So I raised this question in this thread and got no responses. But I'm not so easily deterred!

And I'm hoping I might attract attention from Francesco or Amado if I give it a dedicated thread.

The question is - why isn't the armour bonus for a helm +1d6 rather than +4? It's no real difference on average, and:

(i) It's even easier to remember
(ii) It fits better with the general TOR approach of avoiding modifiers to rolls
(iii) It degrades with Weariness just as armour does, which seems more consistent

Against this, it seems so obvious that I feel sure the designers must have considered this option and rejected it, probably for very good reasons.

And I have yet to run an actual live TOR combat, so maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I don't know what.

Anyone got any ideas?

Maybe because there would still be the "inconsistency" (if we want to call it this way) of the Cap that gives a fixed bonus (so "immune" to the weariness effect).

Sorry to be slow, but I'm not quite following you here.

Can you spell it out a bit more? What do you mean by the Cap?

Thanks.

There are two peices of head gear, the helm which is +4 and the cap of iron and leather which is +1.

E

I believe it is that way to make it yet another difficult and interesting decision to make when you outfit your character.

One thing that I think has been done well in TOR is making armor, weapon, shield, and helm choices difficult and interesting ones to make. This isn't the case with a lot of RPGs.

Yeah, I think this is the right answer. Helmets play an interesting part in armour. They have a benefit that is distinct from armour generally in that they protect the head but is also easy to remove. So you can't easily compare a helmet with a breast plate, where you might be able to compare a breast plate with a chain short.

I think by giving Helmets a static bonus helps convey this distinct feel mechanically from other armour.

Actually, I wish armor protection wasn't affected at all by weariness, but I understand the reasons. So, at least headgear continues to provide a bonus. It is probably easier to pierce the armor of a weary hero than it is to pierce his headgear.

Weariness isn't that big a deal anyway. It takes a 3.5 average per die down to a 2.5. It seems worse than it is when you look at the dice.

Just wanted to highlight a perk of the Headgear.

It has a higher Protection to Encumbrance rating than regular Armour.
I think this is intended since it is a lot more inconvenient than regular armour pieces and also makes for a nice feature when you discard it in combat to re-gain some of that Encumbrance.

Armour = 1d Prot costs 4 Enc = 4/3.5 = 1.14 Enc/Prot

Helm = +4 Prot costs 6 Enc = 6/4 = 1.5 Enc/Prot
Cap = +1 Prot costs 2 Enc = 2/1 = 2 Enc/Prot

On top of this Helm is a secure 4+... wearing a helm you know what you get... whereas Armour is a little more prone to chance. This also feels right to me.

/wolf

Protection / Encumbrance ratio

Leather Armour (Not Weary): 3.5 / 4 = 0.875
Leather Armour (Weary): 2.5 / 4 = 0.625
Helm: 4 / 6 = 0.667

So a leather armor has a better Protection / Encumbrance ratio than an helm while not weary and a slightly worse Protection / Encumbrance ratio than an helm while weary.

That is true, the helm is still +4 even when you're Weary. Which also strengthens its Reliability.

/wolf

Thanks for the clarification, Eldath. Somehow, I had completely missed the cap, and due to time zone differences, I didn't see your reply until now!

I agree that might well explain why the designers went that way, as otherwise the cap would need an entirely different approach, which would be odd. I actually think the difference between them is a bit overstated: I've spent plenty of time wearing a Sutton Hoo style helm, and it's nothing like as difficult as fighting in a medieval-style great helm. Compared with only 5 Encumbrance for a great shield...? But I digress.

Is +4 really a better way to give the feel of what a helm actually does for you? Not obviously, IMO. You could just as easily argue that a helm is more random, because it only covers a small part of the body, whereas a hauberk offers a predictable, uniform coverage. But if it works for you, it works for you...

But I guess it *does* make the trade-offs harder to calculate when buying gear, and also gives you an option to be more or less risk-averse, which is interesting. So I can well believe that entered into the designers' calculations.

I still think there's probably an option here to discard the cap as trivial, reduce the encumbrance (and Fatigue payback) for a helm and make it give 1d6 armour. But I'm not as sold on it as I was before this thread. So thanks for your answers, all. It's been interesting.

Maybe they left gaps between the types to include variations in future releases