Armor with Body?

[Norm]

I am trying to recreate some of the aspects of Power Armor in Fallout 4.  Right now, it is the armor pieces (arms, legs, torso, head) that attach to the power armor frame.  In the video game, the armor pieces have a defense and can soak up a certain amount of damage before becoming useless.

 

I thought about just using Ablative, but that does not really simulate the idea that the armor can soak up a certain amount of damage and then fail.  The  closest thing that I can think of is using barrier as armor.  Recovery of Body would be the act of the PCs repairing the armor with salvaged resources.

 

Is it even possible to use barrier as armor (with the mobile advantage)?  Instead of anchoring to the ground, maybe anchor it to the power armor frame?

 

Basically...  Barrier - 2 meters, 9 rPD, 9 rED, 25 Body, Opaque (Sight), Restricted Shape

 

I also think it would be neat to have the resistant defenses lessen as it takes damage.  maybe 3 layers of 3 rED/rPD, with 8 body.  nah... too complex.

 

Sound like ablative would be easier.  Have base armor and then an ablative layer on top of it.

 

Am I overthinking this?  Any help would be appreciated.

 

Norm.

[Doc Democracy]

You need to look for how you want to model it and then decide on what kind of limitation it is worth.

 

I think you could twist yourself in knots trying to replicate taking BODY, or using a kind of limited Barrier power. You would have to remember that the Barrier has to be advantaged to allow you to fire out while someone else cannot fire in.  Complicated and expensive very quickly.

 

Instead think about what you want.  

 

Will it function (when it is active) like regular armour?  If so, we have the right power.

 

Describe how it will fail.  If the armour is not breached will it lose coherence?  If so, does it lose more coherence when it is breached?  How many hits (whether they breach the defence or not) before the armour fails?  Will it be proportionate to the damage taken (more complex) or not? 

 

Once you have that detail, you will be able to see how often the armour is likely to fail in-game and you can assign a number to that.

 

My immediate thoughts, if you want to go with rules already written down, is use physical manifestation.  You can rule that damage that exceeds the defence goes through to damage both the physical manifestation of the defence as well as the character as normal.

 

Your instincts are good though, while this kind of thing feels aesthetically pleasing, it can quickly become burdensome in gameplay and slow things down.  It might be easier for the player to have a set of chips and every time they take damage they throw one away (decide the conditions under which they return - like a phase where the character is not hit or when the armour is switched off/repaired etc), when there are no chips left, the armour has failed.

 

Doc

 

[Greywind]

Ablative.

[Christopher]

The question is more about how precisely you want to copy the game mechanics. Often mechanical implementations in games only make sense in the context of that specific game. Mechanics are narative tools in games. It goes as far as that mechanics can tell stories all on their own, no text involved. And something that works well in a Singleplayer Videogame propably does not translate so well to a Teambased Pen & Paper RPG.

Point in case, not a single Fallout game before 4 even had this Power Armor Model. Power armors were some basic +2 Strenght, lots of Damage reduction. The same as the Labcoats, Leatherjackets and Combat Armor.

 

The Hero system already has rules for loosing armor proteciton, via the Focus rules. "Power Armor" is a Focus with many provided pwoers (Armor, Strenght, Jumping to negate falling damage). There are rules abotu how such a item would loose powers, with the armor usually being stripped last. As others have said, there are options like Ablative or realizing it as a sort of "Form Fitting Barrier". I can even remember a "Endurace cost based on damage absorbed" limitation in one of the Advanced Player Guides.

[Duke Bushido]

If I recall correctly, in F4, like most other video games, the armor absorbs _all_ damage until it fails.

 

You can either buy _lots_ do defense, with ablative, but you will get to a point where by champions rules you will take damage through the armor. 

 

You can buy lots of limited body per hit location. 

 

Honestly, there are a lot of ways to do it; those are the simplest I can think of. 

 

 

 

[Brian Stanfield]

If you look at Fantasy Hero 6e, p. 225, there are some suggestions on how armor may show wear and break down. It could easily be applied to futuristic armor. 

[Norm]

On 10/17/2018 at 2:56 AM, Doc Democracy said:

My immediate thoughts, if you want to go with rules already written down, is use physical manifestation.  You can rule that damage that exceeds the defence goes through to damage both the physical manifestation of the defence as well as the character as normal.

 

Your instincts are good though, while this kind of thing feels aesthetically pleasing, it can quickly become burdensome in gameplay and slow things down.  It might be easier for the player to have a set of chips and every time they take damage they throw one away (decide the conditions under which they return - like a phase where the character is not hit or when the armour is switched off/repaired etc), when there are no chips left, the armour has failed.

 

Wow.  I did not notice physical manifestation.  That is really neat.  I was going to ask a weird question on it (about OCV/DCV), but looked in the 6E Errata and then answer was there.

 

You zero'ed in on my worry.  While finding a good way to write it up, I do not want to bog down the gameplay with complex things or having to keep track of a large number of things.

 

On 10/17/2018 at 5:18 AM, Greywind said:

Ablative.

 

Definitely one of my front running thoughts on how to do this.

 

On 10/17/2018 at 6:00 AM, Christopher said:

The question is more about how precisely you want to copy the game mechanics. Often mechanical implementations in games only make sense in the context of that specific game. Mechanics are narative tools in games. It goes as far as that mechanics can tell stories all on their own, no text involved. And something that works well in a Singleplayer Videogame propably does not translate so well to a Teambased Pen & Paper RPG.

 

Nice videos.  I need to watch more of their videos.

