Armor Rules Clarification - CoC 7th Ed.

[BloodySpike]

Hi all!

I am relatively new to the RPG scene and am hosting a CoC game as keeper with some friends soon.  I'm sure this has been addressed before, but I just couldn't find a solid answer anywhere.

For armor, I understand that it reduces the damage dealt by however many hit points the armor is.  But does the armor become ineffective after that?  Can armor be whittled down slowly over numerous attacks?

Example 1:  enemy has armor worth 1 armor point.  He is attacked and receives 5 damage; but because of armor he only receives 4 damage.  On the next attack, is his armor still intact; reducing damage by 1 for the entire battle and after??  To me, I would think that the armor is now broken, and any subsequent attacks would deal full damage.

Example 2: enemy has 40 armor points (Ex: Gla'aki has 40-point integument listed under armor).  He is attacked for 5 damage.  Is the enemies armor now 35 armor points?  And so on until his armor is 0 and he receives actual damage to his HP after this?  Or are all attacks to this enemy fruitless unless attacked for 41 or more damage with a single attack?  In which case, 41 damage would only deal 1 damage of HP.

Thanks to all who clarify!

Edited January 24, 2019 by BloodySpike

[seneschal]

Depends on which rules variation you use.  Armor usually subtracts X amount of damage, period.  (E.g., Daffy Duck smirks that he’s wearing his disintegration -proof vest.  Marvin the Martian fires his ray gun.  Daffy crumbles to dust as vest, undamaged, hangs momentarily in mid- air then drops onto the dust pile.)

However, there are optional rules for ablative armor where a shield or other protective gear gradually takes damage from use and must eventually be repaired or replaced.  It depends on which way you as GM want it to work.

[BloodySpike]

Sorry, should have specified, I'm using CoC 7e.

[Numtini]

It's not specified that I can see, probably because worn armor in CoC classic period is really rare. It's almost exclusively an NPC thing. Delta Green is mum on the issue. I think the notion may be that if enough damage is done to the armor, the character will be dead or hospitalized and it won't really be a relevant issue.

[drablak]

 

13 hours ago, BloodySpike said:

Example 1:  enemy has armor worth 1 armor point.  He is attacked and receives 5 damage; but because of armor he only receives 4 damage.  On the next attack, is his armor still intact; reducing damage by 1 for the entire battle and after??  To me, I would think that the armor is now broken, and any subsequent attacks would deal full damage.

 

IMO there is no reason that armour would lose effectiveness as you described. Say you have armour protecting your torso and someone shoots a bullet at you. Assuming he hits the torso (there are spot rules for hit locations that may come into play here), then there is a bullet size spot that might be embossed in the armour, but no hole. The damage that went through is the impact, not indication that the armour is broken. All the rest of the armour is fine. What are the odds that the next bullet will hit at the exact same place as the first? Would it pass through if it did? I don't think so.

If you want you could accumulate the amount of damage the armour absorbed and set a maximum amount before It becomes useless, but I'd set it at a large amount.

Personally, I would not bother with this.

[trystero]

By the 7th-edition rules, armour's effectiveness is not reduced no matter how many times it's penetrated or struck.

[klecser]

Its worth noting that part of the purpose of Armor in this game is to give a statistic that really makes Mythos entities very difficult to defeat in combat. I would call it a gateway statistic to the intended balance of the game.

[standardtoaster]

On 1/24/2019 at 1:29 PM, drablak said:

 

IMO there is no reason that armour would lose effectiveness as you described. Say you have armour protecting your torso and someone shoots a bullet at you. Assuming he hits the torso (there are spot rules for hit locations that may come into play here), then there is a bullet size spot that might be embossed in the armour, but no hole. The damage that went through is the impact, not indication that the armour is broken. All the rest of the armour is fine. What are the odds that the next bullet will hit at the exact same place as the first? Would it pass through if it did? I don't think so.

If you want you could accumulate the amount of damage the armour absorbed and set a maximum amount before It becomes useless, but I'd set it at a large amount.

Personally, I would not bother with this.

If we look at Bullet-resistant protection as we have it in our modern day, typically rifle-graded plates will have the strike face covered with ceramic, which helps to dissipate a large amount of velocity to the point where the centimetre of steel behind it is not penetrated and you don't end up with a bullet in your body. But the ceramic fractures and becomes less effective as huge chunks of it are displaced. I understand your point, that perhaps the one or two HP could be considered the impact damage breaking a rib or something, but if a PC ends up losing half of their HP to impact damage, any descriptive workarounds to acknowledge the armour, acknowledge that it played a role in saving the PC some damage, but did not prevent all damage and is no worse for wear seems a bit contrived. A plate of metal being deformed from a bullet or links of chainmail broken after being hit by an axe will be considerably weaker than previously. Even a sandbag, listed as 20 armour (CR pg 112) being shot at by a thompson is going to start spilling its sand and be less effective cover.

