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Here's a variant on my rule that might work better: (it's not written up fancy like, that will wait for a real keyboard)

Absorb Impact

When a character selects this action, make a Protection Test against the Edge of the weapon, on a success the armour absorbs the blow and no Endurance damage is done. However, if the Protection Test is failed (or an Eye is rolled on a success), the armour is damaged and can no longer absorb impacts until it is repaired, usually during a Fellowship Phase.

Repair during fellowship is automatic, and doesn't take the character's action to do so.

Hopefully the prospect of damaging your armour will keep Absorb Impact in check, what do y'all think?

I'll help muddy up the waters. Even if you are Weary, your armour still protects you. And players like rolling defensive dice when there are tangible results, such as damage reduction. Why not combine the two?

Keep everything as RAW (weariness, encumbrace, etc) except, if you are wearing armour and your are hit, roll a feat die + your armour's protection rating. For example if wearing a mail hauberk you roll 1d12 + 5d6. There is no TN check. Instead, for each tengwar rolled, you reduce your endurance loss by one, i.e. 5 tengwars reduces the damage inflicted on you by 5 points.

If you are wearing mail, add +1 to any damage reduced (must have at least one tengwar).

A rune rolled reduces the damage lost by +2, even if no tengwars are rolled.

If you roll an Eye, no damage is reduced.

If any 1's are rolled on the protection dice, and you roll an Eye, you suffer the effects of knockback without the endurance reduction (since it's not voluntary) and your armour's protection rating is reduced by 1 dice. A mail hauberk's protection rating would drop from 5d6 to 4d6, for example.

If your opponent rolls his Edge, you do not roll for damage reduction. He/it has bypassed your armour as RAW and you check for Wounds as RAW, etc etc.

I would not grant this rule to adversaries.

Notes. The hauberk and the coat will provide a 2 point damage reduction roughly a bit more than 50% of the time (59.8 and 51.7%). Chances of damage reduction for the other armours drops rapidly.

The higher protection rated armours are more likely to be damaged than the leathers, 5% and 4% vs. 2% and 1%, which makes sense. If you are wearing mail, you are more likely to be in the thick of it as you are able to sustain blows and overcome wounds easier than leather.

Evening wrote:I'll help muddy up the waters. Even if you are Weary, your armour still protects you. And players like rolling defensive dice when there are tangible results, such as damage reduction. Why not combine the two?

Keep everything as RAW (weariness, encumbrace, etc) except, if you are wearing armour and your are hit, roll a feat die + your armour's protection rating. For example if wearing a mail hauberk you roll 1d12 + 5d6. There is no TN check. Instead, for each tengwar rolled, you reduce your endurance loss by one, i.e. 5 tengwars reduces the damage inflicted on you by 5 points.

If you are wearing mail, add +1 to any damage reduced (must have at least one tengwar).

A rune rolled reduces the damage lost by +2, even if no tengwars are rolled.

If you roll an Eye, no damage is reduced.

If any 1's are rolled on the protection dice, and you roll an Eye, you suffer the effects of knockback without the endurance reduction (since it's not voluntary) and your armour's protection rating is reduced by 1 dice. A mail hauberk's protection rating would drop from 5d6 to 4d6, for example.

If your opponent rolls his Edge, you do not roll for damage reduction. He/it has bypassed your armour as RAW and you check for Wounds as RAW, etc etc.

I would not grant this rule to adversaries.

Notes. The hauberk and the coat will provide a 2 point damage reduction roughly a bit more than 50% of the time (59.8 and 51.7%). Chances of damage reduction for the other armours drops rapidly.

The higher protection rated armours are more likely to be damaged than the leathers, 5% and 4% vs. 2% and 1%, which makes sense. If you are wearing mail, you are more likely to be in the thick of it as you are able to sustain blows and overcome wounds easier than leather.

At first I thought, "Huh, that's kind of simple." Then I kept reading and it got more complicated.

I'd be curious if it gets annoying to roll every time you're hit. But maybe I'll add this to the sim to see how it works.

Just to check: you're saying that mail is +1 better than leather, even above the implicit advantage of higher protection?

zedturtle wrote:Absorb Impact

When a character selects this action, make a Protection Test against the Edge of the weapon

I guess you mean the Injury rating

zedturtle wrote:on a success the armour absorbs the blow and no Endurance damage is done

Whoa! A Hauberk has a 96% of success against TN 14, that means 96% of the times your character won't get a scratch! Way too much IMHO, even if Endurance loss is halved instead of completely avoided!

zedturtle wrote:However, if the Protection Test is failed (or an Eye is rolled on a success), the armour is damaged and can no longer absorb impacts until it is repaired

Premise: "Eye rolled on a success = bad things happen" has no rule symmetry with anything, and it sounds a bit odd - I mean, "Eye on a failure" has symmetry and coherence, but a player would feel cheated to be robbed of a success simply because he rolled an Eye. However, numbers-wise, for a Hauberk failure is 4% of the times, and an Eye is 8.33%. Together, it is 11.15% chance for your armor to get broken, that means around once every 10 blows received. And a broken armor, in your rule, simply stops absorbing impacts, but I guess it is implied that Protection Tests to avoid wounds work just fine. I simply see no real drawbacks here.

