On 5/24/16 9:01 PM, Rick Smith wrote:
12 was arbitrarily chosen for illustration purposes. Now that I've read what everyone has to say about it, and actually thought about it in a coherent fashion, I'd like to propose 15 as the starting point (explained below).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".
Guess I didn't clearly discuss how to treat MA. The idea in my head was, once you've offset all the DX penalty of any type of armor, you've also offset the MA penalty. I'd say that, if you had a suit of plate armor so fine that it never gave you any DX penalty, but still affected your MA, then you'd completely offset that MA penalty at the ST level it would take you to wear an ordinary suit of plate armor without DX penalty. (But I'd also doubt the possibility of such a suit even existing.)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.)
Because this pushes the "no negatives" numbers closer together, it makes sense for the magic numbers to start at a higher ST. Also, I'd like for the Advantages of Great ST to somewhat parallel the Advantages of Great DX, which basically start at 14 when the Fencing talent becomes available (though technically, you can get twice-a-turn archery at DX 12, if you have a small bow, Missile Weapons talent, and no armor).
So: (ST 14: Warrior) ST 15: 1 less DX penalty, cloth free. (ST 16: Veteran) ST 17: 2 less DX penalty, leather free, chainmail etc. for only -2 MA*. (ST 18: Campaigner?) ST 19: 3 less DX penalty, chainmail free.*I'm using the ITL/AM version of MA penalties for armor. (Incidentally, ITL goes out of its way to keep MA an even number for everyone. Rick, when determining whether a figure with an odd MA has moved half their MA in combat, do you round up or down? And what's the realism/gameability tradeoff?)
- Meg
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===== Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com. Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body "unsubscribe tft"
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