Variable Armor Points

[Triff]

Variable armor points, like in Stormbringer, seems to be a realistic system, but I have not used it so far because of the allready long time combat takes. With hit locations gone (one roll less), I'm considering adding variable AP.

Those of you who have played with this system allready, what are the weaknesses and strengths? How does it affect gameplay?

SGL.

[Jason D]

I actually prefer variable armor protection far and above fixed armor point values.

It allows for some variability, doesn't slow combat down that much, and even creates some nice options for graphical descriptions of armor working or not working, such as:

(low roll) "Your armor only stops one point? Okay, then. The dagger slips between joints of the half-plate and plunges deeply into your flesh. You take seven points of damage after the armor protection."

(high roll) "Your armor stops eight points? Okay, then. The dagger scratches along the metal plates on your breastplate and leaves a bright scratch, but doesn't penetrate."

It also helps add an air of unpredictability, where fixed armor values don't. A character with fixed-point value full plate layered with something else, for example, is nigh-invulnerable to any hand weapons that don't critical or have a significant damage bonus.

I was happy to include both systems in the core rules, but whenever I play, I'm using random armor protection.

[badcat]

I have used it for a long time. It adds a lot of suspense, excitement, and flavor. Also, I developed an 'armor point' system where I assigned a point value to each individual piece of armor and had the total armor points equate to a roll based on the total of armor points. As, helm 1 point, plate cuirass 3 points, equals 4 Armor Value, which corresponds to 1D8-1 on the table, for instance. Like having your cake and eating it too. The detail can be tailored until it feels just right.

[Nightshade]

I tend to find variable armor a good thing when hit locations aren't in use (I experienced it pretty extensively when running Alternity) but probably one die roll more than its worth to me when using locations. Without locations, I think there's too much variability in terms of what armor protects where for a fixed value to be a good abstraction for quasi-realistic games.

[Joseph Paul]

I find variable armor points to be terribly unrealistic and they are one of the reasons that I never did get into Stormbringer.

I can't see anyone investing in armor that has as large a spread of vulnerability as represented by a random die roll. Real warriors did not spend the equivalent of a modern house for armor that didn't protect reliably.

If you are going to get past the armor roll a crit or work harder for it by targeting gaps or thin spots at appropriate skill reductions.

Here is a tip for reducing the pain of using some of the options all together-roll all of the dice at once. That's right- color code a pair of D10s as the percentiles, a D20 (red) as the hit location, and the damage dice as appropriate, perhaps they should be steel colored. Throw'em, read the percentiles and decide if it is a hit. If it is a failure play progresses to the next player. If it is a success you have all of the info you need already in front of you, hit location and damage.

Want to avoid the math for figuring if the hit is a fumble, crit, or special?

Add another D20 (don't forget to make it a different color!). The percentiles are then used as pass/fail while this D20 is used to determine if you have critted on a 1, specialed on a 2-4, and on a 20 you have fumbled.

When RQ came out it was lightyears ahead of other games in terms of tactical play and verisimilitude. I can't help but think of variable armor as the antithesis of that.

Joseph Paul

[drohem]

Yeah, when I ran a Strombringer campaign, I used armor protections values from RQ3. I don't like the concept of variable armor points.

[RMS]

I find variable armor points to be terribly unrealistic and they are one of the reasons that I never did get into Stormbringer.

I can't see anyone investing in armor that has as large a spread of vulnerability as represented by a random die roll. Real warriors did not spend the equivalent of a modern house for armor that didn't protect reliably.

The irony here being that random armor is much more realistic than fixed armor values because real armor is full of strong and weak spots that a warrior has to exploit. Additionally, random armor simulates angle of attack and it's affect on armor's ability to protect. Throughout most of history, armor was expensive, but nowhere near the cost of a house. There's a very limited time when that's true and only of the top-end armor, not the armor worn by most of the people on a battlefield.

If you are going to get past the armor roll a crit or work harder for it by targeting gaps or thin spots at appropriate skill reductions.

