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{{trope}}
{{quote|''I shoot the hippopotamus with [[Abnormal Ammo|bullets made of platinum]], ''
''Because if I use leaden ones, his hide is sure to flatten 'em.''|''Hilaire Belloc''}}
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{{examples}}
== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Champions]]''
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** The Penetrating power advantage: even if the attack is completely stopped by enemy defenses, a little (averages to 1/6) will always get through.
* Most modern day RPG's have some kind of armor piercing bullets.
* ''[[Shadowrun]]'' had APDS (Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot) ''bullets'' for firearms (sabot loads for medium calibers like .30 actually exist, but of course there are trade-offs).
* ''[[GURPS]]'' has various "armor divisors" from 2 through infinity. For example: in the ''Ultra-Tech'' book even handgun bullets can be loaded with the High Explosive Multi-Purpose ([[Fun with Acronyms|HEMP]]) warhead which reduces the effectiveness of armor to one fifth normal by using a sort of shaped charge.
* Most weapons in ''[[Warhammer
** Before 8 ed it means how good an armor they can bypass but worked as all-or-nothing (in game terms, weapon's AP value negates any Armour save weaker or equal to itself, but does nothing against better armor). In early editions, power weapons do not allow armour saves to happen against them, ever, in later have AP from 4 (ignores Carapace) to 2 (ignores improved types of Power Armour).
*** Given that most infantry weapons have an AP stat of at least 5, this renders any models with an armour save of 5 or 6 pretty much unprotected against enemy fire. Like the Imperial Guard, who are unfortunate enough to be squishy humans. And armed with a laser gun with no armour piercing value whatsoever.
* [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle|Its fantasy counterpart]] has Armor Piercing Attack as a special ability of certain weapons, like guns and crossbows. It lowers the target's armor even further (in addition to the modifier based on the strength of the weapon used).▼
** In 8th ed. it was changed to adjustment, more like in ''[[Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay]]'' - Armour save is reduced by weapon's AP value (to tell them apart, the new type AP values are negative numbers), and AP is somewhat less common (normal bolters don't have it, only heavy).
▲* ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle
* The ''[[Hero Clix]]'' version of the feat card allows any character who wields it to still do 1 damage even if it would normally be reduced to 0. They still have to have at least a damage value of 1, though.
* A clip of ammunition with this in ''[[Mekton]] Zeta'' costs four times as much as a normal round and halves the target's armour value. (For a similar price, you can skip attacking the target's mech ''at all'' and [[Shock and Awe|shoot electric bullets]], which bypass armour and directly affect the enemy pilot.)
* ''[[BattleTech]]'' offers armor-piercing shells for its standard and light autocannons, which may inflict critical
* ''[[Earthdawn]]'' had armor-defeating hits: basically, if you rolled well enough on your attack role, you could ignore the effect of your target's armor. In addition, some weapons and spells (razor orb being the most notable) were designed to cut through armor so a lower roll could still be an armor defeating hit.
* In ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'', spells ending in -dict (such as Diabolic Edict), and the annihilator ability, require your opponent sacrifice a card, getting around protection, absorb, indestructability, damage prevention, high toughness, regeneration, and everything else. Unfortunately, your opponent still gets to ''choose'' which card he sacrifices.
* [[Dungeons & Dragons]]
* In ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]] 3ed/3.5'', a number of attacks can ignore certain categories of defenses, and become a very major part of the strategy in advanced play. Many spells ignore armor; a handfull also ignore spell resistance and saves or deal damage of a type that is virtually impossible to resist - spells with all four of these traits are highly valued. A rogue or ninja's backstab attacks, conversely, ignore dodging and a number of related defenses which are often the best options against magic damage. Lances do not actually negate any defenses outright, but due to the way accuracy and damage reduction function in the game possess characteristics that make them extremely effective against almost all forms of defense.▼
** ''[[Birthright]]'' rules give crossbows armor penetration (target's armor counts as 5 points worse at short range and 2 at medium).
** ''Player's Option: Combat & Tactics'' ("2.5") model gives "armor penetration" ability to some weapons, including pile arrows at short range and crossbow bolts up to medium range: they ignore a few AC points from armor,<ref>separately from specific weapons working better against general classes of armor they were designed to defeat (e.g. maces vs. mail, picks and bills vs. plate, flails vs. shields) and classes of armor having varied efficiency against [[Damage Typing|general types of weapons]])</ref> but not from dexterity or magic.
** In 3.0, a combination of very high critical hit rates and the buff Bless Weapon were able to negate armor on 60% or more of all attacks. Nerfed in 3.5, where critical buffs cannot stack and are exclusive with any buff that would actually make them worthwhile anyway.▼
▲** In
** Certain monk builds based on grappling also negate armor.
** ''[[Pathfinder]]'' features firearms that ignore armor at short range but are expensive and impractical for an adventurer not specialized in their use, unless in a setting where they are widespread, and in this case [[Armor Is Useless|wearing armor becomes pointless]].
