Armour penalty

[GbajiTheDeceiver]

As for the reneissance thing, the RQ weapon tables have rapiers, don't they? I'm not talking about Glorantha here, but the generic RQ fantasy.

Not the overlong, elaborate weapon of the Renaissance. A basic cut-and-thrust weapon lighter than a Broadsword.

That didn't mean very much then, and it still doesn't. The picture sure looked like a rapier (or a small-sword). Furthermore mongoose is trying to market their RQ as a general fantasy game-engine. You need to be able to do rapiers, black-powder weapons and footmans plate for that.

That's fair enough, but RQ3 was marketed the same way too. At least at the start. Anyway, we had black powder with the Mostali in Glorantha.

Looking at the rapier picture, it's definitely not long/thin. It's slightly longer than a gladius, shorter than a scimitar, and broadens quite a bit towards the tip.

 

[RMS]

I bow down to your superior knowledge. Out goes the skill penalty. Hmm... must work more with the fatigue rules instead then. Must limit my players! Or they'll all be strutting around in full chain+plate!
:?
SGL.

Well, if you want realism, then it's pretty easy to restrict armor. You can't pick up anyone else's armor and use it, in that case. This also means that it's of little value to sell to anyone, even when you do find it. A properly fitted suit of armor cannot be bought off the rack, but must come from a proper armorer who takes weeks to build it. Also, if players started stacking like that, I'd hit them with massive penalties in a hurry. Armor is a compromise between coverage and not restricting movement. If you built armor to give the penalties that MRQ has, it could be done, but it should be much more protective IMO than what's described.

Maybe this is getting too detailed. I've noted before that no point in history has the plethera of armor in most RPGs. There's generally about three levels: no armor, light affordable armor, and the best damn armor around. When the best is superceded, everyone who can afford what's currently out there, can also afford to buy the new stuff and upgrade.

As somebody who practises historical european swordplay (italian longsword* style, from 1300 - 1400), I'd keep the skill penalty.

Armour restricts your movement, and combat skill isn't about your ability to stand still and hit your target with a blade. It's about movement and timing, and heavy armour does restrict your options.

In the systems I use, I have half the armour penalty to the actual fighting skill (like swordplay) and the full penalty to things like dodging, climbing and jumping.

I've never worn much armor, but that sounds resonable. I'll do it your way!

*my feeble bugbrain flicker between opinions*

SGL.

That's the way it goes. None of us have fought in real battles with real armor and weapons of the period, so there's some room for educated opinions being different. My opinion is that the limit armor puts on someone is well below the level of granularity most RPGs can handle. In RQ terms, I could see a few % and Adept's suggestion of halving the penalties I could probably deal with, though it's still too high for the heavier armor IMO. OTOH, you learn to fight with armor and weapon. In real life, they aren't two different skills, so "realistically" you would fight best with whatever you had trained with the most and worse with whatever combination is less familiar to you. (The same goes for weapon + shield. The difference in sword + shield and axe + shield is much smaller than the difference in sword w/o shield and sword + shield, but we don't bother with that distinction in most RPGs. I digress! )

Most of armor's restrictions in movement are overcome by proper training, and lots of it. Someone suggested adding an armor skill before and letting that offset armor penalties. It's something else worth considering.

 

[RMS]

All of this is a bit beside the point though since RQ plate armor is actually Greek hoplite armor with no articulated joints, etc. It's a breast plate, greeves, etc. and a Corinthian (or similar) helm. It won't affect range of movement at all. It weighs a bit, but can still be marched in for hours a day with little trouble.

Actually that is the description of Plate from RQ2 and 3, however MRQ is a generic system and not Glorantha specific so the plate in question has to cover all settings the rules can be used for and that includes late medieval and renaissance settings.


Vadrus

RQ3 was generic too. I assume the higher grade armor comes out in the Equipment book that was much discussed before.

 

[Adept]

Scavenging armour isn't quite as useless as that.

Helmets can be used if the other guy's head was about the same size as your own, and maille is pretty easy to adjust (by a smith).

Plate harness is the tricky one. A proper knight's armour took years to make, and required exact measurements. One of the finest examples of gothic armour that has survived did so because the baron for whom it was made got too fat to wear it in the years between measurement and delivery.