RQ/BRP hasn't offered the ability to target weak spots in armor in the past, so I'd be surprised to see it now. MRQ offers it, but it breaks down mechanically pretty quickly and I don't see any easy way to implement such a system elegantly in BPR.

When RQ came out it was lightyears ahead of other games in terms of tactical play and verisimilitude. I can't help but think of variable armor as the antithesis of that.

Making armor variable is no different than making weapon damage variable. They're both there becasuse there are too many variables to track to accurately simulate what happens in real combat. Does random damage make any sense or should it be tied directly to skill or to-hit roll? Same thing.

[badcat]

I like both armor methods in BRP, but to me variable has always been more fun. Ever since I first tried it. That counts for more than anything, to me. Variable armor isn't the 'antithesis' of anything, and it works just fine. Oh, the system's main strength is the same as it's main weakness...that the armor roll can fail completely (combat is more exciting and less predictable but much more deadly). I think it just comes down, as usual, to what you prefer in your games. If you don't like it, no problem at all to include fixed armor by location. No big deal.

But give it a try. You might find that it adds excitement to the game, as our group did.

[Triff]

With variable armor, I like that people in plate armor won't be totally invulnerable to a stab from a dagger. I don't like the extra dice roll, but thinks it might be worth it. How does it work with gameplay though? Is it mainly negative or positive for the players? Mor PC-death or the same? Does it bug down combat when you have to roll it for all the NPCs too?

SGL.

[Nightshade]

As others have said, fixed armor isn't particularly realistic because its virtually impossible to design armor that protects from all blows at all angles equally. Now with locations, you'd need to have the spread be fairly tight, but with Stormbringer, where locations weren't paid attention to, you're also getting into the issue that its rare for all locations to be protected equally, too, so the system is accounting for that in addition to the lesser individual locational issues. After all, RQ3 effectively has variable armor the moment you have someone who, for example, armors their head and torso heavier than their limbs (an extremely common occurance in my experience).

[Nightshade]

With variable armor, I like that people in plate armor won't be totally invulnerable to a stab from a dagger. I don't like the extra dice roll, but thinks it might be worth it. How does it work with gameplay though? Is it mainly negative or positive for the players? Mor PC-death or the same? Does it bug down combat when you have to roll it for all the NPCs too?

SGL.

Well, without locations, it doesn't take up any more time than the hit location roll does. Less, usually.

[Joseph Paul]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

I find variable armor points to be terribly unrealistic and they are one of the reasons that I never did get into Stormbringer.

I can't see anyone investing in armor that has as large a spread of vulnerability as represented by a random die roll. Real warriors did not spend the equivalent of a modern house for armor that didn't protect reliably.

The irony here being that random armor is much more realistic than fixed armor values because real armor is full of strong and weak spots that a warrior has to exploit. Additionally, random armor simulates angle of attack and it's affect on armor's ability to protect.

When you write “armor is full of strong and weak points” you are implying that the two exist in equal abundance. This is simply not true. If for every strong spot there was a weak spot the armor would be only 50% effective. Just looking at the coverage of a hauberk will show that it covers much more than half of the body with a consistent armor. Even plate armors cover so much to the point where the fechtbuchs point out the weak spots of armpit, inside the elbow, under the gorget etc. However those are so small that it is very hard to target them. The random rolls severely overstate the risk to the wearer in a fashion that I am at a loss to explain. What I see is that with every blow from my opponent he is getting a random chance to by pass the great bulk of my armor. This flies in the face of the hard experience of veterans that found armor hard enough to get through that they had to A) invent new weapons to do so and developed systems of combat that allowed them to close with an opponent, throw him to the ground and then look for weak spots in the armor while he was immobilized.

As in real life armor represents a major investment on the part of the warrior. It took much sacrifice for them to afford the harness in the first place and armor was looked upon as a major component of one’s ransom in Europe. My feeling is that role playing charcters make in-game sacrifices to be able to afford the appropriate protective gear and that the effectiveness of that gear should not be diluted with out some sacrifice or effort on the part of the attacker.

