I would say go ahead and purchase it if your dead set on getting power armor. We cant hurt by not having it. (double negatives :S )<br/>Just assume its use the same as you would in Shadowrun. Not every situation is going to be legit to have power armor.<br/><br/>For combat in rogue trader...<br/><br/>cover is a predominant aspect. and helmets.<br/><br/><br/>************<br/>to give a bit of a play through... you get 2 half actions, and a reaction every turn in combat. (obviously a full action equals 2 half actions).<br/>You *CANNOT* do the same action twice in a turn, ie two standard attacks (which are each half actions).<br/><br/>So you decide to shoot some heretic. To give you better odds of hitting, you Aim (1/2 action) which increases your Ballistic skill by +20. Then use a Standard Attack (1/2 action).<br/><br/>In order to hit, you need to roll *Under* your Ballistic Skill. so if you have a skill of 40, then aim, you must roll under 60 to hit the heretic.<br/>so lets say you roll a 37. thats a hit.<br/><br/>now the heretic has to dodge. he makes his roll, and fails. the attack hits on the heretic.<br/><br/>where did it hit? you take that number 37, and transpose the numbers... now its 73. looking at the hit location table, you hit the heretic in the right leg. (lots of tables, dont worry, tgt and us with books will help with the heavy math and table lifting)<br/>************<br/><br/>depending on how many wounds the poor sod has remaining, the penetration of your weapon and GM whimsy, you either wounded the heretic (he's still able to fight) or you might have blown the bastards leg off (subsequent screaming, dieing, pool of blood, icky-ness).<br/><br/>That's if the guy *wasnt* in cover... what if he is? Cover is a magical thing (not quite, but roll with me here). Cover PROTECTS you entirely, or if you attack on a turn, only protects your legs and your torso from being hit. the GM will let you know if its even possible to protect an arm as well (like on the corner of a hallway, and you shoot a pistol. not often, but never hurts to ask)<br/><br/>lets look at that 37 you rolled... since its transposed to 73, you 'hit' the right leg of the heretic, but its in cover... the shot impacts harmlessly into the cover and it is the same as if you missed to begin with.<br/><br/>looking at all the numbers you can roll on a d100, you can only hit on so many of them (duh). if someone is in cover, you can only manage to hit them if the 'ones' spot is a 0, 1, 2, or *maybe* a 3 (if you rolled 03 on your attack, which is a crit... which has other implications involved). so just cover alone gives someone a 60-70% chance of dodging an attack.<br/>************<br/><br/>so is cover the end all of protection? yes and no... cover does have a rating involved. usually between 8 and 11. it degrades as it gets hit by certain attacks, and provides less cover the more you use it. If an attack overcomes the cover rating, the leftover amount *does* hit you (which then goes through your shield, armor, then toughness to actually wound you... that's a different thing not in the scope of this writing) If an attack overcomes the cover rating, the rating drops by 1. so that cement wall of cover rating 10, becomes 9. if the next attack beats 9, the leftover damage hits you and the cement wall becomes 8. ad nauseum.<br/><br/>then there is weapon penetration. sometimes a good thing, sometimes bad. penetration ratings subtract their rating from the cover rating, in order to hit you. but in order to degrade the cover rating, the amount of damage the weapon does, must beat the cover rating as normal.<br/><br/>I will direct you to Burt Gummer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7idJFzpuvt0#) why massive penetration -can- be a bad thing... especially on a starship...<br/><br/>wow that got away from me... but there you go...