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It seems that a lot of people who read the rules for TOR are left feeling that the armour rules are great in concept- but that the execution, specifically the numbers involved, need tweaking. Clearly I'm one of these, and after pondering the rulebook and reading several threads on the subject I've come up with what I feel is a workable alternative set of rules. My aim has been to make it possible to fight effectively in heavier armour while also making it a bad idea to wear it on long journey.

My proposal is that the Encumberance ratings of armour suits (those with dice of protection) is divided by four, thus giving armour an Encumberance equal to the number of dice of protection it gives. However, this rating is also added to the weight of a character's Travelling Gear, and to the TN of any Travel rolls made. At the GM's option, it can also add to the TN of any other skill tests where armour could be a hinderance- Stealth, Athletics and Hunting are likely to be commonly penalised ones. The Cunning Make quality it clearly overpowered when applied to armour that uses this rule, so I'd suggest that it be revised to reduce the TN increase by one point per level, whilst not affecting the Travelling Gear weight increase (or perhaps the player chooses which to reduce?).

The effect of implementing this houserule is that armour suddenly becomes very, very desirable for combat situations instead of being a hinderance as in the main rules. It doesn't reduce the problems of wearing it when adventuring through thev wilderness, though. Just consider what travelling through Mirkwood with +5 TN to Travel Rolls and an extra 5 fatigue lost per failed roll would be like, and you can see that nobody would ever want to wear the heaviest armour in such a situation.

The characters in the books would wear little or no armour when they travelled through the wilderness- but they always found heavy mail from the nearest armoury and put it on if they were facing a big battle. These rules encourage players to act in the same way- which as I see it is what all rules in TOR should strive to achieve.

You would need to tweak the Dwarven cultural blessing as well.

The Dwarven cultural blessing isn't as much of an issue- it reduces the amount of fatigue given by equipment carried, but not the effective weight of Travel Gear, which is the main change here.

Tantavalist wrote:The Dwarven cultural blessing isn't as much of an issue- it reduces the amount of fatigue given by equipment carried, but not the effective weight of Travel Gear, which is the main change here.

Yeah, you're right. There's a edge case were some of the blessing would be wasted (i.e. Favoured Heart > Encumbrance) but probably not.

It would still encourage Dwarves to carry more junk than anyone else. They'd probably hike from the Blue Mountains to Erebor carrying fiddles, flutes, a drum, clarinets, viols and a harp.

I've been working on something along the same lines, but with less reduction in bulk and less travelling weight.

On the subject of Dwarves, I would like to point out that Erebor dwarves start with Travel 3, which is the highest among the currently playable cultures, it's pretty hard for them to botch a Travel roll even from the start.

Tantavalist wrote: Armour has an Encumberance equal to the number of dice of protection it gives.

This rating is also added to the weight of a character's Travelling Gear, and to the TN of any Travel rolls made.

At the GM's option, it can also add to the TN of any other skill tests where armour could be a hinderance- Stealth, Athletics and Hunting are likely to be commonly penalised ones.

The Cunning Make Quality reduces the TN increase by one point per level, whilst not affecting the Travelling Gear weight increase (or perhaps the player chooses which to reduce?).

It seem very interesting to me.

I like the way Encumbrance tries to get rid of all sort of tiny bonuses/malus ("Your armor is X, so your TN is Y. And you? Tell me whats your armor so we can calculate your own TN"), but sometimes it becomes illogical.
A full-clad warrior is, theoretically, easier to get Weary due to the higher Fatigue Threshold. But in real game, by spending a few points in raising the Travel skill, the characters with a 5D armor can cross Mirkwood unscathed by Fatigue.

I'd like to read what others think about this rule (or similar ones).

I should point out that I've never actually run the game, and these are just ideas I came up with from reading the rulebook. I do feel that adding to the Travel Gear encumberance is the right way to go as opposed to simply adding large numbers to the Fatigue rating- the latter just makes armour pointless. But I'm fully aware that the numbers may need some tweaking to make it work, hence my posting it here to let those who have run the game offer their opinions.

So... Possibly the increase to TN needs to be increased? Double the Encumberance rating? This would mean that someone with that travel skill of 5-6 is no longer able to make those rolls, with a +10 TN, I think.

No, the increase to TN should not be increased.

When playing the game, you notice some important facts that didn't show up when reading the rules:

1) Characters (almost) never reach level 5 or 6 in a skill.
2) An increase in difficulty of +2 is already a big one (from 14 to 16). A TN of 18 makes a task almost impossible for most characters, unless they're very skilled at it and are willing to spend Hope Points. A TN of 20 (+6 to standard difficulty) is another way for the game to say " You most certainly can't do that, but you can try...". Spending Hope Points is usually imperative here, as is being lucky with your roll.

So, I don't think the maximum increase in difficulty should get above +4. So, your initial idea of making it equal to the number of Protection Dice of the armor is easy to remember and gets along well with the increases in difficulty. After all, it isn't impossible to travel with armor, it's just more difficult.
The dwarves from the Iron Hills did it when Thorin called for them, even forcing the march. And Gimli travelled with a chainmail all the way.

So... The initial idea works well enough with the numbers given, only breaking down when a character has 5-6 in Travel. A skill that high is so rare as to be legendary, and it's not breaking the genre for someone as tireless as that to be able to march the length of Middle-Earth in full heavy armour and fight a battle at the end of this?

Sounds like my initial idea was the right one, but as I said I've not played the game and wasn't sure if there was something I'd missed that would have become apparent in actual play.

Now I just need to work out how to revise the rules for Mithril and other magical armour qualities from the Rivendell book to fit this new system.