name of the game.

A sniper from cover picking his shots with even a Accurate Lever Action Rifle to open targets, laying out Krak Mines, A pit trap, Fuel Drum bombs hidden that can be command detonate or shot to blow..

Fire and shock, do they need to hit or deal at least a single wound?

Shock tests go against Toughness with extra bonuses for armor on the hit limb.

Fire only needs to hit to force the AG test to avoid burning.

Fire does 1d10-TB damage (ignoring armour) and 1 level Fatigue per round, and test WP or run around screaming and burning.

Even when he succeeds on WP he has to make a Hard (-20) AG-Test to put ot the flames which also takes a whole round.

So, fire works very well.

A horde of heretics, all armed with homemade fire bombs. Goodbye

Okay so next combatis 2 gun servitors, one armed with a grenade launches with a couple of kracks and some frags, the second with a heavily flamer supported by three arbitrators in a winding collapsed building in the underhive. Throw in some pits and other hazards and hopefully we will have a tactical, threatening combat on our hands =D

Cheers for the info guys, been reading it all fearfully and I'll keep you posted on how the party finds my new challenges!

Make armour degrade through use, he may try to argue for constantly maintaining it but then charges for materials and equipment will add up and he`ll learn that having he best stuff means having the most to lose.

Maybe a 20% chance armour on a location degrades from an hit.

-1 for Impact

-2 for Energy or Rending

-3 for Explosive

Double armour damage on critical hits or if the weapons pen is equal or greater than AP value.

Or you could teat all his armour points over a set level as ablative.

Gonna apply this to all the other players for fairness? If not it's just singling one person out. Even if so you radically change the economy and value of gear.

Of course applied to eveyone. It doesn`t matter how awesome your armour is from walking tank to puffa jaket it doesn`t last forever unless you look after it. Heck most armour won`t even save you twice hit in the same place.

The best defence is not getting hit at all.

Okay so next combatis 2 gun servitors, one armed with a grenade launches with a couple of kracks and some frags, the second with a heavily flamer supported by three arbitrators in a winding collapsed building in the underhive. Throw in some pits and other hazards and hopefully we will have a tactical, threatening combat on our hands =D

Cheers for the info guys, been reading it all fearfully and I'll keep you posted on how the party finds my new challenges!

Ah, but here's the thing: won't that combo Auto-Kill the rest of your PCs who didn't MinMax? The non-Power-Gamers in your group shouldn't be punished because one guy decided to milk some broken rules...

I went with the wreckers as suggested by Gregorius in the thread I linked to earlier.

A bunch of guys with webbers to immobalize him, then run in with the las-cutter

The trick is to know your enemies. The guys springing the ambush know there is a highly armoured tech-priest, right? So they stick a mag-adhesive melta-bomb to his ass. Dodge that

Mmmm, I wouldn't say it was outright unfair to the rest of the party. The krack user is set to target the tank and not waste its small number of rounds on the softer targets, the heavy flamer is as dangerous to all the party as it is to any individual and the others are mostly there to play cat and mouse and move the party through a dangerous maze where the risk is as high as your care is low. At least, that's the aim.

Great thing about kracks is no burst so they will (in theory) only affect the tank. One of the party uses a hand cannon with three of one round type and three of another, spending actions to skip rounds or alternating as he fires. I plan to do the same thing with the launcher with 3 krack and 3 frag.

Much as I would LOVE to strap a sticky melts bomb to his as, he might take offence =P

Other suggestion (well, more an expansion of one I already gave):

Throw a Psyker with Weapon Jinx against the party. That power is the absolute bane of a Tech Priest-- it's literally stated in the power's description that Tech Priests strongly dislike Psykers with that power (more than usual) and for very good reason.

Much as I would LOVE to strap a sticky melts bomb to his as, he might take offence =P

That should be "his shiny, metal ass", and taking offence is kinda the point