How do you handle Armor in your Marvel Super Heroes / 4C games?

Since damage and armor protection is static, there is no way to damage an armored person through a "flaw" in his armor. There is no way Smaug would have been hit and damaged by the black arrow.

I am sure there must be house rules out there so please share those with me.

Thanks!

I asked the same question back in January when I was getting ready to run a MSH campaign as a the armour rules, as written, looked a bit like a game breaker in MSH.  If you do a search on this forum for MSH you should be able to find that thread.

The suggestion I adopted is a simple house rule that states on a Red result the damage ignores armour. Essentially it mean that against armoured foes the players will have to spend a lot of Karma. It's not a perfect fix, and it doesn't help much if one of the players has a lot of armour, but it's worked well enough in practice. My MSH campaign has been running now for 11 sessions and it's been a blast, one of the best games I've run in a very long time.  

The other thing to do is remind the players there are more ways to stop a villain than a straight KO. You can grab them, pin them to the ground, encase them in ice or a magentic field.

Also, in the Advanced rules, PCs don't start out with AM(50) armour.  They start out with the lowest value in the range, I believe it is 46 for Amazing, and have to buy it up later with Karma.  For the PCs, then, AM(46) armour would leak 4 points of damage through from a standard Amazing attack, which would be 50.

You could do the same thing for villains, but there is also a rule in there somewhere that armour only protects from one attack per round or something.  I will have to look that up again, I could be completely mis-remembering on that.

I generally allow the color of the feet to influence this since it is one of the common since some percieve it as a flaw.

The game was built to make players think tactically around the problem: use a heavy duty blunt melee weapon to get +1cs, utilize energy vs body armor (it is less effective), use fighting tactics like martial arts, charges, and the like to increase damage or get around the armor.

However, for those that feel it is a "flaw", the best way to handle it is simply let the color feet add a bit of damage your choice of results Green (Nominal Damage), Yellow (Top End of Rank Damage), Red (Low End of Next Rank Damage) this gives you some ability to power through armor. Or for simpler book keeping Green Normal, Yellow +1 CS, Red +2 CS) whichever you'd like.

Armor protects against all attacks in around. Pseudo Armor (Blocking) only protects against one attack IIRC.

Quote from: Silverlion;307725Armor protects against all attacks in around. Pseudo Armor (Blocking) only protects against one attack IIRC.

Yeah, that didn't sound right, even while I was typing it out.  I am pretty sure there is some deal about concentrated attacks or something, though.  I will look that up later.

Quote from: Soylent Green;307715I asked the same question back in January when I was getting ready to run a MSH campaign as a the armour rules, as written, looked a bit like a game breaker in MSH.  If you do a search on this forum for MSH you should be able to find that thread.

The suggestion I adopted is a simple house rule that states on a Red result the damage ignores armour. Essentially it mean that against armoured foes the players will have to spend a lot of Karma. It's not a perfect fix, and it doesn't help much if one of the players has a lot of armour, but it's worked well enough in practice. My MSH campaign has been running now for 11 sessions and it's been a blast, one of the best games I've run in a very long time.  

The other thing to do is remind the players there are more ways to stop a villain than a straight KO. You can grab them, pin them to the ground, encase them in ice or a magentic field.

As good a bit of advice for this as I have ever seen.

Situations like this are precisely why I switched to Marvel SAGA and never looked back.  With FASERIP you can do cool things with hard limits...with Saga, limits are MUCH less "hard" and way more negotiable.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;307747As good a bit of advice for this as I have ever seen.

Situations like this are precisely why I switched to Marvel SAGA and never looked back.  With FASERIP you can do cool things with hard limits...with Saga, limits are MUCH less "hard" and way more negotiable.

I imagine busting through armor would also be a decent Power Stunt, if you were using a power in the first place.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;307747As good a bit of advice for this as I have ever seen.

Situations like this are precisely why I switched to Marvel SAGA and never looked back.  With FASERIP you can do cool things with hard limits...with Saga, limits are MUCH less "hard" and way more negotiable.

The advice wasn't mine, it came mostly from Silverlion who clearly knows his MSH and superheroes in general like few others.

I never played the Saga version so I can't comment. On paper there are a bunch of things that don't seem quite right to me about the FASERIP MSH game, but in actual play it's proved to be fantastic. It is so easy to prepare for, so easy to run and really seems to draw the players in. The Karma rules have a lot to do with that in the way they do help smooth over the cracks but I think there is something in the style, or dare I say philosophy, of the game, that works very well for super heroes.

The fundamental truth of the superhero genre is that it does not bear close scrutiny. You simply cannot explain scientifically how most superpowers work nor can you explain rationally the trappings, attitudes and conventions of the genre.And whereas a system that tries very hard to accurately model superpowers runs the risk of exposing the absurdity of it all, MSH with it's "Just go with it and let's not worry too much about the details" approach really helps set the right mood.

So, you could say I am a MSH convert.

Thanks for the great advice! I will definitely read the thread suggested.

Quote from: enelson;307894Thanks for the great advice! I will definitely read the thread suggested.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I'll be here and love MSH (and Marvel Saga, and superheroes in general.) Heck I love MSH enough I just had my Marvel books hardback bound, so maybe this set will hold up better. (Mind you I treat game books gently, but not everyone does..)