That's not the whole story, though. Later landsknecht armour was made with adjustable straps and could be fitted to a great variety of different sized people.

 

[RMS]

Scavenging armour isn't quite as useless as that.

Helmets can be used if the other guy's head was about the same size as your own, and maille is pretty easy to adjust (by a smith).

Plate harness is the tricky one. A proper knight's armour took years to make, and required exact measurements. One of the finest examples of gothic armour that has survived did so because the baron for whom it was made got too fat to wear it in the years between measurement and delivery.

That's not the whole story, though. Later landsknecht armour was made with adjustable straps and could be fitted to a great variety of different sized people.

We're actually on the same page here...just the typical internet communication issue. My point was that the typical RPG activity of grabbing someone else's armor and putting it on after offing them is remote in the real world. A helmet, maybe, but a full suit, no. If nothing else, you have to drag the mail back to your friendly neighborhood armorer and have them do some work before it fits... and if you can afford that work, you most likely already had equal armor. That's not to say that it's worthless. Ancient and medieval economies valued resources much higher in proportion to labor than modern economies, so that chunk of metal was work more proportionally than it would be today.

 

[RosenMcStern]

All of this is a bit beside the point though since RQ plate armor is actually Greek hoplite armor with no articulated joints, etc. It's a breast plate, greeves, etc. and a Corinthian (or similar) helm. It won't affect range of movement at all. It weighs a bit, but can still be marched in for hours a day with little trouble.

Actually that is the description of Plate from RQ2 and 3, however MRQ is a generic system and not Glorantha specific so the plate in question has to cover all settings the rules can be used for and that includes late medieval and renaissance settings.

Assuming the standard "tech level" of MRQ is that of early Middle Ages and Gloranthan Orlanthi, you can work up the full plate armor used by Renaissance Knights and landsknechts (and Mostali) by simply using the enhanced item rules.

A Marvellous suit of armor with AP+2 / Bulwark is AP 8 and -80% to bypass. The effect is the same as RQ3 plate, but the price is outrageous: 90,000 SP !!! Such an armor cannot be considered available in the standard MRQ settings. Maybe the Loskalmi have some....

 

[Richard]

Here's my take on this. The armour table I'd use is the more consistent and complete one that has appeared on this forum before.

p.39 Some real confusion with the armour table. Notably the identical stats for the leather and heavy leather hauberks with accompanying price discrepancy. Also I can’t help thinking the skill penalty costs are way over the top. Armour certainly weighs you down but most is designed for fighting in by warriors trained to use it. Retain the skill penalty modifier but apply it only to Dodge rolls and as a penalty to Athletics rolls to avoid Fatigue. In this way it can still wear you out and hinder you in combat without crippling the wearer. To simulate it’s limited effect on other physical skills the actual ENC of armour worn could be applied as a skill penalty (e.g.-12% for wearing full plate which would apply to attack rolls etc).
Remember, apply the skill penalty to Dodge and Fatigue tests not all combat skills. I would suggest though that fine motor skills are penalised by wearing gauntlets and perception checks by the wearing of a helm. –5% per point of armour seems about right. Remember the ‘ignore armour’ precise attack option has been dropped!

p.49 The bypass armour option in precise hits is surely a major blooper. –40% to ignore your opponents armour completely? I’ll take that thank you very much! Just ditch this particular option.

For getting through armour on that special occasion I balanced this out by improving the critical rules as follows...

p.47 Critical Hits. This was a real head scratcher. The hefty armour penalties to most combat skills and the ‘bypass armour’ option had to go to make sense of the existence of expensive armour at all. Having done the inevitable and dropped ‘bypass armour’ I had to find a way to get through the stuff for the occasional special hit. Simply using maximum weapon damage for a critical doesn’t really work. As pointed out by forum testers wee beasties and smaller weapons would still be useless against decent armour even with a crit hit. Doubling damage in the style of RQ3 kind of works but with crits happening twice as often and the slight drop in heavy armour value this seemed more than a little severe! Then as I was pondering something else entirely I clocked the new Damage Bonus tables. A crit is a result of the character’s skill as much as weapon type or size. So how about this simple alternative? A Critical Hit in combat increases the attacker’s effective Damage Bonus for the blow (Same rule as for a successful charge, see above. Average critical damage might drop a point or so for some weapons but you’ll now have the potential to beat armour without the need for any unconvincing rules option). >
* On a Critical Hit the attacker rolls damage for the weapon normally but their damage modifier is counted as being two steps better for this particular blow.
* If the critical is equal to or better than half the strike’s basic Critical chance the blow ignores any armour protection (Worn or natural, not parrying).
* If the roll is 01 the weapon also inflicts it’s maximum possible damage (Damage bonus is still rolled separately) in addition to the above.

