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Something has always bugged me about the way armor is portrayed in most d20 modern/future/sci-fi systems that I really hope paizo takes the opportunity to correct.
So, your a space marine decked out in the latest combat armor, protecting a diplomat wearing nothing but a fancy suit. A thermal grenade goes off, dealing 8d6 fire damage... perhaps allowing a reflex save... and for some reason your armor provides no protection. You might as well have gone to work in your PJ''s for all the good your armor did too protect you from the blast!
It's the future. People are running about with laser/plasma/arc/gravity guns... give our armored hero's a built in defense against these types of attack. In addition to providing a Defence/Ac bonus, I hope that we see elemental resistance built into the suits ("So, my space rated armor provides no protection from Ray of Frost? You're joking right?")
This also opens up a lot more options to make different armors viable. One medium armor might provide better protection against physical attacks (perhaps it's made to protect against the natural attacks of hostile lifeforms found while exploring), while another armor is optimized against Fire and Electricity attacks, making it ideal against energy weapon using foes.
Thoughts?
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Sounds good, I am expecting a reprint of the Technology guide with all the gear from Iron Gods thrown in for good measure.
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The Technology Guide has the inssuit and HEV suit, which provide resistance against energy damage as well as AC.
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Yeah, I hadn't actually read those until today, I don't have the technology guide. I really hope that's the direction they go. The Inssuit augmented with Ceramic or Polymer Plates would make a good Medium armor.
A few more ideas along these lines without making a new thread.
Armor as DR has been brought up in a few places, and I really like the idea. A d20 game that did "Armor as DR" really well was the Stargate SG1 RPG. Characters received a static bonus to Defense (Ac) based on Class/Level, Armor on the other hand granted decent DR (Light/Medium armor was generally around 4-5 DR, while Heavy was 8-12!).. But heavy armor came at the expense of LOWERING you're Defense score, making you easier to hit. Of course ranged weapons in that game did significantly more base damage than the weapons in the technology guide. A .45 Pistol did something like 1d12 damage, and an assault Rifle did 4d4 (The Alien energy weapons did something like 4d6, but couldn't use auto-fire and burst attacks).
All in all, it made armor feel more important than just tacking on another +4 to you're Ac. Instead, you looked for cover, or dodged.
Speaking of Defenses, Another thing I would like to see: Deflection Field and Force Shield (or Energy Screen).
Pathfinder has a lot of different sub-systems already built in that will work great as passive defenses that can be easily converted too "Sci-Fantasy", and these two deserve too be called out.
One of the most common bonus types in Pathfinder for AC is the Deflection Bonus. It would seem wrong if we don't get a Technological Item that generates a Deflection Field, this would be something that is worn with Armor, perhaps a harness that is worn over it, and generates a Field that deflect's incoming attacks away from the wearer and provides a bonus to you're Defense Score (or AC).
A Force Shield (or Energy Screen) on the other hand could be a separate item that creates a more traditional "Shield" that has to be penetrated before an attack can effect the user (Mass effect style). Fortunately we already have rules for this... the Force Ward ability of the Kineticist. In effect, a Force Shield would provide a pool of Temporary HP that represent the Shield's remaining strength. Just like Force Ward, attacks that fail to deplete the shields hp never reach the user. The shield can even recharge at a different rates, or have different max HP based on model.
An interesting design choice would be to make these two items interfere with each other... you can have a Deflection Field, OR a Force Shield, but not both (This would be the "fluff" explanation of them effectively using the same item slot). Hero's would decide between being more difficult to hit (Defection Screen) or being able to "Soak" a greater amount of damage (Force Shield).
This also open's up class feature options for Soldiers or Technicians, the ability to optimize the use of these items (increasing the Deflection bonus, or the Max Hp/Regeneration rate of Shields).
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Armor as DR sounds great, but I've had number troubles with it in the context of Pathfinder so some of the numbers definitely have to change.
What I mean by that is that I had thought about it, DR doesn't really protect from energy damage which is fairly common when you're dealing with laser beams so it's useless. If I adjust them to work against technological firearms then even when using dex to damage, they are too weak to handle heavy armor until clustered shots comes online.
I agree Malwing. Armor as DR and built in energy resistance would be ideal. That also allows for a much wider range of armor properties (a quick example would be that you could have 3 separate light armors, one with improved physical protection but very little energy resistance, one with balanced protection, and one with weaker physical protection but improved energy resistance (much like the Issuit from the Technology guide).
I also strongly suspect we are going to see the base damage on weapons change dramatically from what we see in the Technology Guide. Base damage of 1d6 for pistol and 2d6 for rifles is well below the norm for just about every modern /future d20 game (d20 modern had rifles dealing between 2d8 and 2d12).
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There is one thing that isn't exactly an in-system solution that I wanted to experiment with but the players aren't biting is Force Fields. (I noted it among the items they found but nobody put them on. I'll remind them next session.) Force fields are mostly an HP buffer that regenerates and therefore is kind of a 'per encounter' HP boost. It would make sense if they were the norm given what they do but I'm not sure if it being a system norm is appropriate. I guess if armor itself is a norm then force fields themselves wouldn't be too far off. Anyways easy temporary HP is one way to balance out firearms as they are written now.
