Defence only viable stance for experienced characters

[Angelalex242]

Well...

I dunno...

Wish we had some SCEA types around. Boxing is very different then medieval sword fighting. And SCEA types do actually fight in armor.

Maybe if armor did reduce end damage as well...

For example, armor takes its dice of end off every hit.

With leather reducing every bit of end damage by 1 per hit, and the mighty mail hauberk reducing end damage by 5 per hit. At that point, people MIGHT actually be tempted to wear the hauberks (because it'd make you immune to most attacks where the enemy doesn't get a great success or better.)

[Rocmistro]

I've actually toyed with the idea of giving the metal armors a damage reduction value of 1 / 2 / 3 respectively for mail shirt / coat of mail / and mail hauberk. The 4d and 5d is almost certainly overkill, except for when you are fatigued, and the best way to not get fatigued is not have a fatigue rating so high!

[Stormcrow]

Armor should not reduce endurance lost during a fight. Endurance doesn't represent "damage"; it represents how tired you get avoiding a blow or taking a hit on your armor. It's non-lethal bruising, cutting, scraping, and shock.

Try this: put on a football helmet, then have someone hit you over the head with a heavy branch repeatedly as hard as they can. (Okay, maybe you shouldn't try it.) Even if the blows never get through the helmet, you're going to quickly want them to stop: your ears will be ringing, your head will be swimming, your neck will hurt, and you'll have trouble standing up.

I don't consider the SCA the definitive guide to authentic medieval combat, but it does provide valuable experience. When you're fighting, if a rattan sword hits your helmet, you're not necessarily out; it has to hit hard enough that you could believe a metal sword could hack through. This was approximately, "hard enough that you wouldn't want me to hit you any harder with this piece of wood."

The guy who taught fighting at my college had a routine for beginners. He'd put on a helmet and give you a rattan sword. "Hit my head," he'd say. You'd thunk his helmet. "Nonono," he'd complain, "really hit me." You'd whack hard. "C'mon," he'd say, "hit me like you mean it." Then you'd throw your entire weight behind the blow, and it felt like you might take his head off. BANG!! "Good!" he'd say, not having even swayed out of position. It wasn't until this that you'd scored what The One Ring calls a piercing blow.

[SirKicley]

Armor should not reduce endurance lost during a fight. Endurance doesn't represent "damage"; it represents how tired you get avoiding a blow or taking a hit on your armor. It's non-lethal bruising, cutting, scraping, and shock.

Try this: put on a football helmet, then have someone hit you over the head with a heavy branch repeatedly as hard as they can. (Okay, maybe you shouldn't try it.) Even if the blows never get through the helmet, you're going to quickly want them to stop: your ears will be ringing, your head will be swimming, your neck will hurt, and you'll have trouble standing up.

I don't consider the SCA the definitive guide to authentic medieval combat, but it does provide valuable experience. When you're fighting, if a rattan sword hits your helmet, you're not necessarily out; it has to hit hard enough that you could believe a metal sword could hack through. This was approximately, "hard enough that you wouldn't want me to hit you any harder with this piece of wood."

The guy who taught fighting at my college had a routine for beginners. He'd put on a helmet and give you a rattan sword. "Hit my head," he'd say. You'd thunk his helmet. "Nonono," he'd complain, "really hit me." You'd whack hard. "C'mon," he'd say, "hit me like you mean it." Then you'd throw your entire weight behind the blow, and it felt like you might take his head off. BANG!! "Good!" he'd say, not having even swayed out of position. It wasn't until this that you'd scored what The One Ring calls a piercing blow.

First, I do not play with the idea that armor provides damage reduction. And I do agree with most of what you say, especially to the part of how one should abstractly define "endurance loss". I will at least suggest that your logic isn't without faults, however. Taking your football helmet vs heavy branch analogy, now replace the football helmet with a leather/cloth covering like the ones they wore in the 30s. And now hit the head with the same force from the branch. The result I reckon will be far less fun for the less protected. So it's not without reason to assume heavier armor can reduce damage.

Now I can see how this can be argued that this is the difference of "protection dice" in heavier armor to reduce the viability of a piercing blow, but you were using the helmet analogy to define how "endurance" is lost and fatigue (weary condition) is caused.

