Armor

Hunters, adventurers, and warriors of the New Earth are almost always found in some kind of protective clothing. Most have nothing better than the tanned hides of the creatures they kill, but some lucky or skilled souls are able to obtain better protection. The thick hides of mutant creatures provide some defense even against bullets and energy beams.

Buying new armor or a good spear isn’t something that’s done at a shop, it’s done by going to the villager who knows how to make such things and arranging for it to be made. Most healthy communities will have a scrapsmith capable of working salvage into serviceable armor and weaponry, along with the numerous small tools required for daily life.

Heavily-armored characters are effectively immune to unarmed attacks. Those with AC 3 or less cannot be injured by an unarmed combatant unless the attacker has the advantage of a mutant’s natural attacks, the Combat/Unarmed skill at 2 or better, or augmentation devices such as kinesis wraps. Most of the savage beasts of the wasteland have sufficiently impressive natural weaponry to overcome even heavy armor.

Primitive armor tends to be heavy, and adds a significant amount of encumbrance. Characters with mutations that leave them with additional limbs or drastic physical alterations cannot use armor that hasn’t been modified for their physiognomy. Crafters can do this as part of making a suit for them, and characters with the appropriate Tech expertise can refit existing suits. Refit attempts require one day and three units of the appropriate spare parts per tech level of the armor.

Some powered armor requires the use of energy cells. Such armor immediately drains whatever cell is inserted and remains powered for the full duration given- it’s not possible to “turn it off” between combats in order to save energy.

In the perilous world of the New Earth, it’s often safest to keep your belongings close to hand. Nomads and wanderers of the wastelands rarely own more than they can sling on their own backs or pack animals. After all, there is a limit to the amount of equipment a single adventurer can haul around. A character can have ready a number of items equal to half their Strength score, rounded down. Ready items include those that the character is using or wearing at all times, or that they have conveniently to hand in sheaths, holsters, or belt pouches. Suits of armor count as readied items, but the normal clothing and jewelry that a character might wear does not.

### Armor Class

Hit rolls are made when a creature tries to shoot, punch, vibro-chop, burn, or otherwise injure a target. The attacker rolls a twenty-sided die, adds his attack bonus, relevant attribute modifier and combat skill, and adds his target’s armor class. If the total is equal or greater than 20, the attack hits, and the attacker rolls his weapon’s damage dice to determine the number of hit points lost by the target.

Certain Conditions can ruin your armor class. Dazed characters lose any Dexterity bonus to their armor class. An enemy who spends a full round lining up a shot against an Incapacitated target will automatically hit unless their weapon is unable to injure the character.

### Crafting and Maintaining Armors

Skilled artisans can create gear out of spare parts. Twenty units are necessary to build a suit of armor. The GM makes the final determination as to whether or not a given facility is sufficient for creating a given type of equipment.

The items and equipment listed on this page are all assumed to be of average quality- sturdy and well-made, but nothing remarkable. Some artisans are capable of crafting exquisite examples of their art, and these higher-grade items are noticeably more effective than the cruder work of lesser scrapsmiths.

Good quality armor gives a bonus of -1 to the suit’s armor class, while superior grants -2 and masterworked harness gives a -3 bonus. Shields cannot normally be made high-quality.

Crafting high-quality gear is much more difficult than building ordinary equipment. Total parts needed are as normal, multiplied by 2 for good items, x4 for superior items, and x8 for masterwork items. Thus, trying to make a superior suit of hide armor would require 80 units of TL4 spare parts to locate just the right fittings and elements to make such magnificent harness.

### Armor Degradation

Equipment condition is measured as one of seven progressively worse states. When a character is hit with a 19 or 20 on the attack die, the armor they're wearing degrades by one step of condition. This wear and tear can occur only once per fight for any given piece of equipment. Armor is usually sturdy enough to hold up with no loss of effectiveness until it takes 6 points of condition damage, after which it is no use to the wearer and grants no armor class benefit.