 

[Licheking]

First the armour skill penalties existed under the older versions of the rules and in fact are actually harsher than the new rules. I spent an hour one afternoon comparing RQ2 and the new rules, and found that all armours are actually easier to use in the new rules than the old. Plate armour worked out as about 90% penalty to skill under the RQ2 rules.

Plus the armour from the tables are off the peg, which i imagine is ill fitting and roughly made. Whereas as soon as you pay more for your armour, eg better quality, then you can reduce if not completely remove the penalty from some of the armour. (Nimble) Which would represent better fitted, custom armour for the owner.

As for scavenging armour i allow characters to wear armour within 10% of their SIZ +/-. And if its custom/better quality then you must be the same SIZ as the victim, to be able to benefit from the quality.

Anyway, if you want a realistic system go for Riddle of Steel, if you want something that recreates Glorantha and previous runequests sets, then in my opiinion this is the game for you, well me anyway. I play both systems and find enough enjoyment in the differences to do so.

 

[Richard]

Dear Licheking, Eh?? Come again? I'm reading RQ2 right now and it says nothing of the sort! The worst armour does to you is penalise your SILENT score (See P.29 Armor Statistics Table last column). Also 'When several different types of armour are worn take the noisiest as the subtractor do not add all of the different types together' (Same page). Even assuming this applies to each location the very worst you can do is build up a 50% or so Silent penalty for running around in plate. It does not wipe out your other skills! You are even more wrong with RQ3 as 'one of 'the older versions of the rules'. In RQ3 you add your CON and STR to give you the amount of ENC you can carry before any excess affects your skills. So your warrior is average size and has a combined STR + CON of 26 say (Not brilliant for a fighter at all...). By some miracle he gets his hands on a full set of plate weighing 25 ENC. He adds 5 ENC worth of shields and weapons and starts at a -4% penalty. This rises by 1% for each round he goes hard at it in combat. This was a brilliant system for simulating the effects of armour. It's drawback was it's complexity to newcomers. '90% penalty to skill??'. I've run RQ for over a decade now it just ain't so. Check out the post above to sort out MRQ.

 

[Licheking]

The version of the rules i have, Avalon Hill, states that every ENC point comes off your Dodge, every ENC of armour comes off your Stealth score and if you are carrying too much weight then that comes of all your DEX based skill scores. I forget if this is in the fatigue rules or encumbrance rules as i don't have the book in front of me now but that was what i was referring too.

 

[Deleriad]

The version of the rules i have, Avalon Hill, states that every ENC point comes off your Dodge, every ENC of armour comes off your Stealth score and if you are carrying too much weight then that comes of all your DEX based skill scores. I forget if this is in the fatigue rules or encumbrance rules as i don't have the book in front of me now but that was what i was referring too.

I'm afraid you have some of this wrong. You're right that both Dodge and Stealth (but not hide) have ENC as a negative modifier. A full suit of RQ3 plate is -25% for an average human's dodge in RQ3 (as opposed to -42% in MRQ). However, ENC had no effect on any other DEX based skill (e.g. attack or parry).

There is an argument that RQ3 massively disfavoured dodge.

 

[Rurik]

There is an argument that RQ3 massively disfavoured dodge.

Well, in RQ3 a successful dodge avoided all damage. In MRQ a sucessful dodge results in taking minimum damage (which can be significant) and giving ground. You need a critical dodge vs. a normal success in MRQ to avoid all damage.

 

[RosenMcStern]

There is an argument that RQ3 massively disfavoured dodge.

Well, in RQ3 a successful dodge avoided all damage. In MRQ a sucessful dodge results in taking minimum damage (which can be significant) and giving ground. You need a critical dodge vs. a normal success in MRQ to avoid all damage.

