"Cattle" is certainly a Trait that you can use with more than one base skill. One of which is Handling.

This is the beauty of Traits. You do not need to start recording a new skill for a limited scope (or derive it from a totally unrelated one with a complex formula), you just apply an existing Trait to another skill. 

The skill name will become "Handling" in the international edition. Actually, the modification will already be there in Dynamic D100.

Having Handling Horse means you can ride, too (further stunts can exist in animal-heavy environments like the Steppes to allow Horse Archery and such). 

Having Handling Dog means you can train a dog. A trained dog who is loyal to you uses up a slot, like all followers.

Having Handling Cat means you can persuade cats that they are not the boss, you are. This is probably more a Divine Power than a Trait.

It depends on what the group wants to do. The game supports both mech-combat-heavy and character-interaction-heavy stories, thanks to our conflict system that can handle even a quarrel between Koji and Sayaka as a "battle".

In addition to this, building an involving story before the weekly robot combat generates Karma, which helps a lot in winning said combat.

All pilots are larger than life in what they can achieve. This is obtained with Karma, as explained in the latest developer journal.

However, Duke, Grace Maria and Hiroshi are in fact superhumans. Their physical prowess is superior. This will show in their statistics (characteristics above 20) and they have powers, too, not just skills.

Both options are possible. The rules cover "support vehicles" that the associated pilot can control for one round by paying one Karma, otherwise the GM controls them. Borot is treated as a support vehicle that anyone can control if necessary.

If you want to focus on one Getter pilot in particular, you can use the others as support cast not assigned to a player. Alternatively three players can share Getter Robo. The issue here is that only one of them can be involved in battle at a time.

And my favourite Getter Team is the one from the ending episode, not the official one. Expect some surprises.

18 hours ago, Mazinman said:

You have to wonder why they did not just make a Scrander for Diana like Venus got. I don't think there is any reason why Diana could not use a Scrander like Venus, especially after her power boost in Great Mazinger. Will have to fix that when I run a game.

Or even better, let the players fix that. The craft rules of Revolution D100 are very flexible and easy to use and there will be a section about improving one's robot. Here Koji and Sayaka are at an advantage as they have a scientific background that other pilots lack.

3 hours ago, Mazinman said:

I honestly don't think that Diana A is that bad of a robot. They just wrote her inconsistently in the TV show. Sometimes her Scarlet Beam did no damage at all and other times it did good damage. In Shin Mazinger Zero I preferred Artemis A although Sayaka's costume in that was just ridiculous. While on the subject of female robots, will there be rules for Minerva X? 

Diana has no flight capability, and this is a huge disadvantage. She is always carried by Venus in the multi-robot shows that we used as a basis for developing the game, and this makes her instrinsically dependant on others to be effective. Not that heroic.

No plans for Minerva atm. 

3 hours ago, Mazinman said:

Speaking of Kikaiju, do you know how many the rules will come with? I assume the there will be a selection from each series. Any chance one of them will be my absolute favorite Jenova M9 from Mazinger Z?

There will be as many as we can fit in the page count. Some are already statted, others we are statting.

One reward level of the crowdfunding will be "Write a *ju and we will include it in the book".

Borot will be there, but not as a player character mecha. 

Aphrodite and Diana are easy to handcraft from Venus, but they are rather weak robots and using them would put female heroes at a severe disadvantage. Note that in both Mazinkaiser and Shin Mazinger Zero Sayaka uses Venus, not Diana. A powered up version of Venus will be available, it will be easy for the players to devise a similarly powered-up version of Diana if they wish. It boils down to what lady they want to roleplay.

The original Getter is not planned, either.  We did not purchase the rights.

Rules for personalisation will be present if there is enough room. But I suspect most players would prefer two extra pages of pre-made kaiju rather than an explanation of how to tinker with the existing stuff. Serial tinkerers usually know how to tinker without assistance.

Jeff has clarified that the "3 Rune Points for all Initiates" rule refers only to PCs. Most denizens of Glorantha will know only spirit magic. Elite warriors will have some Rune Points, but cannon fodder will not. The stats for RQ2/3 supplements should still be a valid example, and few initiates had Rune Magic in these.

Third article about the genesis of Dynamic D100. Today we explain what makes characters heroic, and how to represent it in the game.

