Variable Armor Points

[Nightshade]

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.

I suspect that its not a coincidence that most of the low-end possible results are on armors that may have either very lightly armored or unarmored areas.

[badcat]

Lord Twig. The d8+4 etc. was Melnibonean armor, only...and from Elric!, a different ruleset. Added in my list for comparison only, and yes they do sort of defeat the random roll...that was part of Melnibonean superiority in warfare. They make real good armor. The rules that go along with the first set of armor values are the original Stormbringer and are a 10% critical that doubles damage dealt by the weapon; half total hit points are a major wound that yields a possible crippling effect. And no armor roll on a critical (which part I never used, as it tends to result in instant kills on criticals). The net effect being about the same as special/critical with solid armor value and hits by location. The main difference is that 10% critical/variable armor/major wound level is considerably easier and faster to run with a fraction of the book keeping. I'm OK with either one playing, but I much prefer the variable armor system when GMing. And it does help level the playing field for weaker npcs, it makes them more of a threat. Or so I have found running many games with both systems. It's MY preferred way.

[Joseph Paul]

I suspect that its not a coincidence that most of the low-end possible results are on armors that may have either very lightly armored or unarmored areas.

I can see that applying to the half-plate since it implies that half of it is missing but I see no reason for that to apply to leather armor just because it is leather. Vambraces, rerebraces, cuises and schinbalds were all made from leather at one time as well as scale and lamellar armors for the body. You could be in leather from head to foot.

How would you rate an Age of Mail knight that had an homogenous armor of mail in all locations? None of it is any lighter than the others and there basicly aren't any areas that are unarmored. Would this end up like the Melnibonean armors with a huge plus?

[RMS]

What the heck are you typing with here?! I haven't seen so many html tags in a post around here before...

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.

I imply no such thing. However, there is no doubt that armor varies in strength from spot-to-spot (basic physics there) and that it only covers a portion of the body throughout most of history. You give some examples, but those are very late examples of armor. There's 3000 years of hard armors that precede those that don't cover the complete body. As late as the Norman invasion of England, there are significant portions of the body not protected by heavy armor.

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.

That's the way it works. You go after the hoplite across from you with "full plate" on (the heaviest armor offered in RQ and most fantasy versions of BRP) and there is an open face, no armor on the joints, hands, backs of limbs, etc. There's plenty of locations to get hit with no armor and plenty with good armor. Now, I would agree that the variable roll isn't the most "realistic" way of handling this, but it's close enough without adding a bunch of extra rules. (Though if you like that sort of thing, something like the Harnmaster combat system with very detailed hit location rules would be easy to add onto BRP.) Ironically, the D&D take on armor making someone harder to "hit" (read: damage) is probably more realistic than absorbing damage in most cases. Throughout most of history, the heavy armors on the field are proof against the best weapons on the field, so you tend to either bounce off the armor (not having an effective hit) or hit a joint and do full damage.

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.

IMO, I never, ever think of RQ/BRP and late medieval at the same time. The two don't go together, so heavy armor should have significant open spots. Also, what you are describing is a very, very limited time period compared to the hundreds of years of armor that preceded it, so I'd consider it an outlier that should be the exception rather than used to form the rule.

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.

Once again, you seem to have a limited era to which you're referencing. Consider that every single male Roman citizen had to provide their own armor when they went on campaign during the time of the Republic. This was something every middle income person could afford, in addition to supporting a family, business, etc.

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.

It's a straight -40% to skill to bypass armor. It breaks down quickly at higher levels, but the real break in the system is that armor in MRQ causes extreme negative skill modifiers. Someone with a complete suit of plate armor has a -42% to all physical skills (including melee weapon skills!). So if two identical twins (same skills, stats, etc.) get into a fight, one with full plate and one naked, the naked one can take the 40% penalty and always bypass armor on the armored one and have an overall advantage during the fight.

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.

