effects of armor on characters

[daxos232]

Looking at the players handbook for armor penalty it says,

"The same amror penalty is applied to various types of movement, such as climbing or swimming. If these penalties are too great, then the adventurer may find themselves unable to perform such movements."

I'm not sure how to interpret this but I think it means if your wearing plate all over with a -9 armor penalty, you can't swim if your movement is 8m.

Also, I wondered why the armor penalty for AP points to Dodge skill and so on was dropped from MRQ2?

 

[PhilHibbs]

RQ 2 Rules, p.63:

Swimming: Divide the base Movement by two and subtract
the Armour Penalty. If the result is zero, the Adventurer
cannot move and barely keeps himself afloat. If the Movement
is negative, then the Adventurer sinks.

So, you can't swim in 4 point armour, and you sink in 5 points or more.
*Update*: I'm wrong, Armour Points are not the same as Armour Penalty!

 

[Loz]

Let me help clarify things. Let's take your example of swimming in plate armour with a -9 AP penalty; here's what the rules say.

Swimming: Divide the base Movement by two and subtract the Armour Penalty. If the result is zero, the Adventurer cannot move and barely keeps himself afloat. If the Movement is negative, then the Adventurer sinks. For example, the Adventurer wearing full plate armour, with a –9 penalty, has a Swimming Movement of 4–9 = –5: the Adventurer will sink if he attempts to swim in his armour.

So yes, AP inhibits your movement depending on the type of activity you're undertaking. Swimming in full plate is impossible for a standard human because the armour's weight and bulk will pull you under. Your armour type will affect how far you can move under certain activities and may make some kinds of movement activity impossible.

Why did we get rid of the old method of applying a penalty to skills? Well, it wasn't popular for one thing, even though its not necessarily unrealistic, and many people were house-ruling the way the skill penalty worked. It also made it messy for reflecting skills in stat blocks.

However, someone who's trained in combat is likely to have trained wearing armour. Pete, who's the expert on these matters because he fights in heavy armour on a regular basis, looked carefully at how to reflect the fact that trained combatants can, actually, be quite dexterous in armour, but not necessarily as fast, because the bulk slows you down and fatigue builds. A trained fighter, though, won't have his attack, parry and evasion skills necessarily compromised through his armour type.

So we re-engineered the armour penalty to work on speed of initiative and movement to better reflect circumstances. We tried several mechanisms, including an Armour skill that reduced the skill penalty armour imposed. In the end we found the way we have in the rules the most efficient and best reflecting what really happens. I don't think its necessarily completely true to life, but is a reasonable compromise in terms of game system.

Does this help?

 

[Vagni]

I regularly fight in a padded mail shirt and helm without noticing any significant reduction in my sword skill, but I certainly get tired quicker and find it restrictive for other activities such as climbing.

All the previous RQ attempts to represent this have been either too complex to keep track of (fatigue points, aaarggg!) or reduced almost every skill so much you couldn't hit a gorp unless it sat still for six rounds!

I think the RQII version is a good compromise on real life and a workable games system, it's also pretty easy to adapt it to other house rules if you find it a bit too realistic.

If you want an adventurer who can swim in armour then maybe create a new Heroic Ability for your campaign.

 

[daxos232]

All right now I understand. Thanks for the info Loz and Philhibbs. I was only looking at pg. 65, in Equipment. I totally forgot about that explanation on the previous page.

I can see what you mean about the armor penalty to skills Loz. My players didn't like how it worked in MRQ1 either. We dropped it for our MRQ2 games like it says in the book.

 

[master of reality]

On page 63 under "Movement in Armour" it says, "Armour Penalty = Total Locations Armoured, divided by five and rounded up." I'm guessing that by "Total Locations Armoured", the authors meant the total APs over all locations, because the next sentence says, "Thus, a full suit of plate armour (6 AP on seven locations gives an Armour Penalty of 42/5 = -9)" This makes more sense. Presumably, then, if two locations are armoured at 3 AP each and 3 locations are armoured at 4 AP each, then the armour penalty would be (2(3)+3(4))/5 = (6+12)/5 = 18/5 = 3.6 which rounds up to 4. Thus, the armour penalty in this example is -4.
Also, on the same page under sprinting it says, "an Adventurer wearing full plate armour can sprint or charge 31 metres per Combat Round." Characters normally sprint at a rate of 20 meters per round. So, presumably, in this example, the sprinting rate is actually 20 - 9 = 11 meters per Combat Round.

I don't know whether any of this was mentioned in previous posts. It isn't mentioned in the errata. So, I thought I should point it out. If my interpretation of these rules is incorrect, then by all means let me know.

 

[Vagni]

I think the example is correct.

On p.11 Core Rules, Human movement rate is shown 8m per CR. This is also consistent with other roughly human sized bipeds in the creature section such as broo, skeleton and trollkin, so it seems to be correct.

Sprinting is move rate x 5, thus 40m per CR.

Less your -9 armour penalty for the plate gives you 31m/CR.

*Update* Reading back I think there may have been some confusion here over human land movement rate of 8m/CR and swim rates of 4m/CR.