Heroes and Karma

Defenders of humanity in a Robotech or Gundam series are clearly identifiable as soldiers, whether they have an explicit military rank or not. In a Go Nagai robotic anime, the protagonists are not soldiers. They are heroes. And what distinguishes heroes from common fighters is that they have a positive Karma. This means that their actions have made them worthy in the eyes of the Powers that Be. Their intents are pure, so their actions will succeed.

In Dynamic D100, Karma is something that heroes gain in play and that turns the odds in their favour. When the dice would say no to common fighters, true heroes can appeal to their Karma and make things happen. Of course, Karma is not endless, and if the heroes use too much of it, they will eventually run out of divine favour. More important, Karma is not something that the heroes get for free at the start of the game. They must earn it with their actions, otherwise they are doomed to fail like common mortals. True heroes fight for a superior principle, and they must prove it.

Being worthy

To prove their worthiness, heroes must stay true to what they stand for. Motivations noted on the heroes’ character sheets are the reasons why they fight, and each time a player inserts one of these Motivations into the story, the acting hero gains Karma. The more enjoyable the group finds these actions, the more Karma is generated.

But being worthy in Go Nagai’s world is not just being honourable and brave. Love is part of a hero’s worthiness as much as his or her courage. Protecting any living creature from harm and always acting as a positive example for the young generations is paramount. All heroes have a young sibling or counterpart for whom they act as a beacon of virtue, even when their virtue is not exactly above question. Overcoming human flaws is another way of displaying worthiness. A hero may fail and fall, and this will add to his or her Karma, too, to allow a heroic recovery.

Another driving force in a robotic anime is romantic love. Even though this is seldom made explicit, heroes often have feelings for someone else in the team. Sometimes even for more than one person, giving rise to romantic triangles; This provides invaluable opportunities to prove one’s worthiness against an adverse destiny and increase Karma. In some extreme cases, there may be feelings even between the hero and one of the enemies. What could be better to showcase the Power of Love?

Being cool

But Go Nagai’s stories are not always so serious. There are more light-hearted moments that make them stand out. One of them is when the heroes excite and emotion their fans during combat with their BATTLECRIES.

Because if you do not shout out loud when you fire your beams in the blue… it is not Mazinger! Yes, the weapon will activate (sorry, no vocal controls here, just good old buttons) but it would not be heroic. True heroes shout GRENDIZER GO when they take off, CHANGE GETTER when they cross in mid-air and KNUCKLE BOMBER when they give the enemy of the week a well-deserved beating. Just pushing the button is for losers.

Thus, in Dynamic D100 you get Karma each time you (the player) shout a battlecry. You are doing something cool that will inspire future generations to be heroic, just as the loud, naïve cries that the voice actors used decades ago inspired you. And this means that your hero will prevail.

Enough said, let us get ready for action, Nagai-style.

MAZIIIIIIN GO! PILDER ONNNN!

The issue that (dis)advantage rolls have is that you end up only having one level of bonus/penalty. In D&D5 you either have or do not have (dis)advantage, and the rules are built so that one single disadvantages trumps several advantages and vice versa. CoC handles advantage a bit better, but you still can have one (dis)advantage die only, I think. If you have to penalise or reward more, you must add another mechanics.

Honestly, this is not a mechanics that I would recommend, as it is can only exist in parallel with another mechanics, be it the classic +something to the die roll or the 1/something of skill of CoC. In other words, no implementation of this mechanics succeeds in totally avoiding some maths. Mythras, OpenQuest and Revolution all use a unified mechanics that achieves the same result with fewer rules to remember. Some players may be fond of extra dice, but they are more work for the GM. Is it worth it?

And above all... when you are already throwing two dice with each roll, why on earth should you add a third die instead of swapping the two you are already rolling??? 

The big question is:

• why do you need to add "drawbacks" to the use of Stunts?

Do you have statistical data that shows that players will abuse stunts if you do not make them "cost" something? That battles will become unfun? If not, then all this bookkeeping is not only annoying, it is also pointless. Just let them use stunts when appropriate and you are fine.

20 minutes ago, Diego Barretta said:

I just played CoC and Elric! when I was young, maybe 1991-1993.....

Then start without hit locations, as you have no experience with them. Use OpenQuest as the foundation, and introuduce pieces of RQG gradually.