The big problem is that the balance is the exact opposite. In RQ3 you'd better not resort to Dodge except vs. ultra-heavy opponents like Dragons that do too much damage to parry it. In MRQ Dodge is rather effective, except vs. ultra-strong opponents who rely on damage modifier rather than weapon damage. Hmmm.....

Honestly, I cannot see a reason why a bigger opponent should be more difficult to dodge. I'll always houserule that the DM is mimimized, too.

 

[Gnarsh]

There is an argument that RQ3 massively disfavoured dodge.

Not really though. Remember that RQ2 did not have a dodge skill at all. You had a "defense" (which was incredibly difficult to raise) which was a set amount that you simply subtracted from your foes (you had to divide it up among all attacks over a round).

Dodge actually was "king" in straight RQ3 because if you made your skill roll you avoided all damage. Period. Someone with a 130% or so dodge skill could effectively avoid taking damage from any opponent no matter how skilled or how much armor the dodgee was wearing (and honestly except for missile weapons, he didn't have much reason to wear any).

Ok. That's not technically true, since in straight RQ3, if your opponent rolled a special, you had to make a special dodge, or if he rolled a critical, you had to make a critical dodge. It was still incredibly powerful as a defensive methodology though. In fact, it was largely because of the overpowered nature of dodge in RQ3 that I implemented (or re-implemented if you will) the ability for characters to subtract their combat skill over 100% from their opponents dodge or parry skill (and vice versa of course!). A particularly annoying session where my mighty warrior with a 200+% skill could not kill a couple skeletons because they dodged every round and I didn't get lucky and special them (I *hate* "lucky guy wins" type mechanics, largely because I'm not a lucky die roller). They never failed to dodge, and I never rolled under the 40% value I needed to roll to overcome their dodge (well, for several annoying rounds that is).

Luck should play a part in combat rolls, but not that much of a part... It's also one of the reasons I dislike simply using success level results in skill rolls. Those systems also end up being "lucky guy wins" systems. We all know the player who seems to always roll a crit or special when he needs to. We also all know the players who *dont*. Both types of players should get to enjoy the game...


As to the effects of armor on skill, I still think that most people are progressing from flawed assumptions about armor. The problem is that most game designers are basing their knowledge on the experiences of people who fight in SCA style tourneys. The problem with that is that most of the armor used in those type of fights are designed and built by people who think they are being historically accurate and basing their designes on museum pieces and drawings (often also based on museum pieces), which are horribly innacurate due to modifications to make them into pieces suitable for viewing instead of wearing. Many key components of armor that make them very wearable and usable are removed when they're put on display.

Because of that most armors worn in tourneys today are built "wrong". They work, but they don't work well. And those are the pieces that were actually built using some skill and effort. The vast majority are simply built to look good and only stand up to combat use becuase the wearers layers on massive amounts of padding, extra bits of cover, and other extraneous bits that result in a difficult to wear armor that protects sufficiently to be used in a "live steel" fight. Even those designed to be fought in from the ground up are built using designs that are inherently poor. They might have represented something someone would have worn for show, but not something someone would have actually worn in combat.

If you look at the typical armory's designs, you'll notice that almost all of them put the entire weight of the armor on the shoulders of the wearer, even in plate pieces where this makes no sense. They also make no effort to balance out the backweight and the front weight (breastpiece weighs more then the front piece, and is attached over the shoulders). This results in armor the presses down on the arms, seriously hampering range of motion *and* which pulls the entire mess forward, effectively putting the wearer constantly off balance. You can get used to fighting in this armor, but you will feel it and it will effectively reduce your skill.

Armor that is made correctly, regardless of style or period, can be worn with little or no padding underneath, will balance correctly on the torso, and does not inhibit range or movement of the limbs. And in any sort of ancient world campaign, we can reasonably assume that the armorers of the day would spend a lot more time and effort making their armor wearable to the user then is spent today (where it's mostly about looks). Basing skill decrements on how replica armor built today works is an incredibly bad decision. Ancient armor would simply not be that hindering, or it would not have been worn...

 

[Adept]

Scavenging armour isn't quite as useless as that.