Evening wrote:Keep everything as RAW (weariness, encumbrace, etc) except, if you are wearing armour and your are hit, roll a feat die + your armour's protection rating. For example if wearing a mail hauberk you roll 1d12 + 5d6. There is no TN check. Instead, for each tengwar rolled, you reduce your endurance loss by one, i.e. 5 tengwars reduces the damage inflicted on you by 5 points.

If you are wearing mail, add +1 to any damage reduced (must have at least one tengwar).

A rune rolled reduces the damage lost by +2, even if no tengwars are rolled.

If you roll an Eye, no damage is reduced.

If any 1's are rolled on the protection dice, and you roll an Eye, you suffer the effects of knockback without the endurance reduction (since it's not voluntary) and your armour's protection rating is reduced by 1 dice. A mail hauberk's protection rating would drop from 5d6 to 4d6, for example.

If your opponent rolls his Edge, you do not roll for damage reduction. He/it has bypassed your armour as RAW and you check for Wounds as RAW, etc etc.

Muddy waters indeed! Way too much complicated at my table: so many numbers and cases to keep in mind, my players would never remember this rule

BUT

Evening wrote:And players like rolling defensive dice when there are tangible results, such as damage reduction.

This is a very interesting statement. I usually regard extra-rolling as a bad thing, but I definitely agree that players just love to roll if this could benefit them.

Michebugio wrote:

zedturtle wrote:However, if the Protection Test is failed (or an Eye is rolled on a success), the armour is damaged and can no longer absorb impacts until it is repaired

Premise: "Eye rolled on a success = bad things happen" has no rule symmetry with anything, and it sounds a bit odd - I mean, "Eye on a failure" has symmetry and coherence, but a player would feel cheated to be robbed of a success simply because he rolled an Eye. However, numbers-wise, for a Hauberk failure is 4% of the times, and an Eye is 8.33%. Together, it is 11.15% chance for your armor to get broken, that means around once every 10 blows received. And a broken armor, in your rule, simply stops absorbing impacts, but I guess it is implied that Protection Tests to avoid wounds work just fine. I simply see no real drawbacks here.

I might be wrong here, but this how I usually interpreted the "Eye": numerically it's a 0, but in terms of story it authorise the LM to throw some extra problems to the players. Hence, if a character rolls enough high enough with Skill Dices, good for him, but the "Eye" means that something bad is incoming (like a called shot from an archer or so).

Michebugio wrote:

Michebugio wrote:

Evening wrote:Keep everything as RAW (weariness, encumbrace, etc) except, if you are wearing armour and your are hit, roll a feat die + your armour's protection rating. For example if wearing a mail hauberk you roll 1d12 + 5d6. There is no TN check. Instead, for each tengwar rolled, you reduce your endurance loss by one, i.e. 5 tengwars reduces the damage inflicted on you by 5 points.

If you are wearing mail, add +1 to any damage reduced (must have at least one tengwar).

A rune rolled reduces the damage lost by +2, even if no tengwars are rolled.

If you roll an Eye, no damage is reduced.

If any 1's are rolled on the protection dice, and you roll an Eye, you suffer the effects of knockback without the endurance reduction (since it's not voluntary) and your armour's protection rating is reduced by 1 dice. A mail hauberk's protection rating would drop from 5d6 to 4d6, for example.

If your opponent rolls his Edge, you do not roll for damage reduction. He/it has bypassed your armour as RAW and you check for Wounds as RAW, etc etc.

Muddy waters indeed! Way too much complicated at my table: so many numbers and cases to keep in mind, my players would never remember this rule

BUT

Evening wrote:And players like rolling defensive dice when there are tangible results, such as damage reduction.

This is a very interesting statement. I usually regard extra-rolling as a bad thing, but I definitely agree that players just love to roll if this could benefit them.

I agree that this rule seem too complicated for a potentially small return. A Leather Armour would provide a maximum reduction of 4 with a chance of 0,0023% (roughly).

Woodclaw wrote:I might be wrong here, but this how I usually interpreted the "Eye": numerically it's a 0, but in terms of story it authorise the LM to throw some extra problems to the players. Hence, if a character rolls enough high enough with Skill Dices, good for him, but the "Eye" means that something bad is incoming (like a called shot from an archer or so).