1 hour ago, Diego Barretta said:

For long time I have no longer played heavy and detailed systems.  I come from at least a decade of narrative or light RPGs.  Now I would like to try RuneQuest Glorantha .... I read the Quickstart and I had a headache reading combat and magic rules, strike ranks, various bonuses and more.  Now ... which game do you consider preparatory for a less traumatic transition in near future? OpenQuest, Magic World or what?

OpenQuest. Note also that Norberto has translated the OpenQuest SRD into Italian, so this may also help in alleviating the pain for your players. Once everyone is comfortable with attacks/parries, utility magic and combat being deadly and not narrative, you can switch to RQ:G and introduce the extra detail of Strike Ranks, Hit Locations, Rune Magic etc. etc.

And a birdie (actually, a Raven) told me that RQ:G could become available in Italian, too.

Second part in our article series about the genesis of Dynamic D100. We have already explained that the game is based on our Revolution D100 game engine. It is a variant of classic percentile RPGs, where you have abilities like Strength, Intelligence, etc., but you also have skills and you must roll a percentile die under your skill score to succeed.

However, creating an RPG is not just choosing a play-tested game engine and sticking to it. Our game is for players who want to take parts in adventures “like Go Nagai would write them”. This does not mean that everything is pre-determined, and in fact you are free to choose the ending you like for your stories (anyone wishing for a different ending for Grendizer, perchance?). But whatever story you tell, it must sound like Mazinger, not Star Trek.

Thus, we had to make sure that the game encourages you to create Mazinger-like stories. In an RPG, a story is something you create at the table, not what the Narrator decided beforehand, so the rules should reward all players for acting like heroes in a Go Nagai series. Moreover, the outcome of actions should be the same they would have in the anime, rather than what would happen in classic roleplaying games.

But what is so unique in Go Nagai’s robotic tales? There are two key peculiarities: how they handle confrontation and battle, and how they represent heroism. In this article we will focus on the first and leave the second for another episode.

Confrontation

Confrontation is the moment when the heroes face a hostile opposition trying to frustrate their plans or to crush them outright, physically or morally. In Go Nagai’s stories, heroes face several kinds of challenges: finding missing people in a storm, persuading the United Nations not to surrender to the bad guys, infiltrating enemy bases or discovering enemy infiltrations into their own, designing and building new modules for vehicles, and, of course, fighting the minions of evil with both fists and beam guns.

However, these challenges may look dangerous, but they are hardly ever deadly. Victory or failure in a confrontation determines whether the events follow the heroes’ plans or the bad guys’ machinations, but when someone passes away there are usually vehicles involved, even when the victim was not in one. It makes the demise of an important character more heroic.

Luckily, our game engine already manages these kinds of challenges in the correct way. Revolution D100 has a Conflict System that handles any kind of climactic scene by using “narrative hit points” based on characters’ abilities and rolling dice against their skills to inflict “narrative damage”, which the players describe in detail as the scene unfolds.

We will handle combat among humans in this way, too. Characters engaged in man-to-man combat suffer narrative “hits” rather than physical damage. Once the fight is over the losing party may decide that the character died, if it is dramatically appropriate, or that another kind of defeat took place, and the risk of death is postponed until a robot battle takes place.

Battle

Battle is something that happens between two or more giant, samurai-like robot warriors, and is a matter of power and heroism, not stealth and tactics like in real-world warfare or in realistic robotic anime. Some games make combat “narrative” in the same way we handle generic confrontations, but in a context where technical mecha details are often described in detail or even pictured, reducing robot battles to a “let’s narrate it” just did not feel right. Unrealistic as it is, robot combat is internally consistent in Go Nagai’s stories. We needed rules that yield precise results, leaving little room for interpretation.

Luckily, the Advanced Combat rules of Revolution D100 can handle this: combat is detailed, blows are location-based, armour can negate certain hits but not others, and heads and limbs fly off in quantities. We had to introduce some tweaks (such as removing the rules for taking cover, which never happens in super robot battles even if it is paramount in real warfare) but in the end we found that the core concepts were up to the job.

Weapon variety

While robot battles are heavily ritualised affairs, there are no “final weapons” in Mazinger. This feature, which is prevalent in later robotic anime, is almost absent from Go Nagai’s tales. Yes, some weapons are more powerful than others, but all are deadly, so we must make players use all weapons and not just the best ones. Note also that in super robot anime weapons have no “cooldown” time like you find in many computer games, so we had to discard this solution in order to keep the right atmosphere in combat.

