Technological Levels as Scale

Technological differences between weapons and armor can be expressed as Scale if the GM desires. Instead of figuring exactly how much mega-damage a transvibrational subneural pulverizer does, the GM can simply say, “This is a weapon that is of the same technological level as the armor of the defender therefore, it has the same effect on her as a modern pistol would on kevlar.” However, if used against someone who is wearing kevlar, the transvibrational subneural pulverizer does lots and lots of damage kevlar wasn’t designed to stop this type of thing.

Basically, there isn’t much difference between thrusting a sword through a naked man’s kidney, or shooting him with a .38 through the kidney, or using a transvibrational subneural pulverizer on the kidney: naked people don’t resist most weapons well. Plate armor stops the sword well, but won’t slow down the .38 enough to help much unless it can deflect it away from the kidney, that is. It probably won’t help at all against the pulverizer, but it may: the GM will have to decide the effect of such a weapon on plate armor.

The concept of technological levels as Scale only comes into effect when weapons of one technological era are used against armor of another technological era. At that point, the GM can add an arbitrary Scale difference to the weapon or armor, whichever is of the higher tech level. No attempt to quantify tech levels is made here.

This section is merely food for thought.