Warning: Long and boring post about rules ahead.

I'm not happy with the way armors work in SIFRP, the armor penalty is so severe that it's sometimes more advantageous not to wear any armor at all. There is even an example in the corebook that proves it.

Quote from: Page 159 of the corebookExample
Gerald attacks a sworn sword to his rival's house. Gerald has Fighting 4 (Long Blades 4). His opponent has a Combat Defense of 8. Gerald's player rolls eight dice—four for ability rank and four for his specialty—and keeps the best four, getting a total of 19, which hits by 11. Normally, a longsword deals damage equal to the attacker's Athletics+1. Gerald has rank 4, so a regular successful attack would deal 5 damage. However, Gerald got two degrees of success (he beat the Difficulty by at least 10), so Gerald deals three times this damage (5 + 5 + 5) for 15 damage. His foe wears ring mail (AR 4), so the armor reduces the damage to 11, a solid—and ugly—hit.

The ring armor has a -2 penalty. What would have happened if Gerald's opponent had not worn any armor? Let's see. Without the -2 penalty, his Combat Defense would have been 10 instead of 8, so with an attack total of 19, Gerald would have dealt twice the damage, that is, 5x2=10 instead of 5x3=15, 15-4=11. You see? Not only does the armor not protect him, but also it makes him suffer more damage.

At first, I thought that the best solution would be to ignore the armor penalties. No armor penalty at all. But then I recalled a scene of the novels, the one in which Bronn fights one of Lysa's knights. He was offered an armor, but he refused the offer. Wearing an armor must be better than wearing no armor, but there must be occasions in which wearing no armor can be more advantageous. So I came up with another solution, create benefits that offset the armor penalty. For example:

Armor Training
Requires Athletics 3
When wearing an armor, you can offset the armor penalty by 3 points. The armor penalty cannot be be reduced to less than 0.

Improved Armor Training
Requires Armor Training, Athletics 4
When wearing an armor, you can offset the armor penalty by 3 points. It is cumulative with Armor training. The armor penalty cannot be be reduced to less than 0.

or another possibility:

Armor Training
When wearing an armor, you can subtract from the armor penalty what you have in Athletics. The armor penalty cannot be be reduced to less than 0.

Any thoughts?

What is SIFRP?

Perhaps this?



But don't look at me, I am still busy drooling over my ebay-acquired copy of RuneQuest.

Claudius, I was thinking about it -- what if you kept the armor penalty and subtracted the armor rating from damage before increasing the damage? EDIT: If damage is increased, maybe a minimum of 1 after armor has been applied.

Kyle, that's still my favorite version of RuneQuest.

no idea how hte system works :-) but armour should in general make you easier to hit (you can doge about less) but take less damage. so removing an amount of damage from the toal woudl seem to be nice. personally i don;t like the damage multiplier for a good hit as it doesn't generate enough variety i woudl opt for increasing hre number of damage dice from 1d8 to 3d8 and subtracting the ac rating from each dice. This makes armour toughter , a lot tougher. but that is largely why people wear armour :-). I woudl modify this wor damage types, piercing, crushing, slashing etc
I ran a homebrew game one where a chanracter in full body armour was hit from point blank range with a clip from an uzi. he took some damage and was through through a plasterboard wall but he got up. It nearly forced me to redesign armour and automatic weapons in the game. Then I saw a tv science show where they shot some modern kevlar composite vest from 5 feet witha .44 magnum and it didn;t penetrate or break the vase the kevlar was protecting. So i ummed and ared and left it in.
Armour protects (maybe it ablates a bit) but should have other negative effects

Eh, melee is complicated. If you want realism, that is. Armor makes you easier to hit? Maybe, but in combat you aren't just dodging, you're also trying to hit the other guy, and the fact that you're trying to hit him should throw off his attack. Since with armor you have to worry less about minor nicks, it's possible that it allows you to interfere more with the opponent's attempts to get a real good hit on you.

Not sure how this relates to SIFRP, or most other games for that matter, it's just some food for thought prompted by the previous post. Seems to me, if you accept my little theory, it would be hard to shoehorn into an existing system like SIFRP and would require a whole new one.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;306357Eh, melee is complicated. If you want realism, that is. Armor makes you easier to hit? Maybe, but in combat you aren't just dodging, you're also trying to hit the other guy, and the fact that you're trying to hit him should throw off his attack. Since with armor you have to worry less about minor nicks, it's possible that it allows you to interfere more with the opponent's attempts to get a real good hit on you.

Not sure how this relates to SIFRP, or most other games for that matter, it's just some food for thought prompted by the previous post. Seems to me, if you accept my little theory, it would be hard to shoehorn into an existing system like SIFRP and would require a whole new one.

In my rpg, I give a +6 bonus, on a d20, to strike if a character forgoes his defense because he is both fearless of his enemy's attack and immune to its ill effects (such as a hero with huge amounts of invulnerability.) Most of the powered armor suits give a + to both attack and defense, to reflect just that.

Quote from: brettmb;306335Claudius, I was thinking about it -- what if you kept the armor penalty and subtracted the armor rating from damage before increasing the damage? EDIT: If damage is increased, maybe a minimum of 1 after armor has been applied.

I like the logic, but the damage strikes me as being a little on the low side.  The attack was (pretty darned) successful by two degrees.  Using the above method would result in only 3 damage.

How about something along the lines of reducing the effectiveness of armor for each degree of success?  This would reflect (at least to my mind) that the more successful you are, the more likely you are to have found a weak spot/opening/gap/chink in the armor.

Here's one example of reducing the effectiveness of armor by 1 for each degree of success:

Ordinary success:  5 dmg - 4 armor = 1 damage
1 Degree of success:  (5 dmg - 4 armor) + (5 dmg - 3 armor) = 3 damage
2 Degrees of success: (5 dmg - 4 armor) + (5 dmg - 3 armor) + (5 dmg - 2 armor) = 6 damage
And so on and so forth.

If this damage still seems a bit low (and it still does to me), here is a halving scheme where each degree of success cuts the armor in half (3 degrees of success essentially nullifies the armor)?  It is a great success after all.

3 Degrees of success:  (5 dmg - 4 armor) + (5 dmg - 2 armor) + (5 dmg - 1 armor) + (5 dmg - 0) = 13 damage

To compare from the above example where No Armor = 10 damage:
Original scheme:             Mail = 11 damage
Reduce by 1 scheme:      Mail = 6 damage
Halving scheme:             Mail = 8 damage

Thoughts?