In the end, reproducing the effects that weapons have in the anime was enough. Some weapons are more “tactical” in that they put the enemy at a temporary disadvantage, and others are more incline to dealing a crippling of finishing blows. Revolution D100 represents this very well with Readiness and Toughness, as you can use lesser weapons to decrease your opponent’s Readiness until you drop it to zero and go for a stronger attack to overcome Toughness. Giving armour the ability to “absorb” some kinds of energies like heat or electricity also helped to ensure that no “ultimate” weapon existed, and to produce those “oh no it had no effect” moments that often happen in the series.

We also added a further incentive to weapon variety by giving a Karma bonus to the first use of a weapon. But this is about Karma, so we will talk about this in a future article.

25 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

So for a group (GM + players) who don't want to kill any pc, give low skill to the giant and follow the rule

It is not a matter of not accepting the risk of PC death. "The PC died because the giant had 300% in Maul and this was too much for him to handle." is extremely different from "The PC died because the GM decided on the spot that he was not able to handle a giant with 40% Maul when the rules says he should". 

But as Lordabdul said, we have reached the point where we are discussing some general concepts about "simulative" RPGs rather than the RuneQuest rules.

The point is that it should be a house rule that the duck player knows when he chooses to play a "small but exceptionally clever" character, not a ruling you make on the spot. Both player and GM should agree about plausibility when the player is still in time to say "Well, then if this is the rule I will play a big guy, instead".

2 hours ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

I’d probably allow it, though I might question In the case of a huge cave troll. Basically I’d go with what makes the story cool. If it’s fun to have a super effective duck parrier running circles around a giant troll then I’d go with it. If it’s more fun to express the power of the opponent swinging huge hits at a tiny target, then I might disallow the 100%+ opposed rules. 

One of the things I like about RQG/BRP games is it’s easy to make these kind of calls as a GM, and it still retains a logic.

Honestly, this would piss me off completely as a player. 

The game is not about "what makes the story cool", it is about making your characters shine in the story. If the duck's player has invested a lot of playing time in developing his character skills, seeing them nullified and the character put at risk of anti-climactic death is not cool at all. Players should know what to expect when they use their skills, particularly when their characters are masters at them.

This is also one of the reasons that makes me fiercely opposed to the "rulings, not rules" approach to RPGs. GM rulings are for situations where the situation is blurry and borderline, but here the point is very clear in the rules. A parry is an opposed skill roll, so a master subtracts his % over 100 from the attack of the less skilled opponent. The disadvantage of being smaller is already factored in the rules with the subtraction of AP from the blow instead of using an "all or nothing" parry as you have in GURPS. A giant club blow can kill the duck in any case if it connects despite the penalty, whereas a bigger adventurer with a large weapon would easily survive a parried hit. To add a further "GM call" to a situation where the player is already penalised to the point that he risks losing his character is the antithesis of fun. It is pure player frustration.

I can understand that the GM may have "suspension of disbelief" issues, too, but this cannot come at the cost of player enjoyment. "Disallowing" rules that are core and central to a character concept (and do not tell me that this is not central to the character concept: a duck with 100%+ in shortsword is built on the concept of "I may be small but I can outsmart bigger guys" - except that the GM says you cannot) is never fun. The GM should not make any call whatsoever in cases like this, just stick to the rules unless the players agree.

1 hour ago, Ian Absentia said:

Point taken -- they're the carrot at the end of the stick.  They're what an entire campaign might aspire toward, not necessarily the powers one might actively employ.

Geas rules, on the other hand, reverse that order.  You get the powers now, associated directly with proscriptive behavior, which in turn affect how one plays.  They're dead simple, too (and even older than the Ki skills!).

!i!

In other words, a little bit more playtested

6 minutes ago, sladethesniper said:

Same thing as asceticism, but instead of getting "magic" you get "psionic" abilities...not really a big mechanical difference, just a different descriptor.  I don't really know if there would be different ascetic traditions for them, so to cover my bases, I am assuming they are different.

-STS

Ah ok, so what you meant is "Asceticism that gives you access to powers from the Psi chapter of the BGB rules". 

