Magick/Tech Loophole

If you are a mage, wearing tech items increases your chance to critically fail. However if you never use a weapon and just cast spells all the time then surely this critical fail chance doesn't matter?
The moral of the story: If you use nothing but spells you can get away with wearing tech armour.

 

Not to mention that the magickal Dread Armor gives the absolute highest weight-to-protection ratio in the game.

 

How about tech characters with magic armor? From what I can tell there's no real penalty unless you've got tech stats through the roof.

 

Well, if you're a super-mage wearing tech armor, then when you are hit by an enemy you can have a critical failure of your armor. Of course, if you're a super-mage and anyone touches you, it's your own fault.

 

I'm fairly certain this is not the case.
Basically there are 3 outcomes from casting an offensive spell:
Succeeds
Fails due to magick resistance of critter
Fails due to tech aptitude of critter

I had always assumed this too but when I actually investigated it seems that criticals apply only to weapons. So if your tech plate gives you +50% critical failure, it means that you are 50% more likely to fail with your *weapon*.
(If someone knows otherwise then please point me to the evidence).

A lot of the time this hardly seems to matter.
e.g. if you have a high melee skill you might have a 1% chance of critically failing.
1 + 50% = 1.5
So it doesn't make much difference.
If you are a melee master then you cannot get critical misses so it has no effect whatsoever on you.

 

Hmmm...so, that's what's been doing it, then.
Is there a script to show how your armor breaks on a critical miss as opposed to your weapon?
I was playing as a very magickal character (aptitude around 90), and I had been using the charmed axe while wearing electro-armor.
The character had a critical failure while attacking, not being attacked, and the armor broke. In this way, I think the armor has critical failures, but not in the same way as weapons would. For example, if something would normally damage your armor by ten HPs, the critical failure would up it to thirty.
Of course, it's almost never happened to me, maybe once or twice at the most. Still notable.

 

I'm not sure about that Gross.
When you have a critical failure with a weapon you can hit yourself. I think depending on where this self-hit is on the critical chart you can destroy your own armour. But that is just an educated guess.