Reformed Hi-jacker, or AR: the Archaic redeux

[Dog_O_War]

I was going to hi-jack another thread that happened to involve the mention of AR, but instead I'll post my thoughts and changes to it here.

AR is a rule I often have a hard time understanding; is my hit against the target doing damage to him or his armour? Is my hit doing damage, or is it being ignored due to AR? The book is often not clear about this, and thanks to there being multiple types of AR, I never know which one I'm using. I always ask whether I'm doing damage to the target or to his armour or if at all, or if I have to naturally roll or roll a modified number to beat it.

As a side-story; we have a guy that does this for every system we play (D&D, Deadlands, Rifts, etc...) for any rule that is minorly complicated. We usually laugh about it, but it does make him feel limited in his choices. He used to never ever burst with his gun in deadlands, because it sounded way to complicated. I did him up a cheat-sheet though and now he's putting those 7 dice in shooting to good use. What this story was about is simplifying or offering a stream-lined version of the current rule.

I also find AR as redundant sometimes. If you're rolling against a modified AR, yet the target is moving fast enough that it doesn't matter if the target had an AR or not.
As I can't leave well-enough alone, I am opting to change the rules completely to better fit both my play-style, and to smooth out the bugs in this archaic system.


In Rifts (as this is what I run and play most often) you need a modified 8 to hit a target. This I like. I believe there is a clause stating that a naturally rolled 1-4 is still a miss, but we've since tossed that in favor of zero conflicts with the modified 8 rule (that and you can't tell me that my expert sniper with a +7 to hit is consistently missing 20% of the time). We still use the 20-sided standard, "1 is a miss, 20 is a hit" rule.

Now that everything has a base target number of 8, it is easy to apply modifiers for movement and armour. AR is now based on the location you are trying to hit, and is offered as a bonus to the TN. For instance, say you were wearing a simple kevlar vest (AR 5) that covered the chest only. A called shot to your head would not be affected by the AR of the vest.
You'll note that a person's base TN is 8, but the vests' AR is only 5. You're probably wondering, "how's that supposed to protect you?" The AR rating is applied on top of your TN - this is done so that you will know whether a shot hit you, hit your vest, or simply missed the mark.

An example of this is a man with a pistol shoots someone wearing a kevlar vest. His hit has no modifiers, beyond his bonus to strike (+1) and his aiming bonus (+2) for a total of +3 to strike.
He shoots once and rolls a 4. 4+3 is 7; not good enough for a basic hit (8 needed).
He shoots a second time and rolls a 7. 7+3 is 10; good enough for a basic hit, but not good enough to hit a spot past the vest (13 needed). The vest takes damage.
He shoots a third time and rolls a 12. 12+3 is 15; good enough to strike past the vest's AR. The target takes damage.

Make sense?
Is that suitibly simple and easy to learn?

The next part to this is for shots against targetted locations, and AR.
You might target a spot that has an AR attached to it; the rules for this are the same as above. The difference here though is that you apply the penalty to your strike before you determine where you hit that target. A headshot (-3) simply lowers the modified number you rolled.

Some armours do not offer AR; these are AR-full. This includes things like EBA - the armour always takes damage when an 8 or more is rolled.


This is what I use for AR.
What do you think?

[Natasha]

You're effectively making all armour ratings +8?

[Dog_O_War]

You're effectively making all armour ratings +8?

No.
Did you read my post at all?

[Natasha]

You'll note that a person's base TN is 8, but the vests' AR is only 5. You're probably wondering, "how's that supposed to protect you?" The AR rating is applied on top of your TN - this is done so that you will know whether a shot hit you, hit your vest, or simply missed the mark.
...
He shoots a second time and rolls a 7. 7+3 is 10; good enough for a basic hit, but not good enough to hit a spot past the vest (13 needed). The vest takes damage.

The vest is AR 5 but you need to roll a 13 to defeat it. That's AR +8.

[Dog_O_War]

You'll note that a person's base TN is 8, but the vests' AR is only 5. You're probably wondering, "how's that supposed to protect you?" The AR rating is applied on top of your TN - this is done so that you will know whether a shot hit you, hit your vest, or simply missed the mark.
...
He shoots a second time and rolls a 7. 7+3 is 10; good enough for a basic hit, but not good enough to hit a spot past the vest (13 needed). The vest takes damage.

The vest is AR 5 but you need to roll a 13 to defeat it. That's AR +8.

That's because you're adding it to the basic number to hit anyone. You don't need a natural number to beat anything in my system, because having to make a luck-roll is dumb.

I offered the examples below where you quoted to clarify what kind of protection it offers.

[Dog_O_War]

I'll be more clear; it is not AR+8 because the target has to hit you first, not the armour. It is TN 8 + AR (your target number, then the armours' rating).

There are certain attacks (like a phase sword) to which armour does not apply. These bypass even AR-full, meaning that they still need to hit your basic target number of 8.

No matter how you look at it, you must always hit the target's basic number before you can consider whether or not the attack struck the armour or not.