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

[David Bofinger <bofinger.david@gmail.com>]

> The PC's also hit NPC's all the time.
Damaging goblins, orcs and wolves is
routine

There's no need for NPCs to use this system if you don't want them to. You
can give them whatever numbers you like. Remember that in a point
allocation system like TFT the primary role of the character generation
system is to put a price on a character, to determine if a player can
afford to pay for it with the points granted by the GM. Since nobody is
paying for NPCs, or goblins, or wolves, you can write down whatever ST, adj
DX, IQ and hits stopped you like, as long as it's vaguely reasonable. After
all there's no saying whether these characters are generated on 32 points -
your exemplar wolves and goblins certainly aren't, and presumably real
enemies have variation. Or if you really want to use these roles you can
make NPCs fail every armour roll. They may end up being inefficient designs
but who cares?

> When I say cloth or leather or Plate armor, people know what
> I am talking about and can picture it.

They can. The picture they have is almost certainly completely unrealistic
and anhistorical but it certainly exists. The idea that some people wear
plate armour and others leather is kind of silly - plate is better, and if
the heavy armour is plate then the light armour is probably limited
coverage thin plate. The boiled leather armour used by your great
grandfather probably weighed every bit as much as  your suit of plate, it
just didn't work as well.

Perhaps the false picture is nonetheless a good thing, or as I put it
quaint. It's not really relevant to these rules, I threw it in as an
offhand remark.

> I am not seeing why this is needed at all.  Someone has "armor 4" and
> they have the constant armor 4 penalties and the armor stops a variable
> amount of hits.  When I put on armor 4, I get the same penalties and stop
> a different number of hits.  Why divide by ST and multiply by 12?

I'm having trouble understanding you here. The core idea of your system,
TFT's and Meg's is that as ST increases armour protection stays the same
and penalties are reduced (eventually to zero). The core idea of my system
is that as ST increases penalties stay the same and armour protection
increases. Does that make things clearer?

And we're multiplying by ST and dividing by 12, or effectively two. Not
nearly as horrible.

> I do NOT think that the magic numbers should be even 12, 14, 16, etc.
> Because the Warrior, Veteran, Campaigner series of talents (which stop
> hits) are on the even numbers.

Interesting point. OK, maybe protection should round up instead of down.

--
David
On 25 May 2016 12:06 PM, "Rick Smith" <rick_ww@lightspeed.ca> wrote:

