Defending specific body parts

[[MKF]Kapten]

I have thought about this before, but now its kind of important.

If a fighter in full plate has one exposed leg for some reason, would it be realistic to let that fighter guard that leg better at the expense of other body parts?

My house rule would be that someone can guard two zones. The person can raise all parries or blocks by 1 to 3 if attacked on those parts but loses the same number of dices when parrying/blocking against other parts.

The reason behind this rule is to make piecemal armor more effective but mostly for this situation: One of the bad guys of the campaign has summoned a powerful demon that has helped him to make an explosive expansion out of his territory. The demon is rumored to be invulnerable and it's mere prescense is enough to scare off entire armies. Now it was partly true; the demon has TO 10 with the skin on the torso having AV 2 and it is immune to pain and blood loss. It regenerates lost body parts (including the head) in under a minute.
But the demon has a heart it cant regenerate. A lvl 5 stab wound to the chest will kill it. The PCs have found out (by hunting occult libraries and using Research) and now they are facing the demon.

All the while the demon has known it's vulnerability. It doesnt care what happens to the rest of the body as long as it's chest is protected. So when the PCs face off against it it will only focus on protecting it's chest from stabbing attacks.

Therefore, it is possible to do this realisticly? I know that it is true for martial arts but is it true for weapons as well?

[Jake Norwood]

It is certainly feasable IRL, so yes.  More importantly, it works great in terms of drama, which is why you see it in movies and books so much. It would also add dynamism to certain perceived "problems" in TROS combat.

And yes, something like it is in TFOB.  We'd quit bringing it up if you guys would quit house-ruling all the time.

;-)

Jake

ps.  Use this rule for now.  Sounds good to me.

[Lance D. Allen]

Jake: Alright, you all need to stop reinventing the wheel!

Forum: But.. we've never seen the wheel!

::grins cheekily, and scampers off::

[Ingenious]

I'd quit house-ruling,
but it's the only thing that can be done IMO in lieu of TFOB.
And it is far faster to tinker around with house-rules than it is to wait for you guys...j/k I know TFOB is huge.. so I'll lay off pressuring you guys to finish it faster.

As for myself, I am finding out that it is in fact difficult to come up with solid rules for a game of TROS' current stature in The Riddle of Gold.

And that explains my abscence from the forum for awhile and from the IRC as well..

-Ingenious

[Edge]

i really like this rule and i'm glad there is going to be something official in TFOB about it.
I have been noticing the lethality of thrusts to the head and this may alleviate some of these problems

good work

[Brian Leybourne]

What's really amusing (well, admittedly I am easily amused), I wrote an article about this, and at about the same time Jake wrote one as well, and when we got around to swapping them, it turned out we had both independantly come up with almost exactly the same rule, the only difference being that mine was focused more on shields and his on parrying weapons. :-)

Brian.