Ablative Focus Armor

[Doresh]

I stumbled upon a quirk with the Focus rules that's really confusing me right now. Let me illustrate:

 

Let's say you get yourself an Armored Costume (Resistant Protection) with Ablative (reduced by BODY), all as an OIF, like the "Realistic Armored Costume" in the Equipment Guide p. 273.

So your character is wearing armor that gets less effective as attacks get past its defenses.

 

But: Getting hit also hits the Focus since it provides a defense to the character, and getting past the Costume's defenses means the Focus gets damaged, which knocks out the entire thing since it just as one power.

So, I'm not sure if being Ablative actually does anything in this scenario, unless I'm missing something.

[Grailknight]

Without Ablative, the Focus does not take damage unless an enemy attacks it specifically.

 

The Focus user gets the benefit of the defenses provide by the Focus at all times unless a Limitation comes into play. The reverse is not true however, a Focus attacked directly does not benefit from the user's other defenses unless they are bought to Protect Carried Items.

[Doresh]

22 hours ago, Grailknight said:

Without Ablative, the Focus does not take damage unless an enemy attacks it specifically.

 

Depends on the GM, if 6E1 379 is anything to go by, where it is mentioned that a defense focus is automatically hit along with the wearer. Though this is omitted in Champions Complete, so I guess I may have been overthinking this.

[Surrealone]

On 12/9/2019 at 2:15 PM, Doresh said:

 

Depends on the GM, if 6E1 379 is anything to go by, where it is mentioned that a defense focus is automatically hit along with the wearer. Though this is omitted in Champions Complete, so I guess I may have been overthinking this.

As has been remarked, before, Champions Complete is not actually complete; it is missing at least one table and also lacks a lot of clarifying verbiage.

 

If you were to ask Steve Long about this, you'd get a 6e answer, not a CC answer.  Take that as you will.

[IndianaJoe3]

On 12/8/2019 at 3:04 PM, Doresh said:

But: Getting hit also hits the Focus since it provides a defense to the character, and getting past the Costume's defenses means the Focus gets damaged, which knocks out the entire thing since it just as one power.

So, I'm not sure if being Ablative actually does anything in this scenario, unless I'm missing something.

 

I tend to buy body armor and such as Unbreakable Foci. They can still be destroyed deliberately out of combat (or by excessive damage in combat, GM's prerogative), but they don't stop working simply because a little bit of damage gets through.

[Surrealone]

That's pretty much what Captain America's shield is -- an unbreakable focus that provides defense, likely requiring a skill roll to use while having a partial coverage limitation.  It can, of course, be destroyed outside of combat... and it likely also has some Reflection capabilities.