Then the answer is "no", since all systems we recommended here give access to powers taken from their power list

3 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:

Relative to the original post, it's worth noting that the Ki Skills rules don't actually deal directly with asceticism, but provide rules for abilities that might result from ascetic devotion.  They might just as well represent a lifetime of being a badass, though.  It's a matter of interpretation.

!i!

The Ki rules are nice, but as you noted here they are good for "over the top" characters with dozens if not hundreds of years' experience. Unless you start with skills at 90+, then it takes really long to be able to use Ki. From a practical point of view, if you want to portray a character who is building a career as a mystic, they are of little use.

This is a type of question that it is dangerous to ask, as everyone will point at their favourite system even when they have not fully understood what you wanted

That said, if I have understood your question (and it is a big if), then the Mysricism rules in Mythras are a good answer. 

As much as I love "Land of Ninja", I suggest you stay clear from its Ki rules. They were extremely innovative for the times, but we are talking about 35 years ago, more or less. The rules allow you to score "super criticals" by spending Magic Points, but they require levels of competence in skills that require months if not years of playing, in real time, to have a noticeable effect in play. Note also that some of the "super criticals" have become standard skill effects in modern BRP or RuneQuest. Nice, but not really usable unless you play 2-3 times per week.

But most important of all - what do you mean by psionic asceticism ? Cause I am still afraid that not everybody (me included) really got what you were looking for.

We will publish more organic updates in the weeks that lead us to the Crowdfunding. Here is the first instalment. Most of the content is probably already known to roleplayers.

http://www.alephtargames.com/en/news/117-dynamic-d100-developer-journal

--------

This series of articles is an introduction to the upcoming Dynamic D100 roleplaying game, which Alephtar Games and Kaizoku Press are about to release. In a pinch, we want to clarify some concepts when the game is not out yet, and to give a pre-emptive answer to some questions that will probably arise.

The first point, for our friends who are anime fans but not gamers (or not roleplayers) is: "What is a roleplaying game"? We will provide a short answer here. If you already know what an RPG is, please skip to paragraph "What is the goal of Dynamic D100".

What is a Roleplaying Game?

An RPG (Role Playing Game) is a form of entertainment where a group of people take the roles of remarkable characters and describe their adventures in a fictional world –in our case, the Nagai-verse. In most RPGs there is one special player who is in charge of describing the world and determining the behaviour of all its denizens who are not among the protagonists. This player is designated as the Game Master or Narrator, and in our case is the one who impersonates all the bad guys and the support cast of scientists who help the super robots from their scientific bases. All of the other players impersonate one of the main heroes of the story – the pilots.

As you may have guessed, the game involves a lot of recitation and speaking as if you were your character – something you do not usually do when playing a card or board game. Dynamic D100 emphasizes this part more than other RPGs, as it rewards players for shouting the typical battlecries of super robot pilots ("Kooshiryooku something" or "Getter something else") during battles. However, it is not all about acting: there are parts of the game that resemble classic tabletop games, leveraging fortune and tactical cunning to make your experience more anime-like. Whenever your hero attempts something, particularly if it involves his or her robot, one or more rolls of the dice determine whether the plan succeeds or backfires.

Another peculiarity of RPGs is that there is no "winner" among the players at the end of a session. All players either win together or lose together by thwarting the machinations of evil, and if the players "lose" the Narrator does not win. Winning in an RPG is simply the fact of "having had a good time".

What is the goal of Dynamic D100?

There are literally thousands of Roleplaying Games available, each with its peculiarities that make it stand out (or not) in an immense sea of cooperative fun. Even attempting a simple classification is difficult, as there are many schools of thought locked in endless debates about the true nature of the roleplaying experience. In this series of articles we will try to avoid technicalities and focus instead on the kind of entertaining experience that Dynamic D100 makes its player enjoy, and how it does so.

To make it simple, the players of a Dynamic D100 game become the protagonists of a robotic adventure "like Go Nagai would write". It is not just a matter of having giant moveable battle machines – you have them in Star Wars, too – but how the adventures evolve, and how the giant robots, the co-protagonists of the story, are treated. If you are a robotic anime fan, you already know that there is a big difference between a robotic story by Go Nagai and one written by, for instance, Yoshiyuki Tomino, the father of "real robots". The only point in common is that the protagonists fight enclosed in fearsome mechanical giants, the rest is different.

