Ad Astra armor

 Early on I made, as an example, a Cilindarean commando suit. Think of it as a fully loaded Mandalorian warrior suit, or maybe a bit like Warmachine from Marvel. (Really, they're pretty similar in most respect, except that the Star Wars versions probably have less ammo for their bigger weapons, and there's no such thing as the repulsor blasts.) I'm heading towards the crew of a ship that are iconic for Ad Astra, and it includes two main characters who are partners as well as their associated sidekicks and others who make up their crew. All in all, maybe a half dozen characters, maybe one or two more if you include a droid or two. One of them is an ethnic janissary, and although the janissaries and the Cilindareans aren't exactly the same, I'm using the Cilindarean armor that I already devised in the m20 game to represent janissary traditional armor too; the two groups are related culturally in a somewhat uneasy rivalry yet also alliance kind of fashion, and although janissaries are much less likely than Cilindareans to hire themselves out as mercenary bands, considering themselves blessed to have won their freedom and happy to keep it as armed and very capable militias on their colony worlds, a Cilindarean and a janissary are meant to be more or less equivalent as a military unit.

The second half of this partnership, though, is a renegade Serean knight; one who probably grew up on a planet of one of the colonies and has had, since at least the time of his parents, little connection to his Serean culture, having rejected it and embraced the Christian religion of the Bernese and others of the old Marian Empire tradition (some of the Revanchists are a type of heretic Christian, but most of them have abandoned their faith within the last three or four generations or so.) What kind of gear would a Serean knight (or for that matter, a knight generally) be expected to have, especially one who runs as a kind of privateer/smuggler as a living? And how to do I make sure that his combat effectiveness is about as good as that of the janissary with his fully kitted out suit?

I refer you, again, before we begin, to the m20 document that has the rules for the game, specifically the equipment page. So, let's get started. I think a knight in Ad Astra isn't exactly like a Medieval knight, with the heaviest armor available, but he's also not like a Jedi who just wears dumb brown robes. This character (name TBD) wear a black ballistic cloth flight suit with some embedded shielded plates on them, with another padded jacket, tunic or vest on top of that, which has a built in energy shield. While his traditional weapons are his psionic sword and shield, he also carries a heavy radium pistol, a number of grenades, maybe some additional smaller pistols in another holster or two, and knives in his boot sheathes. He's probably got a helmet, but may not always wear it, prefering often to simply put up the hood of his jacket.

Because psionic powers are penalized with any armor heavier than light, this description of armor will be (and honestly sounds like, anyway) light armor, +4 to AC. This is a 2,000 credit base cost. The really expensive addition is the energy shield, which is unusual on a personal armor set, especially a light armor set (although notably, nothing in the rules precludes it, just setting stuff that says it's unusual.) This adds Damage Reduction 10 against radium weapons and adds an additional 10,000 credits to the cost. (For reference, my fully loaded Cilindarean battle suit costs 18,575.) The knight suit would also have a commlink for 50 credits on one wrist bracer or gauntlet, and a utility belt for an additional 250. It would have, in particular for this character, active shadow camouflage, giving him an armor affinity for Stealth (2,000 credits) and the ballistic cloth is especially treated by psionic sages and warlocks to give it the ability to absorb small amounts of kinetic energy and store it for later use (seen, kinda sorta, in the Black Panther's suit in the Marvel movies.) This gives him also the Acrobatics affinity, so that's another 2,000 credits.

He doesn't have a jet pack, but I imagine he owns some kind of small speeder and keeps in "garaged" on the ship when not in use, and he has an optional face shield that would look very similar to the Winter Soldier's face mask that serves as a sensor and HUD interface as well as a breath mask (Perception affinity, +2,000 and 250 respectively.)

This armor, then is certainly in the same ballpark as his partner's fully loaded janissary suit; it's 16,300 not counting the mask and 18,550 with it. I'm actually a little on the fence about the mask. If I were more inclined to tell stories about singular characters, I'd rather let him have it, but since I'm talking about stories about a partnership, I don't think that they both need it. Plus, the psionics powers that he has allows him to do a bunch of other stuff; maybe it'd be nice if they had their own space a little bit more. 

On the other hand, I'm also on the fence about the radium shield. The psionic power negate energy would represent his psionic shield and do something similar, and I could maintain the setting element that this is more of a vehicular bit of equipment rather than a personal clothing/armor piece of equipment. However, I'm also considering maybe giving him a couple of one-of-a-kind warlock powers made incarnate on the armor; maybe catfall and biofeedback. If I do take away the shield, I'll certainly add those, and be much more likely to assume that he does have a facemask, although he may not always have it with him.