[Sorcerer] Mundane Armor & Shields

[Alan]

I'm preparing a Sorcerer and Sword one-sheet and have been thinking about non-demon armor and shields.

In the core rules, Ron says that mundane armor functions in general just as demonic.  So in general mundane armor would have a protection score that converts attacks to Fists damage - and it might have application rules, such as reduced effectiveness against thrust attacks, arrows, etc.

He also writes "Note also that all attacks in Sorcerer are ... aimed, and no  armor (aside from the demon ability) covers everywhere." (p111)

So, except in certain limited circumstances, a character should be able to attack an unarmored spot at no penalty.  I think this would often relegate mundane armor to the status of color.  

I note that in REH's original Conan stories, the barbarian occasionally shows up in mail hauberk, and his armor does make a difference.  Opponents don't attack that protection easily.

I would like to hash out some more definite rules for armor (and shields) in my game - and I want to do it in a way that supports the genre/story enhancement approach of, for example, the sword rules in Sword and Sorcerer.  

How have you handled armor and shields in your games?

[Valamir]

The easiest way I can see would be to add additional "Armor Dice" as a bonus to a Stamina Roll where armor would be useful.

If they help win the roll, then the armor helped, if they didn't, the armor didn't help.  For some added color, use different color dice for the armor and if it was one of those armor dice that actually won the roll (or added successes) then you can incorporate the armor into the narrative.




A different way of handling it which I kind of like better is to not add additional dice to the Stamina roll but simply designate a number of existing dice with a different color (the number depending on the armor in question).

In any lost roll, if one of these colored dice is the "stopper" (i.e. the loser's high die that cuts off the attacker's successes) then damage is reduced to Fists due to the armor.  If not, then the armor was missed.  In other words, just like Demon power but with a randomizer which determines when its "on" and when its not.

For winning rolls just treat as above.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

So, except in certain limited circumstances, a character should be able to attack an unarmored spot at no penalty. I think this would often relegate mundane armor to the status of color.

Oh, that is one speedy speedy conclusion, Alan. I think you are mis-reading the text a bit.

Armor counts. Let's just get that out of the way first. When hit, and when wearing armor, use the rules. That's how Conan makes it through a couple of exchanges in his fight with the assassins in The Phoenix on the Sword.

[Let's also consider another crucial point: Conan loses that fight. He only lives because Thoth-Amon's demon arrives and kills the fellow who's about to do him in.]

So, armor works, right? Then what about aiming? The main point is that Sorcerer combat does not proceed like this:

Player: I strike at his wrist!
GM: His wrist is unarmored, so his armor doesn't count.
[roll roll]

That would indeed accord with your reading, but that is not how to do it.

Instead, consider that in Sorcerer combat, all actions flow from one to another, and all the descriptions and gesturing going around establishes tremendous detail to the entire imagined situation. Announced actions make use of that detail that has cropped up.

For example, let's say an opponent has been making it through a combat largely because he's well-armored. In resolving round X:

GM: He aborts his attack, flings out his hand to grab the pole, and his momentum spins him in a half-circle around the pole!
[rolls defense dice; say he fails but the armor keeps it from being a takedown]

So in round Y:
Player: I strike at his wrist! No armor there, right?
GM: No armor there! Awesome!

I cannot articulate, no matter how I try, how often this kind of back-and-forth and all-crossed-among-us informational role-playing plays an enormous role in Sorcerer combat.

Note that the opponent is already working with major temporary penalties from the last blow. The notion that he is not paying massive attention to utilizing his armor effectively through his body movements, as well as the actual and explicit stated action from last time, is why the player pointed out that target and why the GM is fully complicit with it.

The same logic applies even against the player-character, and I have never in all my time playing Sorcerer encountered an objection from the player that his character's armor was negated. Again: we are all complicit in this via the basic-dice-rules, the bonus-rules, and the verbal interplay.

[These are rules are consistent with the literature. Conan does quite well in an armored fight among a faceles horde (as in the climax of People of the Black Circle and at the beginning of The Scarlet Citadel), but often gets a "bad bonk" when wearing armor in a fight against a skilled, named foe.]