> Hi David, everyone.
>    My comments are inline below.
>
> On 2016-05-24, at 6:00 PM, David Bofinger wrote:
>
> > It would still give you magic numbers. ST 12 would be much better than ST
> > 11. Maybe not the end of the world but it would distort characters -
> nobody
> > would make a character with ST 11 any more, because ST 12 is so much
> > better. (The Roman empire fell because the gladius was a poor choice
> under
> > the new armour rules introduced in late antiquity.)
>
> Many systems have magic numbers.  One thing that has not been
> mentioned is that I have lots of magic numbers and they are small.  So
> many, and so small, and so close together, that they tend to blend
> together.  In the ITL page 8 rules there are few magic numbers and
> they give big steps.
>
> I suspect Rome fell for other reasons, or at least more reasons, than that.
> I've seen a very nicely argued essay that said that Rome faced a energy
> crisis in the form of ecological damage causing declining crop yields,
> which
> caused it to fall.  Many other suggestions have been made for the reason
> for the fall of Rome.
>
>
> > I think before making the rules more complex we should give some thought
> to
> > which kinds of complexity are harmful and which are tolerable. Meg's
> system
> > tries to make it all as simple as possible. Rick's system lets it get
> > complicated but pushes the complex bits into character generation where
> you
> > only have to do them once, so that play status is simple.
>
> Good point, I agree.  You buy a set of new armor, what?  Once every 12
> play sessions?  Your ST goes up, what? Once every 15 play sessions?
> The player makes adjustments to the character sheet very rarely, and
> play is fast.
>
> >
> > Something else that doesn't happen much is PCs getting hurt. When they do
> > it's not routine, it's an attention grabbing event and I think nobody
> would
> > mind a little bit of extra work.
>
> The PC's also hit NPC's all the time.  Damaging goblins, orcs and wolves is
> routine and happens often.  I do not think I like where this is going...
>
> >
> > Proposal:
> >
> > * Armour has the DX and MA penalties given in TFT, or maybe those in
> Rick's
> > system since they seem to have a little more resolution and nuance than
> > TFT's.
> >
> > * The advantages of great strength rules from TFT are deleted. Well, I
> > guess you can still kick chests if you want to but no armour benefits.
> >
> > * If we want realism we ditch the names "cloth", "leather", etc. and just
> > think of them as Armour 1, Armour 2, etc. where the difference
> represents a
> > combination of thickness and coverage. The difference between plate and
> > leather is technology, not encumbrance. If we don't care about realism
> then
> > we keep the silly names and say they are quaint.
>
> Frowny face.  When I say cloth or leather or Plate armor, people know what
> I am talking about and can picture it.  I think that trying to sell people
> on
> armor 4 which might stop 4 hits, and might stop a different number of hits,
> is not going to fly.
>
> >
> > * The protection afforded by armour and shields is ST x [armour number] /
> > 12, round down to the nearest sixth. So Flavius Marcellus, a ST 11
> > character with "chain" aka Armour 3 plus large shield (i.e. 2) has total
> > defence 4+3/6 in front and 2+4/6 from behind. For character sheet
> brevity,
> > write these "4.3" and "2.4" like overs in cricket. Sorry, that probably
> > wasn't helpful to most of you.
> >
> > * When a character with non-integer armour gets hit, and the armour is
> > possibly penetrated, roll one die to determine whether the armour stops
> an
> > extra point. So if the armour is 4.3 then it stops 5 points on a 1-3 and
> 4
> > points on a 4-6.
>
> I WOULD mind this.  The last thing I want in combat is extra steps that
> happen often.
>
>
> >
> > * If a character puts on armour or shield made for a character with a
> > different ST then we have a problem. Divide the armour's protection by
> the
> > new character's ST, multiply by 12, round up to get the penalties.
> > Fortunately this shouldn't happen often.
>
> I am not seeing why this is needed at all.  Someone has "armor 4" and
> they have the constant armor 4 penalties and the armor stops a variable
> amount of hits.  When I put on armor 4, I get the same penalties and stop
> a different number of hits.  Why divide by ST and multiply by 12?
>
> >
> > In summary, a ST 18 character takes full penalties from leather armour,
> > but at least it stops 3 hits instead of two.
> >
> > Thoughts and comments solicited.
>
> You REALLY avoid magic numbers here.  None of this "armor stops 1 or 2
> points" nonsense!  YOUR armor stops 3 and one third hits.  His armor
> stops 2 and 5 sixths hits.  That guy over there stops 7 and 3 seventeenths
> hits per attack.   ( JOKE.  I find fractions like 3 / 17ths funny for some
> reason.
> "We want to cut this 2x4 to be 6 feet, 3 inches and 14 / 19ths long!"  )
>
>
>
> Harkening back to the super simple suggestion I made based on Meg's
> idea, I do NOT think that the magic numbers should be even 12, 14, 16, etc.
> Because the Warrior, Veteran, Campaigner series of talents (which stop
> hits) are on the even numbers.
>
> If Meg's system was set up with the magic numbers at 13, 15, 17, etc,
> then you would really want just one more ST to go to 13 (gives you an
> armor bonus).  But then you want just one more ST to go to 14 (gives you
> Warrior talent), etc.
>
> We could start the series at 11.  But honestly, I can see David's point
> that 11 is too low.   It is less "Great ST Rules" and more "Barely Above
> Average Rules".   I picked 11, because it meant the Plate armor stayed
> at what ITL page 8 gave it, but smoothly lowered the ST for the
> lower armor.  No big deal if the No Negatives number for Heavy Plate
> rises a bit.  People are going to get ST 35 about as often as they get
> ST 33.
>
>
> Note for the slope campaign:
> We will use my rules for now.  But I might get the time to revise the
> Great ST, Armor and Fine armor rules some time.  (The 3 sets of rules
> are tightly bound so all need to be fixed at the same time.)
>
> Warm regards, Rick.
>
>
>
> >> Hi Meg,
> >>  I was trying to keep the system near what ITL had, except I
> >> wanted to stretch the point where weak armor could be worn
> >> easily, much lower than the 18 ST given in ITL page 8.
> >>
> >>  However, your idea is REALLY simple.   I'm tempted to chuck
> >> all of my stuff and just use your idea.
> >>
> >>  So the biggest penalties that armor can give you is currently
> >> -11 for my heavy plate.  So...
> >>
> >> ST 12 gives everyone one points less penalty on all armor.
> >> ST 14 gives everyone two points less penalty on all armor.
> >> ST 16 gives everyone 3 points less penatlty on all armor.
> >> ...
> >> ST 32 gives everyone 11 points less penalty on all armor.
> >>
> >> This would mean...
> >>
> >> Armor type:          No Negative Number:
> >> ---------------------------------------------------------
> >> Cloth                        12 ST
> >> Leather                      16 ST
> >> Boiled L.            20 ST
> >> Scale                        24 ST
> >> Half Plate           28 ST
> >> Plate                        30 ST
> >> Hvy Plate            32 ST
> >>
> >> (The no negatives number go up by 4 ST at first because both
> >> DX and MA penalties are increasing.  When MA penalties max
> >> out at -4 MA, the No Neg # only goes up by 2 ST per armor
> >> level.)
> >>
> >> So ALL armor would start getting easier to wear at 12 ST and
> >> every two ST above that, it gets 1 penalty easier.
> >>
> >> I would not stagger DX and MA penalties.  You still get magic
> >> numbers (in the system above, even numbers for ST is just
> >> better), but worse of all, the system gets wonky if you have armor
> >> that gives you normal MA penalties but no DX penalties.  (Such
> >> as what you might get if you buy fine armor.)
> >>
> >>
> >> I think that Meg's system is less realistic, but it is MUCH, MUCH
> >> simpler.
> >>
> >> Warm regards, Rick.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> ---
> >>> David
> >>> What if, instead of having each type of armor have separate Threshold
> and
> >>> No Negative numbers, stronger characters just take progressively less
> >>> penalties for armor?
> >>>
> >>> So maybe something like: each type of armor has its associated DX
> penalty,
> >>> per rules. Stronger figures take progressively less DX penalty. So, for
> >>> purpose of illustration, say a ST 12 figure takes 1 point less
> penalty, so
> >>> they can wear cloth armor with no DX penalty, or leather with only a
> -1, or
> >>> chain with -2, etc. Or ST 18 takes 3 fewer DX penalty, so anything up
> to
> >>> chain has no penalty, and plate-mail is at -3. You'd still end up with
> some
> >>> ST's being "more optimum" than others, but maybe you could stagger DX
> >>> penalties offset with MA penalties offset to get a smoother
> "optimization
> >>> curve".
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> - Meg
> >>>
> >
>

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