Simulating angle of attack and other tedious ephemera of a succesful blow by randomizing the protective quality of the armor is to be double dipping against the target. The attacker already gets the possibility of specials that incur more damage as well as crits that bypass armor altogether and do more damage in some iterations. Is there really a need to raise mortality by denying the defender his armor with no more work from the attacker? Come on I paid for plate defenses and only 10% (10 on a D10) of the time am I getting plate defenses!

Throughout most of history, armor was expensive, but nowhere near the cost of a house. There's a very limited time when that's true and only of the top-end armor, not the armor worn by most of the people on a battlefield.

I disagree based on what the comparitive cost is. The armor was a major investment, we seem to agree on that, and was often priced at a significant fraction of the warriors annual worth. Men-at-Arms and Knights are professionals and today the most analogous purchase for a modern professional is a house (or a sports car if they are in a mid life crisis and looking for a trophy wife!). Compared to many modern professionals’ salaries there are many houses whose cost is a significant portion of the (pre-tax) base salary. So for instance $100,000/annum salary and a $75,000 house gives some idea of the worth of the harness to a warrior.

Quote:

If you are going to get past the armor roll a crit or work harder for it by targeting gaps or thin spots at appropriate skill reductions.

RQ/BRP hasn't offered the ability to target weak spots in armor in the past, so I'd be surprised to see it now. MRQ offers it, but it breaks down mechanically pretty quickly and I don't see any easy way to implement such a system elegantly in BPR.

First I would be interested in seeing how MRQs system works and how it falters. Can you supply details? Secondly I do see how to do so by merely assigning a penalty to attempts to hit a chink in the armor. Thirdly the argument that the system hasn’t done this before merely reinforces my belief that perhaps Chaosium should have been looking to update the system rather than just republish it.

Quote:

When RQ came out it was lightyears ahead of other games in terms of tactical play and verisimilitude. I can't help but think of variable armor as the antithesis of that.

Making armor variable is no different than making weapon damage variable. They're both there becasuse there are too many variables to track to accurately simulate what happens in real combat. Does random damage make any sense or should it be tied directly to skill or to-hit roll? Same thing.

Just what do you see as so variable in the armor? In BRP damage is already tied to skill in that you have to first make the roll to have any effect and then BRP does give bonus damage to particularly good skill rolls i.e. specials and criticals. The damage roll is a better place to subsume any question of the attackers ability to place a weapon effectively on target not the armor. Again such a mechanic lowers the utility of armor to far less than what it was historically. Warriors knew that their harness was trustworthy and that the possibility of a wound arriving through some deficit was remote. Vegetius comments to the infantry are to allow the armor to take the blow and press your attack. There are many examples of armors being praised as proof against all but the most vigourous attacks. Did people get wounded through chinks in the armor? Yes but not nearly so frequently as this misplaced mechanic suggests and generally by action of the attacker. Such actions are better modeled with the current ‘bypasses armor’ ability of the critical or by a deliberate targeting mechanic IMO.

Joseph Paul

[Nightshade]

Roman]When you write “armor is full of strong and weak points” you are implying that the two exist in equal abundance. This is

No, it implies both exist. There are ways to represent the fact that strong points are commoner while still using a random roll. For example, a 2d4+1 range will produce an average of 6, and both really effective parts and (more importantly) really bad parts aren't nearly as common to hit. More to the point, in some cases they _are_ just as common; if all you're wearing is a leather jacket with ballistic implants, most hits on you will land on unarmored or lighter armored areas.

damage to particularly good skill rolls i.e. specials and criticals. The damage roll is a better place to subsume any question of the attackers ability to place a weapon effectively on target not the armor. Again such a mechanic lowers

That, however, has the effect of producing unusually high end results against targets who are already lightly or unarmored, which is usually undesireable; its not a quality of the weapon that's being simulated, after all, but the armor.

the utility of armor to far less than what it was historically. Warriors knew that their harness was trustworthy and that the possibility of a wound arriving through some deficit was remote. Vegetius comments to the infantry

I think this is a vast overstatement. If that was the case, most battles would end in draws.

