Need help with armor piercing (AP) effects, especially ammo

Hello,

My group has been wondering about armor piercing attacks. The rulebook simply states that "It ignores its target's armor, inflicting its full harm." Now, this is fine in a simple case like a character wearing body armor getting shot with ap ammo, but becomes very strange in more complicated situations. So, my question is, what exactly should ap ignore?

Here's a really over-the-top example: Fifi the Gunlugger is guarding a heavily fortified hold (+2armor to defenders), as part of a large gang (+3armor against a single person), wearing his serious body armor (2-armor), and he has, say, Daredevil (+1armor) and Battlefield Grace (+1armor). Let's assume both of those moves are active at the same time in this situation, somehow. This means he has a total of 9-armor, making him essentially invulnerable to any harm a single person might throw at him from outside the walls.

However, what if someone attacks him in a way that pierces armor? If it's someone with a 9mm pistol and ap ammo, does he take harm? If it's the Brainer tossing a pain-wave projector, does he take harm? How about some huge badass shooting at this gang with a 50cal machine gun full of ap ammo, doing a total of 7-harm ap? And so forth, you get the idea.

According to the rules as written (as I understand them), the answer is Fifi takes the full harm of the attack. This doesn't feel right at all. Of course the situations at my game table are never this extreme, but we do see gangs wearing armor behind walls and that sort of thing. I feel like there's a real need for a house rule here (only spot in the game I've found yet!), but the details escape me.

Perhaps different sources of ap harm should ignore different parts of the armor (so the Brainer's psychic attack can ignore things the physical ap ammo can't)? Does the ammo ignore both the walls and the body armor? One or the other? What about Daredevil? Should it perhaps ignore armor equal to the weapon's harm (2), no matter the source? Can the pain-wave projector really ignore the gang bonus? Does the machine gun do 7-harm to the gang and defending PC, utterly destroying them? Or do they take some smaller amount of damage, how much? Or nothing at all?

I would appreciate your thoughts on this. Have I understood the way AP works as written correctly, and how do you handle it in your game?

In terms of how I play it, always give the AP precedence. Armor piercing weaponry either relies on ap bullets (which are rare) or deal harm in a way that just doesn't care about armor at all (like the pain wave projector hurting you directly in your brain). The players have already payed the opportunity cost to pick up this ap capability, let them use it. Any old chump can hide behind metal plating and pretend to be invulnerable, it's hard to get your hands on something that gets through it so let it be useful. Maybe, on a case by case basis, I'd let Battlefield Grace et. al. immune to armor piercing bullets, since that's a bit weird in the fiction, but it's easier to just let the ap happen than essentially reword the move to "You get +1-armor, unless it turns out being graceful won't help."


In terms of NPCs who've got their hands on ap rounds; just let the ap do its thing, but only occasionally. You're telling me you don't want to see the look on your players face when they find out those armor bonuses they've been stacking don't mean shit? You don't want to see them panicking as they realise that this time they're actually in danger? Obviously don't make every enemy have ap weaponry (again, ap rounds are hard to find, and don't deny the players their bonuses just because), but just enough to make them worry when they see Jackabacka rolling up with his ap rifle.


Alternatively, you could just say that only one armor bonus can apply at a time. They get their base armor, and +3 for being part of a large gang and that's it. Personally, I'm not a fan of this method; if the players get into a situation where they have 9-armor then by the gods let them have 9-armor. Describe how the bullets barely touch them, and those that do just ping right off. Let them feel badass. Just keep the ap weapons in the wings for when you want them to know who's a serious threat to them.


Side note: The pain wave projector ignores the gang bonus anyway, because it's area. The extra armor of a bigger gang comes from there being more of them than you can shoot at and +area mitigates that. I tend to use the 1st edition rules for gangs in 2nd edition when it seems more convenient (naughty, I know) which said "you deal 1 less harm for each size they are bigger" rather than giving the defending gang bonus armor. This stops the weird situation where an ap pistol does more damage against a gang who aren't wearing any armor (you could say it blows through, collateral damage?) but leaves you with the weird situation where a shotgun somehow doesn't deal any damage whatsoever to a large gang (you could say there's too many, you can't get a clear shot?). I'd stick to the 2nd edition rules as written if I were you.


