armor rule question

[toli]

For instance:
2 very skilled & equal opponents face off. One with sword & helmet (opponent 1) and the other only with a sword(opponent 2). They go around a few times with feints & dodges and then opponent 1 thinks he sees an opening and lunges. But misses and exposes his head. Well, with the helmet on he has less to worry about. If this happened to opponent 2, he would be dead.
Dan

So an advantage of partial armor is related to defending counters.  THat is easy enough to conceptualize in TROS since the attacker doesn't really get to chose counter location.

[Durgil]

I think the reasoning is this:

If you know you don't have to defend your head, you can better defend other areas.  In part this is true because your opponent has more limited choices.  It may also be true because your stance is different such that other areas are more easy to defend.  

I can see the reasoning behind this idea, although perhaps just a helmet in a one on one isn't enough to really give an advantage.  I used to wrestle in high school.  Once and a while the coach would have use practice upper body take downs.  It was full on wrestling except that you could only do upper body take downs, no leg stuff.  It was certainly harder to do a move when 1/2 of your possibilities were eliminated.

This is covered by the actions the player chooses to do with his character, it doesn't need to be handled with game mechanics.

[DanW]

Durgil,

He will not get hit in the head using TROS. Again, only a insane or blind opponent will attack an area covered with armor if there is an unarmored and equally vital area. In this case- the chest area.

So according to TROS- no advantage to wearing just a helmet.

Dan

[Brian Leybourne]

I don't really understand this entire argument.

Dan, your point seems to be that if I only wear a helmet, my opponent can strike at my chest, therefore the helmet is useless, right?

I would counter that this means the helmet has done it's job perfectly. The opponent isn't attacking my extremely vulnerable head (In the full rules, all hit locations are not identical as they are in the quickstart - head shots are always very very nasty (the worst kind of wound to take) and every head shot means a knockout roll as well).

And because he's not attacking my head, I can concentrate on defending my chest, instead of having two very vulnerable areas to worry about (very important in the case of feints).

Partial armor limits your opponents options. That makes it useful. It also protects areas that hurt more when they get the same level hit.

Brian.

[DanW]

Thank you Brian,

So, generally its true that TROS models advantages using limited armor..!?

If so, why is everyone arguing with me? Why don't you inform me of the rules?

Oh well, thanks again.

Dan

[Brian Leybourne]

No problems Dan. There's a lot of cool nuances in TROS combat that don't come out in the quickstart. Stephen did an amazing job with it, but you're talking about nearly 300 pages squeezed down to 32 or so.

I suggest you pick up the main book and have a read through, it'll answer most of your questions and then bring you back here for more :-)

Brian.

[DanW]

"I suggest you pick up the main book and have a read through, it'll answer most of your questions and then bring you back here for more :-)"

I will.

And I hope I haven't annoyed too many people. I'm only trying to understand.
Thanks again, everyone.

Dan

[Mike Holmes]

We did inform you of the head vulnerablility before Brian did, early on. Read it again. You made the sensible claim, then, about the chest still being viable. The corrolary of which is, what if I only wear a breastplate? In which case I go for the even more tasty head. So do I wear only a breastplate if that's all that's available? The answer is, again, yes, because of feints. Which was also mentioned before Brian got to it.

Apparently it took Brian to make clear what we were saying all along. There are no specific rules that give specific advantage to wearing partial armor, but to the extent that it's realistic to do so, the game reflects that realistically through the aglomeration of all the rules. Like the best of models, with generalized rules, not exceptions.

Mike

[Brian Leybourne]

Dan,

We don't annoy easy. Friendly bunch and all that.

Glad to have you aboard.

Brian.

[Jake Norwood]

What I'm saying is that I would probably throw a helmet away if I was fighting myself on equal grounds, because the visibility loss of the helmet and the fact that my opponent can hit the other 87% of my body without difficulty, yeah. That's what I 'm saying. Deal with it, guys.

Armor protects against attacks to the covered part. This is "real." It gives no other bonus. An attacker IRL choses where he attacks. Same in TROS. If he choses not to attack the helmet, then the helmet does JACK, but it did deter a strike to the head. I don't see what's so hard about this..."then there's no point in just wearing a helmet!" you say. Well, yeah, sort of. That's right. Helmets protect your head, not your ass or your leg or even your arm. A breastplate does not protect your arm. In any way. We have to walk away from our preconceptions about what armor is and isn't and really ask "why did some guardsman wear a helmet and a breastplate?" Because strikes at the head and torso are the most instinctive. Good GMs will roleplay this in their attackers. BUT! If you're up against an intelligent, cool-headed opponent, he will hit you in the leg, and to hell with your helmet. This is why roleplaying an NPC attacker in context is so important...there are psychological factors that TROS has no intention of ever modeling, and "why it is that a peasant will hit you in the helmet instead of the leg" is one of them.