See above. Your statements seem to agree with me. Armor is proof against most weapons of the time, but you have to take the hit to your armor, not to the spots that aren't armored. Some of this is because you seem to only be considering the very late medieval, while I'm looking across the expanse of history from the early Bronze Age to the late medieval, and admittedly have a strong attration for the ancient world over the medieval.

Also, it sounds like your worst issue is with the specific implementation rather than random armor in general. I'm only supporting the concept of random armor. FWIW, I've played far more RQ2/3 than anything else and have never bothered with random armor in it.

[soltakss]

Does anyone use random armour with hit locations?

In our game, when the PCs put on a dollop of Protection, they are very hard to hurt. Random armour might be the answer to this. I doubt if they'd agree though.

[Nightshade]

I can see that applying to the half-plate since it implies that half of it is missing but I see no reason for that to apply to leather armor just because it is leather. Vambraces, rerebraces, cuises and schinbalds were all made from leather at one time as well as scale and lamellar armors for the body. You could be in leather from head to foot.

Except as I recall from the description, it wasn't. Just as it isn't with most armors of any nature.

How would you rate an Age of Mail knight that had an homogenous armor of mail in all locations? None of it is any lighter than the others and there basicly aren't any areas that are unarmored. Would this end up like the Melnibonean armors with a huge plus?

No, it'd end up with a modest plus, because even if the _material_ is homogonous, the protection in practice, isn't. I'd expect it to be something like 1d4+ 2 to 3.

[Nightshade]

Does anyone use random armour with hit locations?

In our game, when the PCs put on a dollop of Protection, they are very hard to hurt. Random armour might be the answer to this. I doubt if they'd agree though.

I think at that point you're doing one of two things:

1. Simulating a lower level of distinction than BRP based games usually go to (they don't bother to deal with locations smaller than an arm in terms of damage effects, so why do so with armor, since that's effectively what this would do); or

2. Doing so for entirely game-play related reasons, which is harder to argue with, but I suspect there are better ways to address that end.

[badcat]

Soltakss, yes, I have done that too, usually only rolling hit location after a major wound (not a critical, I was using half total hit points as the measure for a 'critical' hit, with various effects depending on location). So the 'critical' was more like the 'special' in RQ (10%). It works fine, but as you think would likely be a hard sell. The group with which I implemented it had been together a long time and we had generated a lot of mutual trust when it came to games and housrules and such. Actually it was a houseruled version of the original 'major wound table' from Stormbringer 1, with toned down results. The whole variable armor mechanic is not as deadly as some people think, and it certainly makes running a game faster and easier, while enhancing the excitement of play during combat sequences. I think I still have the character sheet for that particular version of fantasy BRP around here somewhere.

[Jason D]

One aspect that variable armor "simulates" is that even if it is homogeneous across all locations, the material doesn't always protect the same against different types of weapons, or against blows delivered from different angles.

If you're head to toe in mail, even wearing a full-face mesh coif... would you rather be hit in the stomach or the head with a mace?

Plate armor is best when it's deflecting points, blades, and crushing blows, not handling them head-on.

Mail, also, is great against blades, somewhat good against points, but not terribly effective against blunt weapons. Anywhere where bone is close to flesh is more vulnerable. Against blunt weapons, the padding under the mail is more effective than the links themselves.

However, from a preferred gameplay perspective (and I think "degree of realism desired" falls under that category), I prefer variable damage rolls.

The mechanic was first introduced in Stormbringer, a game where a character can start as a blind, limbless, leprous beggar from Nadsokor, or as an assassin-noble-sorcerer from Melnibone... variable armor is a perfect extension of that.

I like the variability of the random armor protection precisely because it abstracts armor and the interaction of damage. I find that if I begin thinking that fixed-point is more "realistic", then I begin down a slippery slope into fixed armor protecting differently against different weapon types, and then it becomes more complex than I prefer.

However, I'd argue that the sheer genius of the BRP system is that one can have random armor values, or one can then use fixed point armor value with variable protection against different attack types (slashing, impaling, blunt, etc.), and the game still works.

[Rurik]

One aspect that variable armor "simulates" is that even if it is homogeneous across all locations, the material doesn't always protect the same against different types of weapons, or against blows delivered from different angles.