Hope this helped! Armor and ap is one of the stranger interactions in Apocalypse World, general advice is always: "Trust Vincent, he knows what he's doing. Play the rules as written and only change it if it seems wrong."

When we played, we asked, hey, what's ap rounds in a 9mm punch through in real life (or what would it if it was real)? and we applied ap to any armor that applied; same with the other weapons. You've got some 50cal ap sniper rifle you can ignore the armor of that car, probably that even armor granted by that building. Cool.

I always give the narrative the precedent. If someone shoots someone else whose tied to a chair, and they've got armor but not in the face where he's shooting point blank, hey look it! it's now ap! Exactly the same, but opposite example: if you've got a gun that shoots through armor, you can punch through that guy wearing 2-armor, but surround him with 60 other people and shoot randomly into the mix? They keep that 3-armor from the size. Cause... duh? As for the argument that ap is somehow expensive in this game, I lol to that. It's cheap, like everything else, and easy to get. Roughly worth the cost of one serious gun, if the gunlugger's playbook has any say.

I consider the rules of this game to be exceptionally flexible.

That being said, your example has some things I'm not quite okay with. For example, if someone is using a gang as a weapon, that gang deals and takes the harm. If you're in the gang too, cool, the gang, not you, still deals and takes the harm. If the gang gets 2-armor and +2 armor from defenses and +2 armor from size, then ap knocks off 2, maybe 4 depending on the gun and the story in that moment. However, if you've got a guy who was seized from the middle of the gang and the pc ends up targeting specifically him, I'm not giving that guy the gang's armor bonus, just like I'm not inflicting that harm on the gang. Nah, that's harm against that guy, and gets calculated all by itself.

Armor from a gang's size is not armor, it's a resprentation of how many bodies are sharing that pain.

That's my say anyway, do what you want.

Well, the fiction comes first. Which means that armor from sources that aren't actually armor probably shouldn't be pierced by AP ammo, since that doesn't actually make sense in the world. Though, similarly, a Battlebabe's Impossible Reflexes wouldn't help if they were tied to a chair.

For example, a gang's size shouldn't be considered armor per se for this purpose, nor should most other sources that aren't worn armor, really. I probably would have AP ammo ignore fortifications, though.

In complicated cases, yeah, use your judgment as MC.

The crucial thing is just to establish harm explicitly before the players make their moves and choices, so they know how much harm they'll be suffering and/or inflicting. If you forget to do this, always give the players do-overs if they want them.

-Vincent

I'm going to echo the "case by case" answer above but I'l give my personal dissection, too.

If someone is shooting Fifi, they're not shooting the gang, they're shooting Fifi. A Gunlugger with serious armor and acting in a way that triggers Daredevil is definitely going to stand out from the gang enough to justify that. In that case, the gang as a whole takes no damage regardless of how hard Fifi gets hit. If you want to shoot the gang instead, their armor applies as long as the attacker doesn't have an area effect. As said above, in 1st Ed, it was damage reduction as opposed to explicit armor, which I would port across. So let's say everything is either armor or damage reduction.

The serious armor doesn't protect. At all. For absolute certain. This is what armor piercing is explicitly for.

I personally wouldn't count the wall. There are a couple of reasons for this. Replace the wall with a vehicle (which feels like it's about the same thing) and it's pretty easy to imagine  a bullet going through it. With weird shit like a pain wave grenade, it makes even more sense. Also, that scene where the sniper blows away a bad guy through a wall is classic and cool. More than realism, I like my game to feel cool. On the other hand, the shooter has to know where Fifi is well enough to shoot her in particular through a wall in the first place.

Daredevil, Battlefield Grace, Impossible Reflexes etc, I lean more towards damage reduction than armor. Any mook can get serious armor but it takes someone pretty special to have 2+ armor when not wearing anything. On the other hand, ap is already rare. So Impossible Reflexes might work against ap bullets in my game but not against a pain-wave grenade while Battlefield Grace or Divine Protection would probably work against anything.