Making effective PCs that aren't wizards?

[Wordmaker]

An Armor 2 is going to protect against a Weapon 2 as much as wearing no Armor is going to protect against some mundane guy swing his fist at you.

This. The system doesn't allow for an armor that will give you 100% protection 100% of the time. Debating how this reflects the real world is a matter for each group's preferences when it comes to description and narrative.

Armor 2 is heavier and less easy to conceal than Armor 1, but lighter and easier to conceal than Armor 3. That's it. How you choose to describe the nature of those armors is up to you, based on your interpretation of the list in YS.

[Lavecki121]

This is the wrong way to look at it.  Armour 2 against a weapon 2 pistol will not 'completely prevent injury'.
Lightweight 'bullet-proof vests' likely ARE armour 1, and will negate most of the danger from small calibur pistols that strike the vest and they will significantly reduce the danger from larger rounds.

Um...I suggest you reread the rules:

Armor essentially works the same way as weapons—the rating is based on what it’s ideally supposed to be protecting the wearer from.
Resist the temptation to bog down the game with creating extensive examples of armor types;
the better approach is to color it appropriately to the weapon ratings. So, Armor:2 is intended to protect completely against most pistols—it’s
probably a reinforced Kevlar vest or something.
That said, armor does tend to lag behind weaponry in terms of availability. Many bulletproof vests are only Armor:1—a heavy pistol round can still crack a rib if it hits you. Armor:4 is not really something you find on a personal scale, except maybe in a magical or supernatural
context.

Emphasis not mine

[Tedronai]

Armour 2 completely protects against a weapon 2 pistol in that it completely protects against the added threat that the pistol itself brings to the exchange.
It manifestly DOES NOT 'completely prevent injury'.
If that does not make sense to you, I suggest that you re-read the rules.

[polkaneverdies]

It seems like a waste of time to argue the meaning of "completely" when you would both resolve the damage in a conflict involving a weapon 2 vs armor 2 attack the same way.

(Unless I am mistaken and lavecki would indeed just say "you rolled a 10 to hit and he dodged on a 3. Unfortunately his armor 2 makes your attack with a pistol completely pointless. No stress taken")

[Mr. Death]

I think it's best put this way: Armor:2 should mean that a direct hit from something Weapon:2 that would have killed instead means you only take a stress hit, yes? Where the weapon rating itself is the cause of an attack going past the stress track.

So by this definition, let's call a direct hit a hit that would have landed the stress on the target's last stressbox before taking into account the weapon rating--all of the weapon rating, therefore, is past the stress track and would normally result in a kill.

So your average vest available is Armor:1--it reduces the lethality, but on a direct hit it's still going to hurt.

A reinforced vest--the kind of thing your average SWAT team or military commandos will be wearing--is stronger. A direct hit from small arms will, for the most part, be shrugged off. It's Armor:2 because it completely protects from the force of the bullet--you'll feel it, but it won't hurt you. Heavier weapons--automatic rifles, shotguns--will still hurt, however.

Highly advanced body armor--think Dragonskin, maybe, or bomb disposal suits--are rated to protect against stronger weapons, so are overkill against small arms. They're Weapon:3, so on a direct hit, the character is protected such that it's less effective than a normal punch would've been, and it can therefore take more punishment.

Armor:4, as the books point out, just isn't something you get on a personal scale. Here we're talking about the kind of armor where you could lay on a grenade and expect not only to survive, but get up again pretty much right away.

For melee, Armor:1 is probably things like leather armor--it provides some protection against small knives which are being used with little force, but protection is limited against anything bigger.

Armor:2 is going to be heavier chainmail over leather--you need metal to stop someone swinging a sword, but at the same time they're still swinging a sword. It might prevent cuts, but it's not going to stop the force of the blow, only absorb and mitigate it some.

Armor:3 would be full-body plate mail--able to simply shrug off blows from swords without injuring the person underneath.

[Tedronai]

Personally, I would rate a bomb disposal suit at armour 4.  They're built to protect the wearer (to the point of injured survival) from moderately sized explosives like small car bombs.  A fragmentation grenade is going to play havoc with the armour itself, but the wearer is likely to be up on his feat again in short order with little more than a few bruises for his trouble.
Modern versions of such armour are significantly more effective that 'dragonskin' and its ilk simply because the bomb techs don't need the same sort of mobility that other armour users require and are thus able to pack in more protection.

[Lavecki121]

The bomb disposal teams can still be killed from explosives. In fact there are many explosives that (because they are at such a close range to the bomb) will simply tear through them like butter.

[Tedronai]

Yes, bomb disposal teams are at times called to deal with explosives beyond the capacity of their equipment to protect from for various reasons.

[Sanctaphrax]

Okay, I've lost track of this argument. I'm no longer sure what's being argued or why.

So I'm bowing out.

(I dislike announcing it when I leave a thread, but I figured I should make sure that people who want to argue with my previous posts aren't left hanging.)

[Lavecki121]

Okay, I've lost track of this argument. I'm no longer sure what's being argued or why.

lol, me too

[Mr. Death]

I think the current chain of the argument was: Mortals would be wearing armor vs. wearing armor all the time would be impractical and unlikely, which segued into "also armor is expensive and difficult to get," which became a discussion of just what types of armor would be at which Armor:X rating.

Which brings up an interesting thought. Sanctaphrax, would you allow a stunt to directly boost an armor rating? Like, Armor Specialization, while wearing Chainmail, your armor rating is treated as +2 on top of the armor's existing rating?

[Wordmaker]

At this stage there should probably be new threads made for the topics that have come up 

[Lavecki121]

Which brings up an interesting thought. Sanctaphrax, would you allow a stunt to directly boost an armor rating? Like, Armor Specialization, while wearing Chainmail, your armor rating is treated as +2 on top of the armor's existing rating?

I think it would be +1 if I were going to make it. The athletics boosts are only +1 unless sprinting so thats what I am basing this off of.

EDIT: I would also say that you could do one for crafting to boost self made armor

[GhanjRho]

For what it's worth, in Michael's OW profile, his armor, a breast/backplate lined with several layers of Kevlar and backed by ceramic strike plates, is Armor:2.

Food for thought.

[JDK002]

For what it's worth, in Michael's OW profile, his armor, a breast/backplate lined with several layers of Kevlar and backed by ceramic strike plates, is Armor:2.

Food for thought.

It's also worth pointing out that most mundain armor will probably only work against a specific type of attack.  A reinforced Kevlar vest would provide armor:2 against gunfire only.

Where as Michaels armor very likely protects him against everything but non-physical magic attacks.  Obtaining something like that would require a fairly high resource or craftmanship roll and/or some declairations/fate points.