An exoskeleton is a duralloy and plastic framework grafted to the recipient’s flesh and skeleton, significantly increasing the body’s ability to bear weight and stress. It also pro-vides a platform for the attachment of additional external attachments.

Benefit: An exoskeleton provides reinforcement and structural integrity to a character’s natural skeleton. Cyberware that enables the body to perform far beyond its normal limits requires either an exoskeleton or a rein-forced skeleton; without such reinforcement, the cybered-up body can tear itself apart when powerful cybernetics interact with rela-tively fragile flesh and bone.

In addition to anchoring powerful cyberware, an exoskeleton provides two oth-er benefits.

Firstly, it acts as armor, providing a +3 equipment bonus to Defense and 25% Fortification against critical hits.

And secondly, rather than taking up slots in the locations it covers, the exoskeleton actually grants an additional implant slot in each location, though any attachment that uses one of these slots becomes external, even if it would normally be internal. Internal implants installed to the exoskeleton keep their normal hit points, but gain the exoskele-ton’s hardness. Likewise, external components which normally have a lower hardness than the exoskeleton use the exoskeleton’s hardness instead of their own.