I'm reminded of Jake's plight in trying to deal with the TROS reader's objection that one might just "pick the best maneuver" all the time. In role-playing TROS, the role of the strike zone rules leads to extravagant gesturing during play. The body language and positions of the imaginary characters is shared among everyone, and in actual play that informs a player's choice of the next maneuver to an extraordinary degree, even though there is no textual rule to constrain that choice.

But try explaining that to the guy who's merely read the book and is imagining "my guy" against "generic opponent." (Not that you're in this position, Alan; I am not modelling you in this example.) I find myself in a similar situation when talking about Sorcerer combat.

I will go an extra mile for you though. Here's an optional rules-add I just made up. Note that demonic-ability armor only counts up to a certain amount. After that amount, the victories of the attack are applied as normal. If you'd like, feel free to rate armor in the same currency as demonic Power.

Best,
Ron

[Alan]

Armor counts. Let's just get that out of the way first. When hit, and when wearing armor, use the rules.

Then, as a default, when an attack doesn't somehow justify an aimed shot, the armor applies?

Instead, consider that in Sorcerer combat, all actions flow from one to another, and all the descriptions and gesturing going around establishes tremendous detail to the entire imagined situation. Announced actions make use of that detail that has cropped up.

I begin to see a principle behind this.  For comparison: in The Riddle of Steel an aimed shot means choosing a location from a list of options, which are, for this example anyway, pre-defined.  In Sorcerer,  that list is defined by the fictional details of the previous rolls, and the current descriptions of intent.   Okay, I like that.

Here's my understanding by example:


ROUND 1
This is the very first round. Two combatants face off.

GM: He wears a mail hauberk that leaves only small areas unprotected and his stance is good, leaving no vulnerabilities.  He jumps forward and cuts.  

Player: Crap!  Well, I'm going to try to slash him anyway.  Maybe a good whack in the stomach will take the wind out of him.

Dice are rolled.  Player goes first.  Armored guy sucks it up and gets hit for two victories that are converted into Fists damage by armor.

GM: He whooshes a little, but takes a swipe at your legs.  You roll defense with 3 dice bonus because of your hit.

Player: Cool!  I get two victories.  I sidestep and he loses his balance.

GM: Okay, he flings out one hand to recover balance.


ROUND 2

GM: He's back to 1 lasting penalty, but you can get 2 bonus dice if it makes sense.

Player: He's sticking his arm out?  I strike his wrist!

GM: Awesome!  He has no armor there.  But he'll try to whirl and thrust at you anyway.  

GM allows the 2 bonus dice.  Dice are rolled.  

  ***[at this point my example branches]***

ALTERNATIVE 1: Player wins initiative

GM: Okay, he'll abort to snatch his hand back.  Agh!  You win again.  Looks like three victories and no armor.


ALTERNATIVE 2: Armored Guy wins initiative

Player: I'll suck it up.  Take that!  Ha! I won.

GM: He whirls and you whirl and avoid his cut.  Now he rolls defense against your cut.  You win again.  Looks like three victories and but he's already snatched his hand back, so armor applies.  Your sword skitters across his vambrace.

--------------

So is that what you mean?

--------------

... feel free to rate armor in the same currency as demonic Power.

That's how I read page 111.   I was thinking of rating armor by the number of victories it can convert.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Yeah, you got it.

Best,
Ron

[Alan]

Okay.

At the risk of adding too many rules, I was thinking of codifying a Fatigue Check.

FATIGUE

If a combat runs long enough, the GM may at his discretion call all participants to make a fatigue check.  They roll the score for their military training descriptor (Stamina or Past) vs a difficulty based on armor (dice = armor protection value [-1 if small coverage; +1 for nearly total coverage.])  Success is the number of rounds until fatigue kicks in; Failure: it's here now.

Fatigue penalty -1 to all actions.  It goes away if the character takes a round to catch his breath or at the end of the conflict.  In a round catching his breath, a character can only defend, can't take more than a step or two, and doesn't get a total defense bonus.

When a lighter armored player declares he's trying to to tire an opponent, they roll a contest of military training descriptors with a one or two dice bonus to the lighter armored character.  The loser suffers fatigue.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Alan,

I used to have that in the rules, 'way back in the draft stage. In play, it never got used, so I chucked it.

