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

[Jeffrey Vandine <jlv61560@yahoo.com>]

Hmm.  This:

"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."

...creates a visualization problem for me.  Are you seriously proposing that someone could wear a foot-thick set of leather armor and move at all?  The statement "...you can wear leather that is so thick it
is as good as the plate an ordinary person wears..." certainly seems to imply that.  At some point sheer physics will intervene and you will become a leather encased statue...until, at least, your opponent does you the huge favor of cutting you free.

The longer this debate goes on, the more inclined I am to go with the rules as written!  ;-)

--------------------------------------------
On Tue, 5/24/16, David Bofinger <bofinger.david@gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: (TFT) Re: New Armor in TFT. -- David's thoughts.
 To: "Rick Smith" <rick_ww@lightspeed.ca>
 Cc: "Anthony Purcell" <dr.anthony.purcell@gmail.com>, "Joe Hartley" <jh@brainiac.com>, "Marc Gacy" <marcgacy@gmail.com>, "Nils Lindeberg" <018.591777@telia.com>, "Thomas Fulmer" <tfulmer1@gmail.com>, tft@brainiac.com, "dan nicholson" <kootenayvalleydan@yahoo.ca>, "Richard Walters" <rick.walters@yahoo.com>
 Date: Tuesday, May 24, 2016, 10:24 PM
 
 > 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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