At the Battle of the Pelennnor Fields, Imrahil of Dol Amroth is wearing metal vambraces. He discovers that Eowyn is still alive when her breathe mists them. This suggests that they were plate vambraces to me.
So, the question is, how would you rule for vambraces and greaves in TOR and is there a place in your collective hearts for a Steel Cap? Something like a Norman helmet or a later Viking one with a simple nasal bar that fits somewhere between the full helmet and the cap of iron and leather. If so, how would you rule for it?

Actually, most Norman and Viking helmets were nothing more than than a leather and iron cap as described in the rules and there is nothing that says you can't have a nasal bar on your leather and iron cap if you so desire without having to change the rules.

As for plate vambraces. No armour consist of just one specific piece like a mail shirt and nothing more.
If a character are wearing a mail hauberk you can probably safely assume that that he is also wearing some kind of vambraces or these round disk things I completely forgotten the name of that protected the elbows and armpits without it needing any special rules except for that of the mail hauberk.

That's the beauty of abstract systems. You can pretty much add and detract any type of detail as long as its reasonable and fairly cosmetic.
Want to have plate vambraces and still have it count as mail hauberk go right ahead.
Want to have a full plate then maybe not.
Want to have scale mail perhaps.
It's pretty much up to your fantasy to add details because the rules doesn't.

Thanks for the input Chrykan. I suppose it is fair to say that most Viking Helmets and 'some' Norman helmets would indeed be variations on the Cap of Leather and Iron as per the rules. However, those are not the helmets I am referring to. I am referring to the,single piece, metal variety of nasal helm with a conical( or occasionally Phrygian styled) crown. Mentioning the nasal bar was simply to make it easier to envisage the type of helm I was talking about. It wasn't an attempt to get extra protection from a nasal bar and you are quite right when you suggest that said bar could simply be abstracted.
No, the fact is that this is a sturdier helm than the pudding bowl of iron and leather and was designed to deflect blows as much as to absorb them(IIRC).
It might however be considered to offer less protection than the Helm in the rules which is basically a Spangenhelm with cheek guards etc.

Regarding the abstraction factor in TOR. Personally I think it is one of the best things about the system. However, IMO that abstraction has to be consistent. Why should greaves and vambraces be regard as abstractions when Helm's are given rules? Each protects an extremity of the body and they should be treated in much the same way IMO.

I have to disagree with you about armour not only representing a single piece. When you purchase a mail shirt from an armourer, that is exactly what you get. It doesn't come with a free helmet, why would it come with splinted greaves and bracers?

Halbarad,

I can't help but wonder if you're the chap who corrected a group of us some years back on the Decipher Forum concerning the armor question by pointing out Imrahil's vambrance .

Seriously though, I've thought about this a great deal, & while I agree that you can insert these additional armor goodies among the rare leaders, I have reservations about going beyond that. I like what they've done with TOR so far & limited it to chain at best - the professor's writings seem to so indicate.

Speaking of which, it sounds as if you've reached a point where you're happy with your Horsefolk - they should be a welcome addition to your saga.

Staying somewhat on thread .... Who else is on the decipher LOTR at TrekRPG. Net ? I am still there.
"Feanorgil".

I was thinking about all of that the other day.

My thoughts mainly concerned hoods of mail and helms of metal not including neck and cheek guards (coming to the same conclusion to treat them as caps of iron and leather). You can 'stack' a coif of mail and a cap of leather and iron for double protection, double encumbrance???

I also wondered how to treat amalgams of metal and leather, especially scale mails and other armours where small plates of metal are sewn on to a leather frame. While historically questionable in the west (while they definitively existed in the east), they are still greatly depicted in fantasy illustrations and movies (including Peter Jackson's trilogy). My intuition is that they would receive the appellation of 'mail' in Tolkien's jargon and would be treated similarly.

Then there's the 'reinforced mail' situation, whereas a suit of chainmail is complemented with pauldrons, vambraces and greaves or iron or hardened leather (or combination of the two).

Would 'that' be considered a hauberk? Would that be a +1 success die? +x bonus on protection test like an helm? The easiest RaW answer is that 'pauldron and vambraces' is a narrative variation of the close-fitting reward (+1 to protection tests).

Personally if I had to houserule it, I would go the cultural reward route, possibly not available to any culture in the north save perhaps for an individual with a rich standard of living.

That remind me of an alternate 'reward' system dealing with standards of living I had the other day...

