Maximums No Armour or combination of can exceed the Personal Armour Maximum of 6D in any one Category.
Different Armours protect against different damage types.
Wearing a lot of protective gear can make certain actions challenging. Each set of armour has an Enc penalty above which increases Agility-based skill checks.
Each additional layer of armour increases Agility-based difficulties by +1 as well as that layers std Enc penalty.
A character cannot wear two suits of the same type, though he could combine some types. This listing indicates what armour may be worn with what, and the kind of bonus it can provide.
Of course, layering armour assumes that the two pieces fit together — a character couldn’t wear two helmets, even if they were made of different materials. For protective gear not listed here, use the type that the armour in question most closely resembles to determine what it can be combined with.
Except armor providing less than a full die of protection, any allowed combination offers the character the complete armor bonus for both layers, up to a maximums of 6D.
Hides and Fur; Bone and Hide: May be worn over any other type of armor. May not be worn under anything.
Soft Leather, Canvas, Heavy Khaki, Syntheleather: May be worn over or under any other type of armor.
Padded Leather/Flying Jacket, Syntheleather Mesh, Woven Metal Fabric: May be worn under any type of armor or over soft leather, canvas, heavy khaki, syntheleather, chain mail, plastovar, syntheleather mesh, padded, or metal fabric (though two armors of the same type may not be combined).
Chain Mail: May be worn over or under any other type of armor.
Reflec: A reflective material layered on a thin plastic base, this may be worn over any other armor or over or under clothes.
Plastovar: May be worn under soft leather, canvas, heavy khaki, syntheleather, or syntheleather mesh, or over padded, syntheleather mesh, or woven metal fabric.
Plasteel: May be worn over soft leather, canvas, heavy khaki, padded, or syntheleather, or under syntheleather mesh or woven metal fabric.
Plate Mail, Bulletproof Vest, Flak Jacket, Light Kevlar, Heavy Kevlar, Ceramic Armor: May not be worn under anything. May be worn over soft leather, canvas, heavy khaki, metallic woven fabric, or chain mail.
A powered exoskeleton (also known as power armor, powered armor, powered suit, cybernetic suit, cybernetic armor, exosuit, hardsuit, exoframe or augmented mobility)1 is a wearable mobile machine that is powered by a system of electric motors, pneumatics, levers, hydraulics, or a combination of technologies that allow for limb movement with increased strength and endurance.2 Its design aims to provide back support, sense the user's motion, and send a signal to motors which manage the gears. The exoskeleton supports the shoulder, waist and thigh, and assists movement for lifting and holding heavy items, while lowering back stress.3
A powered exoskeleton differs from a passive exoskeleton due to the fact that a passive exoskeleton is not powered. However, similar to a powered exoskeleton, it does give mechanical benefits to the user.[4]5 This also explains the difference to orthotics. An orthosis should promote the activity of muscle work and, in the best case, regain it.
The Caterpillar P-5000 Work Loader from James Cameron’s Aliens is an iconic piece of sci-fi hardware, and we’ll probably see something similar in the real world before too much longer. It’s designed to allow workers to quickly and easily move heavy pieces of equipment and cargo around.
But while Ripley demonstrated that it can be a formidable weapon in the right hands, it’s not really designed for fighting. It’s a glorified fork lift, and it’s pretty slow and cumbersome. But it’ll do in a pinch.
In his 2013 film Elysium, Neill Blomkamp populates his world with plenty of combat robots, but humans have their own augments as well. When Matt Damon’s character Max tells a crime boss that he’s willing to storm the film’s titular space station, he’s outfitted with an exoskeleton that’s grafted to his arms and legs, while the film’s villain, Kruger has a more advanced version of his own.
The Exo Suit from the film has its roots in real-world technology, and while these might have been designed for work, the film’s characters use them to give them an edge in a fight. There are some drawbacks, though. These suits don’t provide much armor, giving an opponent plenty of weak points to strike, and they’re drilled right onto a subject’s bones, meaning that you can’t easily take them off.
Set in a near future where private military corporations wage war on behalf of the governments of the world, 2014’s Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare prominently features exoskeletons that enhance a player’s movements in the game.
The game’s characters are equipped with Exo Suits, a frame that allows them to jump incredible heights, punch through doors, and more, which gives them incredible power and freedom of movement on the battlefield. The suits help speed up the game, and allow for plenty of add-ons to go into battle with.
