I recently came across an article on Armor Piercing by Steve Perrin in an old issue of Adventurers Club. In the article he offers an optional way to use the Armor Piercing advantage in that instead of halving the defense of the target it only removes defense equal to the amount of BODY rolled on the damage dice.
Example: An 8d6 Armor Piercing Energy Blast does an average of 28 Stun and 8 BODY. Instead of halving the defense of the target, subtract 8 points of defense for the BODY rolled. Thus a character with a defense of 27 is only lowered to 19 by this attack, but a character with only a defense of 13 is lowered to 5.
Hardened Defenses would negate this effect. x2 Armor Piercing would double the effect of the BODY rolled on that attack.
This advantage has the potential to seriously harm low defense characters, but also makes it less likely to seriously harm high defense characters (like Mechanon or the like), which does appeal to me. In a way, I think it does better reflect what Armor Piercing should do (i.e. blow through low defenses but have lower impact on high defense characters). However, I'm hesitant to implement this as a house rule in my campaign without first looking at all the possible ramifications.
Has anyone every used this optional Armor Piercing rule, and if so, how did it work out? Do you guys and gals feel this is a good option, or too unbalanced?