Player Core Chapter 6: Equipment

Armor

Armor increases your character's defenses, but some medium or heavy armor can hamper movement. If you want to increase your character's defense beyond the protection their armor provides, they can use a shield. When they're in a vacuum, their armor's environmental protections can keep them alive, enabling self-contained breathing and shielding them from the hazards of space. Armor and its environmental protections protect your character only while they're wearing it.

Armor Class

Your Armor Class (AC) measures how well you can defend against attacks. When a creature attacks you, your Armor Class is the DC for that attack roll.
Use your proficiency bonus for the category (light, medium, or heavy) or the specific type of armor you're wearing. If you're not wearing armor, use your proficiency in unarmored defense.

Donning and Removing Armor

Getting in and out of armor is time consuming—so make sure you're wearing it when you need it! Donning and removing armor are both activities involving many Interact actions. It takes 1 minute to don light armor, 5 minutes to don medium or heavy armor, and 1 minute to remove any armor.

Environmental Protection

The galaxy is a vast and wondrous place, with countless dangers and worlds within it, but space is inhospitable and incredibly deadly. Every type of modern armor has built-in environmental protections which, when activated, protect you from the vacuum of space. These protections allow you to survive for a few days if you must make repairs to the hull of a starship, explore an airless alien world, or endure exposure to an environmental breach while trapped inside a space station. Some armors do this through an environmental field (a minor force field specially tuned to protect from a vacuum that doesn't reduce damage from attacks), while others can be closed with helmets and airtight seals. While using your armor's environmental protections, your armor can protect you from the dangerous environmental effects of a vacuum and can facilitate self-contained breathing. This allows you to survive and breathe while within a thick or thin atmosphere, in a vacuum, or while submerged in liquid (the safety seals and rebreather offer no protection from the effects of damaging liquids, such as acid or lava). Armor protection doesn't protect you from smoke inhalation, inhaled poisons, toxic atmospheres, or corrosive atmospheres.
Armor environmental protections work only while within a thick or thin atmosphere, a vacuum, or non-hazardous liquid. In all other environments, armor is designed to cycle down, refill its air supply, and filter in the surrounding environment by entering low-power mode. This enables the armor to conserve power and air for unexpected emergencies, and to ensure its delicate systems are constantly operating at peak efficiency. To protect yourself from other environmental dangers, such as radiation, you can install armor upgrades into your armor's upgrade slots.
Armor Protections: All armors, except those with the exposed trait, allow you to breathe and survive in a thick or thin atmosphere, a vacuum, or in non-hazardous underwater environments. This does not prevent inhaled toxins or similar effects from entering your armor's systems. Ancestries like kalo that require specific environmental conditions to survive can easily obtain or modify armor to suit these needs. The wearer can activate or deactivate an armor's protections with an Interact action. A suit of armor's environmental protections last for a number of days equal to its item level (minimum 1 day).

Activation and Duration

A suit of armor's environmental protections last for a number of days equal to its item level. Activating or deactivating these environmental protections takes a single Interact action if you're wearing the armor. Activating the environmental protections on a suit of armor worn by a willing creature takes 2 actions and has the manipulate trait. Thanks to built-in safeguards and security protocols, you can't turn off the environmental protections built into the armor of an unwilling creature.
The duration of armor's environmental protections is utilized in 1-day increments. Recharging this duration requires access to a functioning starship or an environment recharging station (publicly available in most technologically advanced or technologically average settlements) and takes 10 minutes. Most of the recharging stations that replenish devices, such as batteries, also recharge armor's environmental protections, and using them to recharge suits is typically free of charge. Other functions of the armor that do not have a duration still work normally.

Armor Statistics

The Armor table provides the statistics for the various forms of protection without wearing armor and for suits of armor that can be purchased and worn, organized by category. The columns in the table provide the following statistics.

Category

The armor's category—unarmored, light armor, medium armor, or heavy armor—indicates which proficiency bonus you use while wearing the armor.

AC Bonus

This number is the item bonus you add for the armor when determining Armor Class.

Dexterity Modifier Cap (Dex Cap)

This number is the maximum amount of your Dexterity modifier that can apply to your AC while you are wearing a given suit of armor. For example, if you have a Dexterity modifier of +4 and you are wearing commercial defrex hide, you apply only a +2 bonus from your Dexterity modifier to your AC while wearing that armor.

Check Penalty

While wearing your armor, you take this penalty to Strength- and Dexterity-based skill checks, except for those that have the attack trait. If you meet the armor's Strength threshold (see Strength below), you don't take this penalty.

Speed Penalty

While wearing armor, you take the penalty listed in this entry to your 395"Speed", as well as to any other movement types you have, such as a climb Speed or swim Speed, to a minimum Speed of 5 feet. If you meet the armor's Strength threshold (see Strength below), you reduce the penalty by 5 feet.

Strength

This entry indicates the Strength modifier at which you are strong enough to overcome some of the armor's penalties. If your Strength modifier is equal to or greater than this value, you no longer take the armor's check penalty, and you decrease the Speed penalty by 5 feet (to no penalty if the penalty was –5 feet, or to a –5-foot penalty if the penalty was –10 feet).

Bulk

This entry gives the armor's Bulk, assuming you're wearing the armor and distributing its weight across your body. A suit of armor that's carried usually has 1 more Bulk than what's listed here (or 1 Bulk total for armor of light Bulk). An armor's Bulk is increased or decreased if it's sized for creatures that aren't Small or Medium in size.

Upgrades

Armor can be customized with upgrades, which include technological armor modifications and magic armor fusions. This indicates how many upgrades the armor can Install.

Group

Each type of clothing and armor belongs to an armor group, which classifies it with other armor of similar a type, material, and construction. Some abilities reference armor groups, typically to grant armor specialization effects.

Armor Specialization Effects

Certain class features can grant you additional benefits with certain armors. This is called an armor specialization effect. The exact effect depends on which armor group your armor belongs to, as listed below. Only medium and heavy armors have armor specialization effects.