Armour house rule

[Corvo]

@Mchebugio
I have edited and expanded my previous answer... And was surpassed by your many posts. Embarrassing
Check back my longer answer, if you feel like it

[Woodclaw]

Here's my proposal: check Adventurer's Book, page 160. Yes, that option that I bet that all your players always forget: the possibility to halve the Damage you get (rounded up) at the price of losing your next turn.

To make armor relevant, and more interesting, maybe we can change this rule as follows.

Instead of simply halving the Damage, we can require the player who wants to "roll with the blow" to make a TN 14 Protection check. He doesn't lose his next turn doing so.

- If he fails, the character can't avoid the Damage. On a Sauron roll on the Feat dice, the hit is also considered a Piercing Strike (requiring immediately another Protection roll to avoid the Wound).
- On a Normal success, he ignores 1 Damage from the blow.
- On a Great success, he ignores 2 Damage from the blow.
- On an Extraordinary success, he ignores an amount of Damage equal to 3 or to his Body score value. (A dwarven Ancient Hauberk may let his wearer use his favourite score of Body to determine the Damage reduction)

The character can also choose to spend Hope to automatically gain the benefit of an Extraordinary success.

We then have rules symmetry both with the Inspire ability in the Open Stance, and with the Hideous Thougness of some monsters in case of Hope expenditure. Moreover, it's not game breaking, while still giving a substantial advantage to armor, more so the heavier they are.

What do you think?

I think that it might be a good idea, but I think that reducing the Endurance loss by 1/2/3 points is too little by itself. I understand that not losing the next turn is quite the plus (especially in Forward stance), but I keep thinking that it's too little.

[Michebugio]

Thanks for answering, Corvo, and thank you for the feedback Woodclaw! Going with order:

The hypothetical 5d armour+helm is a whopping 26 fatigue. Add some weapon and we are in the 28-32 range.
Most PCs don't have such endurance! The PC is already tired or will be at the first blow/fatigue roll.

Well, take a Dwarf with a Heart score of 4. He has 32 Endurance, let's say he has an Hauberk, a Helm, an Axe and a Buckler: he goes to Fatigue 29, which drops to 25 for being a Dwarf. Then he can also lower the Encumbrance value of his armor with Rewards... even at character creation, it's perfectly possible that he starts with a Fatigue of 23 all geared up.

Now consider he's fighting a bunch of Attercops in Defensive stance. The enemies will have to get past his Parry AND to get an Extraordinary success to even land 3 Damage points. All of this with 2 dices on attack: even with your improved Damage rule, I hardly see any problem for this Dwarf to fight alone even 30 of his critters, and we are talking about a novice adventurer!

Speaking of fatigue roll: that is a +6 to tn! Even a stroll around Beorn's home would be tn18. A trek on the elf path is some 22 or more (going from memory).
And here we come to the third part of my house rules: Parry is a skill, and combat is an opposed roll. Being weary makes your parry less effective, so you take more blows, in a vicious circle.

This doesn't actually balance things up, simply because we are now outside combat (in the case of fatigue rolls increased TN) or we are talking about taking more blows which aren't actually harder, since total damage depends only on the number of Tengwars rolled by your opponent, not on your Parry value: so a fatigued character will take more blows, but the Attercops of the example before should still roll a double T with their 2 attack dices to deal even just 3 Damage on your character.

About armour vs no armour: historically, people who can afford armour bought armour. Outside of money the only limit was usually the climate (hot climate was bad for tin men): but that is fatigue rolls-ground, TOR-wise. And despite the climate even Muslim heavy cavalry used chainmail when they got the chance.

Well, indeed. Armor definitely gives an advantage in real-life combat, and in TOR we are simply accepting a distorsion of reality for the sake of game balance

I think that it might be a good idea, but I think that reducing the Endurance loss by 1/2/3 points is too little by itself. I understand that not losing the next turn is quite the plus (especially in Forward stance), but I keep thinking that it's too little.

Woodclaw, think more about that. It's basically a free roll, with only a small percentage of risk to make it worse, that allows you to shrug off some Damage, up to 7 points. I'm more concerned about abuse by the players, than it being still too little! In fact, I should add that it can be used only once per turn.

[Woodclaw]

I think that it might be a good idea, but I think that reducing the Endurance loss by 1/2/3 points is too little by itself. I understand that not losing the next turn is quite the plus (especially in Forward stance), but I keep thinking that it's too little.

Woodclaw, think more about that. It's basically a free roll, with only a small percentage of risk to make it worse, that allows you to shrug off some Damage, up to 7 points. I'm more concerned about abuse by the players, than it being still too little! In fact, I should add that it can be used only once per turn.

All very true, but at this point I would consider if it won't be better to keep the turn loss penalty.
Aside from that I would suggest that the TN should be 10+the opponents Attribute level instead of 14, so that more dangerous opponents will still hit harder.

[Yepesnopes]

I was wondering that if you house rule armours to be more relevant, will it be needed to house rule as well those characters like hobbits and woodmen that cannot carry heavy armour due to their low endurance score?