Variable armor as implemented in SB in no way simulates the effect of different types of weapons agianst different types of armor though - mail is just as likely to roll max protection against a mace as it is to roll minimum protection against a sword slash.

[Nightshade]

One aspect that variable armor "simulates" is that even if it is homogeneous across all locations, the material doesn't always protect the same against different types of weapons, or against blows delivered from different angles.

I tend to agree with the second, but not the first, since a variable roll doesn't really pay attention to the weapon used.

However, I'd argue that the sheer genius of the BRP system is that one can have random armor values, or one can then use fixed point armor value with variable protection against different attack types (slashing, impaling, blunt, etc.), and the game still works.

The real virtue of RQ when it came out wasn't its realism (though in contrast to the only other fantasy games of the time, it felt far more realistic in a cause-and-effect sort of way) but its transparency; what was being represented was pretty clear from process. That's still one of BRP's general virtues; you're very unlikely to change a subsystem without being able to see what it means in play and whether its a good idea on game play grounds.

[Rurik]

Actually it was a houseruled version of the original 'major wound table' from Stormbringer 1, with toned down results.

Please tell me you left the severed nose in. Some of my fondest memories of SB come from that Major wound table, and noseless PC's. At one time we had two in the same party.

[badcat]

I definitely agree. Even when a BRP game did insert a small nod to 'realism' that involved slight additions (like the mace halving chainmail protection, in Hawkmoon) I tended to disregard it. Stormbringer 1 always brought the feeling of flashing sword booming on dented shield, all the excitement of favorite books and movies, and it still does it better than anything else I have found. And most importantly, it does it without distracting from the storytelling, which was (I thought) the whole point of rpgs. Every version of BRP does to some extent, but SB1 always has been my 'sweet spot' for rules vs. playability. With some of the wildness toned down (I didn't make players take beggars or use the Elemental Lords casually, for instance).

Books/stories that I always thought SB1 captured perfectly, besides the Elric stories of course: Conan, David Drakes' 'Dragonlord' and 'Killer', Nifft the Lean stories, Wandor, The Lost Prince, Coramonde, Sir Walter Scott stories, 'Men of Iron', the list just goes on and on. The system just helps tell the story without bogging down in details...and the variable armor system is a big part of why it does.

[badcat]

That's Jason I agree with, just so there is no confusion.

[Triff]

The variable armor points were quite different from what I expected. I would have thought the conversion would be something like this:

fixed - variable

1 - 1d2

2 - 1d4

3 - 1d6

4 - 1d8

5 - 1d10

6 - 1d12

7 - 2d6

8 - 2d6+1 / 1d6+1d8

something like that (which would actually give a higher average)

If I would add the stormbringer values, my players would fall like flies! :shocked:

SGL.

[Nightshade]

The variable armor points were quite different from what I expected. I would have thought the conversion would be something like this:

fixed - variable

1 - 1d2

2 - 1d4

3 - 1d6

4 - 1d8

5 - 1d10

6 - 1d12

7 - 2d6

8 - 2d6+1 / 1d6+1d8

something like that (which would actually give a higher average)

If I would add the stormbringer values, my players would fall like flies! :shocked:

SGL.

Well, do remember that at the least, these are games where all you have is total hit points, so its usually pretty hard to fall from one blow, in comparison to RQ, where locational effects tend to be far more crucial.

[badcat]

In Stormbringer 1-3, they do indeed drop like flies, Triff. Before I modified the critical rules a bit, at least one PC was killed every session. Of course, they did insist on using poison, firing into mixed melee with poisoned missiles, charging into combat like it was D&D, etc. After I modified the criticals we only lost a PC every couple of sessions.

[Atgxtg]

I think Triff is onto something here. Maybe instead of the fixed AP being the max value, they should be the average value?

IMO for variable AP, it would be better to use a bell curve that a lineral distrubtion. WHile it might be possible to hit a weak or strong spot, I would expect that much of the time blows will hit the largest sections. SO 5 point scale could be 2d4 rather than 1D10?, and so on.