Glorfindel

[edit] Ah, its paulDron and not paulTron. Edited to match correct spelling.

Mim, no mate, I'm afraid that it wasn't me who made that comment. There was, however, a similar thread on the old Valinor site which is where I picked up on the notion.

Telcontar did a great job on the Horsefolk PDF and I am pretty happy with the content. I would have made Mounted Combat the Blessing and Horse Whisperer the Virtue but it works ok as written.
My mounted combat rules are slightly more complex than Tel's as well, but each to their own. Mine has an extra step for quality of mount.
I'm just trying to find time to complete my backgrounds but my youngest daughter is teething and my concentration levels are currently low.....
(Glorfindel added backgrounds that are excellent for Riders still remaining in the Anduin Valley).

Anyway, back to greaves etc.

Glorfindel, I had considered using the Weapon and Armour qualities from the Rewards section as well. It doesn't work for me though. I am of the opinion that would represent an inconsistency in how armour works in the game. IMO that train of thought means that helmets also should be represented using an Armour quality rather than an individual 'ruled' armour piece.
I am leaning towards treating them in much the same way a helmets and making them a set +1 addition per pair to the protection roll and limiting their construction to worked leather with metal splinting in the default region of Rhovanion. Imrahil may have plate one in Gondor but these are less technologically advanced areas. I might consider them for Dwarves though?

I think that the Qualities rules work well to represent adjustments made to the basic armour pieces, such as a hood on a mail shirt or riveting a few steel plates to the front of a hauberk.

Finally, I would suggest that in TOR , the differences between Chainmail, Lamellar and Scale would be very difficult to represent. I would suggest that all provide roughly the same protection and could be treated as such.

On the subject of armour, what do orcs wear?

The books sometimes describes them as heavily armoured and 'clad in iron', suggesting a crude amalgam of plates that would be too heavy and cumbersome for men to wear. Some illustrations in the TOR seem to support that as well.

Is there an 'official' take on what orcs use as armour, and what are the regional differences if any?

I think helmets would receive the reward treatment if they were rare and/or expensive and reserved for deserving warriors. In the frame of the Lord of the rings, that may not be the case for helmets but it may be the case for pauldrons and vambraces. Other than the knights of Dol Amroth, the royal guard of Minas Tirith, the marshals of the mark and a few more distinguished individuals, they may not be that common. In TOR's language, uncommon gear = reward.

I'm not saying that treating vambraces as rewards is the way to go, only saying that it isn't necessarily that much of an incoherency within the frame of the game.

Glorfindel

Hmmm, I can see what your saying. I would probably agree that plate ones would only belong to the wealthiest and most valorous of warriors but not the splinted leather ones. Take a look at Lifstan the Barding. A starting character who is clearly wearing splinted greaves.

I am trying to follow and grasp the issue here about armor. Clearly I am failing to see the issue in terms of game play. Anyone care to enlighten me?

I've been scouring the professor's writing for everyone & he didn't have much to say in detail concerning this topic. While this doesn't necessarily answer our questions regarding greaves & vambrances, he did discuss the armor of the Rohirrim in a letter:

I have no doubt that in the area envisaged by my story (which is large) the 'dress' of various peoples, Men and others, was much diversified in the Third Age, according to climates, and inheritated custom. As with our world, even if we only consider Europe and the Mediterranean and the very near 'East' (or South)...The Rohirrim were not 'mediaevel', in our sense. The styles of the Bayeux Tapestry (made in England) fit them well enough, if one remembers that the kind of tennis-nets [the] soldiers seem to have on are only a clumsy conventional sign for chain-mail of small rings.

Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 280-81.

Thus, taking into account his abstract explanation to a fan (broadly speaking), he apparently envisioned: conical helms, with/without nasals and/or coifs as appropriate; byrnies, gambesons, and hauberks; kit shields and perhaps a mix of broadshields among the lesser levies and allies of both sides (Bretons with the Normans and Anglo-Saxon Fyrd for example); and so on.

This also doesn't address other issues, such as the Swan-knights of Dol Amroth, but it at least gives us a glimpse into his creative process.

At any case, making a set of vambrace a +1 protection/+2 encumbrance akin to a cap of iron and leather isn't going to unbalance the game IMO, and doesn't even break the spirit of the rules. Actually, you may be right about this being more coherent.

My worries is that if each accessory can provide a protection bonus, you'll end up with a panoply of helmets, vambraces, pauldrons, greaves, hard leather boots, reinforced girdles, double-layered chainmail shoulder pads etc. It could become pretty muddied pretty quick, and yet be just as justified as lamellar vambraces.