Helmets can be used if the other guy's head was about the same size as your own, and maille is pretty easy to adjust (by a smith).

Plate harness is the tricky one. A proper knight's armour took years to make, and required exact measurements. One of the finest examples of gothic armour that has survived did so because the baron for whom it was made got too fat to wear it in the years between measurement and delivery.

That's not the whole story, though. Later landsknecht armour was made with adjustable straps and could be fitted to a great variety of different sized people.

We're actually on the same page here...just the typical internet communication issue. My point was that the typical RPG activity of grabbing someone else's armor and putting it on after offing them is remote in the real world. A helmet, maybe, but a full suit, no. If nothing else, you have to drag the mail back to your friendly neighborhood armorer and have them do some work before it fits... and if you can afford that work, you most likely already had equal armor. That's not to say that it's worthless. Ancient and medieval economies valued resources much higher in proportion to labor than modern economies, so that chunk of metal was work more proportionally than it would be today.

You misunderstood me there. I'm serious that maille is easy to adjust. A maille shirt cost a lot of money and takes a long time to make, but having one adjusted for you is pretty cheap and doesn't take that long. Most of the work has already been done.

I'll just pluck these numbers from thin air.

Let's say that a proper Viking huscarls maille armour (the sort with long sleeves, and that reaches almost to the ground like a dress) would cost 800 silver pennies to make, and requre several weeks. Having one adjusted for you could quite possibly be done in a day or two, and cost something like 30 - 50 pennies. Of course you'll also have to have the padding made, and that should be made specifically for you (a sort of like a thick shirt or coat that goes under the maille).

 

[Licheking]

I'm afraid you have some of this wrong. You're right that both Dodge and Stealth (but not hide) have ENC as a negative modifier. A full suit of RQ3 plate is -25% for an average human's dodge in RQ3 (as opposed to -42% in MRQ). However, ENC had no effect on any other DEX based skill (e.g. attack or parry).

There is an argument that RQ3 massively disfavoured dodge.

ENC came off your Fatigue points and therefore penalised your skills every combat round. Page 43 Book 1 Runequest by Avalon Hill. the formula is
Current Fatigue points = Basic FP - current ENC.

With average CON + STR you get 22, which means that just wearing plate, ENC 25, gives you a minus 3% on every skill roll, including magic points vs magic points, resistance table roll, or characteristic roll... Such subtraction also decrases special and critical rolls. And this hasn't included any weapons or equipment yet.

Since you would also lose 1 FP every combat round you fight in, you are actually getting worse as the fight wears on. So you gain a penalty to Stealth, Dodge and all other skills as you wear out, in actual fact if you were a particularly harsh ref, you could penalise Stealth and doge twice, once for the armour and ENC and then again for the fatigue loss.

So as i said originally i think the new rules work well, are less complicated and still keeping the flavour of the original Runequest rules.

 

[Deleriad]

I'm afraid you have some of this wrong. You're right that both Dodge and Stealth (but not hide) have ENC as a negative modifier. A full suit of RQ3 plate is -25% for an average human's dodge in RQ3 (as opposed to -42% in MRQ). However, ENC had no effect on any other DEX based skill (e.g. attack or parry).

There is an argument that RQ3 massively disfavoured dodge.

ENC came off your Fatigue points and therefore penalised your skills every combat round. Page 43 Book 1 Runequest by Avalon Hill. the formula is
Current Fatigue points = Basic FP - current ENC.

With average CON + STR you get 22, which means that just wearing plate, ENC 25, gives you a minus 3% on every skill roll, including magic points vs magic points, resistance table roll, or characteristic roll... Such subtraction also decrases special and critical rolls. And this hasn't included any weapons or equipment yet.

Since you would also lose 1 FP every combat round you fight in, you are actually getting worse as the fight wears on. So you gain a penalty to Stealth, Dodge and all other skills as you wear out, in actual fact if you were a particularly harsh ref, you could penalise Stealth and doge twice, once for the armour and ENC and then again for the fatigue loss.

So as i said originally i think the new rules work well, are less complicated and still keeping the flavour of the original Runequest rules.