Ack...okay, I just noticed the 4 posts before mine. Sorry for my tone. I'm cranky at the moment. Just remember that while TROS is a game, to the imaginary characters in it it's not.

Jake

[DanW]

Wait Wait Wait.

It sounds like Jake (its my understanding hes the designer) implies TROS does not model advantages using limited armor.

But Brian and others say that there are advantages. Brian for one implied
that the head is a better target than the chest. I at first thought they were equally vital. And evidently feints, counters etc are game mechanic combat maneuvers that have a bearing on armor placement. I thought people were using the words in the ordinary sense.

So which is it?
Does TROS model advantages using limited armor or not?

Dan

[toli]

So which is it?
Does TROS model advantages using limited armor or not?

Dan

Yes and No.  

Wearing a helmet WILL NOT decrease the chance of getting hit if some one is striking to your leg or to a zone where the attack has no chance of hitting you in the head (eg to the leg region).

You can't target a specific location but attack a zone.  Hit location within that zone is determined randomly.  As such swinging attacks to the upper body might hit the head, shoulders or arms.  Here the helmet DOES give you and advantage because you might get hit in the head instead of the arm.

It is easier to hurt or kill some one by striking their head or chest than it is for other parts of their body.  That is the damage is much larger for the same level of attack success.  Thus, if you have a helmet, your most vulnerable body part is protected and it will be harder to kill you.  In that sense partial armor DOES give an advantage.  Helmet and breast plate will make it very difficult for some one to kill you in one shot.    

After a successful counter, possible attack location is limited and determined randomly. The attack might have be to a protected target.  In that sense, partial armor DOES give you and advantage.

As such, wearing just a helmet doesn't change your CPs to your advantage (may actually lower them) or lower your 'armor class' specifically,  but it does give you some defensive advatages.

Either way, if you can't stand this idea TROS is so flexible that you could just make up some modifiers or maneuvers that you like.

NT

[Brian Leybourne]

Dan,

Read Jakes message again and you'll see that he's saying what everyone else has been trying to.

TROS models partial armor just as well as in real life. I think that you think that's what you keep asking, but what you actually keep asking is "I have a preconcieved notion that partial armor should have XYZ benefit in real life and I want to know if TROS models that".

Nope, it models real life. If the opponent chooses not to attack the armored part then some would say the armor was useless. Others (i.e. me) would say that means the armor did it's part by discouraging the attack. Not all areas of the body are equal in TROS, the same level hit to the head will kill, seriously wound to the chest, or only badly wound to the arm or leg. If armor helps divert attacks to less "important" areas, then it's done it's job, just as in real life. If the opponent attacks the armored area, then the armor protects, just as in real life.

Brian.

[Ben Lehman]

So which is it?
Does TROS model advantages using limited armor or not?

BL>  Yes, it does, except that these "advantages" are limited.

Jake's point is that, given the choice between wearing a helmet or not, an experienced swordsman fighting another experienced swordsman would -- like as not -- not choose the helmet, because the very limited protection ain't worth the distraction and visibility problems.

In TROS terms, wearing a helmet will likely make your injuries a little less brutal (your opponent will have to target a different body part), it could save your ass in a counter / feint situation, and it makes you less likely to take an instakill (again, you opponent should choose a less vital hit location) but it will also reduce your general effectiveness a tad.  Is this worth it?

Well, it's up to you.

Armor is NOT a gimme is TRoS.  It, like every other damn thing in the system, is a hard decision.

If you feel that any armor ought to be a gimme, well, you have a difference of opinion with the designer.  But I hardly think you can argue that it makes the game less realistic or less interesting.

yrs--
--Ben

crossposted with Brian.  Essentially, ditto him[/i]

[DanW]

Okay, I think I see.

Thats what I'm really asking.
Is certain limited armor combinations a viable tactical option?
Now I'm hearing they can be.

Before, I thought everyone was saying they weren't.

BTW, I'm not sure where Jake is coming from with his expertise.
So I kinda dismissed it. Not because I'm an expert.  Its only because its an argument from authority and I don't know the credtials of his authority.
I thought it might be possilbe to resolve this without resorting to empirical propisitions that couldn't readily be verified.
Thats why I was using examples and thought experiments.

Now Jake, before you get offended- Realise that I'm only saying for every authoritative claim you make, I could probably find an expert that says the opposite.

Or maybe not. Maybe there's a clear consensus in regards to how low tech combat works.
But that wasn't my assumption.

Dan