Combat: Rifles Pierce Armor

[SignedName]

To differentiate Rifles from other weapons, have them ignore 2 points of soak. As guns that fire large caliber rounds, they can pierce through less substantial armor- while not matching the raw damage output of Shotguns even against targets with 2 or more soak, they close the gap, making it more efficient to focus on armored targets with the Rifle, leaving the Shotgun for unarmored targets.

[Goliath]

+1

[Fellis]

I think this is already simulated by armors having more or less piercing soak, since pierce is the primary damage type of firearms on the mundane side

[Nayru]

kind of reminds me of ballistic damage in a sense, gun soak was different

[SaltedSalmon]

Yeah, I think what Fellis said is how the game handles it.
Besides rifle already deals decent damage sooo...
-1

[SignedName]

I think this is already simulated by armors having more or less piercing soak, since pierce is the primary damage type of firearms on the mundane side

The difference would be that ignoring soak isn't the same thing as having high damage mitigated by soak. The max damage doesn't increase when soak is ignored, it just makes the soak less effective at stopping that damage.

[Fellis]

How is that different? If I have max damage +2 vs soak or I have Max damage (pierce 2) vs soak, it's functionally the same. Unless we code (pierce 2, floor 0) which only matters vs unarmored/1 soak. It also requires more information to be communicated to the characters involved regarding their attack/defense rather than a simple "they did X you soaked Y"

Also if this went in, it would definitely require rifle damage to come down. I don't think this is a bad suggestion if I was doing things from scratch, but it already functions fine in the game as is.