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yeah sorry, I just did a quick scan and found nothing.
Looks like I just carried this (the Awe/Intimidate/Athletic bonuses and penalties) on over from WFRP.

Rich wrote: 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.

Now that you mention it, I'm surprised this wasn't included given its Pendragon roots.

Armor may not always be aggressive...in a world where it's easy enough to find some orcs if you want to find them, wearing armor SHOULD be simply practical.

And the highest end armor (mail hauberk) should perhaps include the 'lordly' distinction as a property of the armor, as it's not cheap stuff.

Angelalex242 wrote:And the highest end armor (mail hauberk) should perhaps include the 'lordly' distinction as a property of the armor, as it's not cheap stuff.

Exactly. Mail was never cheap to manufacture. Eventually it was less time consuming and cheaper to make plate than mail.

I love the rule set for TOR and I think the dynamics of the hope shadow systems and the travel and dialog encounters are great. I kinda started the armor should be rethought only because it is the one area of the game that thematically and logically doesn't "fit" well. Tolkien was supposed to have based combat mechanics and arms on the 14th 15th century timeframe. Warriors of that time wore chain hauberks and gambesons underneath for padding in the 14th leading to chain reinforced with plate later depending on your wealth and location. If armor had some restrictions to movement skills and kept fatigue where it was but reduced damage slightly OR just weighed less slightly (or made the valor reduction bigger) it would be a perfect game to run any midevil setting in.

I have been thinking about this a lot and this is my final input. Armor should reduce damage taken based on type of armor to type of weapon.

Leather 1vs blades
Leather corslet(reinforced) 1 blades/ bludgeon

Chain(all types) 2 blades/ bludgeon

Plate/heavy scale: 3 blades/ bludgeon

Basically group armor as 3 separate categories and none of the stop arrows since archery is harder to hit with anyway and a shield is more effective against it anyway.

Also just read the house rule that you calculate your fatigue by subtracting your body score is brilliant as well because it adds to the power of that attribute. Body is seriously under valued in my group because people throw their 3 to favored body and make this weapon a favored skill to compensate.

The "subtract Body from Fatigue" rule is actually a deep change in mechanics, since applying this rule the Leather shirt or the Helm become almost mandatory for any character.

It is simply making ALL armors more convenient: which is NOT what we want, as we've seen that light and medium armor are already quite an advantage respect to being unarmored.

In other words yes, it makes heavy armors more effective: but it also makes light and medium armor more effective. So the problem is still there.

Btw I'm coming up with a set of home-rules which I'm going to test tonight, one of which also covers armors. But I think I'll open a new topic for that.

Michebugio wrote:The "subtract Body from Fatigue" rule is actually a deep change in mechanics, since applying this rule the Leather shirt or the Helm become almost mandatory for any character.

It is simply making ALL armors more convenient: which is NOT what we want, as we've seen that light and medium armor are already quite an advantage respect to being unarmored.

In other words yes, it makes heavy armors more effective: but it also makes light and medium armor more effective. So the problem is still there.

Btw I'm coming up with a set of home-rules which I'm going to test tonight, one of which also covers armors. But I think I'll open a new topic for that.

If it looks promising, pass it along and I'll add it to the sim.

It actually can't be simmed, since it's an out of combat advantage I'll share it in another topic asap.

Besides, I'm also skeptical on the Endurance damage reduction... the benefit of the armor would counteract its own flaw, which seems very odd to me: the armor gets you tired faster (because of the encumbrance)... but also allows you to get tired later (because of Endurance damage reduction)... I don't like this...

I'll make a complete report after tonight. Maybe some of the other h-rules, though, would really be blessed by a trip on your simulator, Elfcrusher... I'll let you know

I've kept thinkering with the Rules a bit and I've come up with this idea.

In another post it was suggested to make Armor Encumbrance count only during travel, based on the same logic of Travelling Gear. While this is possible, I think it's a bit too good. Maybe it will be more effective to slipt Armor Encumbrance in half having one half count against the normal Encumbrance and the other calculated for journeys.

For example: a Chain Shirt usually as a Enc of 12, with this system it would only have a Enc of 6 but it would inflict another 6 on a failed Journey roll.

While heavy armor remain a disadvantage in the long run (i.e. while travelling) the gap between light and heavy armor is now less pronounced.

It might be possible to split the Encumbrance in non-equal halves (the chain shirt from above might be 4/8), but this might require some heavier math than I'm able to figure out right now.

FWIW:

@Rich - I see what Angel was saying in the 3.5 comparisons. No "heavy" armor isn't the obvious best bet in D&D 3rd edition, because it has drawbacks such as limited movement, lower bonus to AC from Dexterity, and much higher penalty to movement skills. Plus many character classes have class feature/abilities that do not function in heavy armor. Not to mention all those heavy armor bonuses do not count against "touch attacks" (things that don't have to get through armor to affect you like most spells that just need to contact the "person" and not the skin/flesh of the person. There are many if not the majority of instances when lighter armor is superior.

Imposing many of your cool nuances and penalties for having heavier armor mirror the same things that 3rd edition D&D does. Hence, his comparison.


I think in the end, it's less canonical to Tolkien for a bunch of people to wear "heavy" armor all the time. I believe the game's mechanics facilitate this well. BUT I can see how many would think it goes too far in making heavy armor a bad choice. I feel there is room for adding a bit more 'benefit' to it, and still not making it TOO beneficial to be an obvious choice and thus disrupt the preferred flavor of the world.

In that vein - I feel the best way to accommodate a slightly better advantage is to use a previously proposed idea to allow "armor" to heal back Endurance more quickly, the more armor one wears - illustrating less "wear and tear" on the body from the bumps and bruises one received during conflict.



As for the ENCUMBRANCE aspect; having armor only apply half its encumbrance in the first 8 hours is a nice feature to allow for the use of heavier armor when preparing for a stationary battle vs. encounters during traveling.


Finally for BODY scores applying to Encumbrance, I have played since my second game that ½BODY score (rounded down) is reduced from one's Encumbrance. It has not unbalanced things. And while this does help "lighter armor as well" what it does do is allows for one to opt to use a slightly heavier armor than he would normally and reap the benefit of better "protection" on tests. While the lighter armor wearer is similarly benefited, he still has less protection when it comes to tests. This has not unbalanced the game at all, and has given a little more love to Body Score and brought it in line IMO to be as important as the other Attributes. It is my opinion that "whole" body score is too lucrative especially when used by a Dwarf.

Robert