[badcat]

Triff, it is one of those gaming concepts that may sound cumbersome, but actually works fine in play, rather like the wounding system in Savage Worlds. You only roll armor when there is a hit anyway. A quick 1D6-1 for leather...I quickly got to where it was automatic. As for the players, it adds a level of uncertainty and danger to combat that keeps combat from becoming 'ho-hum, another goblin'...because even the sorriest specimen of goblinhood can skewer the big knight in plate armor. It doesn't happen every time armor is rolled, so it isn't as 'deadly' as you might think. It has to be just the right combination of damage level and bad armor roll...but the possibility is always there and makes for much more exciting combat sequences, IMO. As to how the players take it, that depends on the individual. I tend to associate with players with a mature attitude and without unhealthy strong attachments to imaginary characters, so I have never had a problem like that. Oh, one other thing, I always let the PCs make armor rolls, even on criticals, unlike the official Stormbringer rules...it is quite deadly enough without disallowing the armor roll on critcal hits. Overall I'd say it's considerably less lethal and cumbersome in play than many popular games out there, like Warhammer (which I also like).

[TRose]

I Figure critical and special hits, along with randomness of the die roll, are there to simulate weak points in armor. If we are going to roll to simulate weak points in armor then we should then also should simulate that certain armor protects better against certain types of attacks too. For example how much protection should chain armor provide against a slashing sword and how much against a spear or rapier? More realistic yes , but game can then get bog down.

[Joseph Paul]

With variable armor, I like that people in plate armor won't be totally invulnerable to a stab from a dagger. I don't like the extra dice roll, but thinks it might be worth it. How does it work with gameplay though? Is it mainly negative or positive for the players? Mor PC-death or the same? Does it bug down combat when you have to roll it for all the NPCs too?

SGL.

It results in more PC death. Do the math- succesfull hits on skill or less, weapon damage stays the same but PC armor does not protect as well. If your fixed point armor is supposed to stop 6 points of damage and it now will only stop that on a 6 on a d6 you are getting pimped 83% of the time.

If you are using specials then you are also making "mini-criticals" out of this. 5% of all succesful hits are crits that bypass armor. If your variable point armor is on the order of 1d6-1 then 16% of all succesfull shots have become crits (but not specials) plus those that would have been crits anyway.

Look at specials-20% of all succesfull hits are such. Now 16% (1 of 6) are also ignoring armor like a critical in addition to the 5% that are crits.

Effectively you are adding (with d6-1 armor) a crit 16% of the time and a crit plus some armor half the time and only getting your full armor value 16% of the time. How can this not kill PCs faster?

Edit: for Badcats example of letting players roll for armor protection even against criticals- You have replaced a 1 to 5 percent chance, depending on the skill of the attacker, of bypassing armor with a flat 16% chance of not having any armor protection for every blow recieved. That is three times as effective as someone with 100% skill getting a crit. The goblins better like it!

Joseph Paul

[badcat]

Yeah, but you always have to be careful about how much 'realism' to add to any rpg, don't you? That aside, there has been the occasional rule in this or that BRP game to simulate the effects of different weapons against various armor types, and differetiate wound types. Like RQ2's impale/slash/critical. Hawkmoon had a rule where the mace negated half the armor roll of chainmail, 'due to it's nature', reducing the roll for chainmail from 1D6 to 1D3. Stuff like that? I imagine some of those types of rules will make appearances in the new book, too. It's just that I have found the simple variable armor system in the early Stormbringer editions to be the fastest, most elegant, most evocative armor rules I have found. A winning combination.

[Jason D]

At the risk of sounding like a thread policeman (which I'm not), is this argument going anywhere other than one of these two positions?

1. I prefer variable armor protection because it suits my style of play more

vs.

2. I prefer fixed armor protection because it suits my style of play more

The core book uses "generic fixed" armor as the default, and presents variable as an optional system. Everyone wins!