On a roll, the Eye is ALREADY a problem, since it's a 0: you'll hardly beat any TN with less than 4 Success dices.

By RAW, LM is authorized to throw in extra problems ONLY if the roll is a failure AND the Feat dice scores an Eye.

If you score a Success and you rolled an Eye, that means you had either a lot of good luck with your Success dices, or a very good Skill rating. In either case, "robbing" a player of a Success despite his good roll is wrong, IMHO: instead, he should be happy to say "hey, depite the Eye on the Feat dice I made it! Those AP were damn worth it!".

Remember: players HATE bad luck. The less you make it a game of chance, and the more you make success rely on skill and right choices, the more your players will be happy.

Michebugio wrote:

Woodclaw wrote:I might be wrong here, but this how I usually interpreted the "Eye": numerically it's a 0, but in terms of story it authorise the LM to throw some extra problems to the players. Hence, if a character rolls enough high enough with Skill Dices, good for him, but the "Eye" means that something bad is incoming (like a called shot from an archer or so).

On a roll, the Eye is ALREADY a problem, since it's a 0: you'll hardly beat any TN with less than 4 Success dices.

By RAW, LM is authorized to throw in extra problems ONLY if the roll is a failure AND the Feat dice scores an Eye.

If you score a Success and you rolled an Eye, that means you had either a lot of good luck with your Success dices, or a very good Skill rating. In either case, "robbing" a player of a Success despite his good roll is wrong, IMHO: instead, he should be happy to say "hey, depite the Eye on the Feat dice I made it! Those AP were damn worth it!".

Remember: players HATE bad luck. The less you make it a game of chance, and the more you make success rely on skill and right choices, the more your players will be happy.

My idea is that a "Eye" on a success roll is a "success, but" result, meaning that while you get what you aimed for, something else somehow goes the wrong way.
E.g. During a fight Dworin the dwarf chops a orc with his trusted axe, he rolls a 11+"Eye" and hit and kill the orc, but the "Eye" allows the LM to pull a bit of nastiness on him. The LM declares that Dworin's axe is firmly wedged inside the orc and Dworin has to either use his next round to tear it out, or switch to a different weapon.

Woodclaw wrote:My idea is that a "Eye" on a success roll is a "success, but" result, meaning that while you get what you aimed for, something else somehow goes the wrong way.
E.g. During a fight Dworin the dwarf chops a orc with his trusted axe, he rolls a 11+"Eye" and hit and kill the orc, but the "Eye" allows the LM to pull a bit of nastiness on him. The LM declares that Dworin's axe is firmly wedged inside the orc and Dworin has to either use his next round to tear it out, or switch to a different weapon.

Well, that is indeed a nice way to make combat interesting, and I think an LM can use it from time to time. But that is definitely not the RAW: it's that big, indistinct field called Loremaster's discretion

Michebugio wrote:

Woodclaw wrote:My idea is that a "Eye" on a success roll is a "success, but" result, meaning that while you get what you aimed for, something else somehow goes the wrong way.
E.g. During a fight Dworin the dwarf chops a orc with his trusted axe, he rolls a 11+"Eye" and hit and kill the orc, but the "Eye" allows the LM to pull a bit of nastiness on him. The LM declares that Dworin's axe is firmly wedged inside the orc and Dworin has to either use his next round to tear it out, or switch to a different weapon.

Well, that is indeed a nice way to make combat interesting, and I think an LM can use it from time to time. But that is definitely not the RAW: it's that big, indistinct field called Loremaster's discretion

True it's not RAW, but I think this is rather in tone with the general feeling of the game (at least for me).

Michebugio wrote: Muddy waters indeed! Way too much complicated at my table: so many numbers and cases to keep in mind, my players would never remember this rule

I’m not sure what you mean. Do your players have trouble remembering their armour’s protection ratings for when an orc or a spider roll’s their weapon’s Edge number? The process isn't really any different, except you’re not making a skill check to counter wounds. You're just seeing how well your armour stands up against normal damage. Every 6 you roll knocks off 1 point of damage. If you roll a rune or an eye, something good or bad happens.

Woodclaw wrote: I agree that this rule seem too complicated for a potentially small return. A Leather Armour would provide a maximum reduction of 4 with a chance of 0,0023% (roughly).

Actually I think its a 1.39% for leather to soak up 4 points of damage (1/72). However, the point is to make the metal armours worth wearing. Any benefit gained by the leather armours is just incidental.

But you may be right about a potentially small returns. Ran the numbers for being hit 10000 times while wearing a mail hauberk. Only 56.81% of the time was there any damage reduction. And 74.6% of those instances was only 1 point reductions (or 2 total, 1 and +1 for being mail).

Overall the hauberk remained undamaged 91.2% of the time.