Armour skill penalty
- Thread starter halorix
- Start date
simonh said:Enpeze said:What this means? This means that armored knights with a standard riding skill of 50% or 60% will fall from horseback more often than not in the future. Funny
Yes, there's a difference between accepting that armour does restrict movement somewhat, and then looking at the actual practical effects of the rules on character abilities, which are a bit excessive. It's not untill you work out what the effects mean in a range of situations that you can make a ballanced assessment.
Simon Hibbs
HArnmaster Second Edtion had the same exact problem-armorpenalties that were too high. It tured out that the penalty was asimplification imposed by the Columbia Games on the aurthor, N. Robin Crosby.
When Crosby wrote HArnmaster GOldf, he changed the peanlty to a modifer for fatige. THe idea being that fighting in armor will tire one out faster, and bring in the peanlties for fatigue.
THat was why I suggesed doing something similar with MRQ and just apply the peanlty to fatigue rolls. That way the armor won't turn a master swordman into an fair to average one.
Another Idea would be to increasse the rate that a character must make fatigue rolls. For example, a character normally has to check for fatigue while fighting once even CON minutes. We could increase that rate based on the armor peanlty.
Either, for every 10% we subtract a minute, or do something like:
10%+ =3/4 CON
20%+30=1/2CON
30%+ = 1/3 CON
40%+= 1/4CON
Or somethuing a little more complex, like:
STR x CON
Skill Penalty
in minutes.
So a Guy with a 12 CON and a 14 STR wearing full plate (42%) would check for fatigue every: 14*10/42 = 3 minutes.
Which could be simplified to:
Penalty Roll
<=STR = CON
>STR= 1/2 CON
>2xSTR= 1/3 CON
>3xSTR= 1/4 CON
etc. =etc.
Easy I reckon. Just use the ENC as a penalty for overall physical skills and have combat fatigue checks per every CON x rounds of the fight using the given armour penalties. It has some, plausible, effect and still wears you out (I'm also going to add a wee perception and manipulation penalty respectively for helmets and gauntlets).
Drop the 'ignore armour' precise hit or just don't bother with heavy armour at all. Saying that the armour penalties are a useful abstraction for learning to fight in armour is a bit bonkers! It assumes everyone has equal access to, and is training in, all types of armour; that heavy armour renders a non-expert fighter pretty much helpless (It didn't ... they wore it too if they could); that an expert fighter, having trained in it, is suddenly a much better opponent when unarmoured (You're 60% wearing your Plate? Strip off and break the ton...).
If you're looking for a quick useful abstraction maybe a character might have to train for a week/month per point of heavy armour to be proficient in it.
Drop the 'ignore armour' precise hit or just don't bother with heavy armour at all. Saying that the armour penalties are a useful abstraction for learning to fight in armour is a bit bonkers! It assumes everyone has equal access to, and is training in, all types of armour; that heavy armour renders a non-expert fighter pretty much helpless (It didn't ... they wore it too if they could); that an expert fighter, having trained in it, is suddenly a much better opponent when unarmoured (You're 60% wearing your Plate? Strip off and break the ton...).
If you're looking for a quick useful abstraction maybe a character might have to train for a week/month per point of heavy armour to be proficient in it.
Or you could add in a wear armor advanced skill. Probably serveral skills by type of armor. THe skill could offset the peanlty. Say -10% for each 10% or 20% of skill.
So a knight who has worned a suti of plate and grown accusomed to it (and Has Wear PLate Armor at 75%) would only suffer a lesser peanlty (0% or 12% depending on which option people like).
So a knight who has worned a suti of plate and grown accusomed to it (and Has Wear PLate Armor at 75%) would only suffer a lesser peanlty (0% or 12% depending on which option people like).
GoingDown said:
That's what I'll do as well.
The base idea is sound (applying a penalty to heavy armor), but the amounts listed are excessive.
Pretty simple fix...
The problem is still there with precise attacks at high level, as in Why even wear heavy armor, if you are going to bypass it alltogether ?
The 40% penalty at high level won't even be a problem.
My take on this is that some more "exotic/high level" kind of armors (such as the kind worn by Parn in Lodoss for the neck as an example :
http://static.flickr.com/27/48724470_67d911f145_o.jpg
) have specific designs that will not allow for some /all precise attacks, or increase the penalty dramatically (80%+).
Elandyll said:
Too simple for around here, we like overcomplicating things. I personally was thinking of the following as a penalty:
(Total AP per Location times itself) divided by (Twice the total AP per Location)
Rounded down of course.
Elandyll said:
I am going to try:
Rurik said:
I plan on running a few combats with highly skilled (120+) combatants to see how it plays out. No amount of skill will make up for lost CA's. And it is very reminiscent of the wait till end of round and strike at half chance rule from previous editions.
I think in another thread it was determined that 200 is the new 100, so maybe there's no need to divide the penalties in half.
I do like the way this approximates previous RQ. I think it would work well together with random CA determination (a few different methods were discussed several days ago, iirc). I would probably even allow someone with 1 CA to make the precise attack the next round.