[Nightshade]

At the risk of sounding like a thread policeman (which I'm not), is this argument going anywhere other than one of these two positions?

1. I prefer variable armor protection because it suits my style of play more

vs.

2. I prefer fixed armor protection because it suits my style of play more

The core book uses "generic fixed" armor as the default, and presents variable as an optional system. Everyone wins!

Actually, I'm making an argument mostly based on the implications of non-locational armor; I think if you aren't going to deal with locations, that a set armor value implies more consistency of result than is warranted. You can make an argument, as some have, that special/critical results cover some of this ground, but I honestly suspect with many armor types that's too rare for the result; there's a lot of armors where half the hits should land on lightly or unarmored areas, and if you aren't going to deal with hit locations I think that should be handled in _some_ fashion. We aren't talking a game system with highly abstract combat, after all.

[drohem]

At the risk of sounding like a thread policeman (which I'm not), is this argument going anywhere other than one of these two positions?

1. I prefer variable armor protection because it suits my style of play more

vs.

2. I prefer fixed armor protection because it suits my style of play more

No. I choose #2 for a variety of reasons.

[badcat]

Actually, Jason, I was just trying to answer the questions Triff posed without regard to distractions. I don't have a 'one true way' attitude, just a preference...and I am attempting to share a positive viewpoint about something. That's all. Variable points work as well as better than anything else I have seen, and are a viable option. And I am happy that you included both fixed and variable armor in the new book.:thumb:

[Joseph Paul]

At the risk of sounding like a thread policeman (which I'm not), is this argument going anywhere other than one of these two positions?

1. I prefer variable armor protection because it suits my style of play more

vs.

2. I prefer fixed armor protection because it suits my style of play more

The core book uses "generic fixed" armor as the default, and presents variable as an optional system. Everyone wins!

Me, I am having fun with math, contrasting my own experiences with a medieval combat group, historical research, and other game systems with this. This sort of discussion, for me, forces me to examine my own experience and biases and prejudices. It also causes me to have to examine a game system, possibly from angles and PoV that I had not considered previously.

Joseph Paul

[Lord Twig]

Can we get some examples of what kind of dice is rolled for armor using the variable system?

In RQ3 soft leather was 1, stiff leather 2, ringmail 4, chain 7 and plate 8. What would the same (or equivalent) armors be in the variable system?

[badcat]

In the early EC games, leather 1D6-1

half plate 1D8-1

full plate 1D10-1

w/helm 1D10+2

In Elric!/Stormbringer 5, leather 1D6-1

w/helm 1D6

...similar to above, until you get to Melnibonean

armor, half plate 1D8+4, and I think Meln. full plate

was something like 1D10+8,

just to give you an idea.

[Lord Twig]

So average protection would be:

leather 1D6-1 = 2.5

half plate 1D8-1 = 3.5

full plate 1D10-1 = 4.5

w/helm 1D10+2 = 7.5

So leather is a bit stronger and plate a bit weaker.

Then, what the heck!?

Melnibonean half plate 1D8+4 = 8.5

Melnibonean full plate 1D10+8 = 13.5

With +4 and +8, doesn't that kinda defeat the purpose of rolling?

Anyway, I am in the fixed armor camp.

The variable damage covers angle of attack and Specials and Criticals would be hitting weak points or unarmored areas. Armor is designed to minimize weak points and gaps. Sure there is going to be some, but armor is designed to minimize those as much as possible.

How effective is a dagger vs. full plate anyway? There is no way you are going to shove a dagger through a metal plate. You are either going to have to jab at the seams (Special), or you are going to stab through a gap (Critical).

I find it interesting that the example was made that "even the sorriest specimen of goblinhood can skewer the big knight in plate armor" when talking about variable armor. We have played with fixed armor for years and the number of times that some lowly bandit or militia (or trollkin or zombie or feral broo, etc.) has taken out a location of even our most heavily armored warrior is frightening. Specials and Criticals are not to be discounted.