[Æon] Armor in Trinity and Aeon

[maekkel]

Follow up question as I did not find it anywhere else.

An armor does only help (thus provide it´s hard & soft armor points) against the damage type (bullet, impact, slash) it has?

Leather Jacket (Impact-resistant) does not provide any hard or soft armor against slashing or bullet damage, correct?

[Florin]

Yes. That is correct.

[satoshi]

Does this hold true for Aberrant as well? I would assume so since it is the same rules set, but with easy access to eufiber and the amazing shielding powers that novas can have it gets really easy to have a metric ton of soft armor. How does this interact with scale? For example Quantum field gives you soft armor = quantum /2 (say at quantum 3) and +1 scale for each dot past the first (once again assume 3 dots) and 3 dots of eufiber. Does that mean you get 5 soft armor and have scale 3? or do you have 2 soft armor at scale 3 and 3 soft armor at scale one?

[Florin]

Yes, damage types still matter in Aberrant. However, most armors have the Complete tag, which means they protect against all kinds of damage.

You have 2 soft armor plus 2 x the scale difference between your Durability and the Power of the attack. So, if a baseline punches you, you have soft armor of 2 + 2 x (3 durability - 1 power) = 6 soft armor against that attack. If a Nova hits you with a bolt of fire with Scale 4 power, you would have soft armor of 2 + 2 x (3 - 4) = 0 soft armor.

[Mateus Luz]

Actually, by RAW, your Soft armor don’t change (it would be 2 all the time, no matter the attacker), but you get a +2 on defense per Scale (if durability is higher) and the attacker gain a +2 enhancement per scale (if power is higher).

But what’s the difference? Well, if the attacker have scale over defense it’s possible to buy Inflict Injury once more per scale difference, and it will cost Soft Armor anyway. So the attacker will spend defense successes to hit + 2 successes to cause 1 injury +2 to cause a second injury + 4 to cause critical. If the armor is reduced, the second injury is automatic.

[Florin]

Mateus, can you quote the page with the Durability adds to Defense rule? I did a quick ctrl+f for durability in the Aberrant and TC:Core books and didn't see it. (I also didn't see one for Durability adding to soft armor.)

I think Durability should count towards armor. If it counts towards Defense, then all the offensive stunts you use become harder vs. that character as opposed to just the Inflict Injury stunt.

[Mateus Luz]

Page 74 of Core, in paragraph starting with Dramatic Scale it says “provide an Enhancement or Difficulty to actions” and during Combat the difficulty of an attack is the target Defense.

I house roll this way: Scale causes a complication to the action, that, if not bought up will make impossible to use certain stunts, in combat situations it makes impossible to cause damage to the target, for example, as it’s not harder to hit the target, just to damage it.

Same for enhancements, they can only be used to certain stunts, in combat cause damage, as it is not easier to hit the target, but if hit, the target probably will get a lot of damage.

[Florin]

But how does Durability make it harder for your opponent to perform any of the other stunts in combat other than Inflict Injury? And how do you reconcile Durability Scale on armor? Armor doesn't affect Defense in any way. I think the RAI is Durability is your ability to resist taking harm, which is why I calculated things the way I did in my example above.

[Mateus Luz]

Agree with you, that’s why I house rule that way.

The only issue with reducing the armor is the cost of additional injuries that would be reduced (most probably reduced to 0). If you don’t mind that every punch cause 2 injuries ok, actually it can work better than raw if you want to make scale in combat particularly more lethal.

[Florin]

The way I calculated, though, there would be no Power Scale applied to the attack roll, since it reduced all the armor. It would make more sense, though to say you still have 2 soft armor, but the attacker still had 1 net Power Scale to apply to the attack. That gives the attacker more options to use the bonus from Scale than just Inflicting Injuries.