▲** In 3.0, a combination of very high critical hit rates and the buff Bless Weapon were able to negate armor on 60% or more of all attacks. Nerfed in 3.5, where critical buffs cannot stack and are exclusive with any buff that would actually make them worthwhile anyway.
== Video Games ==
* ''[[Ancient Domains of Mystery]]'': There is a weapon called ''phase dagger'' that completely ignores the armour of the target. The downside is that on each hit, the game throws at you a message about you easily cutting through the armour, which requires you to press [more] much more often. And the dagger itself doesn't do much damage anyway, making it useful only against [[Heavily Armored Mook
* ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' does this with armored enemies, who require a specific weapon type to get past it. Fortunately, they begin to show up just as you get the biggest [[Badass]] around, whose weapons all come with the armor-piercing ability, into your party.
** In all the ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games, Flare and Ultima tend to be armor-piercing attacks.
** ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'' had guns and measures, both of which only calculated the weapon's strength for damage. So while they were good against enemies that had high defenses, it didn't matter how strong a character was when using them. However, it doesn't help that some of the tougher enemies only take a 16th of the damage from the two weapons.
* ''[[Fire Emblem]]''
** Throughout the games, Luna generally ignores your opponents' defensive stats whenever it triggers. Although, the 3DS games causes it to halve Defense and Resistance instead of just reducing them to zero.
** The breath attacks from Dagons and Fire Dragons ''Fire Emblem: Gaiden'' ignores their target's Defense.
* In ''[[Legend of Dragoon]]'', the group knew they'd stand no chance against the Divine Dragon on normal terms, so they went on a quest to find the Dragon-Block Staff (made specifically for fighting dragons), thus allowing them to fight a significantly de-powered Divine Dragon with a chance of victory (which is funny, because it still manages to be [[That One Boss]]).
* ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' has three different kinds of non-health defenses. Powers and weapons receive damage multipliers against specific defenses. Powers will not perform their full effect against armoured targets (Attempting to knock down a target with a concussive shot while they are protected will just stagger them), but may still damage their protective barrier (and may even be unable to damage targets who are unprotected - Overload, for example, is a counter to shields and synthetic enemies, and does no health damage to organic enemies, only being able to damage their shields)
* In ''[[Alien vs. Predator|Aliens Versus Predator 2]]'', Praetorian Xenomorphs are immune to most standard gunfire, and only vulnerable to heavy weapons or special armor-piercing bullets from the lighter ones.
** Of course, Predator players have to take down Praetorians the manly way: with their armor-piercing ''[[Blade on a Stick|spears]]''.
* One of the Samurai's abilities in ''[[Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice]]'' allows half of his basic attack's damage to ignore the enemy's defense. There's also a gun skill called Armor Piercing, but it subverts it by not ignoring the opponent's defense in any way.
* ''[[First Encounter Assault Recon|FEAR 2]]'' has several weapons which disregard or degrade the functionality of armor, both for enemies and the player.
** To be more specific: all weapons, especially in the first game, deal part of the damage directly to the health. However, in most weapons the damage that isn't absorbed by the armor is a very small fraction of the total. However, there's a weapon in each game (the Penetrator in the first game, the Hammerheadin the second) that ignores armor almost completely, making them true examples of this trope.
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* ''[[Warcraft]] 3'' has various damage and armor types. Certain damage types may deal more or less damage depending on armor type, while armour amount also influences how much damage is received through percentage reduction. One type of armor (Divine) is practically immune to any damage except one type of damage (Chaos). Spells tend to ignore physical armor when inflicting damage, but may instead be affected by some abilities or fail to work altogether on some unit classifications.
** In ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', this trope used to exist as ''Armor Penetration'', a very desirable stat for classes that mainly inflict physical damage, such as rogues and warriors, but it was removed due to balance issues, though those two retain abilities to reduce the opponent's armor with a debuff for the benefit of their allies.
* Speaking of Blizzard games, both ''[[
** As for the secondary armor/damage systems, Starcraft has one in which different attack types may do half, three-quarters, or full damage depending on unit type, with "concussion" type attacks dealing full damage to "light" units, three-quarters damage to "medium" units and half damage to "heavy" units. ''[[
* In ''[[Fallout 3]]'' the Deathclaw Gauntlet ignores armor entirely.
** Largely averted in ''[[Fallout 2]]'' but only due to bad design. Hollow-point and other "regular" ammo is generally superior to armor-piercing ammo in any given situation with the AP Needler ammo and the AP rocket (!) ammo being exceptions.
