[falar]

If it had changed, that would make high-Force spirits MUCH less of an issue to deal with. Which I'd be fine with. Once a spirit hits about Force 6, they become nigh on impossible to touch for a mundane without some serious firepower. Force 7 or 8? Run like flint.

This isn't the first time I've seen this misconception. Most recently, I saw it in someone's comprehensive set of house rules for drones.

[Herr Brackhaus]

If the intent was to remove the rule that ignores DV less than AV, what was the alternative?

If modified DV does not exceed modified AV roll damage resistance AND add half modified AV auto hits, and if modified DV does exceed modified AV just roll damage resistance as normal?

Or roll damage resistance AND add half modified AV regardless of whether or not DV exceeds AV?

This isn't the first time I've seen this misconception. Most recently, I saw it in someone's comprehensive set of house rules for drones.

Hehe, guilty as charged! I've happily houseruled the ignore DV less than AV away for my games, as we've been playing it like that since SR5 came out. Ignoring DV less than AV just makes spirits far too damage resistant as far as I'm concerned.

[falar]

If modified DV does not exceed modified AV roll damage resistance AND add half modified AV auto hits, and if modified DV does exceed modified AV just roll damage resistance as normal?

Or roll damage resistance AND add half modified AV regardless of whether or not DV exceeds AV?

Just to clarify the difference between these is:

Option 1:
10 DV vs 12 Armor = 10 - 6 - (12 + Body dice)
15 DV vs 12 Armor = 15 - (12 + Body dice)

Option 2:
10 DV vs 12 Armor = 10 - 6 - (12 + Body dice)
15 DV vs 12 Armor = 15 - 6 - (12 + Body dice)

It's kind of moot since it didn't make it into the game, but it's an interesting thing to have around as a house rule.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Option 2 should be:
10 DV vs 12 Armor = 10 - 6 - (12 + Body dice)
15 DV vs 12 Armor = 15 - 6 - (12 + Body dice)

[Wakshaani]

What I thought was that you didn't have the 'ping', but half-hits were in the mix.

Thus, a Body 12, Hardened Armor 12 type could take damage from anything (in theory), but would roll 24 dice (-AP) to resist, and have 6 (modified by AP) auto-reductions in there.

It isn't *quite* "Half vehicular armor" but close-ish.

Light pistols would be useless (that 6 auto-hits wipes the core damage out entirely), while heavy pistols would need some good luck to do more than cause a bruise. Rifles and the like would start being a real threat, but you'd still have to wear it down.

I know Patrick had a big issue with the old 'ping' and how critters tended to be immune or splat, and came up with the new Hardened Armor to deal with it, but... huh.

Man.

Gotta adjust my brain now!

[Herr Brackhaus]

So here's the interesting thing; the rule about ignoring modified DV less than modified AV is almost entirely useless when the rule regarding half AV counting as success is in play. This is because mathematically, using half AV as automatic success will almost always result in less than 0 DV remaining when averaging results. Obviously, there is going to be variance when using actual dice, but you are statistically likely to just get a DV ignored result regardless of whether or not you ignore the DV because it's less than AV in the first place.

A couple of examples where modified DV is less than modified AV, but we don't ignore DV and soak it using automatic success instead:

Force 4 Spirit of Man vs Holdout pistol (7DV + 1 net hit, 0 AP); 8DV would normally not exceed AV, and would be ignored.
Resistance roll: Round Up Half AV 8 + ((Body 5 + (AV8))/3) = 4 + (13/3) = 4 + 4.33=8.33 DV resisted

Force 5 Spirit of Man vs Heavy Pistol (8DV + 1 net hit, -1 AP); 9DV would normally not exceed AV(10-1) and would be ignored.
Resistance roll: Round Up Half AV9 + ((Body 6 + (AV9))/3) = 5 + (15/3) = 5 + 5 = 10 DV resisted

Force 6 Spirit of Man vs Heavy Pistol w/Explosive Rounds (9DV + 1 hit, -2 AP); 10DV would normally not exceed AV(12-2) and would be ignored.
Resistance roll: Round Up Half AV10 + ((Body 7 + (AV10))/3) = 5 + (17/3) = 5 + 5.67 = 10.67 DV resisted

Force 9 Spirit of Man vs Assault Rifle w/APDS (11DV + 1 net hit, -6 AP); 12DV would normally not exceed AV(18-6) and would be ignored.
Resistance roll: Round Up Half AV 12 + ((Body 10 + (AV12))/3) = 6 + (22/3) = 6 + 7.33 = 13.33 DV resisted

So really, the only difference between ignoring DV less than AV would be when a critter with Hardened Armor rolled less than average, which becomes more likely the higher the dice pool through sheer probability at an actual table. Statistically it's the same, but we all know that dice rolls do not exactly follow statistics.

I stand by my house rule to give hardened armor to vehicles and simply removing the auto-ignore DV less than AV. Statistically this change makes no difference, but realistically a poor damage resistance roll can now mean that a vehicle, critter with Hardened Armor, or person in Mil-Spec armor might actually take at least some damage from low-DV weapons instead of being completely immune at all times.

