Re: (TFT) Re: New Armor in TFT. -- David's thoughts.

[Rick Smith <rick_ww@lightspeed.ca>]

On 2016-05-24, at 10:10 AM, David Bofinger wrote:

> Rick,
> 
> I have some concerns about your armour scheme.
> 
> Philosophical argument, YMMV: It means light armour literally has no
> effect on many basically ordinary people. It becomes a why not feature
> of a character, very difficult to leave off without making your
> character just worse than everyone else. TFT always tried to cater for
> unarmoured fighters, Celtic maniacs and the like, and yes it went way
> further than is realistic but still, the core idea of "armour keeps
> you alive at the cost of slowing you down" is one that's probably
> worth keeping. TFT let that slide for high ST but to let it slide for
> everyone cuts something I liked.

On the other hand, in the Advantages of Great ST in ITL, page 8, it
talks about strong figures not being affected by armor, and being
able to use shields with no negatives.

So this is not something that I created from nothing.  Now in GURPS,
Steve Jackson argued, that well constructed and fitted armor did not
lower your DX at all.  That you could do acrobatics in armor.  The big
disadvantage was the weight.

I didn't go that far, but I have made very light armor not penalize 
medium strong figures.  


> 
> Eliminating magic numbers was a design objective. But there are still
> basically magic numbers. it's generally good to have a ST that's one
> less than a multiple of four. An ST that is a multiple of four kind of
> sucks.

Hmm.... looking.  Not seeing your point.  The no negatives number for
Cloth, Leather, Boiled Leather, Scale, Half Plate, Plate and Hvy Plate
are respectively: 11 ST, 15, 19, 23, 27, 30 and 33 ST.  I am not seeing
why 12, 16, 20 etc. are especially punished.  

Perhaps you mean Threshold Number?  For Cloth to Heavy Plate, we 
have: 11 ST, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, and 23 ST.  Again, why 8, 12, 16, etc.  

are especially singled out is not obvious to me.

Let us look at a concrete example;  

If you were wearing Boiled Leather (popular with my players), at 15 ST
you hit the threshold number.  So 15 is special, right, because the DX
penalty is 1 less.  But at ST 16, the MA penalty is one less, so it is 
also
special right?  Boiled leather has the following special numbers: 
15 ST, 16, 17, 18 and 19.  So out of the 5 special numbers, for this
armor, 1/5 of them evenly divisible by 4, for 20%  Given that we want 
this to be 25% we are low for this type of armor.

For heavy plate the special numbers where you gain an advantage
(either one less DX penalty or one less MA penalty are: 23, 24, 25, 26,
27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, and finally 33.  So 3/11 of these numbers are
divisible by 4.  The divisible by 4 numbers are special 27.3% of the 
time.
Given that you would want one quarter of the numbers to be special
25% of the time, for this armor, the evenly divisible numbers seem to 
be doing a bit better than average.


> 
> Armour at any level can be divided into armour that defeats your ST
> (you pay full penalty for wearing it), armour that your ST partially
> defeats (less than full penalty) and armour that your ST totally
> defeats (no penalty). That has two effects:
> 
> * The penalty of armour as a function of ST is flat, then falls, then
> is flat again. Which is pretty weird. You might expect it to be
> falling from absurdly high numbers for low ST, then go flat.
> 
> * The system strongly encourages your character to adopt armour that
> your ST either just defeats or almost defeats, or possibly very heavy
> armour if you laugh in the face of penalties. Going to lighter armour
> just loses you protection without benefit. Going to armour a modest
> distance beyond the defeat line incurs big penalties at the margin,
> relative to the optimum armour. So all characters of a given ST will
> tend to have similar fitouts. I think that's undesirable, though
> admittedly it's what happens now in weapons.

Re: the curve being flat, then linear then flat.  The system is simple,
and I can not see any reason why a more complex system would be
more fun.  Would we really gain anything if the system followed an
"s" shaped curve?  That said, this "simple" system seems to have 
caused some confusion which would argue against using something
more elaborate.


In TFT on page 9 of ITL the have a system where:
ST 18 - big jump.  Cloth and Leather is ignored.
ST 20 - jump for shields.
ST 24 - another big jump. Chainmail is ignored.
ST 26 - another jump.
ST 28 - all armor is ignored. 

In this system, wouldn't you NOT want to wear cloth at ST 24 when 
you COULD wear chainmail?

>From realism's standpoint, I think that very strong figures ARE less
affected by armor.  If we accept that as true, then it is proper for 
them
to pick the heavier armor of a pair when they have no penalties for 
both.


> --
> 
> Here's an example (leaving out the chain variant armours for clarity):
> the German ST 14 with a two-handed sword fighter "Wulf" from the Melee
> example of play, who in basic Melee doesn't wear armour. For him:
> 
> Cloth stops 1, -0 DX, -0 MA
> Leather stops 2, -0 DX, -0 MA
> Boiled leather stops 3, -2 DX, -2 MA
> Scale stops 4, -4 DX, -3 MA
> 
> Obviously not wearing armour is a silly move, as is wearing cloth. But
> because leather is benefitting from his ST, and boiled leather isn't,
> the penalty jump from leather to boiled leather is kind of nasty. I
> don't think many characters will choose to make it (at least until
> they get their ST up a few points higher). On the other hand the jump
> from boiled leather to scale is actually smaller than the one from
> leather to boiled leather. So the character is pushed strongly into
> wearing leather armour and away from boiled leather with heavier
> armour options less affected. I doubt this is what you intended.

