Pages 16 and 72 of the Mechanoid Invasion trilogy assigns A.R. 2 to cloth, 3 to padding, 4 to untreated leather.
AR 3 is also on 174 for unrepaired hulls and 185 for Dionii Larva
AR 4 is on page 53-54 for some NPCs and 74 for Sand Beetle Larva
I can't actually find the "1-4 misses" aspect in these rules. Perhaps this was added in later games?
I think Mechanoids was the 1st RPG that Palladium did so the writers perhaps had this system in mind when writing things like AR 4 for energy field?
It also seems like in MIT that all AR functioned like natural AR. Pages 15-16 give an example:
- This means the player must roll an 11 (matching the A.R. of the skimmer) or better (12 through 20 on a 20 sided die) to hit and do damage. In this case, 1 through 10 does no damage, while 11 through 20 hits and does damage.
There doesn't seem to be anything here about bypassing armor SDC, presumably rolling above the AR in MIT just meant you reduced the SDC of the armor and still had to deplete it to hurt the person.
Page 16-17 "The Incapacitated Foe" also interestingly tells us that AR doesn't apply for immobilized (ie bound/trapped/paralyzed) opponents. This even has a heading on page 4's TOC!
Beyond the Supernatural (pg 108, first appearance of energy field spell) could have been initially written using a Mechanoids rule system, and then page 43's "any roll above a 4" could've been added in at the last minute without amending Energy Field.
Considering that in PF we know cloth is AR 5, padded is AR 8, soft leather is AR 10 (PF2p270) when we compare 5/8/10 to 2/3/4 is there a mathematical formula we could come up with to upscale these sub-5 ARs from MIT to a "4 or higher" game?
Triple minus 2 works for the first 2 but not the 3rd.
