Hi,

I'm new to TROS and a little confused about the armor rules.

It seems to me that armor provides no protection unless you're covered head to foot.
Because the opponent can strike a non armored area without penalty.

In other words- there is no differenct between a hemlet and sword and just a sword.

If I understand the rules correctly this looks kinda wonky.

Can anyone clear this up for me?

Thanks

Well DanW,
attacking the head does incure a small negative of 1 die for melee and 2 die for missile attacks.
The other thing to take into consideration is the following. Once you hit, you still have to roll a D6, and depending on that roll you may end up hitting the persons helmet, even though you were really gowing for the face. For thrust attacks at the head, if you don't roll a 1 or 2 on the D6 it'll hit the helmet. As for the blunt attacks, only a 2, 3, and 4 will allow you to avoid hitting the armored portion of the head.

Remember that you are the Seneschal, and that means that you can change those odds if you feel like it. You could only allow a 1 on a d6 to hit the unarmored portion of the head.

Don't forget it will be a lot harder to KILL some one wearing a helmet and breastplate than some one who isn't. You might hit them in the arms a lot and get them over time, but one good blow to the head and you're out...NT

But tralese, no one would go for the head area if they can strike the equally vital and unarmored chest.

Therefore no benefit to wearing a helmet.

Right?

And toli, that’s the way I read the rules too. But in your example you have BOTH the head and chest armored.

I'm trying to figure out why there doesn't appear to be any benefit to wearing just one piece.

Especially the helmet... If there is a penalty for striking the head area then it would be doubly stupid to try it if the chest is unarmored.

Or am I crazy?

Let me put it this way-

Imagine my character finds the ultimate armor from the gods that imparts no penalty for wearing and makes you invulnerable, butwithout the breastplate.

It seems to me this provides little to no advantage over wearing no armor.

Why? Because an opponent would have to be either blind or insane to strike at any area besides the chest.

If this is true, then the armor rules are wonky.

No, they're just not "game-y."

Think about it. You see a guy covered with plate everywhere but his head. Where are you going to attack? His head.

First, remember that any blow aimed at the head could land on the armor in this example (FREX: I strike at zone IV, downward diagonal. If I roll a 1-3 then I've got him, but hitting 4-6 will land on his armor, if he's wearing shoulder-stuff and a gorget/neck protection).

Second, use the optional rule on p. 239 with extreme prejudice.

If the guy has a shield than most attacks at his torso are protected by the shield-as-armor rules on p. 85.

Armor works, but only where you're wearing it. That's the way it was.

Jake

Sorry, I don't have the full version of the game yet- just the quickstart.

gamey?

No, what I meant was that it didn't seem to satisfy option 1 below.
Option 2 would be gamey.

It seems to me there are basically two reason to have a game mechanic-
1. to simulate the reality that the game takes place in (in TROS case that would be real or near real HTH combat with pre gun powder arms)

2. to create a mechanic that makes game play interesting (levels & classes in D&D)

I think the armor system makes things less interesting because it limits the players possible armor combinations i.e. just wearing a helmet and leg armor would be stupid. So option 2 is out.

As for option 1, I feel that it is highly unrealistic to say that I don't have a better chance of surviving with helmet and leg armor than without. Therefore option 1 is out for me too.

I guess you say otherwise. Hmmm, I think I'll have to see some evidence.
Because that is very counterintuitive to me.

As a thought experiment- imagine that you (Jake the real person) are about to go into a real TROS type combat. I give you the choice of breastplate & sword or just a sword. Which would you choose?

You know, after rereading your post, I may just have misunderstanding about the way combat & armor works.

Perhaps a good example of combat in limited armor?

Dan

"Think about it. You see a guy covered with plate everywhere but his head. Where are you going to attack? His head. ".

I don't know that this is relevant to my point. Of course you are going to TRY to strike the unarmored areas.

The question is - can you?

Doesn't a person covered with some armor have less an area to protect? Ttherefore has a clear advantage over some one without armor?

Again, all this may be moot. I might have some fundamental misunderstanding of the armor rules.

Dan

Wait a minute. Lets get something straight.

If someone wants to wear partial armor, and his survivability doesnt improve, you think thats unrealistic because why? I may not be understanding what you are saying.