Strangely enough, the French dubbers renamed even Duke Fleed's sister, who is called Grace Maria in the Japanese version.

Anyway, fans of the female protagonists may have some pleasant surprise coming. There will be expanded roles available for them.

And after a successful Deep Meditation1 Conflict, here is a little thread-o-mancy.

We will now make a mockup of the Combat Tracker for Dynamic D100. Some of the overlayed content will change, as I have both changed the core rules and made an even simpler version for Dynamic D100, but the core idea will stay. And we have plenty of licensed graphics for the background

Anyone has any suggestions for other useful elements to add in the CT? Many people will play Dynamic D100 with figures, but others will not and the CT is important to simplify the crunchy bits of the RD100 core.

1 - new name for Rituals in the upcoming International Edition.

Hi Lloyd,

I ask again why you do not post this in the RD100 section, since you are not playing generic BRP. This would at least avoid people posting suggestions of houserules that are actually coincident with the core rules

And it would spare people my tirades, too. I will try to address both this post and the issues you raised in the "armed to the teeth" thread.

9 hours ago, olskool said:

Allow each suit of armor a "Coverage Rating" that is represented by a PERCENTAGE that you roll under for the protection to apply.  An "off the rack" suit of armor would provide 90% coverage and a custom-fitted suit would protect on a roll of 95% or less.  Coverage Ratings can vary by armor type at the GM's discretion.  For example, you could have things like gauntlets and gloves provide from 25% to up to 50% coverage of a location. 

        Each time the armor is PENETRATED (ie damage exceeds AP) you subtract 1% from the armor's Coverage Rating.  Slashes/Impales/Crushes reduce the Coverage Rating by 5%.  The DEFENDER rolls the Coverage Dice during an attack.  The Coverage Dice can be rolled in conjunction with an Parry Dice (for a Parry skill check) to save time.  Once the Coverage Rating reaches 0%, the armor is destroyed.  I have the SUNDER ARMOR special effect reduce coverage by 10% on a hit with that SE.

Errrrrrm... in the BRP variant that he is playing, armour coverage is a standard attribute of all armours in the RAW. And you do not need to roll a separate die, you use the unit die of the attack roll to determine if you hit armour or not.

And you also win a quote in a sidebar in the next edition. Should I quote you as "olskool" ? I had not introduced the SUNDER special effect from Mythras because I do not find it particularly fun, but this sounds like a good solution. On a Sundering blow, add +1 to the coverage value of one location or layer of armour of the target. This may or may not be mendable after combat with a Repair Conflict.

10 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

I am playing Revolution D100 now and there isn't much (that I have seen) rule to break equipment.

Even in BRP weapon, with an easy weapon break rule (on special and crit attack) (which is one rule that is attracting me back to BRP), armour doesn't break..

Weapons break more frequently in RD100 than in BRP, it is just a matter of you having the opponents use the "Damage weapon" effect on a successful parry with a higher roll. I remember a fight during the playtest of the rules in which I managed to cast Bladesharp on everything I was carrying and the demon we were fighting kept breaking every single enchanted weapon I threw at it by simply parrying with its demonic blade.

9 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

You only need to defeat 1 knight, boom you get an armour... and then a second knight (much more easily), boom 2 armour...

First of all, gothic plate is crafted to fit the specific body shape of a single person. Unless you are very similar in size to the guy wearing the armour, you cannot simply take it and don it. It must be adapted to your specific figure even if it is somehow of  the same size. Which implies the intervention of an armour maker able to craft plate, who in turn is damn expensive.

This will not stop enterprising playes, but at least it will force them to learn Armour making to simply make the loot usable. Once they see the bill of the armour crafter for "tailoring the gothic suit", they will certainly learn it. Or perhaps even consider to pursue the crafter career. No risk, and most of the big bucks the adventurers get in dungeons end up in your purse.

9 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

At that stage the simplest option for me was to make (at least full chain mail) quite common...

Er.. chain mail was standard armour for everyone and his dog for most of he Middle Ages. You are doing nothing wrong if any professional fighter your players meet has mail. In fact it is city militia wearing leather that is implausible. 

Being a band of mercenaries and sellwords, your players are more than likely to have superior armour. Gothic plate is plausible, but it has its drawbacks. As you note, the guy they looted it from had a bigger purse, so most of the issues did not apply to him. Player characters are a different story.

