Re: [HOE] armor damage and power armor.

[PEGTeller@aol.com]

Open ended makes no difference in this case. A straight 1d4 attack is reduced to no effect by any AV of 1 or greater. The earlier comment abput a sniper rifle killing an armored person also doesn't take this into account. Someone in a Diablo or X-suit (AV4) would be about to shrug off most small arms hits, because the dice are reduced before rolling.
As far as damage to the power armor, remember that these are incredibly complex pieces of equipment, not hopped-up Kevlar vests. Penetrating wounds are damaging the circuits and fiber-optics that run along the inside of the suits. Sure, a hole in the torso might not actually cause enough damage to reduce the AV by 1, but it's a game mechanic to stimulate the degradation of the suit in general. If you want to sit in an immobile, man-shaped pillbox and hide, I'd probably give you some armor value. As for the comment that damage that is tough enough to kill the suit usually kills the wearer--well, lets look at an attack that "kills" a tank. In real life, the crew is usually killed or seriously wounded. Wrap that tank a few millimeters from your skin with no "dead space", and I think that any hits that are tough enough to pop a hole on power armor would put a hurtin' on a human.  
You do have a good point with non-powered armor. In my campaign, I usually call a vest or other non-powered armor protection useless as a story embellishment. If a big bad claws-monster does a whole swath of damage to the unlucky character, I'll usually say the vest is ruined. Likewise with a spray of bullets or explosion. Otherwise, we don;t get so anal about the damamge tracking. Vests are rare enough in my campaign (and combat deadly enough for unarmored people) that we don't bother with the extra record keeping. I would use the "5 hits/AV" method if I was goimng to use something, though.
Teller