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10 orcs seems to be too many to get a good statistical variance.

Try 5.

vs. Cave Troll
with no armor: 24.6% win rate
with mail shirt and cap: 26.5% win rate
with mail hauberk and helm: 26.1% win rate

vs. 5 Wild Wolves
with no armor: 33.7% win rate
with mail shirt and cap: 55.6% win rate
with mail hauberk and helm: 44.9% win rate

I decided to try one more thing, and put the Hero in Forward stance against the wolves.
with no armor: 5.7% win rate
with mail shirt and cap: 24.3% win rate
with mail hauberk and helm: 7.7% win rate

This was exactly my thought.

As I said before and as you can see in Elfcrusher’s simulation, you practically get no benefit from armor against a single powerful opponent, while against many, weaker opponent you do get a benefit, but only from light armor: and heavy armor actually gives you a penalty.

As a conclusion, the value of an armor peaks at middle levels of protection, but then rapidly declines as the armor gets heavier. This is very inaccurate: why would someone craft and wear a heavier, more expensive suit of armor if it not only doesn’t give an advantage, but actually penalize a combatant??

From another point of view, let’s have a look at the average dice roll scores of armor protection checks:
Leather shirt (1d12+1d6): 10
Leather corselet (1d12+2d6): 13.5
Chain shirt (1d12+3d6): 17
Coat of mail (1d12+4d6): 20.5
Chain hauberk (1d12+5d6): 24

As you can see, you can resist most incoming Penetrating Strikes from traditional weaponry (TN 16) with a chain shirt (scoring 17 on average). A coat of mail will already protect you from the biggest common weapons (scoring 20 on average), while a chain hauberk gives you even “too much protection” (but again, on average), since no traditional weapon has a TN of 24.

This is even more evident if we add a Helmet (+4 to protection rolls):
Leather shirt + helm: 14
Leather corselet + helm: 17.5
Chain shirt + helm: 21
Coat of mail + helm: 24.5
Chain hauberk + helm: 28

If I had to choose an armor, basing on average values I would definitely go for a chain shirt, or (almost equivalent) a Leather corselet and a Helmet, since I would be protected against the vast majority of Penetrating strikes with an acceptable Encumbrance value. A Chain hauberk and maybe also a Coat of mail are WAY too expensive in terms of fatigue, in relation to the actual protection they give.

One last point: looking at Elfcrusher simulations, you see that in Forward stance heavy armor is at its worst. This seems counter-intuitive to me: a character should rely more on his armor when he is all-out, not less! If his ability to parry is less efficient, then it’s up to his armor to compensate. Yet we see that if he was wearing a lighter armor, he would perform better.

Something is wrong here. Heavier armor HAS TO BE a tactical advantage, except in hard terrain or where mobility is a key factor. In a straightforward duel, as it has been pointed out before, between two warriors of the same skill level, the one with better protection has much more chances to win.

I just caught up on this thread and it's a really interesting discussion. A lot of you have postulated reducing the encumbrance of armour or something to even it out. I decided a while back that I felt some of the armours, especially the heavier ones, seemed a bit too heavy. In an attempt to deal with this, along with the other issue of the Body Attribute only having bearing when someone achieves a Great or Extraordinary Success, I house ruled that when calculating encumbrance, the players add up the weight of their equipment then subtract their Body score from it

Michebugio wrote: One last point: looking at Elfcrusher simulations, you see that in Forward stance heavy armor is at its worst. This seems counter-intuitive to me: a character should rely more on his armor when he is all-out, not less! If his ability to parry is less efficient, then it’s up to his armor to compensate. Yet we see that if he was wearing a lighter armor, he would perform better.

That conclusion has to be mitigated by the "high skill" effect: when you have enough dice on the table you can overcome the high TN of defensive stance, which in almost every case is more skill dice than your opponent has. (In fact, the metagamey rule of thumb is probably: "Defensive if you have higher weapon skill than your opponent, Open if they are equal, and Forward if your skill is lower." I'll sim that at some point.)

By the way...before I forget...I remember when I first joined this forum somebody saying, "After some experimentation we settled on medium armor and a cap being the optimal combination..." or something to that effect. Interesting that they intuited what the sim concludes.

Something is wrong here. Heavier armor HAS TO BE a tactical advantage, except in hard terrain or where mobility is a key factor. In a straightforward duel, as it has been pointed out before, between two warriors of the same skill level, the one with better protection has much more chances to win.

You are right, it does have to be a tactical advantage, but in all these discussions about realism we forget about fun. If heavier armor is better, why wouldn't everybody wear heavy armor? In D&D they try to mitigate this by giving armor high costs, but every Fighter and Paladin starts with chain and has plate by level 5. It's not really a "choice" if everybody makes the same choice. (cf. Blizzard's talent tree changes)

In a perfectly designed game, armor choice would be a hard trade-off, preferably one that tips one way or another depending on both situation and other character choices, but that can never be perfectly optimized.

But here are my ideas for the collective cognitive hopper:

First, I'm not a fan of a lot of tweaking of the numbers. One thing I LOVE about TOR is its simplicity, even if that simplicity sometimes leads to debates like this. I think any new rules should preserve that simplicity.

