Armour exploit?

[Barak Shathur]

Hello all, first post.

I'm playing RQ3 for the first time, and I have a question about layering armour. According to the official errata "it is possible to wear soft armor under another armor to provide added protection. Hard armor may not be worn under any other type of armor. In any case, the outer layer of armor must be heavier than the inner (i.e., have more armor points). The interior soft armor adds its normal AP to the total armor at TWICE normal ENC cost". Following this it seems to me that it is better to use Ringmail over Bezainted (9 AP, 20 ENC, cost 1300 for full suit for a small person) than e.g. chainmail over Soft leather (8 AP, 22 ENC, cost 3900 for full suit for a small person) or Plate over Soft leather (9 AP, 26 ENC, cost 5460 for full suit for a small person).  Chain over bezainted might be the next step up at 11 AP,  28 ENC, cost 4260, but at that point the ENC gets a little extreme. Anyway, doesn't this seem weird? Or did I miss something? Thanks,

Nick

[jajagappa]

58 minutes ago, Barak Shathur said:

Anyway, doesn't this seem weird? Or did I miss something?

Welcome to the forum!

If you go back to the official errata you quoted, you'll find what you missed.

58 minutes ago, Barak Shathur said:

Hard armor may not be worn under any other type of armor

Basically anything with metal (bezainted, ringmail, chainmail, scale, plate) counts as hard armor and you cannot wear it under other armor.

The only armor that counts as soft is quilted linen (I think that was in RQ3, but that's going back aways), soft leather and maybe hard leather (cuirboilli is also hard, and stiff, and cannot be worn underneath).

[Shiningbrow]

That's weird. Chain was regularly worn under plate...

[Brootse]

1 hour ago, jajagappa said:

Welcome to the forum!

If you go back to the official errata you quoted, you'll find what you missed.

Basically anything with metal (bezainted, ringmail, chainmail, scale, plate) counts as hard armor and you cannot wear it under other armor.

The only armor that counts as soft is quilted linen (I think that was in RQ3, but that's going back aways), soft leather and maybe hard leather (cuirboilli is also hard, and stiff, and cannot be worn underneath).

Soft Armor: Soft Leather, Bezainted, Ringmail, and Chainmail
Hard Armor: Hard Leather, Cuirboulli, Scale, Lamellar, Brigandine, and Plate

Source: the version of the Players Book I have on page 67.

Edited August 15, 2019 by Brootse

[Byll]

Amour units that force a retreat on the unit that they attack get an additional move and attack in the armour exploitation phase

- wait, that's a different game... Sorry, carry on.

[Sumath]

But what 'small person' can afford to carry 20ENC of weight anyway, before you even pick up a weapon, shield or backpack?

There's not much point in having such armour if your parry, attack (and most of your other skills) are suffering high ENC penalties.

[Barak Shathur]

 

38 minutes ago, Sumath said:

But what 'small person' can afford to carry 20ENC of weight anyway, before you even pick up a weapon, shield or backpack?

There's not much point in having such armour if your parry, attack (and most of your other skills) are suffering high ENC penalties.

Ever heard of dwarves?

The idea I came up with is to houserule what jajagappa said, namely that anything other than soft leather counts as hard (stiff leather counts as hard). I will also ignore the errata and instead use the original rules in the Player's Book, according to which overlapping anything other than soft armour triples the ENC of the lesser armour. The errata also says that the outer armour has to have higher AP than the inner, but I don't see why you shouldn't be able to put e.g. a cuirbouillie vambrace over maille. The original rules don't have this restriction, so in this case the cuirbouillie (being lighter) would have its ENC tripled, which I think works well. Thus it's not too ENC-costly to combine non-soft armour types on small locations such as the head (maille coif under helm) or arms (vambrace over maille), while bigger pieces of extra armour (cuirass over byrnie, greaves over trews) become quite cumbersome. This seems to accord well with reality. And seeing as pretty much anything bigger than a halfling will have damage bonus, adventurers will want to bump their AP:s as much as possible if they want to keep their limbs  

Edited August 15, 2019 by Barak Shathur
typo

[Sumath]

Even with high CON, your max ENC is limited by your STR though. Every point of ENC above that penalises your parry by 5%! The extra few armour points is not worth borking your 12-point shield parry for, surely?

[Barak Shathur]

3 minutes ago, Sumath said:

Even with high CON, your max ENC is limited by your STR though. Every point of ENC above that penalises your parry by 5%! The extra few armour points is not worth borking your 12-point shield parry for, surely?

Are we talking about the same game here? This is about Runequest 3, and I can't find that rule anywhere. Please point me to it if I have missed something.

[Sumath]

Ah, sorry. I just naturally assume anything on here is about RQG these days. Didn't even notice the RQ3 comment at the beginning.

[Barak Shathur]

No problem