Armour house rule

[Corvo]

@Elfcrusher

The rules about +1 edge is from Yepesnopes. He got no houserule by his name

[Rich H]

"Is" or "might be"?

Yep, sorry, I didn't mean to be so blunt/decisive. It is flawed from the point of view that it doesn't allow for strategic choices in stances but may only be flawed if those choices affect outcome. Apologies again, I'm subconsciously probably a bit defensive over the RAW when such sweeping changes are being proposed as I just can't imagine that they are 'broken' in such a way.

In this particular case the doubt creeping into my mind is: If a more aggressive stance increases survivability for some armor types, but not others, then wouldn't it be better to use it all the time, not just when weary?

Not as far as I'm aware. Thogrim, the dwarf PC in my campaign, has a long hafted axe skill of 3D and switches from Defensive to Forward when he is Wearied and not before. Dwarves have high Endurance and along with their Cultural Blessing this helps provide a larger gap between max Endurance and when they become Wearied. In battle when he is Wearied and in Forward stance he effectively outlasts his opponents, trading blows/endurance loss, but also resisting Wounds with his ridiculously high protection rolls.

"But I'll tell you what; I'll add it to the model. Tell me the logic you want heroes to follow and I'll code it. Maybe I'll add a new group of checkboxes for tactics.

I think running it for a dwarf and switching to Forward when Wearied would be a good test to see how it effects results.

[Corvo]

"Is" or "might be"?

Yep, sorry, I didn't mean to be so blunt/decisive. It is flawed from the point of view that it doesn't allow for strategic choices in stances but may only be flawed if those choices affect outcome. Apologies again, I'm subconsciously probably a bit defensive over the RAW when such sweeping changes are being proposed as I just can't imagine that they are 'broken' in such a way.

Rich, truth to be told, initially I don't believed Elfcrusher's numbers.
I was sure -by gut feeling- that 2 or 3d armour was mandatory. I laughed at the fools that wrote about going unarmoured or with just 1d. Literally.
Then I used the simulator. Again and again, looking for loopholes or logical fault.

Your player's dwarf is the Hero better suited to wear armour. He got special rules to endure armour.
Rich, do it yourself: use the simulator and check the numbers yourself: it was an eye opener for me.

I love this game at least as much as you: this is the reason I'm trying to solve that problem

[Rich H]

Perhaps if an eye is rolled, the character is now unable to take strenuous action without assistance (jumping, climbing, fighting, carrying a heavy load, etc)?

My initial idea was that becoming Wearied (ie, when endurance is equal or less than fatigue) is congruent to being Miserable (ie, when Hope is equal or less then Shadow) and should therefore have something with the same feel happen when an Eye is rolled. Miserable produces a Bout of Madness which lasts for a 'scene' but then Shadow resets so it's not the same as being Wearied as that only 'resets' when a character gets a good night's sleep, assuming their endurance is higher than fatigue.

I suppose an option would be to create a Wearied Distinctive Feature trait that is applied to the PC in question in the same way that such Shadow traits are but only for the Wearied duration. This trait could be applied to any Common Skill usage (like you've suggested above). If that worked, then the currently RAW Wearied condition mechanic could be applied to Wounded instead. The issue with this is that Wearied is a condition that can exist for adversaries and you can't apply the same house rule to them, which I really don't like, and that's why I didn't develop it further - as well as getting distracted on other things!

[Rich H]

Rich, truth to be told, initially I don't believed Elfcrusher's numbers.
I was sure -by gut feeling- that 2 or 3d armour was mandatory. I laughed at the fools that wrote about going unarmoured or with just 1d. Literally.

Well, it's not impossible. Warhammer had a similar problem - there was a well known running joke of the naked dwarf, so it's not without precedence within RPGs.

[Rocmistro]

I just want to add into this thread that I'm still following it and very interested. I have dropped out of commenting only because the solution discussion went into an area that I did particularly like aesthetically (that is not to say i don't think it can't work; I very much believe it can).