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*** A couple of rarer ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'' melee weapons have 'ignores DT/DR' listed in their description. This amounts to dealing all their damage straight to an enemy's HP. One notable example of such a weapon is the aptly named Ripper, a [[Chainsaw Good|chainsaw short sword.]] There is also a perk that allows any of the player's melee attacks to ignore up to 15 points of damage threshold.
* Featured in ''[[Paper Mario (franchise)|Paper Mario]]'' with Watt, whose basic attack ignores the enemy's defense (making her one of the most useful partners in the game, especially against high-defense enemies), as well as badges which would apply this property to your Jump or Hammer attacks. (Items and the Star Storm power also ignore defense.) ''[[Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door|The Thousand-Year Door]]'' also features said badges (and items/damage-dealing Star Powers), and included Yoshi, whose spit attack had this property (and was needed to beat a mid-level boss who pretty much had infinite defense), as well as the secret character {{spoiler|Ms. Mowz}}, whose attack is ''literally'' an [[Armor-Piercing Slap]].
* In ''[[Master of Magic]]'' for units with Armor Piercing attack
** Attacks of units with "Illusion" ability or heroes wielding "Phantasmal" weapons ignore armor completely, so the damage is determined only by attack roll (thus if a hero has +7 <ref>30%+7*10%=100%</ref> total bonus to hit, every attack inflicts maximum damage), and miss chance if the target is under Blur spell. This bypasses Missile Immunity and even Magic Immunity (they add +50 Defense<ref>average 15 damage points absorbed, for each figure</ref> vs. relevant attacks, which is ignored along with the rest). Unless the target has Illusions Immunity (such as undead, even the weakest). Phantasmal weapons are very expensive, and extremely rare <ref>occasionally may appear in lair/node treasure on Myrror, in Merchant semi-random event (2%-10% chance depending on Fame, and you still must have ''that'' much gold) and Gift [[Random Event]] (an ancient god returns and happens to like ''your'' [[Non-Entity General|Wizard]], good luck)... if one of these 9 items from 250 total happens to be randomly rolled, on top of everything else</ref>.
* In ''[[Master of Orion]] 2'' some weapons can be made in armor-piercing variants (and some in shield-piercing, for that matter) so that damage that passes through armor/shields is applied to the target ship's internals immediately.▼
** Doom Damage caused by a few spells and unit abilities skips Defense roll (and circumvents Immunities) and chance to miss from Blur ''and'' always hits (even through Blur), and there's no immunity to it. "Chaos" property (one of ''two'' more expensive than Phantasmal) gives it to the hero weapons, but also halves damage.
** "Eldritch Weapon" enchantment improves melee, thrown and normal missile attacks by giving [[Damage Typing|Magical attack]] (which overcomes [[Immune to Bullets|Weapon Immunity]]) and lowering the target's chance to block by 10% (usually from 30%, i.e. reduces average blocked damage by 1/3).
▲* In ''[[Master of Orion]] 2'' some weapons can be made in armor-piercing variants,
** Heavy and Xentronium armor negate armor bypassing, but neither can protect against an attacker equipped with an Achilles Targeting Unit device. Shield piercing weapons can be stopped with the Hard Shields device.
* In ''[[Impossible Creatures]]'', creatures that attack with quills or horns will bypass a portion of the enemy's defense.
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* Starting in ''[[Space Empires|Space Empires IV]]'', weapons can now skip armor, in addition to shields.
* The armor piercing tech in ''[[Sword of the Stars]]''. [[Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better|It makes kinetic weapons]] [[A-Team Firing|more accurate and less likely to bounce off the hull]], [[Necessary Drawback|though you get less actual damage in return]]. The Polarized Plasmatics sub-family will deal extra damage depending on [[Body Armor as Hit Points|the extra health granted by armour upgrades]]. Gluonic Torpedoes go through Deflectors and Disruptors, while Mesonic Torpedoes go through all shields other than [[Like Cannot Cut Like|Meson Shields]]. [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Shield Breaker Rounds]] can bring down all shields, [[Crippling Overspecialization|though they don't do any actual damage to the ship]].
* The Terran EMP Shockwave in ''[[
* ''[[Borderlands]]'': one of [[Friendly Sniper|Mordecai's]] skills enables him to bypass enemy shields. Against the Guardians, their health bars being tiny, it is absolutely devastating.
* ''UFO Aftermath'' has no less that '''seven''' damage types: soft, universal, hard, [[Frickin' Laser Beams|laser, plasma]], burn ([[Kill It with Fire|fire]] and [[Hollywood Acid|acid]]), paralyze and warp (the more armor you have, the more it hurts). Transgenants and armors have separate resistances for each. There is an eighth type referred to as "exception" for a few weapons like the psionic crusher.
