Armours house rules...again

[Glorelendil]

In (one of) Zedturtle's PbP games my character was carrying a longsword but no shield. At the Battle of Celduin he borrowed a shield from a villager, and then again the final chapter of TfW he borrowed a shield from a companion. At the time it felt a little bit like having my cake and eating it too, as I didn't have to deal with the encumbrance of the shield while traveling but then got it when I needed it.

But thinking more about it, I'm not sure I should feel guilty. As soon as he picks up the shield his total Encumbrance and Fatigue go up by the shield's value, so there is zero impact during the battle. The only edge-case where it would have made a difference is if, up until that point, his Endurance had dropped to within a few points of Fatigue, in which case maybe he avoided being Weary for some common skill rolls.

But of course the risk of playing this way is that you might show up for the fight and find there's no shield to be had.

Also, there's ample evidence in the texts of heroes traveling without armor and then girding up for a big battle.

The only rules question is whether shedding the shield after the battle then reduces Encumbrance/Fatigue again. I realize that the rule for Helm removal explicitly does not work for shields, but that only applies during combat. That might mean, for example, that in the second case I mentioned, when my character borrowed a shield from another player, his Fatigue would go down and mine would go up, and then again after the fight.

Personally I don't see this as a problem; I don't see how it could be gamed. In fact, letting heroes leave behind gear seems like a perfectly valid way of dealing with too much Fatigue, as long as the LM makes replacement challenging. E.g., it might actually cost Treasure to replace a coat of mail.

Should heroes have the option of shedding gear outside of combat to reduce Fatigue?

[Falenthal]

Encumbrance is only recalculated after a prolonged rest, so that just throwing away your shield doesn't mean you can erase its Encumbrance right away: you need to take a prolonged rest.

p.132
Update Fatigue Rating
If a hero reduced the total Encumbrance of his carried
gear before taking a prolonged rest, he may now update
his Fatigue rating accordingly (see page 159 for details).

[Glorelendil]

Encumbrance is only recalculated after a prolonged rest, so that just throwing away your shield doesn't mean you can erase its Encumbrance right away: you need to take a prolonged rest.

p.132
Update Fatigue Rating
If a hero reduced the total Encumbrance of his carried
gear before taking a prolonged rest, he may now update
his Fatigue rating accordingly (see page 159 for details).

I should have said that I wonder if it should work in a different way. According to RAW, if one player loans his shield to another for a single fight, then until the next prolonged rest...which could be a while...they both have higher Fatigue. Which seems weird to me, as well as unnecessary (unless there's some exploit that hasn't occurred to me.)

[Azrael Macool]

I already came up with baseline rules for changing your equipment while in an Adventuring Phase. Basically, I tied it to Standard of Living and Culture. A Frugal character may afford to "upgrade" (for lack of a better word) a piece of their equipment once, only if among their own Culture. So a Woodman with a Cap can change it to a Helm, but only if in a Woodman settlement. If he had no head gear at all, then he could only borrow a Cap. A Martial character may upgrade once outside of his Culture, twice from within, and so on. Upgrading from Leather Armour to Mail Armour costs an additional upgrade. Of course, you have to be at a settlement of some kind in order to do this at all, and the LM can rule that that settlement, if it's particularly small or poor, either doesn't have a piece of gear, or it would be an increased cost. Occasionally, especially if you're in a place that's unfriendly (though not overtly hostile, of course), you may have to make an appropriate roll in order to obtain the gear (Persuade maybe, or possibly Craft if you wanna represent it as you buying the materials and renting the forge or something to add extra pieces to your armour or something). I thought this would make an interesting choice for if you think you might need something a bit more heavy-duty whilst you've already started your adventure, and it gives Standard of Living a little more to do.

EDIT: Something occurred to me earlier... Does getting a great or extraordinary success on a Protection Test do anything? I can't think of anything, and maybe it ought to. A couple ideas I had were maybe changing a Called Shot to a regular hit, or reducing damage taken. I had initially thought about it basically reducing the degree of success of the attack; if they scored a great success against you, but you got a great success on your Protection Test, you only take Endurance damage equal to the weapon's damage, not their Attribute rating, stuff like that... Though I wonder if that's way too powerful. And Not sure about what happens if you'd reduce the attack's damage to 0... Like, would that be okay, or way too overpowered? It seems like that would give an unfair advantage to heavily armoured opponents, too. Of course, maybe the damage reduction could be toned down, like, one or two points reduced per degree of success. Or something to that effect.

[zedturtle]

Huh. My original objection was that it seemed unfair that a character be able to possess the benefit of something without having 'paid' the cost of it in Encumbrance. Broyan loaning you his shield was doubly generous... he lost his ability to do extra damage (due to Shield-fighting) and the bonus to Parry.

I don't suppose that I would prevent a player from taking the gamble of not carrying gear, but neither would I go out of the way to provide handy substitutes in each location... Finding an ancient shield in the ruins of a watchtower might happen once, but it wouldn't happen every time. Of course, as mentioned, if you are going to a weapontake for some known reason then the situation would be different for sure.

[Azrael Macool]

Encumbrance is only recalculated after a prolonged rest, so that just throwing away your shield doesn't mean you can erase its Encumbrance right away: you need to take a prolonged rest.

p.132
Update Fatigue Rating
If a hero reduced the total Encumbrance of his carried
gear before taking a prolonged rest, he may now update
his Fatigue rating accordingly (see page 159 for details).

I should have said that I wonder if it should work in a different way. According to RAW, if one player loans his shield to another for a single fight, then until the next prolonged rest...which could be a while...they both have higher Fatigue. Which seems weird to me, as well as unnecessary (unless there's some exploit that hasn't occurred to me.)

Well, a prolonged rest is just sleeping for the night. You can do it on the road, so you'd be at "normal" Fatigue the next day. Unless I'm mistaken.

[zedturtle]

Well, a prolonged rest is just sleeping for the night. You can do it on the road, so you'd be at "normal" Fatigue the next day. Unless I'm mistaken.

It might be worth noting that this is how the two players accomplished the switch in my game as well. I let them have reconfigured themselves the night before their assault on the watchtower, thus each character had the appropriate amount of total Fatigue (which was quite a bit, it had been a rough trip).