There had been a lot of talking about armour and its value.
That is the system I used in the last year of gaming. Maybe someone can find it useful.
These are my additions to the standard rules:
Damage reduction=number of point of damage deducted from incoming blows.
Fatigue roll= malus to fatigue rolls target number
Standard of living=standard of living necessary to afford that armour*
ARMOUR______Enc._Protection_D.Reduction_Fatigue roll_Standard of living
Leather shirt___4_____1d___________1_________+1tn_____Poor
Leather corslet_8_____2d___________2_________+2tn_____Frugal
Mail shirt______12____3d___________3__________+3tn____Martial
Coat of mail___16_____4d___________4_________+4tn____Prosperous
Mail hauberk___20____5d___________5__________+5tn_____Rich
Cap of iron_____2____+1____________0___________0______Frugal
Helm _________6_____+4 __________1__________+1tn_____Martial
*Treasure points can be used to buy/capture an armour beyond the Hero's Standard of Living.
These house rules are born from my experience with the RAW, where armour was not-so-useful in combat, while travel was far too easy, even while wearing armour.
The end result is that now heavy armour is extremely useful in combat (far more than in the RAW), but terrible to wear for a long travel (again, far more than in the RAW). I use to ignore the malus to Fatigue Rolls if the Hero is traveling by horse, but that is something I'm still pondering about.
Edit: sorry about the formatting
Edit2: since someone asked for it, I paste here my houserules for damage.
In my houserule damage is based on PC's Body.
Hand weapons (raw damage 5): base damage = body
Hand and half weapons (raw damage 7): base damage = body+2
Great weapons (raw damage 9): base damage=body+4
Dagger base damage=body-2, to a minimum of 2.
Short sword I houseruled a bit differently: same damage as a knife, but same wounding power of a sword. But that's just my idea of a short sword
When you score a great success you simply double your damage. When you score an exceptional one you triple it.
The average damage output is greater. Dwarves and Beornings in particular become fearsome. But once you deduct armour from every blow, the average is pretty much the same (I add some endurance to NPC, but it's just me giving the PCs a tougher time).
Edit 3: since we are at it, I put here the third part of my houserules, Parry as a skill.
The fact that Parry doesn't increase significantly during a PCs career, while attack does, troubled me. So I choose to make Parry a skill and resolve combat as an opposed roll: if the attacker rolls higher than the defender, he lands a blow. If the attacker rolls equal or lower, he misses.
Stance Modifiers:
Open: no modifiers.
Forward: +1 dice to Melee Attack, -1 dice to Parry.
Defensive: -1 dice to Melee Attack, +1 dice to Parry.
Rearward: no modifiers.
Character creation:
The character sheet got 3 slot for weapon skills: I changed them to Melee Attack; Ranged Attack; Parry. Starting PCs have a skill at 1, another at 2, another at 3 (the player choose how to assign them).
Implications of the rules:
-Forward Stance can dish more damage (more d6, more tengwars): a needed boost to the worst stance.
-Defensive Stance dish less damage than the others. By the RAW defensive stance is too good compared to the others.
-being weary makes you an easier target. That makes heavy armour less of an automatic choice, balancing the damage reduction benefit.
-More experienced heroes are better at defending, finally
-PCs need to spend their xp to raise Parry and at least one of the Attack (Melee & Ranged): by RAW most PCs need to raise just one skill. Now they take longer to hit the “ceiling”.
-Higher Hope expenditure: Hope points are spent a lot to parry incoming blows. That higher expenditure can be a problem for some, but I found it a feature (before that rule, they were expending too few)
Multiple combat:
Well, I'll wait a bit before talking about this one, but Parry as a skill let you have some interesting tricks about outnumbering and such