There are several other points.

1. Getting better equipment by loot

So what? It is one of the goals of the game, so why should they not have good armour once they start making a name as fighters?

Honestly, this issue appeared soon after we started playing RuneQuest 30+ years ago. Dario used to solve it by forcing the players to pay maintenance for their equipment, which meant that you had to effectively "rebuy" it every x years or so, and pro rate the cost each time the adventure stopped for more than one month. I prefer a 10% cost per year. This implies a little bit of number crunching but it is a quick solution to penniless adventurers walking around in the medieval equivalent of a stolen Ferrari.

However, the players will eventually find a way to circumvent this and keep high quality items in their possession. At this point the GM, if he becomes uncomfortable with unplausibility, may be faced with the temptation of "taking away" the very powerful gear or rendering it less effective to even things out. I have seen this happen time and again over time. 

But, depending on the group, this might be a dangerous solution. The players may react with a sense of frustration and perceive this as depriving them of the fun. Once they have better armour, they expect to meet more dangerous opponents, not an outraging bill for repairing their gear. It is certainly plausible, but telling them that the fantastic blade they found has spoiled because they could not afford the weapon oil (or did not know that a blade needs oiling) can only detract from the fun of the game, and never add.

If you want to enforce a minimum level of coherence between character and gear, it is better to speak to your players and explain what level of plausibility you want to enforce in the game. At this point, the best option is to tell them that they must improve their characters' Status/Wealth or maintenance skills in order to use that fancy stuff on a prolonged basis (in Hero Wars you would spend a Hero Point to "cement the benefit"). Using the threat of equipment degradation to "keep players in line" is a solution that emphasizes conflict between GM and players. My experience tells me that agreement on a common sense of plausibility is a better idea. 

2. Always carrying the equipment with the best stats

This, again, is an issue I have been facing since 1987 (fu..., I am getting old). If the weapon entry says "throw more dice for damage", the players will want to always use that weapon. It is normal. Even worse for armour, where the statistics are even less varied and the players will simply look at the highest AP score they can have.

If this breaks the GM’s suspension of disbelief (and I confess that for me, it does), what are the possible solutions?

First of all, talk to the player and agree on plausibility. Explain to them that an implausible choice of weaponry, rules mechanics or not, is an act of bad roleplaying if your character is a fighter. Remind them that you are playing a game of impersonation, not a wargame. A real fighter does know that there is no “one size fits all” and would never, ever rely on using always the same weaponry, no matter the difference in sheer stopping power. I stress it again: never, ever the same gear for all situations. Stress it to your players, too.

The point is simple: some weapons are for the battlefield, others are for personal defense and everyday use in areas where civilians may carry. An intermediate category (spears, rifles) is battlefield-oriented but it is still plausible to find it in the hands of a guard on active duty. You do not carry M60s in town, and heavy crossbows or pikes are the equivalent of an M60. Only a soldier who is marching to battle or defending a fortification is supposed to have such a weapon ready. Same for armour. Some elaborate suits of armour are for the battlefield only. They were not worn 24/24, except when the fighter was marching into battle. It is not so difficult.

But what happens when the player says “I do not care about plausibility, I expect trouble and my character wishes to stay alive”? Well, in this case, too, nerfing or damaging the players’ hard earned “toys” to prevent unrealistic use may generate frustration in the players, and give rise to a conflictual attitude between players and GM.

Revolution D100 tries to address this issue (when it is an issue, because, as explained in the sidebar, not all groups find it problematic) by establishing a simple, fair, well-known and plausible penalty to social, agility and endurance feats when wearing battlefield equipment outside the battlefield. It is in the table on page 73, and the important point is that the players have access to this information and so should expect that the Narrator applies it when they choose to go around in heavy armour and weaponry. No excuses; Be fair and strict and simply apply the rules: you are in full plate all day round? -30% to one social roll and two agility or endurance rolls. You are also carrying a halberd (and no, there is no such a thing as a scabbarded halberd)? -30% to a further social roll and two further agility rolls. You are protected against harm, sure, but Billy the Robber (Agility 80%, Stealth 70%) will have an easy time cutting your purse undisturbed, and forget about catching him when he flees, or persuading the bystanders to tell you where he lives.