Since it has been cited twice, I went back to
zedturtle's proposal (I called it
Ablative Armor house-rule) and analyzed it a bit. As I said earlier, it's a great intuition but at my table it would definitely need some tweaking, for three reasons:
1) The damage reduction shouldn’t be linked to Encumbrance value, otherwise a
Cunning Make Quality will simply worsen the absorbing properties of your armor. And anyhow, how many times do you need to reduce 20 points of Endurance loss?
2) Since the armor gets Damaged automatically (at players’ choice), Absorb Impact effectively works just ONCE for every Adventure Phase, which in my opinion is way too low to make any real difference in game;
3) For the same reason before, a full Hauberk gets broken as easily as a leather shirt, the only difference being the damage reduction they give: some distinction should be made about this, but I wouldn't add anything like “armor hit points” or any other kind of buffer (like somebody suggested), it would be very far from the RAW and too much book-keeping in my opinion.
But I like the concept so much, and I also like the idea of heroes going around with a battered armor. Since somebody also liked my
Roll for Knockback house-rule, I would really like to implement a version of it that could incorporate zed's mechanic.
Premise: why am I insisting on
Knockback rule modifications? Because it's the only way by RAW to reduce Endurance loss. My thesis is:
if something (like armor) can reduce Endurance loss, then it should work in the context of Knockback, enhancing it or somehow using similar mechanics.
That said, I devoted an entire rainy evening to develop and playtest a further refinement of my Alternate Knockback rule, making a "zedturtle-Michebugio mash-up" adding his Ablative Armor mechanics to mine. The result - I hope - may be quite interesting to many of you. So here’s the
Alternative Knockback, version 3 – Ablative Armor mash up house rule.
In the
Adventurer’s Book, page 160, replace the
Knockback paragraph with the following:
Characters have two ways to reduce Endurance loss: letting themselves to be knocked back by the blow, or try to absorb the force of an attack with their armor.
KNOCKBACK:
Fighters soon discover that sometimes it is better to literally ‘roll with the punches,’ and reduce the force of an attack by stepping back or to the side or by kneeling under the force of a blow – in gaming terms, they learn to let themselves be ‘knocked back’ by their opponent.
Characters may reduce the Endurance loss caused by a successful attack making a roll of Athletics. The TN for the roll is equal to 10 plus the Attribute level of the opponent who hit the character.
On a successful roll, the companion halves the Endurance points lost from the attack (rounding fractions up) by letting himself to be thrown off-balance. If the knock back attempt fails, the acting hero suffers the normal Endurance loss AND is thrown off-balance.
A character who is knocked back (whether on a failed or successful knockback attempt) cannot change his stance and will spend his following round recovering his fighting position, unable to take any further action that turn.
If an adversary attacks while a hero is recovering from knockback, the attack is resolved normally. If the companion is hit again, he may attempt another Athletics roll to halve the Endurance loss, but a great or extraordinary success is needed this time.
ABSORB IMPACT:
Protection given by armor helps to prevent wounding blows, but it can also soften the impact of less dangerous attacks. Instead of letting themselves to be knocked back by their opponent, fighters may use their armors to absorb the shock of an attack, exposing none but the most protected parts of their body.
A character attempting to do so makes a Protection Test against a Target Number equal to the Injury rating of the weapon used by the attacker.
If the result doesn’t produce any T icons, the absorb impact attempt fails, even if the total result matches or beats the TN.
If the roll doesn’t match or beat the Target Number and the player gets an Eye icon on his feat die, a piece of the armor breaks and it becomes damaged. Damaged armor can’t be used to absorb impacts and all Protection Tests are now made as if the character is Weary.
If the roll matches or beats the Injury rating AND the player obtains at least one T icon on his rolled Success dice, he halves the Endurance loss caused by the attack.
Now, some considerations.
First, you’ll notice a substantial difference: Knockback is now, essentially, an Athletics roll to get the RAW effect, with an option to roll against multiple attacks. You’ll always lose the next turn recovering now, regardless of how many T you rolled.
Absorb Impact is instead a roll that has a symmetry with called shots, and it lets you halve the damage like Knockback but without losing your next turn. It’s made against a TN equal to the Injury rating of the attacking weapon - it makes sense, since weapons with a high Injury rating, like Axes and Mattocks, are also the ones with the greater “breaking” power; it “procs” less frequently (only on Great and Extraordinary successes); and of course, it has a chance of breaking your armor.
But, unless in zedturtle’s rule, now it has a lesser chance of breaking, proportionally to his protection dices (more dices rolled = less chance to fail and break it).
Overall, the two options seem quite balanced to me. They shouldn’t be cumulative, though: either you roll for Knockback, or you roll for Absorption, but not both. In play-test it performed quite well, though now characters will roll for Absorption quite a lot, since breaking armor is a relatively rare instance (which can be rather annoying, however).
Regarding how to repair a damaged armor: personally, I would stick to what the AB says at page 110:
“If a hero loses or breaks any of these items, they can be replaced automatically, at the next friendly settlement they reach or other appropriate moment in the narrative. At most, a small favour may be demanded if the settlement is not of their own culture, such as the performance of a task, or simply a song or tale.”
And now, I’m so much eager to hear your feedback