Totally agree with the first paragraph Glorfindel, not so sure about the second though. As I said previously, IMO the separate rules for Helmets sets a precedent for how armour that protects extremities should be treated. Anything else, that is a refinement or reinforcement of an existing piece of armour, should be covered under the rewards system for adding armour qualities.

A mail coif is the odd one out though. Worn on it's own, it might be treated similarly to a helmet. If it was actually a mail hood on a mail coat, it would probably be treated as a mail coat having the Close Fitting quality.

But why the need to add rules for single pieces of armour at all?

Okay, I can buy the idea of using the rules for rewards&virtues to simulate that someone gets a pair of princely vambraces as a gift to wear with his mail hauberk. That's actually kind of nifty since it's a great piece of story telling.

But The TOR rules is extremely streamlined and abstract. It doesn't use hit areas/zones. It isn't equipment based like D&D is for example.
It doesn't different between a saber, a spatha, a scmitar, an arming sword or a light saber.
The rules just sees all of them as sword and lets you add the details. That's the abstraction of the rules.
Any details of just how your guys' swords look the rules leaves to your imagination because it doesn't care or need to know since it doesn't different between them.
The same is true for different pieces of armour.
There is no need to try and calculate what bonus kind of bonus a pair of vambraces add to a mail hauberk or a nasal bar to a leather and iron cap because the rules already cover that.
You get +1 for a leather and iron cap not matter the type as long as its still an open helmet that sacrifices protection for comfort and a better field of vision.

You'll save yourself a lot of headache when your realize that you don't need to obsess on just what type of rules different types of gear need because the game isn't about gear.

Well done!

Chrykan, I know about the abstraction of combat in TOR and, as I stated earlier, I think that it is one of the best things about the system.
Even abstractions have to be consistent though. See what I wrote in my last post about this.

However, no one is getting hung up on it and I suspect that very few are actually 'obsessing about gear'. It's just guys bouncing ideas off each other. Sometimes we agree, other times we don't and despite my personal support for the abstract nature of the game there are several other posters who are looking for more complexity. It can be fun to discuss these sort of options occasionally and it keeps the boards active.

I think Halbarad's point is that if TOR was that abstract, there wouldn't be a difference between helm and armour. A helmet would be part of the protection of an armour, like greaves or vambraces. As you said, the game as no hit or system of the sort to make protection to head more important than other body parts.

But TOR does make the difference between a body armour an a headgear, yet the two are protective equipments serving the same purpose: making a protection roll to resist piercing blows (as opposed to the shield which serve a different purpose; raise the TN to hit you).

Why wouldn't other accessories be treated like headgears since the game already recognize a difference? As Halbarad said, it's a question of coherency.

I'm not saying Halbarad is right, but his questioning is pertinent IMHO.

[edit] ninja'd by Hal...

Thanks Glor, you have put forward my point precisely. There are no hit s, yet helmets are not simply abstracted as part of overall armour. The precedent is thus set and it seems perfectly reasonable that bracers and greaves 'could' be treated in similar fashion.

Ps. I am right. Deep down, you know it.................

That's because helmets doesn't really makes sense.

Let me come at this from an other direction I give you an example, which by the way was what made me realize that most special rules we want to add is really redundant because the game already have it covered.

I like shields and I find the techniques used when fighting with a shield in real life is interesting and really cool. Because in real life shields isn't protection, they're weapons in their own right. Defensive weapons by all means but weapons nonetheless that in the hands of a skilled fighter can be used to inflict harm or set an opponent up for a killing blow with your sword or axe or whatever.
Which is why I think it's sad that many RPGs just treat shields as an passive addition to a characters armour.

One of the things I liked the most about TOR when I first read it was that it added the bonus for shields to parry instead of to armour.
Now parry represent how good a character is at actively defend himself as you all know and adding the shield bonus to parry simulated that the character actively used the shield during fighting, which is a huge leap forward compared to a passive bonus to armour.

However, that still lacked the feeling of shields being used as weapons offensively since it was still just a defensive bonus. So I thought why not make a house rule that allowed the shield bonus to be used to lower the TN offensively as well raise it defensively and let the players choose which way they wanted to use their shields in a round. That certainly would give the shields the weaponized feel I think they deserve, esp. the buckler.