I also appreciate whoever it was that took the time to praise myself and others: Platonian Eloquence. Very flattering, thank you. And to everyone for keeping it civil. Very admirable and impressed.

As Rich said indicated, I'm also a little concerned about the broad sweeping changes that some are proposing. I'm inclined to agree with him, though I feel I'm not quite as prudent on the RAW as he might be. He's very wise in demonstrating the tactical change a character might make upon becoming weary, for example (switching to Forward stance so he can hit). Or what about the synergy between a heavy-armored weary character in Forward stance and a light armored but unwearied one in Defensive stance using Protect Companion? With one focused on a high parry and the other on being unwoundable, you can effectivley get the best of both worlds in two synegized characters. And how might you model that, because not everything can be modeled.

Having played a good deal, I actually feel the threshold is not 3d armor but rather 4d armor, because of the variables Rich discussed, but also, for example, being able to pump a couple "rewards" into my mail shirt and decrease it's encumbrance by as much as 6!

In considering that, we need to be mindful that the very minor-est (word?) of changes might be all the nudge that's needed to make the heavy armors work. For example if the Mail armors protected you at full success die value, regardless of the Weary condition, that could be all the change that is required to make them viable choices.

In any event, I'll continue to follow this thread, but probably won't post too much more into it.

[Yepesnopes]

Well, there is a lot to chew in this thread.

Since Rich commented on something that also bothers me, I will also add my grain of sand.

I said to reduce edge by 1, just as a first wild-untested-uncalculated approach to increase the importance of armour for combat survivability. But it is a flaw reasoning ( ), as the simulator of Elfcrusher shows. This is mainly because only NPCs die from receiving one wound (a PC needs two to be out of combat).

So, either as Rich says, the wounded condition is changed to be more detrimental to PCs, or we really have to lower the edge of weapons in order that the risk of getting two wounds in a combat is higher, but this is going to be tough for NPCs

House rules are a matter of taste, but I think a tweak of the one proposed by zedturtle may suit me. At the end, it is similar to the Helm removal action, just that here you don't lose an action but you damage your armour.

[Glorelendil]

I love this game at least as much as you: this is the reason I'm trying to solve that problem

Really? I love Rich way more than I love the game.

/wink

[Falenthal]

Although I've been following this (and other similar) threads, I think I've missed the "starting point".

Forgive me if I ask for the obvious, but I haven't found in the discussions a clear statement of where the problem lies.

I mean, Elfcrusher's simulator shows that heavy armour is deadlier than no- or light armour. But to be more precise, I have two questions:

1) Are ALL armours flawed (statistically, I know that playing strategies like the one Rich said can compensate for that) or only mail ones? If leather armour statistics are better than no-armour, then they need not be tweaked, don't they?

2) Why do heavy armours fail to help increase the surviving odds? Is it because they are too encumbersome, thus making the character Weary very fast? If that's the case, maybe just by lowering their Encumbrance we could reach a balanced point. If the reason is another, then you'll need a precise diagnosis of where the problem lies, to know what is that needs modifying.

My proposals are pobably very naïv, I know, but I'd like to have a clear idea of WHAT armours are flawed and WHY.

Thanks a lot for the work you're doing, thinking, testing and writing down all this options for the rest of us to read.

[Glorelendil]

You're right, you could lower encumbrance values and make heavier armors more viable, but the problem (from my point of view, anyway) is not just that heavy armor is bad, but that there is an optimal choice. So that even if you shift the point of optimal armor by reducing encumbrance across the board, there is still (statistically) an "optimal" armor. (Stance seems to have the same problem, to some extent.)

In my perfect world, the optimal armor would vary by both stance and at least one uncontrollable variable (like opponent.) So even if you geeked out on it and totally min-maxed, you could never have the best setup for all situations.

In addition, every combination would be optimal some of the time. So that if you want to role-play an unarmored Hobbit, or a lightly armored woodman, you would never have to feel you were sacrificing viability for character concept.