Simultaneously, this change gives a boost to the durability of drones specifically given their low armor values in general without making them death machines capable of out-tanking a street samurai.

[thePrimarch]

One should note, however, that the standard metahuman in the heavy Milspec armor is practically the same size as a troll. Also note that we haven't seen actual milspec vehicles come out yet. You're comparing elite military gear to upgraded civilian/corpsec gear. Wait until we see main battle tanks and the like before crying foul.

Ok, let's see them then!   

All in good time...

Is that a promise?

...I know it isn't, but I can dream, can't I?

[adzling]

It's funny but our team ran up against a force 9 shadow spirit last weekend and their dude with a weapon focus happened to be awol so they had to try and take it down with Assault rifles firing APDS.

After a few rounds of bouncing bursts off it's hardened armor they switched to attempting Bulls-Eye double-tap APDS shots which worked out a bit better (care to expound on the math Herr?)

But in the end they had to get the fark out because the nasty git kept Fearing the shooters then attacking the supporting team members before the feared folks could get back into the fight.

So TL:DR yes hardened armor is a bitch but that's cool, sometimes you gotta find other ways around a problem besides just shooting it in the face.

[jim1701]

It's funny but our team ran up against a force 9 shadow spirit last weekend and their dude with a weapon focus happened to be awol so they had to try and take it down with Assault rifles firing APDS.

After a few rounds of bouncing bursts off it's hardened armor they switched to attempting Bulls-Eye double-tap APDS shots which worked out a bit better (care to expound on the math Herr?)

But in the end they had to get the fark out because the nasty git kept Fearing the shooters then attacking the supporting team members before the feared folks could get back into the fight.

So TL:DR yes hardened armor is a bitch but that's cool, sometimes you gotta find other ways around a problem besides just shooting it in the face.

It's their fault for bringing assault rifles to a shotgun fight.  Yup.   

[Herr Brackhaus]

After a few rounds of bouncing bursts off it's hardened armor they switched to attempting Bulls-Eye double-tap APDS shots which worked out a bit better (care to expound on the math Herr?)

Sure. I'm assuming average resistance rolls of Body 9 + AV/3 to cut down on the variables. Obviously, better or worse rolls means more or less hits are needed to damage the spirit.

Force 9 Spirit (Body 9, modified AV16) vs Assault Rifle with regular rounds (DV11, AP-2); needs 6 net hits to both exceed AV and deal any damage at all (0.33 unresisted DV on average)
Force 9 Spirit (Body 9, modified AV12) vs Assault Rifle with APDS rounds (DV11, AP-6); needs 2 net hits to exceed AV and 3 net hits to reliably deal any damage (0.67 unresisted DV on average)
Force 9 Spirit (Body 9, modified AV8) vs Assault Rifle with APDS rounds and Bulls-Eye Burst (DV11, AP-10); only needs 1 net hit to both exceed AV and deal damage (2 unresisted DV on average)

And just for kicks...
Force 9 Spirit (Body 9, modified AV11) vs EBR with APDS rounds (DV12, AP-7); only needs 1 net hits to both AV and 2 net hits to reliably deal damage (1 unresisted DV on average)
Force 9 Spirit (Body 9, modified AV5) vs EBR with APDS rounds and Bulls-Eye Burst (DV12, AP-13); only needs 1 net hit to both exceed AV and reliably deal damage (5 unresisted DV on average)

As you can tell, using APDS rounds with the Bulls-Eye Burst called shot you only need a single net hit to start damaging the spirit if he rolls completely average. Compare this to the 5 net hits you'd need using just APDS to do similar damage.

Statistically, it's worth pointing out that the -4 dice will on average only result in 1.33 net hits, so you're by far better off taking the lower dice pool over hoping to score significantly more hits without the called shot. Granted, this is all in a math-hammer exercise in a vacuum where the damage resistance roll is constant, but at least it gives you a rough guideline of what to expect based on probabilities.

[adzling]

So the math would look like:

Force 9 Spirit (Body 9, modified AV8) vs Assault Rifle with APDS rounds and Bulls-Eye Burst (DV11, AP-10) = 17 dice soak pool >average 17/3=6 net hits> + 4 auto hits (50% of remaining AV of 8 ) = 10 hits on average soak roll.

The team's problem was that the spirits dodge pool was 18 dice (reaction 9 + intuition 9) so taking 4 dice off their attack pool meant it was pretty farking hard to get a hit in.

Ah spirits.

[falar]

Yeah, that 18 dice dodge pool is nasty. But a bevy of small drones can help out with that. They'll die ... probably.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Yeah, that's where volume of fire and/or Noizequitos come in. Get a bunch of Fly-Spy drones with taser mounts and harrass the spirit with -1 cumulative modifiers until it caves.

[falar]

Or Dragonflies, if you want something off the rack that can attack.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Dragonflies have a melee attack, though. A Force 9 spirit could Engulf them all and obliterate them in a single use of it's power, or they would be destroyed when trying to attack if the spirit had an Energy Aura (Force x 2 DV, -Force AP, ouch!).