Body Armor (Ultra-Tech)

Body Armor

These unpowered suits and armored garments require no special skill to use.

All body armor can come in any desired color, including camouflage patterns. It takes three seconds per piece to don or remove most body armor.

Body Armor Styles

Ultra-tech body armor is available in a variety of standard styles.

Bodysuit

This outfit covers the torso, groin, arms, and legs. The neck, head, or extremities are uncovered, making it easy to add customized boots, gloves, and helmets.

Gloves

A pair of armored gloves. They're made of thinner material than other armor types to avoid compromising the wearer's manual dexterity.

Jacket

This is a heavier outfit that covers the torso and arms. It zips up and has plenty of pockets.

Suit

This head-to-toe outfit includes a hood and face mask with eye slit. It's a useful exploration suit, supers costume, or ninja suit. It is also used as the basis for tailored armor.

Trousers

A pair of long pants, protecting the groin and legs (but not the feet). It is not obviously armor, and can pass for a normal pair of work pants or jeans.

Vest

A sleeveless t-shirt covering the torso. All concealable armor styles can pass as normal clothing, although bodysuits and complete suits are likely to be conspicuous.

Additional styles can be created using the tailored armor rules.

Ballistic Armor (TL9-11)

This armor uses flexible materials to resist high velocity projectile attacks as well as cutting blows. It's the ultra-tech successor to modern bulletproof vests. On a practical level, TL9+ ballistic armor's major advance is that it can provide full protection for areas other than the torso without sacrificing mobility.

Since bullets are among the most effective ways to deal damage at TL9-10, ballistic armor is widespread at these tech levels. At TL11+ it often declines in popularity, superseded by armor optimized against beam weapons.

Ballistic armor is flexible with a split DR: it provides full protection against piercing and cutting attacks, and uses its reduced DR against all other types of damage.

As material technology advances, ballistic armor continually improves. Examples of progressively-better ballistic armor types are reflex, nanoweave, and monocrys armor.

Reflex (TL9)

This ballistic armor is a fabric woven from para-aramid fibers (such as Kevlar), polyethylene, or synthetics inspired by the molecular structure of spider silk. It is soaked in a "shear thickening fluid" of hard ceramic nanoparticles suspended in liquid. During normal handling, the armor is very flexible, but when a bullet or fragment strikes it, it becomes a rigid material.

Nanoweave (TL10)

This armor is similar to reflex armor, but is reinforced for extra strength by woven carbon nanotubes. Nanoweave armor can be fitted with various accessories, using "smart" properties that can be engineered into it.

Monocrys (TL11)

This is a single-crystal weave of syn- thetic diamondoid fibers, also called "nanocrystal." It is very light, but diamondoid materials melt at high temperatures, which means that monocrys is not particularly useful against beam weapons.

For heavier, non-concealable versions of reflex, nanoweave, and monocrys, see the descriptions of tactical vests and tactical suits.

Concealable Ballistic Armor Table

TL	Armor	Location	DR	Cost	Weight	LC
9	Reflex Bodysuit	body, limbs	12/4*	$900	6	3
9	Reflex Gloves	hands	6/2*	$30	neg.	4
9	Reflex Jacket	arms, torso	12/4*	$450	3	3
9	Reflex Suit	all	12/4*	$1,200	8	3
9	Reflex Trousers	groin, legs	12/4*	$280	2.8	3
9	Reflex Vest	torso	12/4*	$300	2	3
10	Nanoweave Bodysuit	body, limbs	18/6*	$900	6	3
10	Nanoweave Gloves	hands	9/3*	$30	neg.	4
10	Nanoweave Jacket	arms, torso	18/6*	$450	3	3
10	Nanoweave Suit	all	18/6*	$1,200	8	3
10	Nanoweave Trousers	groin, legs	18/6*	$280	2.8	3
10	Nanoweave Vest	torso	18/6*	$300	2	3
11	Monocrys Bodysuit	body, limbs	24/8*	$900	6	3
11	Monocrys Gloves	hands	12/4*	$30	neg.	4
11	Monocrys Jacket	arms, torso	24/8*	$450	3	3
11	Monocrys Suit	all	24/8*	$1,200	8	4
11	Monocrys Trousers	groin, legs	24/8*	$280	2.8	3
11	Monocrys Vest	torso	24/8*	$300	2	3

*Flexible.

