Armour Penetration caps

This house rule is a slight modification to the Armour Penetration rule. The original rule is on SR4A page 162.

I think that this is very unlikely to be negative to player characters, unless they are planning on playing low-armour characters who expect to be shot with flechettes.

Positive AP is capped at doubling the effective armour

On SR4A p162 it states that positive AP (raising the armour’s effectiveness) is ineffective if the target is not wearing armour. I am modifying that very slightly to patch a loophole which makes no sense to me, for situations when the target is very lightly armoured. Here is the replacement rule.

The effect of positive AP cannot be greater than doubling the defender’s armour. This takes into account all applicable armour before AP is applied. This applies also if the defender has no armour; double zero is still zero.

For example a character with 2 impact armour is shot with flechettes: AP +5. Their effective armour is 4 and not 7; the extra three points of positive AP are ineffective. Another example; a troll which has titanium bone lacing, wearing a leather jacket has an effective impact armour of 4 before AP is applied. That’s 1 from being a troll, 1 from the bone lacing and 2 from the jacket. This troll is shot with flechettes: AP +5 and their effective armour for resisting the damage is 8, not 9.