Speaking generally, this is caused by two things:  
-- The threshold number increases from armor type to armor type and
-- the movement penalty increasing with heavier armor (until it maxes
out at -4 MA).
 
(In your example with armor up to Scale, both of these effect are 
kicking in.  A way to improve this, would be to say ALL armor, gives
the same movement penalty, say, -2 MA.)

> 
> Flavius Marcellus, the Roman in that fight, is ST 11, carries a large
> shield and wears chain. (DX penalties? A soldier of the empire fears
> not these things.) For him:
> 
> Cloth stops 1, -0 DX, -0 MA
> Leather stops 2, -2 DX, -1 MA
> Boiled leather stops 3, -3 DX, -2 MA
> 
> It's not as severe but again we have the odd distortion that the jump
> from cloth to leather is larger than the jump from leather to boiled
> leather. So characters at this ST will be pushed into cloth and away
> from leather. It's all a bit odd and a bit gamey, making the game less
> accessible to a new player unwilling to do analysis.
> 
> --
> 
> I'm not sure what the solution is. Maybe a non-linear scheme where
> e.g. you have a ST needed to defeat armour completely, and the harm
> from being below that level goes up like roughly the square of how far
> you are below. ...

What?  Is this what you want?  Let us say that I want to wear Boiled
Leather with a No Negative's number of 19 ST.  I have a 16 ST.  So
the difference is 3 which I square to 9.  So I would use 9 of the 
penalties
that I get from Boiled Leather?  Boiled leather has 5 penalties.  (3 to 
DX
and 2 to MA.)   So for almost all armor, you would get almost no benefit
until just before you reach the no negative's number.  A far simpler 
rule would be to give no benefit to armor until the No Neg. armor and
then get all bonuses at once. 

> ... Or else make penalties fixed and say that strong people
> wear thicker armour that stops more hits (I think I like that idea but
> it's got magic number issues).

So if you wear leather, but are really strong, you get the penalties for 

leather, but stop hits like platemail?  Why would anyone take leather?
Everyone would be wearing cloth (which only masses 7 kg), but be
stopping more hits based on their ST.  Seems pretty ahistorical. 

> Right now I don't think this is going
> where we need it to. Sorry.
> 
> --
> David

Thinking back on long ago TFT campaigns (before ITL and the Great ST
rules came out), people had all sorts of armor.  (Plate was pretty 
standard
for high attribute figures.)  Now, the armor people pick is either:

-- Armor they can wear with no penalty or almost no penalty (as you 
predicted),  OR
-- People who are going for 'huge armor builds' where they want the 
extra protection no matter what.  (Also what you predicted.)

The "everyone with ST 15 takes leather" tendency is blurred when you
add in fine armor.  People might well take Boiled leather when they 
get armor with the relatively modest price increase for two less DX 
penalties.


You say that you don't know what the solution is.  Well I see several 
choices...
1) Ignore "Great ST" benefits on ITL page 9.

2) Use the "Great ST" benefits on ITL page 9.  (Effectively these are so 

high that they help almost no one, so option 2 is close to option 1.)

3) Use my rules.

4) Use a mix of 2 and 3.  Start the lowest threshold number at say, 
18  for cloth, and have in increase by one for each armor type.  That 
would barely change the higher armors from my system, and make far 
fewer jumps with big differences between armor types.  (That is, if you 

are getting benefits from wearing Boiled Leather, you would be far 
more likely to be getting similar benefits from wearing Scale Armor.)

5) Something else of course.


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

However, one thing that I was trying to do with my armor rules was to
encourage player to "get just one more ST" at a wide range of ST.  If 
you are at ST 12, is there a reason to get just one more ST?  Why yes.
At ST 13, you hit the threshold number for Leather.  At ST 14 is there a
reason to get just one more ST?  Why yes, you would hit the no negatives
number for Leather, or the threshold number for Boiled Leather.  
At 20 ST is there a reason to get just one more ST?  Yes, This helps you
if you are in Half plate, or platemail.  

I LIKE the fact that there always is a reason for people to want more 
ST.
Let's look at only the threshold numbers (but include those for the 
chain
mail variants).  The values where the just the threshold number cause 
people to want 'just one more ST' include:

ST 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 23.  Pretty 
good
actually.   Of course, far more numbers are valuable if you count 
value between the threshold numbers and the no negative numbers.
Then the valuable ST key numbers blur together so much that at every
ST from 8 to 33 you have reasons to want just one more ST.  I think that 

THIS is very attractive and desirable.

(This discussion does not include shields.  My shields start getting 
bonuses
at 7 ST & get bigger ones every 7 more, so these are another set of 
number
(not divisible by 4 by the way) which fits into this system.  In that 
case 
people want, 'just one more ST' from ST 7 up to ST 35.  (OK, I admit 
that 
ST 34 is missed, sadly, which admittedly is a weakness in my rules.) 

I think that this is attractive, rather than giving no rewards at all up 
to
ST 18 as is done in ITL page 9.

******

Thinking all this over, I think that if you are happy with most people 
not
being able to gain any advantage for any armor until very high ST, then
you might like a system like this:

Armor type: 			Threshold #			No Neg. 
#

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------
Cloth				17 ST				17 ST
Leather				18 ST				20 ST
Boiled L.			19 ST				23 ST
Scale				20 ST				26 ST
1/2 Plate			21 ST				29 ST
Plate				22 ST				31 ST
Hvy Plate			23 ST				33 ST.

I would be very curious about your thoughts on all of the above.

Warm regards, Rick.







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