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[Edit for any new reader: that is a long discussion. For a shorter read, skip to post n.100 (the last one on page 10), where Michebugio did a nice summary of the thread: LINK]

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

Corvo:

I know there are a lot of naysayers on the DR component, but I happen to like it. I also like the increased travel fatigue.

I think your numbers are a little too easy and too "linear". I also think DR 4 and 5 on the heavier armors is way way too much, especially since you can combine it with a helm for DR: 6. I'd propose this toning it down across the boards.

Leather Armours: DR: 1 TF: 1
Mail Armours: DR: 2 / TF: 3
Helm: DR: 1 / TF: 2

I think your propserity level assignments are good.

I have no in-depth analysis to support my suggestions, a lot of that is just shooting from intuition and what "feels" right.

Thank you Rocmistro.

Probably your assessment about damage reduction is right: too effective if applied with damage RAW.
In my games I houseruled damage too, and on average it's higher than RAW. I refrained from writing them here to avoid a wall of text

Before I start, a disclaimer: The following has not been extensively play-tested.


I actually came up with the idea of damage reduction independently a few months ago because I realized that wearing an armor was not all that useful. Here is my system; it modifies several things.
- Armor reduces damage by 1 point for each protection die. Mail hauberk reduces damage by 5. (I had not though about the helm, but I am inclined to count it as a 1 Dr, too)
- Damage rating of each weapon is increased by 4 (I do realize that it makes combat deadlier for characters who are not wearing armor).
- All characters add their body score to their endurance. This means that endurance is equal to Cultural base score + Body + Heart. (For my system, it may be better to use the favored scores but I have not tested it enough)
- Stuff weighs more: Travel gear is 2, 4, or even 6 encumbrance points (if the characters carries tent and other commodities), not 1 or 2. Food for 1 week is 1 or 2 encumbrance points, depending of what it is (is it all dried stuff or fresh vegetables and fruit/good food--maybe regain 1 point of hope for every month on the road if you eat and drink well, but this off topic here). I always though that general gear is too light as presented in the base rules.

In the end, the starting endurance is higher but it is counterbalanced by the encumbrance of gear and food and it provides a buffer for the deadlier combat system.
Corvo, I like the idea of modified TN on travel rolls. After all, it is a bit counter intuitive to have a dwarf guide wearing full armor and helm and leading your company through the bush...

FYI, I put the armor reduction house rule into my simulator (it's the checkbox that says "Angelalex's Rule" because he was the first person I heard suggest it).

I fought a Dragon-Eyed Barding with Sword:3 and a Shield against an Orc Chieftan, 10,000 iterations each. Open stance.

No armor: Hero wins 38.4% (RAW)
28.5% (Orc gets DR rule)

Leather Shirt: Hero wins 36.4% (RAW)
41.9% with DR (Hero only)
31.9% with DR (Hero and Orc)

Leather Corslet: Hero wins 36.7% (RAW)
44.5% with DR (Hero only)
33.3% (Both)

Mail Shirt: Hero wins 34.7% (RAW)
47.9% with DR (Hero only)
36.7% with DR (Both)

Mail Corslet: Hero wins 32.6% (RAW)
52.5% with DR (Hero only)
41.0% with DR (Both)

Mail Hauberk: Hero wins 32.4% (RAW)
59.3% with DR (Hero only)
48% with DR (Both)

Conclusions: Giving the DR rule to players only is wildly unbalanced; it makes heavy armor so clearly superior to lighter armor or no armor that it is effectively no choice. It may be true that historically armor is a good idea, but I (personally) am interested in interesting player choices.

Giving the DR to both players AND monsters is more interesting. As you can see from the above numbers, as long as the Hero's armor value is lower than his opponent's (Orc Chieftans have 3d) then the Hero is actually worse off with the rule. At parity (Mail Shirt, where both have 3d) there is a very slight statistical difference, probably within the margin of error for my simulator). Above 3d the Hero benefits.

So going from no armor to Mail Hauberk, with the the fair version of the rule, increases the hero's win rate from ~38% to ~48%. Useful and significant, but not game altering, and must be weighed against the issue of starting a fight with higher fatigue after traveling. But since the relative advantage varies with the armor of the opponents, it's not a predictable or consistent gain. I like that.

P.S. I tried to fight something against a Mountain Troll, with armor of 4d, but couldn't contrive any Hero that won more than 1% of the time. Version 2.0 of my sim will have to allow you to build a Fellowship with multiple heroes. How cool would that be?

That "1d armour=1 point of damage reduction" is intuitive enough, apparently. At least three of us came up with the same idea indipendently

@Looping. Looks interesting: change the basic numbers of the game, but don't need additional die-rolls durig game (I try to keep up tempo). My houserules aren't far from yours (as soon as I can I'll add my damage houserule, for comparison purpose). Tell us as it pan out once you playtest it!

@Elfcrusher: thank you for your data (as usual). I apply the rule both for Heroes and for opponents. It didn't occured to me to say it specifically.
In my games favoured armour=+1 damage reduction.

Most of the times my players felt that armour is the way to go (4d, that is), but after having to fight a battle AFTER some forced marches in Kinstrife, they are reconsidering! This is a good to me: no "obvious choice" is a good sign.

PS: Mountain Trolls are food for ballistae

I just realized there was a flaw in my conclusions: in calculating the advantage for Hauberk under the fair version of the rule I was comparing to "no armor" without the rule, but I should have been comparing to being armor-less with the rule, which is 28% not 38%. So it's a 20% absolute gain (and over 100% relative gain) to take the heavy armor.

That, I fear, is too large a margin for players to ignore. You really have to throw math to the wind if you want to be a role-player and desire to be armor-less.

On the other hand, combining it with travel penalties (as I have supported in the past) starts to restore the balance. Sure...if you can put armor on right before a battle (as both Merry and Pippin did) then you absolutely should. But traveling through Mirkwood in a Hauberk should be sub-optimal.

Elfcrusher wrote: (...)
On the other hand, combining it with travel penalties (as I have supported in the past) starts to restore the balance. Sure...if you can put armor on right before a battle (as both Merry and Pippin did) then you absolutely should. But traveling through Mirkwood in a Hauberk should be sub-optimal.

I put them through that misery.
The 5d-armour-Hero recognize that his (tresure-point-paid) armour is battle-winning, yet he's thinking about switching it for 3d+shield
Without malus to travel rolls, damage reduction is too good.

By the way, my game got an "Arthurian" (cough*Pendragon*cough) feel to it, so big armour isn't so much of a problem.

I think it is quite telling that several of us have come to the conclusion that the official rules unduly penalize characters wearing armor. Many of the suggestions I have read are good to simulate protection potential, and I agree with the principle of keeping the game running smoothly by limiting rolls and not adding too many rules (after all, we do not want to turn TOR into MERP).

However, in keeping with the idea that damage reduction by itself is overpowered and that wearing heavy armor should make traveling harder, how do you feel about attributing a malus to athletics, stealth, and certain other tests depending of the situation? I have not had to do this yet so I have not tested it in game. Is this something you already do?
This potentially opens the door to improved gear, which some people may not like. For istance, I can see someone playing a burglar asking for a 2D armor that has been customized to make no noise (no malus to stealth rolls).

I do realize that adding this rule adds to micromanagement and brings us closer to a game that places more emphasis on gear (like **cough* D&D **cough**--lots of coughing today, must be the season)

PS: I also think enemies should get the damage reduction. Fair is fair.