Quote from: Carranthir;397595While I find the Palladium rules are a hot mess, the books are just dripping with flavor such that I find myself willing to work with the rules. That said, I'm currently grappling with how best to fix the Armor Rating system so that armor actually matters at mid to high levels. =/

Armor will always matter against lesser skilled foes.  Even if my foe is +6 to strike, my AR 14 is still useful 40% of the time.  And if I am facing a +12 foe, then I better have my Parry and/or Dodge high enough to be able to deal with them.

At high levels, it's all about Parry...and those who fail get their heads sliced off.  High skilled foes don't waste time with body hits like they did at early levels.  Now, they can strike with vorpal viciousness.

My thought was to integrate some simple damage reduction into armor, so whenever you took physical damage some would be mitigated by the armor. For example:

Discard cloth armor. The lowest armor type is now Padded (AR . Damage reduction is determined by subtracting 7 from the armor rating, which gives a range of Damage Reduction from 1 (Padded) to 10 (Full Plate). This is the number that is deducted whenever a character's armor is breached (someone rolls over the AR AND of course beats parry/dodge).

Under these proposed rules Armor SDC is still damaged, but only by rolls that exceed the AR and at a rate 1/10 of that as per the rules (rounded up). (a foe's roll exceeds your AR and the damage rolled is 6 - your armor takes 2 damage.) This should lengthen the time between the characters' armor falling to pieces.

Criticals under this system would ignore DR, allowing for a dagger (d6) to actually damage someone in full plate (DR 10).

I think to balance the light and heavy armors further I'd have to come up with a Physical Prowess penalty for heavy armor, as well as enforce any encumbrance and movement rules.

That's the best I could come up with on one cup of coffee. Thoughts?

Apparently my earlier post didn't go through. Let's try this again!

My thought was to integrate some simple damage reduction into armor, so whenever you took physical damage some would be mitigated by the armor. For example:

Discard cloth armor. The lowest armor type is now Padded (AR . Damage reduction is determined by subtracting 7 from the armor rating, which gives a range of Damage Reduction from 1 (Padded) to 10 (Full Plate). This is the number that is deducted whenever a character's armor is breached (someone rolls over the AR AND of course beats parry/dodge).

Under these proposed rules Armor SDC is still damaged, but only by rolls that exceed the AR and at a rate 1/10 of that as per the rules (rounded up). (frex a foe's roll exceeds your AR and the damage rolled is 6 - your armor takes 2 damage.) This should lengthen the time between the characters' armor falling to pieces.

Criticals under this system would ignore DR, allowing for a dagger (d6) to actually damage someone in full plate (DR 10).

I think to balance the light and heavy armors further I'd have to come up with a Physical Prowess penalty for heavy armor, as well as enforce any encumbrance and movement rules.

If that makes armor too good, perhaps a a simple assignment of a DR rating say from 1-5 to various armors would suffice.

Thoughts?

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;397644OK...(sorry I may be moving off topic with this) but I guess the problem is that as strike bonuses/parry bonuses go up, the totals start moving up past the AR numbers?
A couple of patch ideas:

*giving characters the option of making a "Roll with Punch" roll to take a hit on armour, instead of taking half damage (probably as an action)

*add some sort of "armour optimization" skill that gives you a bonus to AR with level (i.e. the character moves so that they make best use of their armour)?

*more drastically, run a "parry" as subtracting from the attacker's roll, instead of as a separate roll?

Ah, ok, so this is a problem to you specifically in the context of Palladium FANTASY, not the system as a whole (since most other games don't use A.R.)?

In Palladium I tend to trust the rules as written, so I don't know...

RPGPundit

I'm just guessing at what Carranthir's problem is...mostly from theory. I'm guessing for Palladium Fantasy since you're right, none of the mega-damage games would have any issues with this since AR doesn't apply.

...
And thinking about it some more, I could be completely wrong. I can't remember if characters can get magical armour with better AR in Palladium - if they do their AR might effectively be increasing with level anyway.