I do not argue at all that heavier armor should and does provide better protection against the chance of getting WOUNDED. But the way you described the armor in place blocking blows but still leading to Endurance loss, (making one WEARY), still leaves room to surmise better protection may slow that down.

In actuality, the modern day football helmet would actually lead to WEARY fatigue more quickly than that of the leatherhead helmet of the 30s, due to the greater encumbrance. So that actually creates a paradox to the logic.

Thus, to me, it stands to reason that heavier armor could be theorized to reduce a little damage, and yet still be balanced in that it will still lead to one becoming fatigued (weary) faster.

I may actually try applying some of this logic to just test the feasibility.

Robert

[Glorelendil]

Uh-oh we're going down the black hole of realism.

What's important to me is that simple rules lead to "interestingly complex" decisions. If the stance choice is totally obvious, depending on weapon skill level, that's uninteresting. If armor choice makes no difference..."I either die from wounds or from weariness, with the same odds either way"...then that's also uninteresting.

Few choices, with important and complex ramifications. Regardless of realism. TYVM.

[Woodclaw]

Well...

I dunno...

Wish we had some SCEA types around. Boxing is very different then medieval sword fighting. And SCEA types do actually fight in armor.

Maybe if armor did reduce end damage as well...

For example, armor takes its dice of end off every hit.

With leather reducing every bit of end damage by 1 per hit, and the mighty mail hauberk reducing end damage by 5 per hit. At that point, people MIGHT actually be tempted to wear the hauberks (because it'd make you immune to most attacks where the enemy doesn't get a great success or better.)

While I'm quite satisfied with the system as it is. I think this bit is worth exploring, especially if the GM adds a rule for adding some extra damage.

[Michebugio]

In terms of game balance, heavy armor becomes less useful as the game advances to higher challenges: the adversaries deal more and more damage, while their chance to score a Penetrating Strike remains almost (if not exactly) the same. So the characters get hammered to WEARY conditions faster and heavy armors only worsen this. The only way to counteract this is by raising characters' Endurance, but still, adversaries' damage outputs tend to grow faster than the character's ability to "toughen up".

But it also depends on the threat: if you're facing a horde of Orcs, you'll receive a lot of blows, and your chance to get WOUNDED gets higher. Hence, a heavy armor would be more advantageous. But if the Company is facing a single powerful Mountain Troll, I would recommend them to throw away their armors, since a single opponent won't score many Penetrating Strikes, while it will deal tons of Endurance damage. But would YOU, real-life people, throw away your armor when facing a 10 feet tall monster? I guess not!

Ruling armors has never been an easy task in rpgs...

[Yusei]

In terms of game balance, heavy armor becomes less useful as the game advances to higher challenges: the adversaries deal more and more damage, while their chance to score a Penetrating Strike remains almost (if not exactly) the same.

On the other hand, one of the characters in my group is a Swordsman Barding, and he almost only gets hit when the enemy rolls a Sauron. Which means he almost always needs to do a Protection test when he gets hit. In that case, having a decent armor can be useful.

[Corvo]

Well...
(...)
Maybe if armor did reduce end damage as well...

For example, armor takes its dice of end off every hit.

With leather reducing every bit of end damage by 1 per hit, and the mighty mail hauberk reducing end damage by 5 per hit. At that point, people MIGHT actually be tempted to wear the hauberks (because it'd make you immune to most attacks where the enemy doesn't get a great success or better.)

I use exactly this rule, for the same reasons explained by Mikebugio, SirKickley, etc.
On the other hand, note that the damage output in my games is a bit higher, since I use a different way to asses damage for great/extraordinary successes.

[Woodclaw]

Well...
(...)
Maybe if armor did reduce end damage as well...

For example, armor takes its dice of end off every hit.

With leather reducing every bit of end damage by 1 per hit, and the mighty mail hauberk reducing end damage by 5 per hit. At that point, people MIGHT actually be tempted to wear the hauberks (because it'd make you immune to most attacks where the enemy doesn't get a great success or better.)

I use exactly this rule, for the same reasons explained by Mikebugio, SirKickley, etc.
On the other hand, note that the damage output in my games is a bit higher, since I use a different way to asses damage for great/extraordinary successes.

I'm very interested. How do you calculate it?