I could see armor as DR + Energy Resistance augmented by Temporary HP forcefields working rather well.
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Star Trek Online handled this in a way I enjoy: Starfleet finally (finally!) reissued personal force field belts (last seen in The Animated Series!) and those serve as a per-encounter HP pool.* Body armor reduced damage by a percentage depending on armor and quality.
I'm guessing this can be handled in Starfinder by having shield belts grant temporary HP (like a much better False Life), and armor grants damage reduction/energy resistance.
*Being physically attacked bypassed this pool and directly damaged your actual HP, but the only weapons that do this that I know of are your fists, Klingon targ bites/claws, bat'leths, lirpas, Tsunkatse swords, and Zephram Cochrane's Shotgun.
Perhaps forcefields only activate when a high speed projectile is coming at you, so as to not prevent you from passing items to others or to from interacting with your environment, and thus melee attacks ignore them?
That would give melee a pro so that it can compete with high tech ranged weapons.
That is essentially the way I would like to see it work. Armor As DR + Energy resistance, with the option of a Force Shield that grants a pool of Temp HP that Re-Gen between encounters OR a Deflection Shield that provides a sizable Deflection bonus to AC but doesn't reduce damage directly at all. Having some weapons that By-Pass the shields would be interesting.
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Perhaps forcefields only activate when a high speed projectile is coming at you, so as to not prevent you from passing items to others or to from interacting with your environment, and thus melee attacks ignore them?
That would give melee a pro so that it can compete with high tech ranged weapons.
The slow blade penetrates the shield.
The laser, on the other hand, blows us all to hell.
Perhaps forcefields only activate when a high speed projectile is coming at you, so as to not prevent you from passing items to others or to from interacting with your environment, and thus melee attacks ignore them?
That would give melee a pro so that it can compete with high tech ranged weapons.
That would be interesting. And probably make sense since you are expected to interact with things physically with the force fields active.
Perhaps forcefields only activate when a high speed projectile is coming at you, so as to not prevent you from passing items to others or to from interacting with your environment, and thus melee attacks ignore them?
That would give melee a pro so that it can compete with high tech ranged weapons.
The slow blade penetrates the shield.
The laser, on the other hand, blows us all to hell.
I don't get it. <.<
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I don't get it. <.<Perhaps forcefields only activate when a high speed projectile is coming at you, so as to not prevent you from passing items to others or to from interacting with your environment, and thus melee attacks ignore them?
That would give melee a pro so that it can compete with high tech ranged weapons.
The slow blade penetrates the shield.
The laser, on the other hand, blows us all to hell.
In Dune, if you shoot a shield with a laser it can cause an explosion comparable to a nuke.
Ya'll should read RIFTS.
In Dune, if you shoot a shield with a laser it can cause an explosion comparable to a nuke.I don't get it. <.<Perhaps forcefields only activate when a high speed projectile is coming at you, so as to not prevent you from passing items to others or to from interacting with your environment, and thus melee attacks ignore them?
That would give melee a pro so that it can compete with high tech ranged weapons.
The slow blade penetrates the shield.
The laser, on the other hand, blows us all to hell.
Hah. Wow.
In Dune, if you shoot a shield with a laser it can cause an explosion comparable to a nuke.I don't get it. <.<Perhaps forcefields only activate when a high speed projectile is coming at you, so as to not prevent you from passing items to others or to from interacting with your environment, and thus melee attacks ignore them?
That would give melee a pro so that it can compete with high tech ranged weapons.
The slow blade penetrates the shield.
The laser, on the other hand, blows us all to hell.
Feedback causes both to be destroyed. The reason it's not used as a tactic is that the resulting explosion can't be distinguished from an atomic one, and use of atomic weapons against humans is cause for the extermination of the House responsible. (Paul Atreides used his family atomics to blow up a mountain ridge)
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I think armor as DR might work, but there still are some tricky parts to it. The real issue, for me, in Pathfidner for armor as DR is that it doesn't scale well. Having, say, DR 4 at level 1 is pretty good and effective. Having DR12 at level 15 is trash when the average attack hits you for more than 40. But if you bump the high level DR into the 20s where it might matter, suddenly normal weapons are absolutely not a threat. A high level PC could literally wade into an army of thousands and come out the other side unscathed, which is a problem.
I like the idea of force field belts giving temporary hp. I also think a class defense bonus that scales with level is a good way to go - in a lot of sci-fi only trained specialists actually wear armor. In fact, I could see having actual armor proficiency being restricted to only one or two classes.
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I would like to see armor as DR or full body armors granting hardness to compete with so many (expected) touch attack weapons. Maybe lose all the many, many sources of static damage boosts available in Pathfinder, keep HP lower across the board and make finding cover, gaining dodge bonuses or wearing the heaviest set of power armor you can find much more important. It could really add value to movement if you have to have to take cover too and then you make hard choices about trying for a full attack or taking cover and surviving the rest of the round.
I think Hardness is the way to go as well. Like DR, but covers energy attacks as well. Perfect.
You guys do realize that Starfinder is going to read like a slightly updated version of RIFTS, right? They aren't all that much different...
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