[Corvo]

@michebugio

Ok, one of the weakest creature in the game against the most armoured Dwarf (with the highest Heart, too). Let see if I can stand such challenge

Solution 1: raise damage to 4. For attercops and jagged knife.

Solution 2: ditch 5d armour. By the raw it's worst than useless, nobody is using it. We can excise it without problems.

Solution 3: keep it as it is. We are talking about the toughest guy in Middle-Earth, against puny enemies. Let these Attercops roll 2 tengwars!

Solution 4: have "seize victim" make the victim weary. Attercops need to ensnare before attacking with their sting. Being weary heavy armour isn't proof against a wounding blow. Venom+wounding blow is pretty lethal.
That is the solution I adopted when I ran attercops vs armoured group, since "halve parry score" was a bit weird in my game, where Parry is a skill. It was a very tense encounter.

Sorry for the delay. My son got a rough night. If I'm writing on the wrong forum or other such nonsense I blame my 2 hours of sleep :p

[Corvo]

I was wondering that if you house rule armours to be more relevant, will it be needed to house rule as well those characters like hobbits and woodmen that cannot carry heavy armour due to their low endurance score?

I playtested it "extensively", but just with my group (all Barding). This is an interesting issue.

[Rocmistro]

Ahhhh!!!!

You guys are going WAY off track with the last few posts. Keep in mind what the problem is!

The problem is that their diminishing returns on protection rolls do not even come close to balancing against their high encumbrance values. The goal is to make the heavier armors more relevant by giving them more reason for being.

Stick to the problem and find a solution for it. Going overboard requires you to retweak EVERYTHING.

Problem Statement: Heavier Armors aren't worth it (by "heavy" I assume we are talking about all the mail armors; ie, those in the 3d-5d range.)

Abstract Solution: Make them a "bit" better.

Possible Solution 1: Add Damage Reduction Component. Ok cool. But why are we talking about DR in the 4-6 range and why are we discussing it for all armors? Fix the MAIL armors, by giving it 1 / 2 / 3 DR respectively done.

Possible Solution 2: Lower the encumbrance value of mail armors, but have failed travel rolls generate higher fatigue. (I would put them at 11/14/16 for +1/2/3 fatigue respectively.)

Possible Solution 3: Have mail armors give bonuses to "knockback" of +1/2/3 respectively. Nothing else about knockback changes.

I really think that's the realm of adjustments you need to stick with, so that you don't end up re-adjusting the entire book.

[Woodclaw]

@michebugio

Ok, one of the weakest creature in the game against the most armoured Dwarf (with the highest Heart, too). Let see if I can stand such challenge

Solution 1: raise damage to 4. For attercops and jagged knife.

Solution 2: ditch 5d armour. By the raw it's worst than useless, nobody is using it. We can excise it without problems.

Solution 3: keep it as it is. We are talking about the toughest guy in Middle-Earth, against puny enemies. Let these Attercops roll 2 tengwars!

Solution 4: have "seize victim" make the victim weary. Attercops need to ensnare before attacking with their sting. Being weary heavy armour isn't proof against a wounding blow. Venom+wounding blow is pretty lethal.
That is the solution I adopted when I ran attercops vs armoured group, since "halve parry score" was a bit weird in my game, where Parry is a skill. It was a very tense encounter.

I would add a solution 5: set a mininal damage (1 for each rank of success perhaps) that each blow inflict even against heavier armour. While the armour cushion most of the impact, if a blow connects there's bound to be some effect, even if it's just a bruise.
I know this might seem counterintuitive, but there are a few games that apply this kind of logic (Cyberpunk 2020 off the top of my head)

[Corvo]

@michebugio

Ok, one of the weakest creature in the game against the most armoured Dwarf (with the highest Heart, too). Let see if I can stand such challenge

Solution 1: raise damage to 4. For attercops and jagged knife.

Solution 2: ditch 5d armour. By the raw it's worst than useless, nobody is using it. We can excise it without problems.

Solution 3: keep it as it is. We are talking about the toughest guy in Middle-Earth, against puny enemies. Let these Attercops roll 2 tengwars!

Solution 4: have "seize victim" make the victim weary. Attercops need to ensnare before attacking with their sting. Being weary heavy armour isn't proof against a wounding blow. Venom+wounding blow is pretty lethal.
That is the solution I adopted when I ran attercops vs armoured group, since "halve parry score" was a bit weird in my game, where Parry is a skill. It was a very tense encounter.

I would add a solution 5: set a mininal damage (1 for each rank of success perhaps) that each blow inflict even against heavier armour. While the armour cushion most of the impact, if a blow connects there's bound to be some effect, even if it's just a bruise.
I know this might seem counterintuitive, but there are a few games that apply this kind of logic (Cyberpunk 2020 off the top of my head)

You are right! I forgot my Cyberpunk roots
It's like "Spite Damage" from T&T: every six rolled means that 1 point of damage is inflicted, irrispective of armour.

Edited because I'm sleep-drunk