A counter to complex armour rules

[Rocmistro]

And if you want to properly balance it's use in gameplay, you should make it cost a lot. That should be one of its primary obstacles.

This I disagree with, only because it makes armor choice an uninteresting decision once you have the money.

Sorry if I keep flogging an extremely dead horse, but I believe there should be interesting trade-offs to character choices. If the goal is to make the game fun then the utility of armor should vary both with character build and circumstance, and always have trade-offs. There should never be a "best" or "worst" armor, except situationally (e.g. while swimming).

If the gating factor of the best armor is cost, then the character who accumulates the money but doesn't want to wear armor for role-playing reasons is faced with a bad choice.

As an aside, I find all the discussions about armor mechanics and statistics inherently interesting. However, I probably won't adopt *any* house rules in my own game, even though I think there's a problem with RAW. But maybe some of these ideas will find their way into a 2nd Edition.

I suppose I didn't present this idea well, if at all, but I see no reason why the two can't co-exist. Armor that is expensive (possibly requiring upkeep or maintenance) AND armor that requires tactical consideration for given scenarios.

[Hermes Serpent]

A simple option is to limit armour by Wealth level and say only wealthy cultures can acquire the heavier armour.

I glanced over this and while checking numbers I noticed that the various cultures and the basic weapons choices/weapon specialisations seem to have been matched up.

Hobbits have 16+Heart Endurance but both their weapon options add up to 4 Encumbrance whilst Elves and Bardings both with 22 plus Heart Endurance have weapon specialities of 4/3 and 4/5 Encumbrance respectively. Dwarves and Elves with 3/4 and 4/3 Encumbrance have a difference of 6 in Endurance (+Heart differences) which allows for the Dwarves favoured Heart deduction from their Encumbrance total plus that 6 to easily cover the effect of the 8 points of Encumbrance between wearing 3d and 5d armour.

It does seem as if some of the numbers in the game have been more carefully put together than some here are giving the authors credit for in the threads on Armour 'issues'.

[Hermes Serpent]

Going back to the cost thing with armour I was looking over the Standing Upkeep rules and the cost of spending a
number of Treasure points equal to the hero's current Standing rating to maintain Standing.

How about to maintain armour costs 0.5 point of Treasure/0.5 gold per die of Protection per year rounded down i.e. 5D is 2 Treasure/2 Gold and 1D armour costs nothing above basic living upkeep costs?