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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 608822" data-attributes="member: 18">Morgenstern - Um, so little benefit? It can very easily save you from death, the only issue is that *because* the game is SW, the armour has to be weak so as to prevent Stormtroopers, et al, being invulnerable to the gunfire of the heroes. I mean, in the movies, the armour does *nothing* therefore in the game, it does *next to nothing*.However, in a d20 Modern variant, why should  this be the case?There's no reason that I'm aware of. You can simply have more powerful armour, with higher DRs. Maybe a Class-III flak vest w/plate gives a DR of 12, enough to stop a 9mm round, whereas a tank has a DR of 60, or whatever, to make small-arms fire simply bounce off it.If the idea that a flak vest should always been hit offends you, you can simply add an armour-check, with a DC of 15, and a modifier based on how much the armour covers (and possibly Feats or stats), to see if it's hit. As WP are rarely lost, this will bog down the system very little. Most will happy to assume the armour automatically is hit, unless a penalty is taken to aim around it, or whatever, though.I have to agree with Ranger REG on this, it makes little sense to apply DR to VP, as VP is supposed to mean NOT getting hit, as SW makes abundantly clear. I don't find the "armour contributes" argument convincing, and there's a further problem - to make the armour balanced, you have to give it a low DR value, if it protects VP as well, because otherwise PCs become near-invulnerable.This means that you have to make armour unrealistically weak. Suppose Bobby the undercover cop, wearing his flak vest, is held down by the Evil Drug Baron(TM)'s minions, and shot in the chest with a .45 a couple of times. IRL, he will probably live, and not even be horribly injured, if the vest was a tough one, because the .45 is a low-velocity round. In Spycraft, he will take what, coup-de-grace damage twice, so maximum, which is 10 for a .45 IIRC, minus his puny DR on his vest (what 3, or 4), and thus take 12-14 points of WP damage, and quite likely be dead.Whereas with a proper DR, of say, 8, which would be ridiculously high for normal combat, he can, as he would (particularly in an action movie), survive the attack, and only take an amount of WP appropriate to the likely bruising. An assault rifle will happily chew through that DR, though, and kill him dead. Again, as it should.Also, if you've seen Spycraft's DR system, why aren't you worried about the "human tank" effect? The best armour in Spycraft applies a DR of 14 to VP and WP damage. This means that you basically *cannot* be hurt (due to the large VP pool), or if you are, it's a tiny amount of VP damage, even walking into gunfire! That can get quite silly, especially as d20 Modern doesn't have the "Gadget Points" system to limit things. With a system that protects WP only, he'll be hard to take down, but his VP will vanish in no time, so he'll be living on the edge. One or two lucky rolls, and he's a dead-man. Worse if you have some AP rules.I think a good setup for VP/WP in d20 Modern would be:VP = Current HP.WP = CON.Armour provides DR, not Defence Bonus, but only to WP. DR should stop most damage from an appropriate weapon. Thus a Class-III vest w/plate would stop 10 or 12 points, whereas a plateless Class-I undercover vest might only stop 4 or 6.If WP were to be inflicted, armour is checked to see if it applies. DC is 15. A vest has a +4 to the roll, a +2 is gained if a helmet is worn, with a further +2 for each limb covered. A roll of 1 always fails, of course, so any PC-worn armour can be penetrated.Weapons have an AP value. Most pistols have 0. Pointy melee weapons have 5. Assault rifles have 8 or 10. Heavy calibre rifles have 15 or more. AP rounds for weapons add +5 to AP, -1 damage per die.AP is how much DR or Hardness they ignore. Note that this requires you to increase the hardness of materials and vehicles to realistic levels. Currently, IIRC, a Main Battle Tank can be destroyed with some fairly light weaponry, and an APC can be shredded by assault-rifle fire. This should not be so.Critical hits go directly to WP. Double-criticals go directly to WP and ignore armour (or do double-damage, perhaps, which allows small-calibre weapons single-shot lethality).</blockquote>

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