* ''[[Company of Heroes]]'' gives AP bullets and shells as special abilities for American and British machine guns and AT guns. The former ability turns the dedicated anti-infantry HMG into a feared light-vehicle counter, while the latter boosts the penetration of the AT guns. As the British 17pdr is already one of the best antiarmor weapons in the game, the AP-Discarding Sabot ability makes it one of the few weapons that can counter [[Infinity+1 Sword|King Tigers]].
* While traditionally in ''[[Armored Core]]'' series, Attack Power is the only attribute to watch out for weapons (meaning, how much you need to pump it to any given target to make them go kablooey), 4/for Answer introduced the [[Force Field]]-like Primal Armor and consequently, "PA Penetration". Energy weapons, sniper rifles and railguns do this job really well, and since about a good 4/5ths of the game's armor isn't exactly energy-weapon proof, this can only go wrong, were it not for the balancer mechanics.
* ''[[Ragnarok Online]]'' not only has weapons that ignore defense, but a dagger called the Ice Pick, which isn't reduced by the target's defense and then proceeds to do more damage depending on how much defense it had. Wearing armor actually makes you take more damage. Thankfully, they are quite rare.
* In ''[[Guild Wars]]'', a few skills have an "armor penetrating ability" reducing a target's armor by a percent against the one attack. Due to how armor works (Extra armor is multiplicative in how much damage it reduces), this has a varying effect depending on the amount of armor. Guild Wars weapon skills that add damage also add a fixed amount of damage, that is unaffected by armor, making them useful against highly armored targets.
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** But then there is the upgrade for the pistol, which makes every shot from it ignore armor. Granted, the pistol isn't very powerful, but one or two headshots will still take out every single mook, heavily-armored or not.
* ''[[Star Ruler]]'' has weapons that partially and completely ignore armour, but usually don't do that much actual damage. The ''Galactic Armory'' mod adds weapons that are good at killing shields [[Crippling Overspecialization|but don't do anything to armor or health]].
* ''[[X-COM]]: UFO Defense'' and ''Terror from the Deep'' starts you with armor piercing weapons.
** ''[[UFO Alien Invasion]]'' ran on a gleeful rampage with [[Damage Typing]], so armor actually ''does'' work better or worse against different attacks. Medium-caliber bullets generally penetrate better than blast damage, low-caliber bullets or shotgun flechettes, and high-caliber bullets penetrate better than medium-caliber, though such weapons don't fire in long bursts. Alien needle guns are reduced more than by half only with [[Powered Armor]]; "Encased Plasma" ammo have only slightly greater total damage, but burn through any armor like it's not there.
* In ''[[Mega Man Battle Network]]'' there are ''four kinds'' of armor that can be pierced - Shielding (which yields to Break), Shadow (which yields to [[Outside the Box Tactic|Sword]]), Barriers and Auras (which yield to Wind), and Invisible (which yields to Cursor).
** ''[[Mega Man Star Force]]'' retains most of these except for the Cursor-Invisible relationship. You can still bypass [[Mercy Invincibility]] under certain circumstances, though.
* ''[[
* ''[[Battlefield (series)|Battlefield]] 2'' had an unlockable anti-materiel sniper rifle for the sniper class, the M95. It's main claim to infamy among the player base was its ability to snipe the pilots of helicopters through their armored canopy glass, something no other gun would do.
* ''[[Command
* The Mass Driver in the ''[[X (video game)|X]]-Universe'' games. The weapon will ignore ship shields (which is 90% of a ship's overall health, generally) and damage the ship's hull directly. Mounted [[Spam Attack|en-mass]], this small, fighter based weapon is [[Death of a Thousand Cuts|hilariously effective at killing 4 kilometer long destroyers]].
* In ''King Arthur: The Roleplaying Wargame'', certain units can get the armour piercing trait, which reduces enemy armour by 50%. Oddly enough no archer units can get it, but then again ''King Arthur'''s archer units are generally considered [[Game Breaker
* ''[[Arcanum]]'' has two guns, both [[
* This type of attack is nearly mandatory in ''[[World of Tanks]]'' - not every gun has good HE damage, meaning that often times your ability to deal damage relies entirely on penetrating the enemy's armor from any direction possible.
* In ''[[Vega Strike]]'' some weapons' damage is not completely stopped by shields, though usually a small part. Among the best shield-piercers are kinetics and lasers, the short-wave ones being better (capship x-ray lasers have less than 3% of damage stopped), but even common masers get more than half damage through the shield; the downside is that there's not a lot to begin with.
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Strategy Game Tropes]]
[[Category:Magic and Powers]]
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