Rurik said:
I do like the way this approximates previous RQ. I think it would work well together with random CA determination (a few different methods were discussed several days ago, iirc). I would probably even allow someone with 1 CA to make the precise attack the next round.
algauble said:
I wasn't planning on letting them carry over actions for precise attacks (I figured it was best that precise attack never be made as a first action) but maybe we can make an exception for those poor bastards with 1 CA. Though in a random system everyone should get a shot at 2 CA's, so I don't mind not allowing precise attacks with 1 CA.
If you only have 1 CA in MRQ using the rules as is you should probably find a non violent lifepath anyway, poor bastard.
Sure .. except that at high level, the 40% penalty on precise attacks won't mean anything, and they will always land and ignore armor.
You try that with a 2H sword (2D8) or any other 2H weapon on attacks aiming the head, and you come back telling us how well it works
My point: Precise attacks at high level will be -way- too deadly, and with a penalty (of any form) to dodge/pary, wearing full plate will be a major problem. Character with light armor and a 2H weapon will want to face hugely armored opponents, which is totally unrealistic.
Increasing the penalty on precise attacks with high level armors seems logical.
I sortof like the idea of needing 2 CA for 1 Precise attack, but the result would be the same in most cases.
If not dodged/parried, the target dies (I haven't seen any penalty in calling systematically for the head *wink*)...
Who needs huge plate armor and high Str in these cases ? Get a char with High Dex, Leather armor, a 2H sword / Axe / Hammer and let him do precise attacks aimed at the head for every single combat... No need for the "Decapitating Swing" legendary ability
I maybe understanded wrong the previous discussions about precise attack to the head. If you meant that you can try to bypass armor while targetting the head, then i am right. It cant be done. You can choose only one of those possibilities, armor passing, targeting location or targeting weapon. not targeting head while trying to bypass the armor too. Still, hit in the head with 2H sword is deadly but i remind you that precise attack can be parried as normal. And parry is very easy. if you succeed, it always absorbs some of the dmg and armor does the rest. So guy with armor is in better position than guy with no armor. Sooner or later the guy in no armor will not succeed the parry as good as he should and then he almost certainly get a bad wound and dies very very soon. Guy in armor will get hits through but takes only little damage. If you didnt meant that you can do armor avoiding precise attack with targeting the location, then ignore this message
Aye, you cannot both choose the location and bypass the armor.Hoitsu said:I maybe understanded wrong the previous discussions about precise attack to the head. If you meant that you can try to bypass armor while targetting the head, then i am right. It cant be done. You can choose only one of those possibilities, armor passing, targeting location or targeting weapon. not targeting head while trying to bypass the armor too. Still, hit in the head with 2H sword is deadly but i remind you that precise attack can be parried as normal. And parry is very easy. if you succeed, it always absorbs some of the dmg and armor does the rest. So guy with armor is in better position than guy with no armor. Sooner or later the guy in no armor will not succeed the parry as good as he should and then he almost certainly get a bad wound and dies very very soon. Guy in armor will get hits through but takes only little damage. If you didnt meant that you can do armor avoiding precise attack with targeting the location, then ignore this message
But chosing to bypass the armor systematically will be quite as deadly...
And bypassing the armor on something like this with a 2Hander ...
http://www.cs.usu.edu/~watson/bartholomew/frenchArmor/rd.jpg
I dunno ...
My point stands that with different kind of armors, different difficulties on bypassing it (or so it should)
gamesmeister
Banded Mongoose
So just to round up... 8)
The AP penalty is a reasonable idea, but is too harsh, as demonstrated by the Precise Attack, which is too strong and doesn't scale, and therefore needs to be modified to spread across multiple CAs, except where that would cross over into a second round, which shouldn't be allowed as it makes the first action too powerful.
Did I miss anything? :wink:
Actually I agree that the best way to handle Precise Attack is to make it cost an additional CA. In this way it scales very well, as even a hero in combat will feel the loss of a CA (more so in fact). The question is, do you still apply a to hit penalty? At low level -40 is huge and you'll probably only be looking to get past 2-3 pts of armour, and at high level -40 will hardly register. Halving your attack chance is probably the only scalable way of handling it, but I think that may be overkill.
Gerry
The AP penalty is a reasonable idea, but is too harsh, as demonstrated by the Precise Attack, which is too strong and doesn't scale, and therefore needs to be modified to spread across multiple CAs, except where that would cross over into a second round, which shouldn't be allowed as it makes the first action too powerful.
Did I miss anything? :wink:
Actually I agree that the best way to handle Precise Attack is to make it cost an additional CA. In this way it scales very well, as even a hero in combat will feel the loss of a CA (more so in fact). The question is, do you still apply a to hit penalty? At low level -40 is huge and you'll probably only be looking to get past 2-3 pts of armour, and at high level -40 will hardly register. Halving your attack chance is probably the only scalable way of handling it, but I think that may be overkill.
Gerry