Now I'm going to go off on a tangent for a moment.
In abstract game mechanics like TOR's an attack, at least not in my opinion and many others, an attack isn't just a single chop with a weapon.
An attack simulates a whole flurry of parries, chops and stabs and you don't just use your weapon, you use your whole body by punching, kicking, biting and spitting at your opponent, until you get the fluid and dynamic fights from the Lotor films instead of the mechanically up and down chopping of a theme-park doll you get if you take the rules literally.

Now after discussing the, in my eyes, brilliant house rule with some people, I came to realize that it wasn't brilliant. It wasn't even needed because the rules in their simple abstraction already did want I wanted.
Seen from the POV above a character would already use his shield both offensively and defensively in a fight.
What my house rule really did was make a character better offensively when he used a shield and that simply is not realistic.
You don't get better offensively for using a shield in an offensive way but you do get a little better defence by just picking up a shield and that's what the shield bonus does already.

Now to finally get to my point.
The same argument to why my house rule was redundant and flawed can be applied to any special rules regarding particular pieces of armour.
Any pieces of armour like vambraces and greaves is already simulated by the abstraction in the rules without the need of any special bonuses.
You want your guy run around in a mail coat and greaves then you give him a hail hauberk because that amounts to the same thing anyway.
Plate armour doesn't give you better protection than mail as long were just talking about single pieces, it just give you different protection. Not until you start wearing a chest plate or an integrated full body armour of plate does the quality of the protection increase.

Then what about the rules for helmets.
Well, as I said at the start helmets in TOR doesn't make any sense. Their rules doesn't really mesh smoothly with the simple abstraction of the rest of the rules.
But I can see two reasons why those rules were included anyway.

The first is that people expect there to be helmets in a fantasy game and few players would accept a system were helmets were purely a cosmetic addition so there have to be rules to govern them.

The second brings us back to shields.
No body armour has ever protected the head. You want to protect your noggin you need a helmet or a coif.
But the rules in TOR focus on endurance and not on wounds, and if you compare amateur boxers wearing protective helmets and pro boxers you'll see that not only doesn't amateur boxers get as hurt as the pros but they often finish a fight looking more fresh and alert simply because the helmets have cushioned the blows to their heads a little.
And you could probably argue that that is what the helmet bonus simulates. That the helmets they wear cushions them from all the jostling and blows a fighter suffer to the head in any fight and which in the end wears them down.

But as I said it doesn't work as smoothly as the rest of the rules since you always get that bonus even though most blows doesn't hit your head making them feel both a bit over powered and illogical.

On the other hand it's worth remembering that protection you could get from a pair of even the best greaves or pauldrons can't be compared to that of the simplest helmet.

Lots of good points in there and I agree whole heartedly with most of them.

I don't agree with you about Helmets being out of synch with the rest of the armour system. That is your opinion. I, on the other hand, think it works quite well and it is part of the RAW.
As I said previously, it has introduced a precedent through which we can introduce other individual pieces of armour to protect the other extremities' if we so desire'.
As long as any new items work within the framework of the game RAW I see no reason, save for personal preference, why they should or could not be included.

If we accept your proposition that helmets should just have been abstracted(and I think that is what you are saying) then why do we bother having any types of armour options beyond simple leather and mail shirts? Surely a mail coat is just a mail shirt with the Cunning Quality applied to give it sleeves and a mail hauberk has it applied again to make it knee length.

I have played in loads of games over the years where helmets were abstracted, so it's not simply a case that people won't accept helmets as an abstraction. Off the top of my head, i believe that AD&D prior to 3rd edition had abstracted headgear, as did Merp(though I only played it and never GM'ed so I admit to being a little fuzzy on that one).

Finally, I would be of the opinion that for warriors in a Pseudo Dark Ages setting that a good pair of armoured greaves would be viewed as equally useful by any man standing in the front rank of a shield wall.

I would exploit the diversity introduced by elements like vambraces or greaves as a chance to highlight the peculiarities of a culture, on top of the basic gear everyone uses (armour, shields). The way I see it, what you wear in combat and how you use it is often determined by the martial tradition of the folk you belong to. That is why I would probably portray a proficient use of vambraces as a special ability* for the Knights of Dol Amroth, much in the vein of Virtues like Swordmaster for the Bardings, or of most cultural Rewards.

Francesco

*of course allowing for a bonus on all your Healing rolls.

