Sign In Sign-Up

Welcome!

Close

Would you like to make this site your homepage? It's fast and easy...

Yes, Please make this my home page!

No Thanks

  Don't show this to me again.

Close

Armour And Force Fields

Helmets are treated as a variety of armour in its own right, rather than simply a variant of other types of armour, since most armour varieties incorporate a similar model of solid helmet. The material of even a Space Marine terminator headpiece is ultimately as protective as that of the ballistic helmet of an Imperial Guardsman, thanks to the delicate nature of the complex systems integral to the former.

More advanced helmets may be fitted with integral or removable systems like gas masks, re-breathers, infravision visors, photochromatic lenses, communicators and so on. This is normally determined by the GM when the helmet comes into a character’s possession.

Closed helmets have an Armour Value of 6, but confer a –25 Initiative modifier when making visual Awareness tests, and –35 to auditory Awareness tests, unless there are compensation systems integral to the helmet.

Open helmets have an Armour Value of 5, but confer a –15 Initiative modifier when making visual Awareness tests, and –25% to auditory Awareness tests, unless there are compensation systems integral to the helmet.

Primitive open helmets have an Armour Value of 3, while primitive closed helmets have an Armour Value of 4. They also have the same Awareness penalties as described above.

Whether made up of tanned animal hide, bindings of thin metal, or even wooden plates, armour that falls into this category makes for an extremely feeble form of defence. It is usually only worn by those too desperate, poor or primitive to buy or manufacture anything better.

Depending on the actual material, this kind of armour can often be repaired by a character with the Tailor ability.

Time consuming to manufacture, chainmail is made up of hundreds of tiny linked rings, forming a flexible, yet mildly protective, form of armour. It is reasonably common on Medieval Worlds, or in gladiatorial combats, where its unusual appearance lends an air of glamour to the proceedings.

Similar in style and application is scale armour, where lots of overlapping pieces of metal are fastened to a garment to provide a flexible suit of armour.

The most protective of the primitive armour types, plate armour consists of sheets of steel, iron or other rigid metals, hammered (or sometimes even moulded) to fit the form of the wearer. However, the weight of such armour is incredibly disproportionate to protection it offers.

If chainmail is worn beneath plate armour, the total Armour value is increased to 5, not 6.

The classic bulletproof vest is a good example of flak armour – several layers of padded and reinforced material, tailored into an item of clothing. It is designed to offer protection against shrapnel and ricochets, but offers minimal protection against a direct hit.

Because of its non-solid structure, a character with the Tailor ability can repair a damaged piece of flak armour.

Carapace armour is made up of a solid outer layer on top of a flexible underskin. These plates are constructed from reinforced metal, high-density plastics or more exotic substances such as ceramite or plasteel.

Carapace armour, despite offering excellent protection against most hits from small-arms or close combat weapons, can weigh its wearer down somewhat.

Mesh armour is made up of rings or scales (in a similar manner to chainmail or scale armour), each interconnected so that the impact of a shot or blow is spread over a wider area to absorb and dissipate damage. Where mesh armour varies from its primitive cousins is in its material – the polymers of mesh armour toughen (by ‘meshing’ more tightly together) when pressure is applied, presenting a form of armour plating to incoming attacks. It isn’t the best armour in existence, but it is far lighter than rigid armour varieties that offer the same level of protection.

Because of the complexity of its construction, mesh armour is exceedingly rare within the Imperium, more commonly used by advanced alien species. It is most widespread amongst the Guardian citizen-soldiers of the eldar.

Having an endo-skeletal array of actuators and muscle-like fibre-bundles, power armour not only enables the wearer to be protected by heavy armour plating, but actually boosts his Strength.

Power armour increases the wearer’s Strength by a fifth. This does not affect the Strength of bionic limbs.

Power armour uses a special harness to link the suit to its wearer’s nervous system, so that the immensely heavy armour’s servos move in time with the wearer. Unless this harness is worn, the power armour’s Encumbrance is multiplied by 5 and all movement rates are halved (after any penalties for Encumbrance). Space Marines receive this harness as an implant immediately upon completion of the Adeptus Astartes – Scout career. The harness is fuelled by a single small power pack, which supplies approximately one month’s operation.

Power armour makes the wearer significantly wider (largely due to the backpack and shoulder pads), and movement through confined spaces may be made difficult. A full suit of power armour (including helmet, gauntlets and boots) is completely airtight, and requires a re-breather, but is utterly immune to all viral or chemical attacks.

Most power armour codpieces are fitted with catheter tubes linked to waste processing systems in the backpack. A character with a codpiece and a power armour backpack does not need to remove his armour to answer calls of nature – any waste matter is processed and periodically discarded by the backpack.

Although worn almost exclusively by the elite veteran companies of Space Marine Chapters, senior Inquisitors or members of the Adeptus Mechanicus occasionally wear tactical dreadnought (or ‘terminator’) armour as a badge of office.

Terminator armour increases a character’s Strength by half. This does not affect the Strength of bionic limbs.

Turning of the head is impossible when a helmet is worn. When wearing a helmet with terminator armour, a character’s Initiative is reduced by half for all visual Awareness tests. Without the helmet, Initiative is only reduced by one quarter for visual Awareness tests.

Terminator armour makes the wearer both taller and wider, and movement through confined spaces is often extremely difficult, if not impossible. A full suit of terminator armour (including closed helmet) is completely airtight, and requires a re-breather, but is utterly immune to all radiological, viral or chemical attacks.

Terminator armour uses a special harness to link the suit to its wearer’s nervous system, so that the immensely heavy armour’s servos move in time with the wearer. Unless this harness is worn, the terminator armour’s Encumbrance is multiplied by 5 and all movement rates are reduced by half (after any penalties for Encumbrance). Space Marines receive this harness as an implant immediately upon completing the Adeptus Astartes – Scout career. The harness is fuelled by a single small power pack, which supplies approximately one month’s operation.

