RosenMcStern
Mongoose
I have considered the ENC values for armor and the Overloaded character rules, and I think this is the real problem with armor, not the skill penalty. If the Overloading rules were better, we could just drop the armor penalty and use encumbrance to restrain players from wearing too much armor.
First of all, the ENC values for armor are totally unrealistic. Armor does not weigh so little. It is true that it is easier to carry than the equivalent weight in unbalanced/unbalancing items, but 7 pts for a full chain suit is too little.
Second, any armor but plate weighs ZERO with one simple level of non-magical craft refinement. No comment needed.
Third, the rule that makes bigger characters capable of carrying bigger weights is realistic, but armor weight increases are again unrealistic/unplayable. Olaf the Viking (SIZ 20) has a chain mail suit weighing 7 ENC, cost $2000. Sigron the Troll (SIZ 21) has a chain mail suit weighing 14 ENC, cost $4000. Anything in the middle?
These encumbrance rules would work perfectly with RQ3 armor ENC values (which were retained for weapons). An average character wearing maille, sword and shield (say ENC 25) would be overloaded, for a more realistic -20% penalty to skills & fatigue. A stronger character could afford to carry maille or specially-crafted plate at no penalty, but not standard plate, which would require an average of 15 in STR & SIZ. The advantage of big SIZ would be partially offset by the extra armor weight.
Perhaps the problem that convinced Mongoose to switch to the current, unrealistic, per-AP penalty was the fact that RQ3 armor table were rather complicate, with a lot of decimal values needed to calculate per-piece ENC scores. Furthermore, total ENC values in RQ3 frequently had 0.5 increments for weapons, that required one-decimal-figure operations (arithmetics galore!). However, I think that the vast majority of players would be happier to make more complicate calculations when figuring out how much their armor weighs, which is done once per suit bought, and then having one threshold that means either no penalty or a flat -20% during play, rather than keeping the current values that range from -1% to -42% and must be subtracted from too wide an array of skills to write it on the character sheet. When my Athletics skill is 37% and my Armor penalty is 23%, well this is the kind of maths I do not like to do while playing!
As for craftmanship-enhanced armors, the Nimble effect could be dropped and the Light effect would lower the ENC category by one column shift (with columns meaning increments of 5 SIZ as in RQ3).
First of all, the ENC values for armor are totally unrealistic. Armor does not weigh so little. It is true that it is easier to carry than the equivalent weight in unbalanced/unbalancing items, but 7 pts for a full chain suit is too little.
Second, any armor but plate weighs ZERO with one simple level of non-magical craft refinement. No comment needed.
Third, the rule that makes bigger characters capable of carrying bigger weights is realistic, but armor weight increases are again unrealistic/unplayable. Olaf the Viking (SIZ 20) has a chain mail suit weighing 7 ENC, cost $2000. Sigron the Troll (SIZ 21) has a chain mail suit weighing 14 ENC, cost $4000. Anything in the middle?
These encumbrance rules would work perfectly with RQ3 armor ENC values (which were retained for weapons). An average character wearing maille, sword and shield (say ENC 25) would be overloaded, for a more realistic -20% penalty to skills & fatigue. A stronger character could afford to carry maille or specially-crafted plate at no penalty, but not standard plate, which would require an average of 15 in STR & SIZ. The advantage of big SIZ would be partially offset by the extra armor weight.
Perhaps the problem that convinced Mongoose to switch to the current, unrealistic, per-AP penalty was the fact that RQ3 armor table were rather complicate, with a lot of decimal values needed to calculate per-piece ENC scores. Furthermore, total ENC values in RQ3 frequently had 0.5 increments for weapons, that required one-decimal-figure operations (arithmetics galore!). However, I think that the vast majority of players would be happier to make more complicate calculations when figuring out how much their armor weighs, which is done once per suit bought, and then having one threshold that means either no penalty or a flat -20% during play, rather than keeping the current values that range from -1% to -42% and must be subtracted from too wide an array of skills to write it on the character sheet. When my Athletics skill is 37% and my Armor penalty is 23%, well this is the kind of maths I do not like to do while playing!
As for craftmanship-enhanced armors, the Nimble effect could be dropped and the Light effect would lower the ENC category by one column shift (with columns meaning increments of 5 SIZ as in RQ3).