One thing that occurred to me about armor and fatigue is that maybe there should be a link to traveling. The rule could be as simple as "If you've been traveling in your armor, encumbrance = fatigue." That means that you could put it on before the Battle of Helm (for example) and it wouldn't affect fatigue. I fear that rules lawyering would force us to make the rule more specific ("...for a day" or "...for 8 hours" or "...12 out of the last 24 hours") but it would be nice to keep the rule as simple as the rest of TOR.

So if, for example, you have a pony or a boat you could tell the LM "I don't travel in my armor." You thus arrive at your destination with only travel fatigue, but if you have encounters along the way you won't have your armor. Where it gets tricky is when players start asking, "Do I have time to get into my armor?"

Or how about this:

New 'weapon' skill: "Armor"
For each point of Armor skill, remove 2 encumbrance (minimum 0) from the total of your armor, helm, and shield encumbrance. (Yes, that screws up character progression because it creates a new category for XP.)

Hmmmm. Well, first, take one character, and put him up against 5 orcs with, say, a longsword and every armor/shield/helmet combination in the game, and find out what yields the highest win/loss percentage.

It'd interest me to know what armor combination is actually most optimal at present. Because that's the encumberance value a mail hauberk ought to have.

Angelalex242 wrote:Hmmmm. Well, first, take one character, and put him up against 5 orcs with, say, a longsword and every armor/shield/helmet combination in the game, and find out what yields the highest win/loss percentage.

It'd interest me to know what armor combination is actually most optimal at present. Because that's the encumberance value a mail hauberk ought to have.

Not sure I agree that Mail Hauberk should be the clearly optimal choice. (Which is what it would be if it's a wash on single opponents and a distinct advantage against multiple opponents.) Why wouldn't every character take it as their armor from the very beginning?

I'd really like to see armor interact with other character choices somehow, so that optimality is more fluid.

Hmmm.

Okay, let's run the numbers by culture.

Put the character up against 5 orcs, one of each existing culture, and find what the most optimal shield/helmet/armor is for that culture.

Then, we know what to outfit NPCs in, on the assumption players can do what they like, but NPCs take the statistically sound option.

These numbers should take into account all cultural blessings/rewards/virtues focused on defense for that culture.

(We might find that woodmen wear different armor in the woods then they do out of them, and Dwarves wear different gear underground with Durin's way.)

(I bet we'll find the Beorning's Great Strength virtue is too limiting, and it actually does more harm then good. It might do good things against a single target though.)

Elfcrusher wrote:I'd really like to see armor interact with other character choices somehow, so that optimality is more fluid.

Just a few ideas off the top of my head - not sure how they'd work as haven't thought them through...

1) Armour has a cost as per standard of living -

Leather shirt: Poor
Leather corselet: Frugal
Chain shirt: Martial
Coat of mail: Prosperous
Chain hauberk: Rich

2) Those in heavier armour get bonuses to Awe/Intimidate rolls whether in or out of combat, but have mirrored penalties for Athletic tests. Could also have negative or positive applications to other interactions as someone in armour may be seen as being aggressive, etc - would depend on the circumstances.

3) If an EYE is rolled as a protection test then the number of dice of the armour is reduced by 1D to simulate some damage occurring to it. Also means that the heavier armour types have more of a 'buffer' for this occurring more, to address earlier posts that anything above a chain shirt isn't optimal.

4) When in forward stance those in heavy armour (chain coat or hauberk) can decide to use their armour to reduce the damage of each successful attack by the armour's encumbrance rating. Each round declaring this will reduce the dice rating of the armour by 1D (if any attacks cause damage to the hero).

5) Full helms provide negative modifiers to Awareness tests.

6) Shields are limited to the number of opponents they can be used to defend against within a combat round -

Buckler: 1 opponent
Shield: 1 opponent
Great Shield: 2 opponents

... Open to debate, I'm sure, and also not sure about them as I've not tested them but together (plus others) may give the mechanical options that you're after or at least get other ideas flowing?

All interesting ideas, Rich. And I think largely in the spirit of the game. I like that you're factoring non-combat skills into the equation. Makes it impossible to truly optimize.

On the "damage to armor on Sauron" thing, maybe Armor needs a couple more stats, analogous to Edge and Injury, that reflect its resistance to damage? Or is that getting too complicated....

Elfcrusher wrote:All interesting ideas, Rich. And I think largely in the spirit of the game. I like that you're factoring non-combat skills into the equation. Makes it impossible to truly optimize.

That's what immediately sprung to mind when I read your post; "what are other reasons/advantages for wearing armour?"

Elfcrusher wrote:On the "damage to armor on Sauron" thing, maybe Armor needs a couple more stats, analogous to Edge and Injury, that reflect its resistance to damage? Or is that getting too complicated....

Yeah that certainly crossed my mind too. Reason I went with EYE results is that for my game I've been through compiling a list of EYE results and what they could mean when they occur in specific elements of the game... eg:

Journey Test - Hazard
Battle Roll - Additional dice to adversaries
Attack - Fumble/Complication
Protection Test - Loss of 1D in armour
Encounter - Encounter Hazard
Encounter Insight - Reduce Tolerance
Corruption Test - Additional point of Shadow
Fear Test - Flee

... Just fits in with other elements of the system. The extra stats for armour are a nice idea though.