Armour Penalty and others

[Dano_13]

Hello again,

Just going through the corebook on the second read - and some things popped up.

1) I noticed that armour interferes with movement and strikerank, but it doesn't seem to interfere with Stealth skills. Is this correct?

2) For those people running RQ2 with miniatures, what scale do you use? I have used feet ever since I was old enough to graph a dungeon (even though I am Canadian), but don't relish going through and converting everything over. I am used to grids of 5' a square, so what would I use so that most movements etc come out to a integer value. I guess 1 m squares are the most obvious and flexible even if it makes the maps a little big.

3) If someone were going to try and get a deal from a merchant, would they use influence or commerce?

4) When it comes to vertical jumping, the rules seem to indicate that a running jump allows you to leap higher than a standing jump. Its been quite a while since I took physics, but is this true? Why would a horizontal velocity influence a vertical one?

Thanks in advance
Dan

 

[Greg Smith]

4) When it comes to vertical jumping, the rules seem to indicate that a running jump allows you to leap higher than a standing jump. Its been quite a while since I took physics, but is this true? Why would a horizontal velocity influence a vertical one?

I don't know why, but in athletics high jumpers use a run-up.

 

[Loz]

1) I noticed that armour interferes with movement and strikerank, but it doesn't seem to interfere with Stealth skills. Is this correct?

Yes its correct. You can creep around in armour. Leather doesn't present many problems and even plate tends to incorporate padding and so forth. Impose a penalty if you feel it appropriate, but in general one can move reasonably quietly and stealthily wearing metal.

3) If someone were going to try and get a deal from a merchant, would they use influence or commerce?

Commerce, if you have it; Influence if not. I'd personally apply a penalty to a character using Influence against a merchant using Commerce because they are quite separate disciplines. Influence is the force of personality. Commerce is a measure of knowledge of economics used in a pure business sense which, in my experience, has very different characteristics to other forms of influential behaviour. I've known many superb sales people who were actually quite deficient in being persuasive in other areas. Its definitely a separate technique, which is why the skill exists.

Actually as an aside, I started a new Elric campaign last night with a group of players quite new to RQII. The characters were attempting to persuade a couple of wily sea farers to keep to a bargain they'd just made and then broken. Influence rolls had failed and there were the sailors laughing at the impotency of some quite intimidating PCs. So I had the mercenary of the party make a Combat Style roll (opposed by the sailors' Persistence) as he quickly pushed aside his cloak, Man-With-No-Name style, to reveal the two exquisite blades anchored at each hip. He won the contest and had his demands agreed to. I've never used a Combat skill in this way before, but with the recent thread on Combat Styles, it struck me as one that, in certain circumstances, can be quite effective and certainly applicable.

Equally, I could have had the character make an Influence roll augmented by his Combat Style; but this just seemed to me to be... cooler. I was right; it was.

Worth considering. Especially for those taciturn/tongue-tied types with low Influence who, just by brandishing their weapons in a certain way, could achieve the kind of Influence effect the skill on its own might not achieve.

 

[Deleriad]

So I had the mercenary of the party make a Combat Style roll (opposed by the sailors' Persistence) as he quickly pushed aside his cloak, Man-With-No-Name style, to reveal the two exquisite blades anchored at each hip. He won the contest and had his demands agreed to. I've never used a Combat skill in this way before, but with the recent thread on Combat Styles, it struck me as one that, in certain circumstances, can be quite effective and certainly applicable.

On that narrow point, in the last but one session of my current campaign the PCs were facing bandits and one of them used Brawn (opposed by Persistence) for precisely the same purpose.

 

[Vagni]

Nice idea.

Just shows how skills can be used past the descriptions in the book.

 

[Vagni]

I also use the Armour Penalty as a negative modifier to the number of minutes, rounds, CA's etc. for determining Fatigue checks.

 

[Mortimer]

As for the jumping thing, yes running start helps a great deal. Doing a high jump off your foot uses the same principle as doing a pole vault. Can you imagine trying to do a standing pole vault?

 

[superc0ntra]

I also use the Armour Penalty as a negative modifier to the number of minutes, rounds, CA's etc. for determining Fatigue checks.

That's a good rule. WIll use it.

 

[Mixster]

1) I think it's up to the DM how much your armour should interfere with stealth. Wielding a leather armour probably wont make a difference, and waering just a metal helmet and no metal it can clank against probably wouldn't either. But wearing a full clanky plate probably will. As well as a rattling chain mail.

2) We're quite fond of being back with meters, and we use one square = one meter, most of the time.

3) Preferably Commerce, they should probably only use half their influence skill per the rules of defaulting from an advanced skill if they tried to use influence. If one of the persons knows the market well, the other being talkative wont help him if Person A knows he'll lose a lot of money, or that he is already offering the cheapest price in town.

4) Google found me this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKX1g0qCW-0
A high jump isn't entirely an upward motion, if it was that, you are right, and the run-up wouldn't matter. But since you need to cross an obstacle, you need to use some of the upward momentum to bring you forward. Which is pretty hard, since the human body really isn't build for jumping straight up, so using any of your energy on anything else makes it pretty hard.

 

[Mongoose Pete]

1) I think it's up to the DM how much your armour should interfere with stealth. Wielding a leather armour probably wont make a difference, and waering just a metal helmet and no metal it can clank against probably wouldn't either. But wearing a full clanky plate probably will. As well as a rattling chain mail.

Chainmail doesn't rattle - well not unless you jump up and down or run about in it. Walking quietly however is simple. Also note that the 'plate' armour in the Core Rulebook is supposed to be hoplite style armour - the artist's efforts notwithstanding.

BTW if you want something more like medieval full field plate then you should add a few points to its APs (as in Elric or Wraith Recon) and give a situational modifier depending on what the wearer is trying to do. Hide behind a tree, no problem. Jog quietly, with your articulated knees clattering, different kettle of fish. :wink:

So yes, the stealth penalty should be up to the GM as there are a lot of things which can affect the situation.