 OP, I personally don't find the armour all that relevant in classic, but just house rule during prep as long as you have a basic knowledge of the anatomy of the enemy. If we take Gla'aki crawling around his lake for example, after googling what Integument meant (tough skin), logically if a tank has 24 AR, and Gla'aki's skin has 40, no matter how many .45's he was hit with, he would not be harmed. but dropping a depth charge would bypass some of his protection through shockwave damage. Ramming him with a boat would probably deal damage depending on whether you feel he has internal organs around the point of impact. As much as I love BRP, any system is not entirely dependable for GM needs, and the core rulebook flat damage reduction for armour personally feels too mechanical and arbitrary to describe convincingly, so I decide how to handle it on the fly.

[drablak]

1 hour ago, standardtoaster said:

if a PC ends up losing half of their HP to impact damage, any descriptive workarounds to acknowledge the armour, acknowledge that it played a role in saving the PC some damage, but did not prevent all damage and is no worse for wear seems a bit contrived.

I was responding to the OP which proposed that for an armour that has 1 AR, it would be destroyed after absorbing 1 HP of 5HP hit, which I find excessive. Even if the bullet does go through the armour and damages it (absorbing 1 hp), there is a good chance that the next bullet won't hit the same spot, would it? No worse for wear might be contrived, destroyed might be excessive. I personally don't bother with armour damage, the PC need all the help they can get staying alive as it is.

[Atgxtg]

37 minutes ago, drablak said:

I was responding to the OP which proposed that for an armour that has 1 AR, it would be destroyed after absorbing 1 HP of 5HP hit, which I find excessive. Even if the bullet does go through the armour and damages it (absorbing 1 hp), there is a good chance that the next bullet won't hit the same spot, would it? No worse for wear might be contrived, destroyed might be excessive. I personally don't bother with armour damage, the PC need all the help they can get staying alive as it is.

It doesn't have to hit the same spot. It might only have to come close.  Since armor works in part by spreading out the impact force, the area around the impact can be damaged and weakened. Thus is true of both modern ceramic armor (which isn't malleable and thus will break instead of warp), and older armor (which was often made of bronze or iron, which could deform, possibly even leading to sections of armor coming off).Modern ballistic armor is probably more vulnerable to a drop in protection though, not only because the ceramics can shatter, but also becuase the protective material are encases in a cloth, which can be damaged and lead to bits armor falling out.

Now in both cases, just how likely either result would be on a particular hit is hard to quantify in game terms, and in most cases it probably wouldn't be much of a factor during a fight. Generally speaking any weapon powerful enough to weaken the armor that much, that quickly probably will penetrate the armor in the first place.

 

[drablak]

Seems to me people are arguing with me instead of giving their own answers to the OP. I just gave my opinion on the matter. I take it that @Atgxtg and @standardtoaster both agree that armour should be completely destroyed when hit once, so there you go @BloodySpike  

[Atgxtg]

3 minutes ago, drablak said:

Seems to me people are arguing with me instead of giving their own answers to the OP. I just gave my opinion on the matter. I take it that @Atgxtg and @standardtoaster both agree that armour should be completely destroyed when hit once, so there you go @BloodySpike  

No far from it. I was just pointing out that your statement that it wouldn't matter because the shot would have to hit the same exact spot isn't the case. 

 

As far as the OP and the RAW goes, and this was answers by tystero, armor is not reduced in CoC7.

[standardtoaster]

6 hours ago, drablak said:

Seems to me people are arguing with me instead of giving their own answers to the OP. I just gave my opinion on the matter. I take it that @Atgxtg and @standardtoaster both agree that armour should be completely destroyed when hit once, so there you go @BloodySpike  

Sorry if I came off needlessly aggressive, I'm not going to pretend either of us have anything other than opinions, and I completely understand in the context of 1 point of serpent man scale, their scales wouldn't fall off after one punch. However if that serpent man were to survive a dynamite blast, I think it would be reasonable to assume that it may lose some of its natural protection. All I'm saying is what makes sense is contextual.

[BloodySpike]

Awesome, thanks for the detailed discussion!  Sounds to me like the general consensus is it's mostly personal preference/house rules and situation based.  I'll work from there and just logistics it out as I go!