Tactical Vest (TL9-11)

This thick, sleeveless, jacket-like vest covers the torso and groin, with front and back pockets for inserting rigid ceramic or alloy plates.

A tactical vest is made of similar materials to concealable body armor, but is heavier, and is obviously body armor. It provides full protection against cutting and piercing damage, and reduced protection against all other attacks. Its trauma plates provide full protection against all damage types. It takes three seconds to insert or remove the plates.

Tactical Vest Table

TL	Armor	Location	DR	Cost	Weight	LC
9	Reflex Tactical Vest trauma plates	torso, groin torso	18/7* +34	$900 +$600	9 +9	2 2
10	Nanoweave Tactical Vest trauma plates	torso, groin torso	24/10* +46	$900 +$600	9 +9	2 2
11	Monocrys Tactical Vest trauma plates	torso, groin torso	36/15* +69	$900 +$600	9 +9	2 2

*Flexible.

Assault Boots (TL9-12)

These armored boots add metal or ceramic inserts to the sole of a ballistic fiber. At TL9-11 they provide their full DR against attacks to the underside of the foot (e.g., stepping on a stake, a contact-detonation mine, etc.) but half DR against attacks from other angles. TL12 boots provide full protection from all angles.

Hiking: Ultra-tech combat boots incorporate smart-matter responsive fabrics and biomaterials that treat or prevent blistering from long marches. They count as the best quality equipment and add +TL/2 to Hiking skill.

Assault Boots Table

TL	Armor	Location	DR	Cost	Weight	LC
9	Assault Boots	feet	12/6	$150	3	4
10	Assault Boots	feet	18/9	$150	3	4
11	Assault Boots	feet	30/15	$150	3	4
12	Assault Boots	feet	50	$150	3	4

Laser-Resistant Body Armor (TL9-11)

Ultra-tech lasers are capable weapons at TL9 and become common at TL10, resulting in the development of flexible body armor optimized to counter them.

Ablative Armor (TL9)

This is similar to reflex armor, but made of plastic fabric designed to vaporize when struck by a laser beam. Since the armor is damaged by the attack, ablative armor is more useful against a single assassin than it is in a lengthy combat mission!

Ablative armor has a split DR. Its full DR is used against the burning or crushing explosive damage inflicted by any type of laser (including X-ray and graser models). This DR is also semi-ablative: For every 10 points of basic laser damage rolled, remove one point of DR from the location struck, regardless of whether the attack penetrated or not.

Its lower DR is used against all other attacks, and is not ablative.

Reflec (TL9)

Reflec is a light, highly-reflective armor of polished metallic fibers that reflects laser fire. It is useless against other attacks, but can be worn over other armor. Reflec has a split DR: It gets its full DR against microwaves and lasers (but not X-ray or gamma-ray lasers), but provides no protection against other weapons.

Reflec is an excellent radar reflector: any stealth benefits against radar are negated, and add +1 (+2 if wearing a full suit) to rolls to detect its wearer.

Reflec is not superscience, but is a cinematic technology. Realistically, mirrored material is not very effective against laser weapons, although it will function against microwave beams.

Any rigid helmet can be made reflective for $50. It gains +20 DR vs. lasers and microwaves.

Ablative Nanoplas (TL10)

This is advanced ablative armor made of tailored carbon nanotubes. It has higher DR, but it is otherwise equivalent to TL9 ablative armor.