 

[Vagni]

Previous editions of RQ used to make armour (and ENC in general) affect a characters chance of casting magic, but there doesn't seem to be anything in MRQII to this effect.

Can sorcerers really get away with wearing full plate or have I missed something?

Has anyone got any house rules for this. I was thinking of using the armour penalty in some way, perhaps double it as a penalty on spell casting or something along those lines.

 

[Deleriad]

Previous editions of RQ used to make armour (and ENC in general) affect a characters chance of casting magic, but there doesn't seem to be anything in MRQII to this effect.

Can sorcerers really get away with wearing full plate or have I missed something?

Yes they can. After all, why should wearing full plate make it more difficult to cast magic? It doesn't make playing chess or solving quadratic equations any harder as far as I know.

I don't know if it was the idea, but removing skill penalties from armour helps the game move faster because you're not calculating modifiers for every roll. Obviously you could add penalties but then you have to ask what is it that makes it more difficult to cast magic in armour. For example, if you need to make fine finger wiggles then you could just take off a gauntlet.

 

[Exubae]

It doesn't make playing chess or solving quadratic equations any harder as far as I know.

It might be hard to use fine manipulation skills in heavy gauntlets, so I'ld say no to the chess playing, but armour is relatively unrestricting otherwise.
Full face helms could also restrict or muffle the voice and make it difficult to visually track fast moving targets who are going to be on the recieving end of your smother.
Bespectacled Helm weares may also have problems with their glasses misting up while excerting themselves.

 

[hector]

Since even heavy gauntlets tend to be fully articulated, even the movement of chess pieces isn't going to be that difficult.

 

[Loz]

Since even heavy gauntlets tend to be fully articulated, even the movement of chess pieces isn't going to be that difficult.

And you can take your gauntlets off and still remain 95% fully armoured...

 

[Vagni]

...no penalties on magic for armour...

My new Humakti character is counting his savings already! :lol:


I must admit the previous editions of RQ always overdid penalties on magic especially given that Glorantha is so magic rich.

 

[Tamerlin]

And you can take your gauntlets off and still remain 95% fully armoured...

Or just use bigger chess pieces on a bigger board?

 

[master of reality]

I think the example is correct.

On p.11 Core Rules, Human movement rate is shown 8m per CR. This is also consistent with other roughly human sized bipeds in the creature section such as broo, skeleton and trollkin, so it seems to be correct.

Sprinting is move rate x 5, thus 40m per CR.

Less your -9 armour penalty for the plate gives you 31m/CR.

*Update* Reading back I think there may have been some confusion here over human land movement rate of 8m/CR and swim rates of 4m/CR.

Whoops, my bad. The example given is correct. Looking back on page 63, the first sentence under "Movement" says, "standard human base movement is eight metres per Combat Round at walking pace." I was looking at the table below it and assuming that base movement was 4 meters per Combat Round. Had I worked out the math, I would have known better. Since each combat round is 5 seconds, then moving 8 meters per round works out to be 5.76 kilometers per hour or 3.456 miles per hour, a perfectly reasonable walking rate for humans.

I need to read the book more carefully before posting.

 

[Loz]

Since each combat round is 5 seconds, then moving 8 meters per round works out to be 5.76 kilometers per hour or 3.456 miles per hour, a perfectly reasonable walking rate for humans.

Which is precisely how Pete and I calculated it when reviewing the movement rules.

 

[Exubae]

I've tried opening my car door wearing articulated plate, it moves ok but there still clumpy and you cant feel through them too well...
I couldn't press the remote and then went on to scratch the paint work trying get the key in... but how many Hrestoli knights ride round in old 206's

erm... D'wan my Issaries trader is thinking of starting a side line in fingerless gauntlets for those times when you need to wiggle those fingers and you just don't have time to take of those bulky gauntlets.

 

[PhilHibbs]

I've tried opening my car door wearing articulated plate, it moves ok but there still clumpy and you cant feel through them too well...
I couldn't press the remote and then went on to scratch the paint work trying get the key in... but how many Hrestoli knights ride round in old 206's

Well, I guess in times like that the GM just rules a sit-mod, like when I asked about small characters sneaking.

erm... D'wan my Issaries trader is thinking of starting a side line in fingerless gauntlets for those times when you need to wiggle those fingers and you just don't have time to take of those bulky gauntlets.

Aimed blow to the fingers!

 

[Tamerlin]

Aimed blow to the fingers!

Ouch! Stop that! I'm trying to type here

 

[Vagni]

On the 'armour effecting magic' side I guess that a sorcerer in full plate will find a lot of his colleagues sniggering behind his back because he didn't bother to learn Damage Resistance...where as a discrete ringmail vest under your robes isn't too bad an idea.

All the older, pre Mongoose, versions of RQ all had some kind of restriction on magic and armour but this was often cancelled out at higher ranks by using Gloranthan cult metals such as enchanted iron or similar.

It never really sat well with me that cultists from martial style cults were being penalised for wearing armour, failing to cast Bladesharp three rounds in a row due to your armour/ENC penalty was a real pain - I mostly house ruled it away.

I'm glad MRQII dropped this, although I have to admit I am still struggling with the image of a sorcerer in full plate!!.