If I'm fighting someone who isnt wearing armor in his chest... or head... or whatever, and I'm trying to kill him, I'm going to aim for that unarmored part and, if he doesnt parry my blows, I'm going to get it. That IS realistic, and I'm not sure why you find it otherwise.

Now sectional armor DOES help some on regions... if you are partially armored in each of all of the regions (say, wearing a helm that has an open face), you can maybe hit those vulnerable patches. Sectional armor also helps a lot against missile weapons far better; but in melee combat, you have much finer control of your blows, and you are naturally going to aim where it hurts; you dont aim for the armored parts when there are unarmored parts available, and its not going to happen often that you accidentally hit an armored part that is in a completely different region than where you are aiming.

Because wearing helmet and sword gives you some penalties, whereas no armor and sword you have no penalties.

If I want to be the cool swashbuckling, swinging on chandeleers, tumbling around the battlefield, I wear as little to no armor as possible.

If I want to be the tank, but able to see my attackers, I bulk up on armor, but wear no helmet.

I just want to be as protected as possible, but care not about sight or hitting people, I wear every piece of armor my body can handle.

They go for a realistic type of combat in this game. If you wear a helmet and leg armor, than you have a protected head and leg's. That's it, so it's tough to get an insta kill or do good damage on the head, and it's tough to do damage to the leg's. Chest is wide open, unless you ahve a sheild. So there IS an advantage to that armore combination, but i don't find it that great. lose the leg armor and wear a breast plate.

Just my half a cent

DanW wrote: "Think about it. You see a guy covered with plate everywhere but his head. Where are you going to attack? His head. ".

I don't know that this is relevant to my point. Of course you are going to TRY to strike the unarmored areas.

The question is - can you?

Doesn't a person covered with some armor have less an area to protect? Ttherefore has a clear advantage over some one without armor?

Again, all this may be moot. I might have some fundamental misunderstanding of the armor rules.

Dan

"If someone wants to wear partial armor, and his survivability doesnt improve, you think thats unrealistic "

Hmm, we may be getting to my confusion. Because this is exactly what I am saying.

If I understand correctly, you claim that in real life partial armor does not improve your chances of surviving. And this is what the game models.

Therefore, its realistic.

I claim its axiomatic that, all else being equal, your chances of survival increases with some armor.

Let me put it this way-

If I were to fight my clone and I have a sword and helmet (no Elmer Fudd jokes please).

And my clone opponent only has a sword- then I have a better chance of winning than my clone does.

This is not true?

Very hard to except. I'm afraid I'll have to be convinced.

Or perhaps I might have a better chance of surviving but its very minor. And the system does not bother to model that...?

Dan

I can't remember the optional rule to which Jake referred. However, I do think Dan does have a reasonable point in general.

I would bet that wearing a helmet or wearing a helmet and breast plate would make my arm harder to hit. Becasue I would not have to defend my head or my head and chest to the same degree, I could put more effort into the defense of my unarmored areas. A guy wearing full plate and no helmet will probably be pretty concerned about his head.

One mechanic to simulate this might be to allow a PC to take a CP penalty on parries to some zones in order to gain CP bonuses to attacks from other zones.

Jake,

"Here's the thing. Armor provides significant protection over certain body parts, right? You declare defense after the guy declares attack location and number of dice, right? So if he's attacking an area with some armor, forget defense and just hit him. Toast."

This would never happen if I only wore a helmet. Right? I
I mean no one would go for my protected head when they could go for my unprotected and equally vital chest.

Therefore wearing a helmet provides no advatage.

"Does that explain the logic behind what TROS does with armor?"

Maybe, so you're saying that TROS models skilled duelist and not mass combat or crazed fighters flaying away.

And for a skilled duelsist, wearing only a helmet provides no protection.

Am I getting it?

Dan

I think you're looking at the overal odds with a system that does not determine hit location. In TRoS, armour only protects the part or parts of the body that it covers. Also in TRoS, an attacker declairs what general body zone they are swinging or stabbing at and if a "hit" is landed, then you roll to determine exactly what you hit.

If you say as the attacker, that you are swinging at zone VII and hit, then you roll a 4; the swing lands on the elbow. If your opponent is wearing a metal elbow cop, than that will help lessen the amount of damage from that blow, but wearing a helmet isn't going to lessen the damage delivered by a swing to the elbow just like wearing an elbow cop won't help you when you get hit in the head.

