ya Velusion, I bit over my head. Although I do need a good reference on fbik's. So for all books and tutorial I have ovoid fbik's totally. I need to learn this though, so if you have any suggestion I'm open to it.

you said"t seems to me that using Set Driven Keys or" Just to clarify. I'm not, I have tried but failed. For right now I'm just limiting the joints. Once that limit is reached it rotates the next joint. I end up creating 3 ik's for one arm. It’s a mess.

you lost me here "You could try parenting the shoulder armor to the clavical then keyframe animating it's rotation to simulate the arm hitting it." I know what you mean by parenting, but not second part.

Have you used biped fbik? (youneedthisman.com). is there ever a point in using mayas fbik. It seems so limited.