HELP all my players want or have full plate and helmet!

[Andrew Mure]

Here's a fun scenario you could run that would also teach your players the reasons for not wearing full-plate all the time.

Ransom

A common assumption about people who can afford to wear full-plate is that they can afford to pay a ransom if captured. So why not have one or more of the characters captured and a ransom is offered for their release, the ransomers assuming the characters can pay a lot bigger ransom than they actually have in ready cash.

The character(s) who captured after being made to swear an oath that they will return to pay the ransom are freed to go raise the money. However the ransomers keep something or someone valuable to the characters as a deposit (like their precious armour or a npc they have SAs towards) should the characters not return with the money.

Now the characters have a stark choice should they try and raise the huge ransom or are they going to break their oath and attempt a rescue of their deposite item/person.

Interestingly this did happen in a number of medieval ransom situations. When King David II of Scotland was captured by the English at the battle of Neville's Cross in Durham in 1346, a number of captured Scottish knights led by Sir William Douglas were given early parole to return to Scotland and help raise their king's (and their own) ransom. When Sir William failed to persuade the Scottish nobility to raise it, he dutifully returned to his imprisonment in the Tower of London. Incidently King David was freed in 1357 for a ransom of £66,000 (multiply that at least 100 times to get even a rough approximate of its modern value). The Scots were allowed to pay it in ten installments and over that period twenty Scots noblemen in all served as hostages.

[bergh]

Ransom idea is good, but what Brian L. is saying i can only say this:

YES THEY COME FROM A D&D HACK-AND-SLASH GAME
where more is better, and they where used to fight battles, where they where outnumbered 20:1, some of them was getting boring of this and decided to play my game, but they got a major surprice in there first encounter and have learned a lesson. On my  next session i will give them a little talk about armours and how i see them and full plate armour not is "warrior clothing". but anyway i think i will try to roleplay it, people may think they are nobels and such, maybe attracting attention from "Real" nobels, i think i will manage, and i like ALL the stuff you have written to me in this thread, i will write again when we have had a session.

[Tash]

Ransoms occured during tourneys as well.  Knights would often wager horses, armor and other equpiment on the outcome of their tilts.  If they lost they had to pay a ransom to have the item returned.

Ultimately though I don't think you'll have much of a problem.  Once they see that this is not like D&D they will pobably realize that plate has a time and place.  They'll use it but not depend on it because of the various costs involved with its ownership.

[Sigurth]

Really, its something not to totally wig on. Let them.

As noted in the various posts above, there are social consequences and long term health problems if they decide to wear plate as one would in D&D. Also, once they get into combat with other knights, it will assuredly be a bloodbath...Halfswording, armor piercing weapons like lances and all those mass weapons (most have +1 Damage against hard armor). Their CPs will suffer due to the encumbrance they have taken upon themselves.

And...there's missle weapons (!).  Adversaries may go for their mounts.  Multiple opponents won't be fun. Eventually, after losing a few characters  they might realize combat is no joke, and concetrate on role-playing with their SAs.

[bergh]

i will got for the social thing and sickness.

Missile fire is not very good against full plate, if a guy have 10 MP and a shortbow, then he maybe get 5 succecces, most of my players got TO5 and full plate. thats 10 vs. 11....hehe ping!, the archers need to get around 7-8 success to hurt them seriously....with the +1 atn for 10 years, diff. are not unlikely to go up to 9-10...

but anyway i will try roleplaying me out of my problems with them.

[thamias]

Being a Hârnmaster GM for a long time, I faced the same problem with my group (PCs wearing their mail hauberks everywhere).

I asked a friend (who is a reenactor) to lend me his mail shirt, helmet, sword and shield and brought the stuff to a gaming session. Every player was invited to put on the armour for a few minutes. Needless to say, no one was keen to wear it the whole evening.

This worked far better than any explanation or rule could. Everyone understood that it is VERY inconvenient (if not impossible) to wear one's armour all the time.