Dan, I think you are thinking of two different things.
You have a vision of combat where blows are oportunistic, strike whereever you see an opening with combat being a little wild and unpredictable. As a result blows could land all over. Some might hit your legs, some might hit your head, some might hit an arm. Therefor every little piece of armor you have increases your survivability slightly because some portion of all the attacks aimed at you will wind up on the arm...so adding armor to the arm is incrementally helpful.

This situation is fairly accurate...in a melee. If you're in a regiment of soldiers, the front lines have collided and now the units are intermixed with enemies and friends on all sides and blows being swung wildly and rapidly (including from friends by accident), then you have a situation like you describe above, and then partial armor can be incrementally helpful. Perhaps we'll see some rules to this regard in TFOB.

But man on man and small skirmishes don't work this way. You don't simply swing wherever an opportunity presents itself and hope its an unarmored place. You aim specifically for the part of the enemy you intend to hit. You'd like to hit the enemy in a very nasty location like the head (even low wounds are nasty to the head). However, if he's wearing a helmet, you simply don't do that. You aim instead to the torso, or the arms, or somewhere else.

Because your attacks are much more deliberate and less confused melee, partial armor becomes much less useful. Now to some extent you can't hit exactly where you want every time, and that's where the 1d6 roll comes in. In this case you may randomly hit an area that's armored, while some other area is not. And that's where Accuracy comes in. Characters with Accuracy can manipulate the d6 roll thereby increasing the chances of hitting precisely where he wants.

Take Jake, for instance. If he wants to hit you in the thigh, he'll hit you in the thigh. Period. If you have armor everywhere on your body except the thigh...sucks to be you. You're carrying around alot of weight for nothing, because Jake can pretty much hit you in the thigh whenever he wants...unless you protect yourself and avoid his blow...which is what rolling defense dice are about.

Thanks for the replies everybody,

It seems to boil down to this-
Wearing only a helmet (or other limited armor combos) does nothing for you in dueling combat with skilled opponents.

This is the premise that I find hard to except.

Jake, you have the closest to real experience and you claim this is true.
No one else seems to have a problem with it (although toli can see my point).

Yet, I'm still having trouble accepting it.

And going to back to option 2 in reasons to create a game mechanic- it doesn't make things more interesting for me.

Any other suggestions in addition or elaboration of tolis to change the rules a bit?

Dan

I understand the point you are trying to make DanW, however I think I would have to side with Jake on that argument. I took some fencing classes, and in my experience you usually try to parry the blow the person is sending at you regardless of where he is performing his attack. Now wearing armor may limit the opponent's options for attacks, but there are many ways for an opponent to approach on an attack. Add to that the fact that it is impossible for a roleplaying game to completely represent reality, although as stated earlier some people would wear partial armor for incidental protection rather than for protection during a duel.

Wearing only a helmet (or other limited armor combos) does nothing for you in dueling combat with skilled opponents.

This is the premise that I find hard to except.

Many refer to historical encounters and/or real combat.

Let me ask a game question-

If you find your character without weapons or armor and about to face his/her nemesis, and the only thing you can scrounge up is a sword, helmet, and leg armor.

Do you take only the sword? Or weigh the pros & cons of wearing some armor.

This is where I think the armor rules makes the game less interesting. Because there is no reason to get anything but the sword.

Or another scenario-
You find a magic helmet. Do you wear it? Only if you have chest armor too.

Not that fun to me. And assumed only realistic if you're fighting another skilled opponent.
Seems limiting to me.

But before I piss people off. Let me add I think this game is a breath of fresh air. I've been avoiding RPG for years because of the prevalance of D&D. Which I don't like.
TROS provides a welcome alternative.

Dan

Mike,

You point out some intersting game mechanics I was not aware of.
Perhaps there is some advantage to limited armor.

Dan

You find a magic helmet. Do you wear it? Only if you have chest armor too.

DanW wrote: If you find your character without weapons or armor and about to face his/her nemesis, and the only thing you can scrounge up is a sword, helmet, and leg armor.

Do you take only the sword? Or weigh the pros & cons of wearing some armor.

This is where I think the armor rules makes the game less interesting. Because there is no reason to get anything but the sword.

Or another scenario-
You find a magic helmet. Do you wear it? Only if you have chest armor too.