 

Besides being too complex, another worry I have is how it will translate into a group setting.  Hopefully I have about 6 months or more before I have to run anything.  By then Fallout 76 will be in strong swing and I will get to see how they handle a multiplayer aspect.  Hopefully, that will transfer well to a RPG group.  

 

On 10/17/2018 at 12:05 PM, Duke Bushido said:

You can either buy _lots_ do defense, with ablative, but you will get to a point where by champions rules you will take damage through the armor. 

 

You can buy lots of limited body per hit location. 

 

Those are nice and simple.  I never thought of just buying extra body with limited locations/coverage.

 

On 10/17/2018 at 9:45 PM, Brian Stanfield said:

If you look at Fantasy Hero 6e, p. 225, there are some suggestions on how armor may show wear and break down. It could easily be applied to futuristic armor. 

 

Hmmm....  Even though I played mostly Fantasy Hero, we never even considered using breakage rules. I will have to look at that.  I wonder if Star Hero has something like that also, but dealing with more futuristic materials.

 

[Norm]

On 10/17/2018 at 6:00 AM, Christopher said:

Point in case, not a single Fallout game before 4 even had this Power Armor Model. Power armors were some basic +2 Strenght, lots of Damage reduction. The same as the Labcoats, Leatherjackets and Combat Armor.

 

I actually plan to (hopefully) write up two different versions of power armor.  Fallout 4 and pre-Fallout 4.

 

Fallout 4 will be most likely based off of vehicles.  I am thinking that this will be a good way of limiting things while still have the wow factor. 

Pre-Fallout 4 will be written up as armor with stat and other power bonuses.

 

[Norm]

Thank you everyone for responding.  For some reason the way that the armor pieces work in Fallout 4 power armor was giving me a bit of analysis paralysis.  

 

I have been perusing various Hero System based books for examples of power(ed) armor.  

• Star Hero pointed me towards Hero System Equipment guide.
• Hero System Equipment Guide has some good write-ups of powered armor.
• Kazei 5 have powered armor and mechs sections. 
• The Widening Gyre has some steam-powered armor.  Hey...  they have great descriptions....  who doesn't want a set of Death Badger armor!?!?

And yes...  I was one of the people that got the multi-book (6 I think) set from BlackWyrm when Star Hero 6E was released.

 

I have also been looking around the files area for Hero Designer on this site.  There are write-ups for Traveller and Warhammer 40K conversions.  Speaking of Traveller, I bought the Traveller Hero CDROM from Far Future (http://farfuture.net/) a while ago.  I need to crack that open and look through it.

 

No matter what I do, I plan on writing it up in Hero Designer and uploading it.

 

Thank you again for your time and help.

[Christopher]

6 hours ago, Norm said:

 

I actually plan to (hopefully) write up two different versions of power armor.  Fallout 4 and pre-Fallout 4.

 

Fallout 4 will be most likely based off of vehicles.  I am thinking that this will be a good way of limiting things while still have the wow factor. 

Pre-Fallout 4 will be written up as armor with stat and other power bonuses. 

 

Vehicles are propably the way to go, in particular 1 person mechs.

In particular if compare the Power Armor HP display with any HP Display in any of the Mechwarrior games (FPS and the recent X-Com like) they seem awfully similar

 

I think they made those changes to segment based HP System and Fuel consumption to allow the armor to be a lot more powerfull. It now can compensate for any depth of falling. And I think it even had jumpjets/jetpack mode. Way above the powerlevel of previous incarnations.

Depending on the setting and hte stats of a baseline player character, similar tradeoffs might be nesseary (heroic level) or entirely superflous (superheroic game).

[Duke Bushido]

15 hours ago, Norm said:

• The Widening Gyre

 

 

Am I the only one that is bothered by that??

 

Don't get wrong; I like Steampunk as much as the next guy.  But we have:

 

HERO

Fantasy HERO

(before you say it, I know we don't have "super HERO," but Champions was the original, after all)

Star HERO

Horor HERO

Western HERO

Post Apocalyptic HERO

Ninja HERO

Cyber HERO

Pulp HERO

 

 

And the Widening Gyre.

 

Just whacks it all up.  Not bad, just enough to ruffle the hackles.

 

For the record, other hackle discomfitters include Star HERO and Post Apocalyptic HERO, exclusively because of vowel count.

 

Monster Hunter International should probably bug me, too (and it does!  :rofl:), but I didn't like the source material enough to get worked up.

 

 

 

 

 

[L. Marcus]

It's just a setting book, not a genre book.

[Norm]

Yes, it was part of a pack that was released by BlackWyrm when Star Hero 6E came out back in 2011.  I did not realize it until I just looked...  But they  actually have the PDF version still in the Store.  I was interested in some of them, so bought the books when they came out.

 

https://www.herogames.com/forums/store/product/566-project-wyrmstar-seven-settings-for-star-hero-six-edition-pdf/

 

I love to reuse or get a starting point by begging, borrowing, or stealing ideas.  One scientist's steam powered armor could easily be turned into some engineer's clockwork armor or some magician's metal golem.  Seems like it is the only way I can get some things done now that I am married and have a kid.  Great way to learn also.

 

[Duke Bushido]

2 hours ago, L. Marcus said:

It's just a setting book, not a genre book.

I see. 

 

Thanks.  My hackles are much better now.

 

 

Wait-  so there is no "official steam punk genre book?" 

 

 

[dsatow]

On 10/20/2018 at 3:57 PM, Duke Bushido said:

Wait-  so there is no "official steam punk genre book?" 

 

Its just so much "hot air".  Get it? Get it?  "hot air"  Steam.  Okay... Why is my wife coming over to my computer with a mallet.  Wai.... >>>disconnected<<<