Pretty clearly, BSJ and Spinachcat nailed it. Armor rating matters vs. people with small bonuses, not so much (or not at all) against people with high bonuses. This isn't realistic IMHO, and that's probably what Carranthir doesn't like.

However, it's a nice feature from another perspective, since (theoretically) it looks like it basically makes Errol-Flynn-style action feasible...that is, lightly-armored dude with a light sword takes on three halberd-wielding guards wearing cuirasses, and somehow slices them up. Potentially, it's a lot neater than other games with armor-absorbs, where the high-skill character can only get through by rolling a critical.

(Would have to review Dragon Warriors to compare.)

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;397979Pretty clearly, BSJ and Spinachcat nailed it. Armor rating matters vs. people with small bonuses, not so much (or not at all) against people with high bonuses. This isn't realistic IMHO, and that's probably what Carranthir doesn't like.

However, it's a nice feature from another perspective, since (theoretically) it looks like it basically makes Errol-Flynn-style action feasible...that is, lightly-armored dude with a light sword takes on three halberd-wielding guards wearing cuirasses, and somehow slices them up. Potentially, it's a lot neater than other games with armor-absorbs, where the high-skill character can only get through by rolling a critical.

(Would have to review Dragon Warriors to compare.)

Dragon Warriors works like this: you roll a d20 under your Attack score to hit an opponent. They can spend Defence points to subtract from your attack score (these refresh each round). If you do hit, you roll an Armour Bypass roll; armour has an "armour factor" of between 1 and 5 (full plate),
and you have to roll over to deal damage (i.e. get a "6" for full plate).
Weapons roll anything from d3 (cudgel) to d10 (two-handed sword) on the bypass roll; Strength (rolled on 3d6) adds +1 to bypass at 16-18 or +2 for 19+. If you hit, weapons do a fixed base damage. A critical hit (roll of "1") makes the armour bypass roll unnecessary.

By RAW in DW the sword is pretty much the best weapon (d8 bypass, 4 damage); I think mace by comparison is d6 bypass,3 damage, but I like it that the basic mechanic is there to play with.

The last game I played of it we houseruled the weapon statistics, and the GM built on the mechanics and created a bunch of weapons that had multiple bypass rolls (e.g. the triple flail- one hit roll, each successful bypass roll does a certain amount of damage). It also makes it easier to do stuff like shock weapons - if you hit but fail bypass against metal armour, you still do your electricity damage...and it makes it easier to adjudicate things like "tripping" someone, as compared to say 3.5's fooling around with 'touch ACs'.

DW is absolutely not swashbuckly though. Knight is the most commonly encountered Profession - 'can wear any armour' is virtually their major class feature (they start out with plate). One downside of the bypass system as written (IMHO) in that it is very deterministic, in that peasants with cudgels or wolves can't hurt a knight at all, barring critical hits; likewise level doesn't help odds of getting through armour at all, except indirectly via a couple of Profession special abilities.

Drifting a bit, but...does DW provide a grapple option vs. the knight? As that would probably be the way to do it if you've got a crowd; surround the guy, knock him down, and then swarm.

Not that I see anything better, necessarily, in Palladium.

Nothing's really defined as far as grappling rules go. That'd probably be a workable option, but you'd have to houserule in how to work it... often with DW you end up searching through monsters to find precedents.

Also sorry about double-derailing your thread by page 3, I'd just assumed that there only so much conversation possible about the exceptional stat roll.

No problem at all; you're right, the original topic is done. The derails have been useful in seeing how the rules are supposed to work.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;398075No problem at all; you're right, the original topic is done. The derails have been useful in seeing how the rules are supposed to work.

:cool:

Rather than rip on Palladium some more, just to balance the equation...
I remembered reading some interesting points on why Palladium is better than D&D (AD&D particularly, though most of the points apply equally to all editions).
http://kuoi.com/~kamikaze/RPG/wrong_adnd.php

Most of this is buried in a fairly heated rant against D&D in general, but see particularly the "Why Palladium" section, and the rants on abstract HPs (a problem Palladium at least doesn't have).

Thanks. I enjoy Mark Damon Hughes' stuff. I'll give it a look.