Doug Liman’s 2014 film Edge of Tomorrow features humanity fighting off an alien invasion, using heavy-duty exoskeletons called Combat Jackets to help soldiers on the ground run faster and carry heavy weapons into battle.
These combat jackets provide both extra strength, some armor, and heavy weapons for the soldiers that wear them. But they’re just a bit shy of being proper power armor, and it feels like they could stand to get some better head protection.
In her military science fiction trilogy The Red (The Red: First Light, The Trials, and Going Dark), Linda Nagata introduces readers to a group of specialized soldiers under the command of Lieutenant James Shelley: a linked combat squad. These soldiers head into the field with an impressive kit: an exoskeleton that lets them carry heavy loads and weapons into combat. But it also connects to neural laces implanted in their heads and links them to one another, making the entire unit a formidable adversary. They also have the incredibly creepy side effect of being able to walk their dead wearers back to base on their own after a battle.
The suits aren’t fully armored, but they provide quite a bit of protection to their wearers, and can be used in a variety of environments, from the African plains to high above the Arctic Circle.
While James Cameron introduced the power loader to audiences in Aliens, he featured their militaristic cousins in his 2009 film Avatar. The Amplified Mobility Platform (also known as an AMP suit) is used by the RDA Corporation on Pandora for everything from moving around cargo to combat.
These massive suits are equipped with massive autocannon and a large knife, which gives its driver plenty of firepower. But while they’re agile in the field, their size makes them a bit of an easy target: the native Na’vi of Pandora were able to take them down with a variety of low-tech tactics.
Set in the near future, 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, shows a world that’s come under threat from a mysterious group called M.A.R.S., led by James McCullen (Christopher Eccelston). The G.I. Joe team is called out to help deal with the threat, and along the way, are provided with a couple of Delta-6 Accelerator suits.
These suits provide some armor to their wearers and provide them with an array of weapons, but have an emphasis on speed: Duke and Ripcord use them to zip around Paris. However, while they’re fast, they don’t appear to have been created in large numbers.
This set of armor was the standard issue for soldiers in the United States Army's Mechanized Cavalry Regiments before the Great War in the Fallout franchise. These suits carry with them a small fusion reactor for power, and can deflect laser blasts and conventional rounds.
However, in Fallout’s post-apocalyptic world, these advanced suits were harder to come by or maintain, and they’re largely used by the Brotherhood of Steel or the Enclave. They’re also not invulnerable: they’ll degrade during a heated fight.
While the power armor in novels such as The Forever War and Starship Troopers are well known to science fiction fans, an underrated read is John Steakley’s 1984 novel Armor. In it, a soldier named Felix deals with the psychological stresses of interstellar warfare, equipped with a suit of armor called a Scout Suit, made up of a nearly indestructible material known as plassteel.
“Two meters tall, they weighed six times the norm. Their armored powered hands could crush steel, stone, bone. Armored legs could propel the fasted around 100 kilometers per standard hour. The suit protected them as well, automatically and instantly distributing most concussions in an evenly expanding patter from the point of impact to the entire surface of the armor. “
They’re also equipped with enough life support for three days, as well as a complement of guns and bombs. While these suits are nearly indestructible, Felix comes to fear the raw power at his disposal.
The Nanosuits used in the Crysis series equip soldiers on the battlefield with an enormous amount of power, thanks to the use of artificial CryFibril muscle fibers. These suits give their wearers incredible protection, strength and speed, as well as some really useful features, such as active camouflage. They can also enhance a wearer’s vision, and allow them to survive underwater.
The big downside to these? They bond right to their wearer, and they’re nearly impossible to remove without killing them, and if they’re at risk of falling into enemy hands, they can self-destruct.
One of the best military science fiction novels out there is Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, which drew off of his own experiences fighting during the Vietnam War. In this book, Haldeman’s soldiers are equipped with what they call a Fighting Suit, which they describe as “the deadliest personal weapon ever built.”
These suits are powerful: they can theoretically rip a steel beam in half, and provide armor and life support for a soldier to operate in a variety of hostile environments. But trainees are warned: the suits are dangerous not only to their foes, but to themselves. If they’re not careful, mistakes can be fatal.