He's pointing out, Tony, that it might not make tactical sense. Since the opponent can fairly easily avoid the armor, it won't likely prevent the character from losing, and the GM might assess penalties on the CP.

OTOH, Jake has pointed out that the CP penalties aren't really realistic either. That is, there ought to be no penalty for the leg armor in the example, and the helmet all depends on what it covers.

I mean imagine a knight's jousting helmet on an otherwise unarmored person. Ludicrous. There'd be no point.

Mike

ike,

"I mean imagine a knight's jousting helmet on an otherwise unarmored person. Ludicrous. There'd be no point. "

It would look ludicrous. And it probably would bring on too many penalties in the way of perception to be an advantage. But not all helmets are knights helmets.

Look everyone,

I don't think it makes much sense to say in reality limited armor is always useless for skilled opponents. This seems to be easily refuted with common sense examples.

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.

So, either you have to claim the above scenario is impossible or the system
does not model minor advantages of limited armor.

Dan

Mike Holmes wrote: He's pointing out, Tony, that it might not make tactical sense. Since the opponent can fairly easily avoid the armor, it won't likely prevent the character from losing, and the GM might assess penalties on the CP.

Durgil wrote: of course you pick up the helmet and leg armour. That way if you get hit in the legs or head, you won't be injured as bad, but that isn't going to help a whole lot if you take a swing to the chest or arms. Why should it?

DanW wrote: 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.

So, either you have to claim the above scenario is impossible or the system
does not model minor advantages of limited armor.

To me, it sounded like he's saying that there should be some type of overall protection rating for a character wearing a single piece of armour, such as just a helmet.

DanW wrote: 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

toli wrote: 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.

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

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.

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

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.

"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

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

Dan,

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

Glad to have you aboard.

Brian.

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

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

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

Dan

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.

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

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

DanW wrote:
BTW, I'm not sure where Jake is coming from with his expertise.

Hi Ben,

No I haven't read the website. My only experience is reading the quickstart some time last week. And playing thru a couple of combat encounters with some one who has the full book.

Sorry if I came across badly about Jake.

But to me he's some guy on the net that says, "yes, this is how it really is". Okay, I take that and add it to the pot. I don't take it as ending the discussion.

Who knows. Maybe when I find out more about Jake & his organization then I'll take everthing he says with a great deal of consideration.

Anywho, I'll bow out now with the assumption that TROS has the tactical options I'm looking for.

Dan

DanW,

Hello and welcome to the TRoS Forums! I can understand your reservations in regards to the authority of Jake. You have not met him and you do not know him. I am also a member of a Western Martial Arts organization, and a darn fine one, I might add. My credentials are not nearly as involved as Jake's, but there is one thing I can vouch for. And that is his honesty in his efforts to learn how they really did fight 500 years ago. He will not come out and say "X" if "X" is not true. So far what he and others more learned than I, have had to say about the whole armour thing have been pretty spot on from what I have seen and learned from my instructors.

We all have this preconcieved notion of what a battle or brawl or even a duel was like. We may not have all the specifics, but I am willing to bet that Jake is closer to knowing and appreciating than most of the others who are discussing this here. This is because he trains and uses swords in his training, referring to the books of the Meisters/Maestros of the time. These books were written to help students learn how to best kill. They are intense and no nonsense in the context of the readers and authors. These books, while seeming round-about to us, give me the impression they pretty much got to the point with the intended audience.

This is where Jake draws his experience and his authority, from his training, paucity of preconception and the works of these guys who would consider our very best to be about average in their time.

Hey Dan-

No problem with questioning my credentials. It's a healthy thing. I'm a certified Longsword instructer and "Senior Free Scholar" with the Association for Rennaissance martial arts. I am the senior student of John Clements, who won the US national Kung-fu weapons sparring competition in 1994 with a german longsword and european techniques. I've published materials on training and I run a group of some of the most advanced students of the sword in the western US. I am intimately familiar with the source materials from which we know what we know about medieval and rennaissance personal combat. I have no degrees in the area (unless linguistics counts), but I'm a respected member of the worldwide community as both a researcher and--IMO more importantly--as a fighter. I also try to refrain from making comments without having citations on hand as to where I get my information. It is time consuming to produce them, however, so ask for anything, just not everything.