### Starting Armors

Most characters may choose any one of following armor choices, as well as a shield if desired:

* Old Terran Clothing
* Hide Armor
* Scrap Mail Armor
* Shield

Only the most primitive and desperately poor enclaves are unable to provide this much protection for their members.

## Armor Statistics and Usage

**Unarmored:** Such people might be half-naked tribals or enclave villagers wearing only their common daily dress. While the homespun and soft leathers of normal clothing is relatively cheap, it provides no real protection in a fight.

**Shields:** Most shields are of modern construction, barring a few ancient Old Terran riot shields. Most are composed of transparent composite cut and shaped to a serviceable form, though the most primitive are nothing more than thin sheets of metal or planks of wood bound together. Shields grant an armor class bonus to the wearer against melee weapons or primitive missile attacks. Multiarmed mutants can benefit only from one shield.

**Hide Armor:** The hides and scales of the mutants of the New Earth are often far tougher than the soft leathers of a gentler age. Many enclaves lack the skills and resources to make any better armor than this, though some examples can be quite intricately worked.

**Old Terran Clothing:** These fabric comprising these colorful outfits never fades, rots, or stains, and it has a toughness that makes it a popular armor choice for those scavengers fortunate enough to find a full outfit. As ubiquitous as this cloth was in the years before the Scream, hard use, environmental nanite contamination, and the gnawing of mutant vermin has transformed most pretech cloth into tattered rags. Intact clothing is somewhat rare and remains a valuable article.

**Scrap Mail:** Tough pretech fibers and textiles are woven together around Old Terran credit chips and other sturdy fragments of ancient plastic, usually with an undersuit of thicker padding to absorb the impact of incoming blows. Some scrap mail resembles patched and studded clothing, while other has a more overtly armored appearance to it. Working with pretech cloth is difficult, and manufacturing an effective suit of scrap mail requires expertise, good tools, and patience with the stubborn fabric.

**Harmony Armor:** The sight of the mirrored helms and snug black armor of the Harmony Bureau was meant to provoke a clammy dread among Old Terra’s rebels. Most security officers died soon after the Scream, either lynched by panicked citizens, slaughtered by the engines of the Crazed, or killed while trying to contain the countless local disasters that occurred during the catastrophe. Every so often, however, an adventurer finds a suit stored away in a usable condition. Scrap Plate: These suits of articulated plate and woven mail are painstakingly assembled from fragments of Old Terran ceramic shielding and reinforced composite. Working such tough material with the tools available to most scrapsmiths is laborious and difficult, and finding the right plates and curved surfaces requires a rich trove of parts for the basic components. Such armor is the best that most enclaves can produce, though the weight and inevitable imperfections of fit can be cumbersome to a wearer. Those wearing scrap plate take a -1 penalty to skill checks involving movement.

**Terran Explorer Suit:** Restrictions on movement and population growth left wide swaths of Old Terra in a relatively pristine state. Many Mandate citizens enjoyed outdoor activities in these natural preserves, and clothing designed to facilitate this recreation was widely available before the Scream. Most such outfits appear to be snug civilian clothes, often with metafabrics fashioned to resemble leather, canvas, or wool in assorted styles of “rustic durability”.

Explorer suits are very tough and subtly padded against impacts. All keep their wearer comfortable, clean, and dry under any normal Terran climate range. Small nano-imbued pads in the cloth can be pressed to foodstuffs or water- if the pads turn red, the substance is tainted, poisonous, or otherwise dangerous to eat, thus granting a +1 bonus to Survival checks when foraging. Glove and boot nanites can be triggered to cling to otherwise smooth surfaces, giving a +2 bonus on checks to climb an object, and integral spark elements allow the wearer the benefits of a firestarter. With the collapse of the global positioning system, many of the suit’s navigational elements are no longer useful, but its inertial locator can be locked to the user’s location, thereafter giving a constant bearing and distance back toward that designated point.

The explorer suit is designed to run off of the trace power provided by a wearer’s movement and body heat. The suit must be worn for at least an hour before any of its special functions are usable, but afterwards it will continue to operate until it is removed.

**Insurgent Combat Shell:** Most Mandate-era rebels and malcontents lacked access to advanced Old Terran military technology. However, they did have the use of numerous less sophisticated shaping and molding devices. Combined with high-impact composites and advanced civilian metafabrics, these rebels were able to produce a significant amount of light, durable armor for their more zealous operatives. These combat shells were built for use under circumstances when power, maintenance, and support were unlikely to be readily available. Most have similar qualities, as the basic plans for the suits were widely available on the black Net. In addition to the protection provided by the shell, photomimetic materials embedded on the exterior surfaces allow the wearer to blend in with their surroundings, granting a +1 bonus to Stealth checks. The shell contains passive thermal and humidity regulation elements that keep the wearer comfortable under any normal Terran climate range, and it’s even possible to sleep in the shell without undue harm to the wearer’s rest. The suit is unpowered and requires no energy source.

**Executive Protection Field:** One of the more advanced products of Mandate technology, this force field system was designed to provide discreet but thorough protection for high-ranking Mandate bureaucrats and important security officials. The shield emitters themselves take the form of wristbands and anklets that project an invisible, largely intangible thermokinetic dispersion field. It automatically detects and shunts dangerous incoming objects and energies, flaring a pale blue when triggered. The kinetic dampers also negate all falling damage the wearer might otherwise incur. Operating the field requires a type A power cell for 24 hours of use.

**Powered Armor:** These sophisticated shells of composites, ceramics, and advanced alloys were uncommon on Old Terra, with most security needs filled by more conventional measures. Something more was needed to handle hardened rebel cells and maltech outbreaks, and the rare remaining suits of powered armor often bear the marks of rebel weapons and the eldritch energies of forbidden science. Operators without at least a level-0 skill in Exosuit suffer a -4 penalty to hit rolls and move at only half speed while cumbered with the heavy suit. Those with greater expertise can move so as to lessen the suit’s restrictiveness, subtracting their skill from its Encumbrance rating.

Powered armor can sustain a full environmental seal indefinitely, providing the user with oxygen and protecting them from most hostile environments. The wearer gets a +4 bonus to save versus radiation, and is immune everything short of military-grade invasive combat gases. The wearer can pack an additional 2 readied and 4 stored items with no additional encumbrance thanks to the suit's augmented joints. One type B power cell fuels the armor for 24 hours of use. The armor can be used even when power is unavailable, but the environmental seals and joint augments will no longer work, and the suit will then count as 4 items worth of encumbrance. The same burden applies if an unpowered suit is to be carried by a character.

**Storm Plate:** Most of the surviving Old Terran suits of storm plate were never intended for actual use. They were intended for the ceremonial guard of elite Mandate officials, for demonstrative displays of military strength among restive locals and the intimidation of troublesome malcontents. The masters of Old Terra shipped most of these suits offworld to supply Mandate Fleet operations against hardened alien fortifications and recalcitrant planetary governments. Operators without at least a level-1 skill in Exosuit suffer a -4 penalty to hit rolls and move at only half speed while dealing with the suit’s neural interface. Those with level-2 skill or greater can treat the suit as if it had no Encumbrance cost.

Storm plate is composed of intricate, interlocking plates of nanoreinforced composites and psitech-created alloys. Injuring its wearer is a matter more of luck than raw firepower, as the suit subtracts 6 points of damage from any injury source that isn’t a Gunnery-type weapon or similar massive trauma. The suit’s environmental seals can be maintained indefinitely, and it can ignore up to 2 dice of environmental damage per round, wading through caustic chemicals and bulling through bonfires without harm. Radiation is ignored unless the radiation save is required once per minute or more. Integral blades give the user the benefits of a monoblade in melee combat, allowing either Combat/Unarmed or Combat/Primitive for hit rolls. The wearer can bear their full Strength in readied items and twice their Strength in stowed gear.

The suit is an insatiable energy hog, however, and requires one type B energy cell for every eight hours of operation. Unpowered suits are immobile and count as 8 items of encumbrance for those carting the dead suit.