OK. Lets see.
RQ3 average human (STR+CON=22) wearing plate with broadsword and target shield. ENC = 30. Starting FP =-8. Therefore -8% to all skills except dodge which is is -38.
After 10 rounds: -18 to all rolls, -48 to Dodge
After 15 rounds (3 minutes): pass out from heat exhaustion.

MRQ: Same criteria. ENC basically irrelevant (Mr Average could wear a suit of plate, carry a sword and shield and a couple of 4m ladders without penalty).
So: -42% to pretty much every roll with DEX in the base score, every round. Can fight flat out for 10-11 minutes before needing to make a fatigue test. And here's an odd bit: a fatigue test is a "simple athletics test" (+20%) but Armor Skill Penalty affects athletics tests so it ends up being an Athletics Test at -22%. Odds are that the person will fail adding a further 10% penalty. Assuming each Fatigue Test fails then the character lasts 50 minutes. After 50 minutes he is -92% (-50% fatigue and -42% armor) to his combat skills and will probably fall asleep for 1d6*2 hours after 50 minutes and 5 seconds.

These are two very different models. RQ3 prevented you from fighting for very long in full armor. MRQ pretty much lets you fight as long as you want (10 minutes is 120 Combat rounds and therefore 240 attacks) before you make a Fatigue test but penalises you all the time for wearing armour. Note that 240 attacks in RQ3 would take 48 minutes. and you would need STR + CON 120 to survive that long.

 

[RosenMcStern]

These are two very different models. RQ3 prevented you from fighting for very long in full armor. MRQ pretty much lets you fight as long as you want (10 minutes is 120 Combat rounds and therefore 240 attacks) before you make a Fatigue test but penalises you all the time for wearing armour. Note that 240 attacks in RQ3 would take 48 minutes. and you would need STR + CON 120 to survive that long.

Well, adrenaline will keep you on your toes for several minutes before you realize you are getting exhausted, so no problem for the time elapsed before the first roll. Note also that 1 RQ3 attack is the equivalent of 2.5 MRQ attacks in time and lethality, so it would be only 90 attacks to equal the 240. Still too much, though.

 

[Adept]

These are two very different models. RQ3 prevented you from fighting for very long in full armor. MRQ pretty much lets you fight as long as you want (10 minutes is 120 Combat rounds and therefore 240 attacks) before you make a Fatigue test but penalises you all the time for wearing armour. Note that 240 attacks in RQ3 would take 48 minutes. and you would need STR + CON 120 to survive that long.

Well, adrenaline will keep you on your toes for several minutes before you realize you are getting exhausted, so no problem for the time elapsed before the first roll. Note also that 1 RQ3 attack is the equivalent of 2.5 MRQ attacks in time and lethality, so it would be only 90 attacks to equal the 240. Still too much, though.

After a minute of kumite-sparring in the martial art I did, I was really, really tired. Admittedly that was in the early days. I was quite fit, but way too tense in the fighting.

Still, that is with absolutely no encumbrance, wearing just a light gi.

At later stages one could make it through five to ten minutes of sparring (changing partners every minute or so), but then one was usually really sweaty and tired.

Ten minutes of relaxed (non threatening) combat with absolutely no encumbrance. The fighters were very fit young people.

Ten minutes is a really, really long time to be fighting. Of course armies "fighting" are mostly marching about and brief clashes of personal combat for the soldiers. Duels, and small skirmishes, don't last ten minutes, but rather are over in a few moments usually.

 

[RosenMcStern]

Ten minutes is a really, really long time to be fighting. Of course armies "fighting" are mostly marching about and brief clashes of personal combat for the soldiers. Duels, and small skirmishes, don't last ten minutes, but rather are over in a few moments usually.

You are right. A realistic rule would be "roll fatigue every CON rounds" when in combat, as opposed to "roll fatigue every CON CAs" when sprinting. The problem is that playtesting showed that fatigue rolls got in the way of smooth, fast playing and the frequent rolls were removed. Not dropping one fatigue level when one is really injured is wrong, too, but since survival of a wounded character depends on a not-so-high skill like resilience now, introducing this rule could kill many player characters.

I think the rules are designed to achieve a general effect ("Fighting in heavy armor is difficult", "Protect your vitals", etc) with minimum complexity. Still some more complexity for the sake of realism would not be bad.