Most terminator armour codpieces are fitted with catheter tubes linked to waste processing systems in the breastplate’s ‘hunchback’. A character with a codpiece and a terminator armour breastplate does not need to remove his armour to answer calls of nature – any waste matter is processed and periodically discarded by the breastplate.

This hunchback also grants the head location an Armour value of 18 against hits from the rear.

Despite being invulnerable to most weapons, terminator armour does have two notable weak spots – the helmet (or head, if without a helmet), and the exhaust vents in the upper back of the breastplate. If a character wearing terminator armour is hit in the body by an attack from the rear, there is a 25% chance that, in addition to any damage the attack may or may not cause, the vents are damaged. Terminator armour with damaged vents has a 5% chance each minute of overheating and becoming inert, as if the wearer did not have a harness.

Because of the extreme bulk of wearing terminator armour, standing after being knocked prone requires a successful Initiative and Strength test. The GM may enforce this with partial terminator suits, but may apply positive modifiers (+5 per section of armour not worn).

Most refractor fields cover the entire body, but some can only cover some, or even just one. Force fields do not protect against close combat attacks.

A refractor field glows slightly and so doubles the chance of any character seeing the wearer. Some refractor field models are virtually transparent, while others make it difficult, or even impossible, to see the wearer within the field. It is not unknown for cult leaders to wear refractor fields that project some kind of halo.

Conversion fields work by converting the kinetic, heat, and even psychic, energy of an incoming attack into light. If the amount of damage absorbed by a conversion field is 8 points or more, its reaction is equivalent to a photon flash flare going off, centred on the wearer. Note that the wearer does not see the flash, and is immune.

Displacer fields work slightly differently from other force fields in that they will either activate and take a character out of harm’s way, or they won’t have any effect at all. The more powerful a hit, the more likely the field is to detect the attack and activate.

The field has a basic 50% chance of activating, with a bonus to this chance equal to the damage rolled. If the field activates, the wearer is teleported D10 yards in a random direction and the attack has no effect. If it does not activate, then the field has no effect whatsoever and the injury is resolved as normal.

The displacer field will not teleport the wearer to a place it is impossible for them to enter and survive (such as a cliff face, into empty space or another character’s position) and will stop them 1 yard short if this is the case. They may however pass through terrain and other characters before materialising again.

These are a special kind of psychic shield known as a Shield of Faith, which protects the wearer from daemons. Any daemonic character halves all of its characteristics whilst within 5 yards of pentagrammic wards.

These wards protect against psychic attack. A psyker that is targeting a character with hexagrammic wards halves his Willpower for his Psychic test. The wards also count as D10 force field armour against psychic bolt attacks.

Characters with a shield can protect themselves from attacks coming at them from the front, provided they’re expecting to be attacked (i.e. in a combat situation, or wary of possible ambush – if a PC fails to declare their state of alertness, the GM is the final arbiter).

In effect, a shield is an extra layer of armour over the protected areas, added to the existing armour over the location. The amount of additional protection depends on the material that the shield is made out of:

Shields are most effective in close combat, where they increase the character’s Parry Penalty against incoming attacks.

Characters with a shield can also make a special shield bash attack in close combat. It is resolved as any other attack (usually using the off-hand), with a WS Modifier of +10, and can’t be parried, only dodged. The target takes the amount of damage shown, with the usual bonuses for Strength.

A buckler counts as having an additional –15 Parry Penalty. Because of their limited size, they do not provide armour protection to the legs.

Shields count as having an additional –25 Parry Penalty. Shields provide protection to all locations.

Either bucklers or shields are also available in the following special types:

Suppression shields have Armour Value 4 and count as shock weapons (see the Close Combat Weapons section of the Armoury).

A storm shield has Armour Value 4 and generates a 2D10 force field over the protected locations.

It is possible to bolt, weld or otherwise attach plates of disposable armour over existing armour, increasing its thickness. The downside is that these plates add to the already significant weight of most armour, and are typically only good for one hit. Ablative plates are generally custom-shaped when purchased, to allow the best possible fit, and grant an extra point of Armour over a single location. Once the plate has been used to reduce damage from a hit, it loses all integrity and must be discarded (if it hasn’t already shattered or fallen away).

Ablative armour is always worn on the outside of other armour (to prevent splinters from causing more damage than the impacting bullet would), so it takes the impact before the armour it is reinforcing.

This may make ablative armour seem like a waste of money, but if it slows a bullet down just enough so that the proper armour stops it reaching the meat beneath, it could save a life. Less uniform-obsessed Imperial Guard regiments send troops into battle laden with homemade ablative armour fashioned from compressed mess tins, the lids from ammo crates and even pieces of tank track.

It is possible to combine the effects of multiple special armour types, in which case all effects are used (so ablative ceramite plating will increase armour by D6 against a melta blast, and then be destroyed).

Ceramite is a ceramic-based compound used widely in the Imperium for heat shielding on everything from welding masks and to the lining of plasma reactors. It is also used as a protective coat on certain types of armour, to give additional protection against heat-based attacks from melta weapons and the like.

Ceramite coating increases the Armour value of a protected location by D6, but only against plasma, melta and flame attacks. Roll each time the location is hit.

Also known as reflec armour, reflective armour is either made from, or coated with, micro-crystals that refract light energy hitting it. This increases a protected location’s Armour value by D6, but only against las or laser weapons. Roll each time the location is hit.

The best-known example of this armour type is the Vitrian flak suit, made from the volcanic glass that gives the world its name. It is available in a variety of hues, depending on where the glass came from, but all are prized by collectors Imperium-wide.