Of course variable armor opens up the possibility of the attacker using a special success to to to place the blow on a weak spot, affecting the foes armor rather than taking an "implae" type option, or even a "wear armor" skill that the defender couold use to try and take a hit on a strong spot.

[Nightshade]

In Stormbringer 1-3, they do indeed drop like flies, Triff. Before I modified the critical rules a bit, at least one PC was killed every session. Of course, they did insist on using poison, firing into mixed melee with poisoned missiles, charging into combat like it was D&D, etc. After I modified the criticals we only lost a PC every couple of sessions.

Well, truth to tell, this isn't that uncommon with any combat-intensive BRP game; back when we started with RQI, we were playing twice a week and I think by the end of the first year I had at least 80 sheets from dead characters. Experienced characters tended to last longer (and be more likely to be retrieved with divine intervention) but it wasn't like, as I noted before, one critical from a composite bow arrow wasn't plenty to kill someone if it hit a non-limb area.

[Atgxtg]

Well, truth to tell, this isn't that uncommon with any combat-intensive BRP game; back when we started with RQI, we were playing twice a week and I think by the end of the first year I had at least 80 sheets from dead characters. Experienced characters tended to last longer (and be more likely to be retrieved with divine intervention) but it wasn't like, as I noted before, one critical from a composite bow arrow wasn't plenty to kill someone if it hit a non-limb area.

First edtion SB was much worse that RQ though. THe vartiable armor tened to cut the AP in half, and the major wound rule (take 1/2 you CON/HP form a single hit) made dropping people very common.

Toss in the extra damage die for master quality weapons, or the massive damage bonus for demon weapons (a +5D6 damage bonus was not uncommon), and anyone who wasn't wearing demon armor wasn't long for the world.

[Sorloc]

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.

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.

But the warrior isn't exploiting the weakness; fate is.

A defender will know where his weak spots are, and try to cover them.

An attacker tries to get past that defense into the weak spot.

How to tell if he succeeds? Your skill roll.

How to tell if he hit a weak spot? Your damage roll.

How to tell if you really exploited the chink in the armor? Did you crit?

So actually, yes, RQ DOES offer the ability to target weak spots in the armor. It actually assumes that that is what you are doing, because why wouldn't you?

You don't get a 50/50 shot at hitting a weakness in the armor, you get a 5% chance.

Really, anyone who weakens armor is someone who is revealing that they don't use encumbrance rules.

It's already there; no need to reinvent the wheel.

Yes, it does tend to devolve into a contest of who gets a crit first, or who gets exhausted first, but isn't that what a combat wearing armor really is? A test of endurance?

If your dagger could penetrate a breastplate, the armorer would make thicker breastplate - and not just in places - ALL OVER! That's kind of the point of armor, Right?

[badcat]

Actually, Atgxtg, that is what I did with variable piece armor, part 2. The scale continues past one die values. Give a value to each piece of armor, as helm=1, leather jack=2, greaves=1, etc., and add the various pieces' values up to one sum. Then use a progression as follows...

armor value protection

1 1D3-1

2 1D4-1

3 1D6-1

4 1D8-1

5 1D10-1

6 1D12-1

7 2D6-1

8 2D8-1

9 2D10-1

Or some similar variation. I've tried several different ones. Including dropping the negative mod. It includes 'armor value' for magic or master work armor as well. The player asks what armor the orc is wearing, and if he isn't wearing greaves, say, then a called shot to the leg gets no armor roll. The problem is getting the AVs to balance out right. Oh, and I have usually offered the players the option of just using the AV as a default roll, or rolling the protection rating. It was surprising how often they took the roll.

[badcat]

RATS. That didn't work too well. It is supposed to be two columns, one for 'armor value', a single digit, and the second for 'protection'.

[badcat]

...and I use encumbrance rules.

[Sorloc]

And you don't think that 1-19 is a rather large spread for the most bestest armor around?

Maybe if the curve were not so shallow... :confused: