All of these questions and answers were posted on the Assistance Forum of this website and are archived here for easy reference. If you do not find an answer to your questions here, please post it in the Forum.

Q: Why aren’t armor values additive if characters layer armor on top of other armor?

The reason armor is not additive is that the AR, S and Penetration values are not linear values - they're much closer to a logarithmic scale.

Those familiar with logarithms know that the numbers represent an exponent... so a logarithm of 2 (in base 10) is equal to 100 (10²). Addition of logarithmic numbers works differently from normal numbers. Adding 3 + 2 on a normal scale gives 5. Adding 3 + 2 on a logarithmic scale gives a little less than 3.05 (10³ = 1000 and 10² = 100, so 100 + 1000 = 1100, which is still basically 10³).

Looking at armor specifically, this means that adding an armored duster (AR 4) over armored clothes (AR 2) gives an AR which is not appreciably higher than the armored duster alone. Likewise, adding armored clothes on top of ReFlex plate armor used on warships (AR 15) should logically not equate to an AR 17. And a stack of 8 pieces of armored clothes should not be as effective as a several-inch stack of titanium and ceramic plate.

In terms of the game system and balance, the problem is even more pronounced. An AR of 6 or 7 is quite effective against most small arms fire. If you could add an armored duster (AR 4) over powered armor (AR 7) to get an AR of 11, you'd be at a point where you were immune to grenades and only a high-powered sniper rifle or a vehicle-mounted gun could hurt you.

GMs who really like the idea of characters going into battle with fifteen layers of armor should probably do the layering the same way distributed networking raises the effective HR of computer networks (see the Networking Package in the Computer Chapter for details). I don't recommend even this kind of layering, however and GMs should be sure that AG penalties are increased as layers of armor are added.

Q: When cyborgs take damage, do they base their incapacitation test off their ED or the damage that they can take?

Actually, cyborgs do not have to worry about incapacitation so the answer is neither. Check the second and fourth paragraphs of "Resolving Damage to Cyborgs" on page 170.

Cyborgs also do not have a specific damage capacity - just as organic characters do not have a damage capacity. What you're probably thinking of is an amount of damage for the armor on a cyborg (which is listed in chapter 5 with the other stats for cyborgs).

This damage capacity for armor concept was done away with late into playtesting - while we all liked the realism of having armor take damage and fall apart, it became clear that no one wanted to spend as much time tracking a damage amount for armor. We left the numbers in, however, just so that people would have them - we'll revise the rule and include it in the final printing as an optional rule. Another factor in leaving damage amounts for armor in was the amount of work that would have been required at the last minute to completely remove it.

Q: Can a player declare boundary conditions for when Mu Shin should stop?

Unfortunately, no. This special ability isn't that flexible, and I think the description on page 31 illustrates how much of a liability it can be.

As an example of boundary conditions, someone tried using Mu Shin with a goal of "programming until 11 am." However, that is two goals: one to program and another to do something else at 11 am. Mu Shin represents a single-minded focus on a specific goal, so the player would have to pick one.

The book's description even mentions the possibility of a mechanic dying of thirst while in the trance. That example was intended to eliminate misconceptions of the power – such as the argument that dying is an impediment to the task, so stopping to eat would be within the goal. This is not the case.

Likewise, a character who declares his goal to be killing enemies would ignore imminent danger to continue attacking – meaning that even taking cover is outside the conception of a person under the trance.

Q: Optional rules to handle cover, especially permeable cover.

The current way to deal with cover, of course, is a penalty to hit the character - essentially treating the shot like one aimed as a specific group of body parts. However, the rules allowing point attacks to penetrate "permeable" substances (like wood panels, glass, etc) offer another way to resolve attacks against a character behind cover.

First, ignore the cover modifier, and make the shot as if the target were standing out in the open. If the shot misses, it misses as normal and shot deviation can be used to resolve what it does hit. If the shot hits, however, find the hit location in the usual manner. Then, check to see if the hit location was behind cover before resolving the damage done by the attack. If the location was behind cover, then the shot actually strikes the object being used for cover. If the cover is considered permeable to point attacks, then subtract the appropriate amount from the shot's S, and the weakened shot does damage as usual. If the cover is not permeable, damage is done to it instead..

For example: Joe is using a door for cover and has only the right half of his body exposed. Jim, firing a shot at Joe can 1) aim at the right half and suffer a -10 to hit (as per the original rules) or 2) take the shot as usual. Let's say Jim just takes the shot and rolls a 10 to strike, which hits. 10 resolves to a hit on the arm, and a coin toss determines that it was the left arm. Remember, the left arm is behind cover, so the bullet strikes the door first. An interior wooden door is a fairly flimsy object and subtracts a mere 1 point from the S of the attack. The bullet continues through, striking the original target (his arm), and doing damage at S-1 (if the gun were normally S(4), then the hit is only at S(3)).

This involves a little more work, but the difference between a wooden door and a steel safe door becomes clear. If cover modifiers are used, both kinds of door are equally good, merely imposing a penalty to hit. Using these optional rules, the steel door is much better because it is too thick to be permeable. Unless Jim decides to shoot for the exposed portions of Joe's body, half of Jim's "hits" will strike the door first and do no damage to Joe – whereas, the wooden door merely subtraced one point from half the shots.

Q: Falling damage seem to be awfully deadly from long falls. It also doesn't seem to be equivalent to collision damage.

When the book claims on page 175 that the mechanics behind falling are the same as for collision damage, it is only partly correct - the truth is that they are similar only for falls between 1 and 15 meters (which is quite a long fall in anyone's book). Of course, some of the savant-heavy groups over at RIT have been using TK to drop enemies for distances of 75 meters or so... and at heights like that, the two systems of damages are not compatible at all.

So, for "short" falls of about 10 meters or less, GMs can keep using the rule in the book – S+1 for every meter fallen.

For long falls, a calculation of speed is necessary (in some form) to relate the fall's damage to a collision at the same speed. This is actually fairly simple, if one has a calculator. The time to fall x meters is one half the square root of x. And with an acceleration of about 8 m/s/s in normal gravity and air density, the damage can be figured at about S+6 every second (or S+1 every .16 seconds).

For those who don't like lots of math, here's a summary of more precise values:

Fall Time	Impact Speed	Fall Distance	Damage S
0.5 s	4 m/s or 15 km/h	1 m	S(3)
1.0 s	8 m/s or 30 km/h	4 m	S(6)
1.5 s	12 m/s or 43 km/h	9 m	S(9)
2.0 s	16 m/s or 58 km/h	16 m	S(12)
2.5 s	20 m/s or 72 km/h	25 m	S(15)
3.0 s	24 m/s or 88 km/h	36 m	S(18)
3.5 s	28 m/s or 102 km/h	49 m	S(21)
4.0 s	32 m/s or 115 km/h	64 m	S(24)
4.5 s	36 m/s or 130 km/h	81 m	S(27)
5.0 s	40 m/s or 144 km/h	100 m	S(30)

The chart could be extended - terminal velocity isn't reached until a speed of about 250 km/h, and that would be a fall of about 8.5 seconds over 289 meters and damage of S(51). Note that the damage is dependent on the impact speed, making it identical to a collision in terms of damage.

As far as taking multiple hits from a fall goes, that 1 hit per 5 meters isn't a bad approximation for short falls. For longer falls, one hit per full second is more appropriate.

Q: With the current system, a very crucial tactic known as cover fire is unable to be executed because actions are completed one at a time as if they were sequential events.

Oh, no... cover fire works excellently.

Let's say you've got a bunch of bad guys and one good guy wants to run from one place to another, while another good guy wants to cover him. First, the good guys use Wait actions, so that the firing guy can shoot at the same time the other guy runs. Now, if the bad guys are acting intelligently, they'll use interrupt actions to dive for cover. It will then take them one snap action to get back to their feet, and another to shoot - but the runner has already had a full action of movement and, because he probably activated the suspended Wait action just before his regularly-scheduled action, can probably get his second action before the bad guys can react. The runner (under the right conditions) might even advance to where the bad guys took cover and shoot before they can do anything.

The only reason cover fire would fail to work is if the GM isn't using his NPCs as if they were real characters (i.e. having them stand up and face a hail of bullets without seeking cover). Naturally, cover fire would also fail in real life if you faced a bunch of suicidal soldiers who didn't mind dying.