Good to see your thoughts on the subject Francesco. Linking this to Mim's earlier post and the bit about Imrahil's vambrace might suggest that the future could have Rohirrim with Nasal Bar helmets and pieces of plate armour in Gondor(which should stir up a hornets nest).

Prince Imrahil with his stainless steel bracers of healing...............

Actually I would say that helmets could have been abstracted and not that they should have.

And i don't think helmets is out of sync of the system either. I think helmets work, it's just that they don't work as smoothly as the rest of the system.
Think of it as helmets representing a tiny scratch in an otherwise smooth stone. It in now way reduces the beauty or feeling of the stone. It just means the stone isn't perfect.
And perfection is tbh far to much to ask of any system.
In any game, even one as beautifully balanced as TOR you're bound to find a few bumps and helmets imo is TOR's.

I also kind of like the idea of using rewards to signify a character getting a pair of finely crafted vambraces and so on.

I mostly made that post because it seemed that you guys were at risk from, suffering from the D&D syndrome (or the WoW syndrome if we're going to be electronic about it) as I like to call it. Were people long used to gear and equipment based games like D&D get hold on a much more abstract game and feel that it necessary to come up with all sorts of special rules to cover all sorts of gear that isn't included in the game because the abstraction of the rules doesn't need them.

I've found a radical change of perspective often can cure it.

Hope it wasn't too pre sumptuous of me.

For my part, I think headgear works perfectly as written when compared to armour, both from a rules standpoint and a thematic one.

Rules wise, armour provides you with dice, thematically representing the possiblity that a blow will be turned.

With a helmet, this bonus is fixed, representing the fact that in all cases, anyone with head protection is a little bit safer. Added to this the utterly fantastic image of a warrior hard pressed and fatigued removing their helmet to get a lttle air and take stock of the battlefield.

Could other bits of armour be simulated with a simialr fixed, but thematically pointless, bonus? Sure...but I wouldn't do it...

Just my opinion.

Guys, everyone is entitled to an opinion. As I said earlier, it keeps the boards interesting and active.
There are several posters who clearly don't think that there is need for greaves and vambraces as they just clutter up the system.That's okay by me. Just don't use them, I don't.
I run this game RAW.
That doesn't make it a waste of my time though, as there are a few posters who have indicated on other threads that they are interested in slightly more complexity and I am happy to provide ideas and options that they might wish to use.

Caul,
'thematically pointless'. Really man, that's harsh. I certainly don't think so. It's no more thematically pointless than inventing whole magic systems, entire new heroic cultures and mechanics for mass combat,mounted combat and off hand weapons.

Okay... .... lets take it down a notch.

This is 90% of the reason why they are there. in my mind, this is something that says 'heroic' and 'gritty' at the same time...
Or maybe it just says 'cool!'

Francesco

There's nothing to take down a notch, Bleddyn. A mild annoyance, at what was probably just a throwaway comment, has passed.

At the end of the day, YTORMV.

Chryckan.

I do not think that you are being too presumptuous when you say that there are people who will suffer from the syndromes that you mention. You can be completely at ease though, a I am not one of those people.
I can tell you absolutely nothing about World of Warcraft and I stopped DnD when 3rd became 3.5 Ed. Only D20 played nice then has been Conan by Mongoose. Broadsword, kilt and sandals is not equipment heavy.....

Anyhow, I think we should just agree to disagree on the relative merits of vambraces etc. and move onto a different topic. Would you agree that this is the best course of action?

Caul,

Same to you man. I'm sure you intended no offence in your earlier post.

+1!!

As I've said before I've been enthralled by TOR because of its simplicity and allowance to abstract from the rules to make it our own. I've finally had enough rules bloat with all things D&D (now Pathfinder) and need something light yet more heartfelt. I dont want this to turn into another such game that relies on gear and rules to be closer to true simulationism.

As far as I'm concerned adding a Vembrace to a piece of armor is a perfect ideal fit as a reward to an armor. It adds story, it makes it special to the player, and there's already a rule and precedence set in the game of TOR to support this notion.

Everything else is just cosmetic flavor

I don't mind if people make up rules for vambraces etc. as long as you do it for the right reason.

Right reason being because it makes for a great story or makes the setting feel even more cooler and amazing.

The wrong reason being: "How can my character wear vambraces if there is no rules saying that he is."

I can't help but to agree whole heartedly with that sentiment.
Logically that action doesn't make sense but dramatically....
The image of hero revealing his or her face to the foes after already fighting them off for quite some time. Now that's the birth of songs and myths!
I love it.