This post assumes Medival technology levels, however the principles it discusses pretty much applies no matter the tech level.

Ok, well for the metropolitan area one, sometimes you can wear armour. Take chain mail, or leather. It is easy enough to hide it beneath an overcoat. It's when you start to try and wear heavier armour that it becomes hard to disguise it.

Social situations definantly apply as well, except as noted above (because they wouldn't know you were wearing it)

Sleeping...have you ever tried to sleep in armour on the ground? It hurts like hell, you wake up in the morning all stiff and sore, that's if you slept at all. What about a fire? If you had a small camp fire going, armour tends to heat up, becomes rather...sweaty and uncomfortable. (heck, even putting on armour on a cold day will make you start to sweat.)

There is also the stamina problems. You can only move so far, so fast in armour. It's a lot easier to just stick it in a bag on the pack mule and wear a simple chain shirt.

Why do you want players to get out of their armor?

Complaining that power armor renders certain situations untenable is rather like complaining that if there aren't any swords, there won't be any sword fights.

The point of power armor is to avoid the situations you describe, so it would be rather useless if you had to take it off in vulnerable situations.

Nonetheless, existing RPGs already provide us with some sensible answers to this question. I'm going to approach this from a D&D perspective.

Firstly, thiefs and mages need to remove armor in order to perform their special functions. In the case of the thief, it is because armor reduces the wearer's manual dexterity (for picking locks and disarming traps), agility (for picking pockets and making sneak attacks) and nonchalance (for stealth). In the case of the mage, it is because it reduces manual dexterity (for casting spells with a somatic component).

Secondly, most of the interesting armor in D&D has special features that aren't quite the same as what's available with other armor. So if you suddenly have a need for protection against fire you may need to change your armor.

Obviously, D&D armor isn't power armor. One would expect sufficiently expensive power armor to be transparent to the operator, having no effect on any aspect of his physical abilities.

I think this suggests three dimensions upon which an armor may be measured: dexterity penalty, stealth penalty, and special benefits.

The penalties should always exactly counter-balance the benefits. To make up a benefit surplus, an armor could be made more expensive, restricted to a particular class/race/faction, restricted to a particular experience level or attribute score, or only available as a reward for completely a particular mission. Obviously, the weighting of the various penalties and benefits is a matter for fine-tuning during testing.

So to actually answer the question: don't force players to take off their armor. Instead, provide different kinds of armor for different kinds of uses. Then, where suitable, design challenges that penalise the player for wearing certain types of armor. This forces players to pay attention to what equipment they're using.

[Edited by - Mayrel on October 30, 2004 10:06:46 PM]

I suppose you could always have a crap-o-meter.. and you need to egress from your armor to relieve yourself.

In seriousness.. I don't think I'd enjoy being forced out of my armor.

I believe it was a Klan member that said, "You can't show them you have body armor on, 'cuz then, they'll just shoot you in the head." If you were in a situation where you might get shot, it's more likely that the shooter would shoot center mass, as that's natural.

When dealing with armor, I liked two things in Metal Gear Solid 2: Raiden's "Skull Suit" armor, and Fortune's armor-like mechanism. The Skull Suit applied enough pressure on the body to stop internal injury. Fortune's mechanism used electro-magnetism to divert metallic projectiles away from here. The Skull Suit could easily be disguised, as shown by Raiden's wearing of another suit over his. One or both of these would prove useful in a situation where you'd want to disguise yourself.

One of the best references for Power Armor and even non-powered armor in a high tech civilization I can suggest is the Rifts Role-Playing Game, by Palladium Games.

http://www.palladiumbooks.com/

I would suggest going out and buying the core rulebook for Rifts, it would be a valuable investment (even if you do not copy it exactly, it would give you good ideas and also provide role-playing entertainment with your fellow developers) :-P

Here is the main rulebook on the Palladium Online Catalog: http://store.palladiumbooks.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD∏_Code=800&Category_Code=R800

You can also find it around online (I suggest http://www.alldirect.com or Half-Price Books). I know the Half-Price Books over here near Seattle, WA has like 3 of these books, for like 10-15 bucks each. Regular retail price is between 25-30 bucks.

One book I read had light-saber/jedi'ish types that would ware a very light armor that stoped splash/shrapnal dammage but would not stop bullets or other light-sabers. So you could just get rid of powered armor all togeather.

Or....

Powered Armor requires maintanance, right? Make it expensive to operate Powered Armor, either through expensive power or through expensive/limited parts.

And/Or....

Powered Armor is owned soley by the armed forces and anyone cought with PA is automaticly hunted down by the military.

I haven't read the other replies, so I appologize in advance if I don't say anything particuarly original.

There are two ways that I see to encourage players to remove their armor. One is to incur penalties to wearing them. The other is to make the armor specialized.

Your suggestions all fall in the first catagory. You can't sleep wearing armor, doctors can't heal you, the police harass you, whatever. But there's also skill related penalties. You are slower wearing heavy armor. You make more noise. You can't perform judo. Et Cetera. Finally, you just charge them for its use. Either they wear out and have to be repaired, or they require fuel to keep running, or something.

The other category depends largly on the weaponry available. Take KOTOR, for instance. As I recal, some of the armor in KOTOR was almost useless against physical attacks, but provided excellent protection against energy attacks. So wearing such armor in a sword fighter training camp doesn't make sense, but wearing it in a base protected by security droids does. You can fine tune the parameters as much as you want. Perhaps one type of armor is strong against slicing attacks, but not piercing ones . Perhaps the armor stops projectiles, but a blunt hit from a wide object shatters the armor. Perhaps it completely absorbs all heat, but amplifies all other energy based attacks?<br><br>Basically, just make sure that putting &#111;n a suit of armor requires some sort of decision, and make sure that decision is situation dependant. How likely is the player to get attacked? What are the attacker's likely to be wearing? Can I defend myself without the use of armor? Why shouldn't I put &#111;n the armor, just in case? And so forth.<br><br>CM

Bha, I thought I was loged in. The AP above is me.

The problem with power armour is that you attract a lot of attention and that attention may be unwanted. You aren't going to have mysterious NPC's approach you with rumors as they will be noticed taking to a hulking behemoth. Interesting side encounters with thugs and brigands won't occur as they would avoid attacking someone so obviously well defended.

The location of the player's ship and safe houses will be noted and ambushes may be laid. Imagine the power armoured player returning to his ship to rest after a raiding a criminal stronghold only to run into an ambush set up by a rival gang hoping to take advantage of the weakened player.

One thing that might also work would be BIG machines. Modern armor generally doesn't work well against blunt trauma caused by something with a ton of momentum/inerta: kevlar can stop a bullet, but not a car.
With personal force fields and plasteel, you can probably withstand most 'high tech' weapons, but I'd bet you cant handle a crushing 100 ton iron ceiling or a large piston knocking you away or something like that.

With mech armor (or 'powered armor'), the situation is more complex - you'll need to remove one of its limbs or get a REALLY big machine to hurt it, but the principle still works (probably).

Of course, the above only works under certain conditions. If force fields stop all momentum/inertia/whichever then a character couldn't get knocked around so easily, but that would be overpowered imo.