I think that in play, this isn't an issue. You will find that sometimes combat "locks up," with the opponents not able to do much to one another, but with one of them slowly dominating. This is not a problem! It is a sign that shifting tactics is necessary.

Best,
Ron

[Alan]

Ralph,

I like your mechanical solution a lot, but I think Ron's interplay approach suits Sorcerer better.  I tend to like the mechanical solutions, so it's to difficult for me to avoid approaches that stifle the descriptive interplay method.  

It occures to me that too much mechanical definition can hamper the dramatic use of a prop, so I'll try to keep it to a minimum.

I forge ahead:


ARMOR Ratings

If I were to rate Sword and Sorcerer armor by "power", what values best fit particular types of armor?  Leather 2, Mail 4, Plate 6?

I also envisioned describing coverage as partial, substantial, and full.  Partial being breastplate or mail shirt; substantial: hauberk; or breastplate, skirt, and greaves.  Full would be a rare case, applying usually only to a fitted suit a plate and then only with a helmet.

SHIELDS

I don't think heroes in sword and sorcery use shields much.  Their opponents maybe.  Maybe heroes make fatigue rolls more often than opponents when using a shield.

Shields would, with the right situation and description, either 1)give a bonus die to active defense, or 2) function as armor, converting to Fists damage (shock on the shield arm) but suffering wear from hard blows and destruction from extreme ones.

Buckler (-1 fatigue roll) effective against swung and thrown attacks
Shield (-2 fatigue roll) effective against any physical attack.
Tower (-3 fatigue roll) as shield with an additional bonus
                               against ranged and thrusting.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Alan,

I suggest ... well, we may be getting into matters of taste too much. I suspect that we can slide along the axes of add-on detail forever.

That said, I suggest that armor should only be distinguished in game terms as "heavy" and "light." This doesn't really refer to typical encumbrance as construed in most games, but rather to the armor's protective value overall. A combination of materials, coverage, and usage.

Hence a person with a cuirass and nothing else would be lightly armored. So would a person in full leather armor.

As for the scores involved, be careful. Remember that total victories are the top end of a very tight bell curve distribution in Sorcerer (composed of both rolls). I suggest that even 2 or 3 points of armor is damn effective.

Shields? H'm. I like to consider shields to be weapons with excellent parry capacity (not literally accurate, in terms of what you do with them, but that's the ultimate effect). You don't just wear a shield, you have to be using it. So I guess I'd use the same kind of mods I'd use when comparing any weapons and keep the current circumstances firmly in mind.

In other words, in plain old Sorcerer, if you have a knife and I have a longsword, and if we're facing one another on an open plain, I'm gettin' a bonus die. But if we're tangled up together in the bedsheets (hi Alan! fancy meeting you here), then the bonus die, or even two, would go to you.

Just figure in shields with that exact logic and you'd be doing fine, I think.

Best,
Ron

[Alan]

Hi Alan,

I suggest ... well, we may be getting into matters of taste too much. I suspect that we can slide along the axes of add-on detail forever.

That said, I suggest that armor should only be distinguished in game terms as "heavy" and "light." This doesn't really refer to typical encumbrance as construed in most games, but rather to the armor's protective value overall. A combination of materials, coverage, and usage.

Oh I agree this is getting to a matter of taste.  I don't really want crunchy number mechanics for everything.  What I want is clear principles I can use in play.  Your responses give me enough to derive the principles I need.  

For heavy vs light armor - that's in line with the way pulp fiction treats such things.  But it seems to me there's also the underlying assumption that extent of coverage is a factor.  For my uses, I think I'd still rate armor with effectiveness and coverage descriptions.  Less coverage means more opportunities to get around it.

As for the scores involved, be careful. Remember that total victories are the top end of a very tight bell curve distribution in Sorcerer (composed of both rolls). I suggest that even 2 or 3 points of armor is damn effective.

I'm not sure I understand.  Someone in any amount of armor is still going to take Fists damage from edged weapons.  

And what does total victory do here?

Shields? H'm. I like to consider shields to be weapons with excellent parry capacity (not literally accurate, in terms of what you do with them, but that's the ultimate effect). You don't just wear a shield, you have to be using it.

So a bonus die or two depending on situation and applied to the declared actoin roll instead of just a defense roll.  That makes sense.  Okay.