In The Expanse, Mars possesses the most advanced military force in the solar system, and its elite Marines are trained to operate in deep space, onboard spaceships, and planetary surfaces. They come decked out in a powerful suit of armor called the Goliath Powersuit. This armor completely protects its wearer, providing life support and armor, as well as a heads up display to help soldiers with targeting. They also come equipped with guns mounted directly into their arms, and carry a small rack of missiles on their backs.
These suits will resist small arms fire, and are small enough that they can be used inside the narrow corridors of a spaceship. But they’re not invincible, as Bobbie Draper’s Marines discovered on Ganymede during the television show’s second season.
When the alien Prawns arrived on Earth in Neil Blomkamp’s 2009 film District 9, they bring with them an array of advanced weapons and technologies. One such piece of equipment is a Bio-Suit, a mechanized walker that comes loaded down with a number of guns and rockets.
After he was infected by a Prawn fluid that begins to transform him, Wikus van de Merwe gets into one of the suits while he’s on the run from a gang, and he uses it to kill his attackers. These suits can give a single soldier an edge in a firefight, but only Prawns (or people transforming into one) are the only ones who can use them. While they carry an impressive range of deadly weapons, they also aren’t invincible. As Wikus battles the MNU soldiers trying to capture him, the suit takes crippling damage from a sniper rifle, as well as rockets and a truck.
Marvel kicked off its cinematic universe with 2008’s Iron Man, in which Tony Stark, the head of defense contractor Stark Industries, is captured in Afghanistan. He escapes his captors by building a primitive armored suit, but after returning home, he refines the design and its capabilities. We see him use a huge range of suits over the course of several movies, which to serve a number of specialized purposes.
Stark’s Mark III armor is a powerful piece of equipment. Powered by an arc reactor embedded in Stark’s chest and managed by an AI, it can fly, carry incredible weight, and attack enemies with rockets, guns, hand-mounted repulsers, and a chest beam. The downside? While he has an entire house full of the suits, Stark is reluctant to lend them out to the government, and it’s safe to say that they’ll only work with him in control.
In Karin Lowachee’s fantastic short story “Nomad” in John Joseph Adam’s 2012 anthology, Armored she introduces readers to an armored suit known as Radical Two (nicknamed Mad). Mad is part of a rogue band of armored soldiers, and when its human, Tommy, is killed, it decides to go nomad — striking out on its own — only to pick up an inexperienced kid.
These suits are pretty powerful, and mentally link up with their human operator. These suits of armor are sentient on their own, but they prefer to fuse with a human. They’re loaded down with weapons such as guns and grenades, and are incredibly hard to kill, with or without a human helping them.
When humanity took to the stars in Bungie’s Halo franchise, the United Nations Space Command waged a constant war against an the Insurrectionists, and developed a super soldier program to augment their forces. The SPARTAN-II program enhanced and trained the soldiers who would wear the MJOLNIR armor, and they became a formidable force on the battlefield.
The Spartans are huge, covered in a tough armor that allows them to absorb shots from enemy soldiers, along with an energy shield that provides an additional level of protection. Their suits can also host an AI to support its wearer, and can interface with the weapons that they’re using, and despite their size, they’re incredibly agile, and present a formidable threat to the Covenant and Insurrectionists.
It’s hard to beat the grandaddy of them all: the power armor at the center of Robert Heinlein’s novel Starship Troopers. Almost every instance of power armor in popular culture comes from Heinlein’s use.
Powered armor is one-half the reason we call ourselves “mobile infantry” instead of just “infantry.” Our suits give us better eyes, better ears, stronger backs (to carry heavier weapons and more ammo), better legs, more intelligence, more firepower, greater endurance, less vulnerability.
These suits can operate on a variety of planetary surfaces and environments, and come equipped not only with rifles and high explosives, but also tactical nuclear warheads that can eliminate an opponent in seconds. Let’s hope that the planned reboot of the film will include it this time.
While it’s hard to beat Heinlein’s mobile infantry, the Space Marines of Warhammer 40K will do the trick. Fighting for the Imperium of Man, they have been genetically modified, conditioned and trained to become the best soldiers on the galaxy. Standing two meters tall, they’re incredibly tough, and wear imposing armor made up of thick ceramite plates.
This suit of armor links to a wearer’s nervous system, and fully protects them from their outside environment, meaning that they can operate anywhere in the galaxy. It enhances their senses and allows them to carry incredibly powerful and heavy weapons into the field. If you see them on the battlefield, just walk away.
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