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

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

> this is not something that I created from nothing.

I think I addressed this when I said:

>> TFT let that slide for high ST but to let it slide for
>> everyone cuts something I liked.

The idea that something can be heavy but not reduce your combat DX seems
petty unlikely to me. Try playing tennis with lead weights tied to you,
they don't have to be very heavy to make a huge difference.

You have no threshold numbers that are 11, 15, 19 and can't see how 12, 16,
20 are relatively disadvantaged?

Yes, for some armour type they might be helpful but is that an armour type
you want to wear? I showed comparisons of adjacent armour types and armour
your strength is only able to slightly effect is a sucky choice. Threshold
is nothing in your system - the no negatives numbers are what kick bottoms.

Are your ST 15 PCs really wearing boiled leather? Because IIRC that seems
like a very odd choice. (On my phone so can't be certain.)

> Would we really gain anything if the system followed an
> "s" shaped curve?

I don't understand what you mean by an S. Really, functions can't be shaped
like an S because they would have three values in the middle.

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

Quite correct. All the problems I'm identifying with your system also
appear in ITL's. But we do have a forty year edge on them in sophistication
so we probably should do better. Also in your system the problems develop
at lower ST.

> From realism's standpoint, I think that very strong figures ARE less
> affected by armor.

Probably true in the short term, for a constant standard of protection. One
of the issues of armour was heat management. A powerful guy generating lots
of waste heat and wearing lots of armour gets into trouble.

And less doesn't mean completely unaffected.

I'm not actually suggesting squaring things, by the way. Just a curve that
looks parabolic rather than linear. Though I think I prefer the idea of
increasing protection instead.

> So if you wear leather, but are really strong, you get the penalties for
> leather, but stop hits like platemail?

I mean: If you are really strong you can wear leather that is so thick it
is as good as the plate an ordinary person wears, and only pay leather
penalties. Or you could wear plate that was so thick it stopped even more
hits, but then you pay the plate penalties. Or cloth, and stop as many hits
as leather or chain on an ordinary person.

By the way, technically it should be called plate, not plate mail.

Getting a threshold number is not generally very useful because the armour
generally doesn't become attractive until it has been at least mostly
defeated by your ST.

> I think that if you are happy with most people not
> being able to gain any advantage for any armor until very high ST

I don't think this is desirable. I would prefer not to force characters
into crossing a desert to get to the promised land. All increases should
matter.

--
David
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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