ANyway, welcome to the boards. You've caught me at an annoying transitional time in things and so I'm a bit short right now. I'm a nice guy, really! Ask, um, Brian or someone. ;-)

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.

Jake Norwood wrote: I'm a nice guy, really! Ask, um, Brian or someone. ;-)

Stasngely enough, I nearly created a topic on this very matter myself. I've decided to ditch the CP penalties for armour; I think they are too rigorous.

And I agree that this is something of a problem. While I accept that competent combatants will always attenpt a deliberate blow, opportunity does not always allow this, and not everybody is a competent combatant. Secondly, accidents happen.

I agree there are big differences between the duellist approach and the mass combat, and that armour is much more important in the latter than the former. But I also feel TROS is slightly over-balanced in favour of the duellist approach, penalising armour wearing too much.Between the armour penalty and the a manouvre cost you wipe your combat pool out in short order.

I also think the objections to partial armour are overstated. Yes of course many combatants wore only helmets: the poor ones. Usually not pot helms but dish ones, or skull caps, and for much the same reasons as modern soldiers do - the frequency with which head hits are lethal or incapacitating. But for this reason, I don't think I could legitmiately apply a penalty to someone wearing just a helmet; the category is too broad to assume every helm is an iron pot helm.

And I'll state, AGAIN, that I agree that the CP penalties are generally too great. Just for the record.

Jake

Here are my house rules on armour and shields (of which I have a lot of experience with) if anyone's interested

(no mod if not mentioned)

CP mod Other mods
gauntlets -0 to -1
Breastplate/cuirass -0 to -1
helm/helmet -0 to -1 -0 to -2 per
sabotons -0 to -2 -0 to -2 move
large shields -1 -1 move

Notes- The specific design of armour has everything to do with the mods.
example-sabotons for mounted combat with 8" long toe spike will give the neg. mods when fighting on foot, etc.

* some penalties can be up to double if the armour is munition, or if it's specialized joost armour used on foot, etc.
* additional cp or move penalties can be applied if the character isn't "used" to the piece.

Armour doesn't slow you down, it just tires you faster, which the fatigue rules cover perfectly.

BTW, those mods assume fitted "field" armour

So, Jake, if you think they are too rigorous, how WOULD you do them?

Hello All,

I am new to the Forum ( I have been lurking for sometime) and this is my first post.

Anyway, I think one of the problems with CP penalties for armor is not that they are unrealistic but that there is no adjustment factor. i.e. there should be some rule as to the skill of the person wearing the armor.

A knight IRL would have trained for years wearing armor and learn to deal with the its disadvantages thereby lessening them. OTOH Joe yeoman puts on armor for the first time and tries to fight in it is going have to get used to the weight even if he is skilled at wielding his weapon.

Basically use of armor should be a skill that benefits the skilled and punishes the unskilled.

Hope I did not over look a rule that already exists!

Farmer, welcome aboard.

The idea that armor is limiting in combat is an artifact of second generation games that sought to find some "realistic" way in which to limit the use of armor. The first example I can think of was TFT (based off the Melee rules) which said that you lost DEX for wearing armor. The idea here is to make armor a tactical option, not a certain advantage.

The problem with this is that D&D had it right in that, wearing armor is an advantage. Yes, you aren't perfectly able to do all the things that you could without armor on, but it was designed so that you could fight in it, if not exactly as well, close enough to exactly as well. The point being that, given a choice in battle between going in armored, or unarmored, the soldier chooses to be armored. There is no downside.

So there's nothing to "train" for to negate in these terms. This is from Rolemaster, which followed that second generation ideal. Where armor is a real problem, say in swimming, there's nothing that you can do to prevent this in terms of training. Raw strength and endurance will help, and you can train for that, but the only thing that I could even concieve of for water training for armor would be how to get out of it fast.

Mike

The problem here is that there is no real world situation (that I know of) where we can look to support or disprove the idea of armor training.

In the real world people who wore armor, wore armor pretty much their entire life. It was just something they did.

People who didn't wear armor simply never wore armor. The reasons for this being largely social and financial.

I can't think of any historical situation that has come down to us where people who never wore armor before suddenly started to wear armor and fought side by side (or against) people who'd always worn armor. So there is nothing to indicate whether those new armor wearers were at a disadvantage (lack of training) or not (no/little need for armor training)

About the closest thing we'd have to compare to today would be new soldiers going through basic training and becoming accustomed to hoofing around 80+ pounds of gear. Like armor, the modern soldiers pack and webbing does a pretty good job of distributing weight and approximately in the same areas of the body so its not an unreasonable proxy.