Retro-Reflective Armor (TL11^)

This superscience reflec armor is embedded with polished, metallic fibers covered with millions of tiny spherical lenses. The micro-mirrors reflect laser fire back at the attacker. The armor "bounces back" half the damage from visible-light or near-infrared lasers that the DR actually resisted. The remaining damage affects the wearer normally.

If he wasn't suspecting the reflection, the attacker doesn’t get an active defense against the first attack reflected back at him. He gets his usual defenses against subsequent reflected attacks, or if he knew the armor would be retro-reflective. Retro-reflec only works against direct hits!

Laser-Resistant Armor Table

TL	Armor	Location	DR	Cost	Weight	LC
9	Ablative Jacket	arms, torso	24/4*	$450	3	3
9	Ablative Suit	all	24/4*	$1,200	8	3
9	Ablative Trousers	groin, legs	24/4*	$280	2.8	3
9	Reflec Helmet	head	20/0*	$25	0.5	4
9	Reflec Jacket	torso, arms	20/0*	$150	1	4
9	Reflec Suit	all	20/0*	$300	2	4
10	Ablative Nanoplas Jacket	arms, torso	36/6*	$450	3	3
10	Ablative Nanoplas Suit	all	36/6*	$1,200	8	3
10	Ablative Nanoplas Trousers	groin, legs	36/6*	$280	2.8	3
11^	Retro-Reflective Helmet	head	40/0*	$250	0.5	4
11^	Retro-Reflective Jacket	torso, arms	40/0*	$1,500	1	4
11^	Retro-Reflective Suit	all	40/0*	$3,000	2	4

*Flexible.

Bioplas Armor (TL10)

Bioplas is a strong, pseudo-alive smart matter material that is light and comfortable to wear – see Smart Bioplastic. Flexible armored suits and clothing are made out of this material. Like other bioplastic equipment, it can heal rips and tears if it has access to moisture and heat, such as sweat and body heat. Bioplas is also a popular material for swimwear and other sports clothing.

Bioplas is flexible armor with a split DR. Unlike ballistic body armor, bioplas provides its full DR against burning and piercing damage, but gets only one-third DR vs. other damage types. Thus, it's very effective against a bullet or most energy beams, but not that much use against a powerful blow or a vat of acid.

See Space Biosuit for a sealed environmental suit version.

Bioplas Armor Table

TL	Armor	Location	DR	Cost	Weight	LC
10	Bioplas Bodysuit	body, limbs	15/5*	$1,800	3	3
10	Bioplas Gloves	hands	15/5*	$60	neg.	4
10	Bioplas Suit	all	15/5*	$2,400	4	3

*Flexible.

Transparent Bioplas (TL10)

This is an option for any bioplas outfit and the space biosuit. It does not protect against laser fire, but otherwise is the same as any other bioplas vest or suit. The suit adjusts around the user's body, and is almost invisible when worn. (A Vision roll from a yard or less will spot it, and anyone touching the wearer will notice it.) Transparent bioplas also comes in translucent colors; by covering up strategic areas, a wearer of a tinted bodysuit can look as if he or she is wearing a swimsuit while protecting the entire body. Transparent bioplas costs twice as much as ordinary bioplas, but is otherwise identical.

Energy Cloth (TL12)

This light and easily-concealed armor is an ultra-tech ballistic fiber similar to monocrys. Its hyperdense "fabric" is resistant to nearly all forms of attack. It is flexible, but gets its full DR against all damage types.

Energy Cloth Table

TL	Armor	Location	DR	Cost	Weight	LC
12	Energy Cloth Bodysuit	body, limbs	30*	$2,000	6	3
12	Energy Cloth Gloves	hands	15*	$50	neg.	4
12	Energy Cloth Jacket	arms, torso	30*	$1,500	3	3
12	Energy Cloth Suit	all	30*	$4,000	8	4
12	Energy Cloth Trousers	groin, legs	30*	$1,400	2.8	3
12	Energy Cloth Vest	torso	30*	$1,000	2	3

*Flexible.