[bergh]

what you are saying, i have tryed to say to them, becouse i myself have tryed a suit of full chain and helmet, but they think that they are tough enough to do it.

I would love to borrow a suit, but i don't have the any i know who got one.

[ZenDog]

A thought, is this in your LotR game bergh?

If it is don't allow full plate, no-one in middle earth wears full plate, (do they? Can't remeber it being in the books or the films).

[bergh]

It it for my LoTR campaign, but the campaign in not 100% LoTR true, anyway i think the Gondorian soldiers and cavalry do have lots of plate armour. and the Uruk Hai's from Isengard seem to me to be wearing ALOT of plate armour.

I don't know if you catogory this as full plate amrour, but i do.

[ZenDog]

It it for my LoTR campaign, but the campaign in not 100% LoTR true, anyway i think the Gondorian soldiers and cavalry do have lots of plate armour. and the Uruk Hai's from Isengard seem to me to be wearing ALOT of plate armour.

I don't know if you catogory this as full plate amrour, but i do.

I'm not sure, I'm not really an expert, the Gondor stuff and the Urak-Hai both have lots of plate armour, but I still don't think it is as heavy duty and restrictive as a full plate.

Your Orc and Troll stats look good BTW. Are those stat blocks based on the format for minor NPC/grunts in OBaM? (I don't have the book yet, but your way looks like a good format for Stat blocks).

[bergh]

Maybe becouse in the movie the armour was made from plastic. hehe. but anyways thanks for you looking at my orc stats.

Thanks for your compliment

And yes, i have based my war orcs around the Mercenary/soldier NPC's trying to both adjust them around this, and also trying to make them a challange as the players get more experinced.
As i see it Orcs are a warlike race where the weak are killed, therefor i think that a normal orc soldier is just as good as a human soldier, maybe better on some points, becouse there race a a tough one, even for there size.

The stat block is something i made my self, the stat block in OBaM, does not have the weapon, armour and notes section.

Im uploading more creatures right now, look in my thread about middle earth for the links. I need more people to see them, and find mistakes.

[Spartan]

In any case, I suggest having a round-table with your players and discussing things.

As an aside, round-tables are good to have even when things are going swimmingly in the campaign. :)

-Mark

[Tash]

Full, i.e. Gothic plate is not present in MIddle Earth.  The movies show the soldiers of Gondor and the Urak-Hai wearing a mixed plate, while the Rohirim wear chain.  Elves are also shown wearing fairly extensive and elaborate plate, but it still has joints and weak points.

Of course the movies also show the Rohirim making calvary charges against pike armed infantry while riding unbarded horses and weilding viking style short swords....

In the books the only specific descriptions of armor I remember are when Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas are given suits of mail and leather from the armory at helms deep and when Pippin joins the legions of gondor (he's given a boy's breastplate and helm).  No plate that I can recall.  I think Tolkien was assuming a technology level about equivalent to that of his main inspirations: the epic poems of Iceland and early Welsh and Anglo-Saxon myths.

Another thing you can try pointing out: when the fellowship left Rivendell only the Dwarf wore any armor at all (I think Boromir and Aragorn have leather in the films) and he is wearing chain with a steel pot helm.  Do they think they are tougher than a dwarf?

In seriousness though, you are probably right thinking its no big deal.  so your players have a particular peice of equpiment they feel is important to their characters identity.  Its no different from someone who wants to make a duelist character who is a master of the rapier, or a huntsman with renown skill with the longbow.  They are still human under that plate, they still have SAs driving them.  You can try to hold onto realisim but if they want to be the heavy armored fist of a campaign let them.  Give the Urak-Hai a contingent of fully barded super wards and lances.  Given them heavy crossbows fring steel bolts, they work (there was a reason the pope outlawed their use against Christians).  Maybe have the Rohirim be a culture more like the Knights of the Round and host tourneys where your players can show off their skill and valour, etc.

The near constant presence of plate simply changes how they will fight, not the drama of it.  Especially when they are facing others in simillar equipment.