Seems to me that 1) yes there is a learning curve to adapting to moving around with a pack effectively, 2) its a shallow enough learning curve that new soldiers pick it up pretty easily.

Therefor I'd conclude that an "armor training" skill probably does exist but that its so "cheap" and "quick" to learn (in RPG character improvement terms) that doesn't really need to be portrayed as a character skill.

The GM may impose an additional penelty for someone putting on heavy armor who never before in his life has had a suit of armor on...but after a week or so on the campaign trail, that new soldier is going to have mastered everything there is to master about it (that can be covered at typical level of RPG granularity).

I don't know, Mike.

Knights used to run obstacle courses in full plate to accostom themselves better to it, and so I think it's an issue of "getting used to it." The more I think about it and read about it and consult with people who spend a lot of time in the real stuff (not standard SCA grade, which I ran around in in High school), the more I think along these lines:

Never wore it before? Use existing penalties.
Been wearing it for years?

Full Helms cause -1 CP, pot helms don't.
Torso armor causes -0 CP
Plate Arms and legs caues -1 CP for each pair (thus arms and legs would be -2 CP)
Chain full suits would cause a total -1 CP. Just pants or arms with a shirt would be - 0

That means that a fully armored knight in chain is at -2 CP total and in plate -3 total, assuming both are wearing a full helmet and everything is perfectly fitted and padded with great care.

I would then be more adamant about fatigue rolls in either chain or plate, and I'd assign those CP mods to "reflex" for any contest that involves reflex, such as red-red. Any armor on the legs would drop movement, as would a full helm (try running at full speed with one eye open or something, you'll get the idea). Perception would obviously be hindered by a helm, and hearing would be hindered by just wearing plate at all.

That's how I'd do it, and that's probably what I'll put in TFOB.

Jake

Knights used to run obstacle courses in full plate to accostom themselves better to it, and so I think it's an issue of "getting used to it."

Chain is heavy, and it'll slow you down and cause over-commitment to moves unless effort is expended to prevent that. Effort is represented in CP.

Jake

Seeing as how mail wouldn't hinder someone who trained in it, I think the effort is better represented in fatigue.

The point of debate, Caz, is whether or not one actually can overcome that weight. Jakes side looks like this:

There's only so much effort that you can expend at one time. This is represented as CP. If some is going towards countering the weight of mail, then you have less CP.

I sorta support this argument, because I'm an advocate for CP as effort.

What I proposed once, when debating this same thing earlier (is this the second or third time we've hit this?), is allowing a player to burn through an extra "turn" of endurance if he wants to eliminate his CP penalty for weightly armor. Representing even more effort than normal. This effectively halves the time a person can fight at absolutely full effectiveness in armor as a trade-off for getting those dice back.

That said, I understand Jake's point, and agree that to a small extent, there's no getting around the fact that you'd be slowed slightly. And Jake's waaay more an expert than I am on the practicality of it. In any case, we're quibbling over one die. Not a big deal.

Mike

I agree it's no big deal, the rules are fine as is. House rules happen.
But I have my house rules from my personal experience. Mail is heavy, and it will burn you out quicker, but if you've trained in it, it does not EFFECTIVELY slow you down, slow your techniques, or hinder you in combat. You can cut just as fast, and sprint just as fast in it (you'll just drop a lot quicker from the effort). Same with plate arm/leg armour.
Here's some of my view on particular armour types and why they have different penalties:
(assumed it's fitted)
For helms/helmets- a "kettle" helmet, or war hat- no penalties (it doesn't get in your way, and doesn't hinder vision or hearing)

A barbute- no cp penalties (it doesn't get in the way, and you can see just fine) but -1 per due to muffled hearing.

A close helmet, with the visor down- -1 cp and -2 per (if it has narrow sights, -1 cp for limited vision, -2 per for vision and hearing)
etc. etc.

most body armour wouldn't hinder movement, but the only type that would give a -1 cp is a rigid, 1 piece plate cuirass, that might keep you from ducking as well, or fully bringing your arms inward.
Like I said, just my house rules, not really arguing, but this is really from my experience, not conjecture.