[no subject]

["The Hussar of Conflans" <hussar@hotmail.com>]

Responding to various posts (I get TFT in digest mode)

>I'm not sure you *can* do a good piece armor system for this. The >big, 
BIG problem is that (as TSR has been finding out for the past 25 >years) 
an overall armor rating and individually armored zones just >don't work 
together.

Why not?  Because TSR says so?  I'm not advocating a zone hit system; I 
really don't like the idea.  If I wanted to play a game like that I'd 
play THE RULES WITH NO NAME or D&D or something.  I LIKE the idea of 
generalized "hits" on the body, this is one of the reasons I bought 
Melee and Wizard in the first place: simplicity!  

Why can't the EFFECT of sectional armor be cumulative?  It works pretty 
well in Oriental Adventures (TSR).  

& the Mav said:
>Of course with gladiatorial combat you will generally be targeting 
>your attack to a certain extent which would call for separate hit 
>tables (high attack, medium attack, or low attack, etc.)  Otherwise 
>you run into the "swang for the head and chopped off his toe" 
>effect...

Sounds like we're trying to rewrite the game though.  

and Dan Tulloh Said:

>I was thinking about sectional armor this evening.  As the Hussar
presented it, what he came up with after piecing all of the armor
together was essentially chainmail in Basic Melee.  And there
just weren't that many options to choose from.  Unless the piece
system he is developing allows strange combinations (such as -2
hits, -1 DX or -2 hits, -3 DX), what's the point?  You could just
say that Gladiator Armor falls somewhere in between leather and
chain.<

The numbers I assigned are somewhat arbitrary, but were based on the 
three variables offered in the rules for plate, leather and chain 
protection.  A PIECE of plate is not the same thing as plate armor, a 
leather Stomacher is not the same thing as leather armor either.  So 
their protection value should be allocated as a fraction of the bigger 
armor.  I don't see how the piece armor system doesn't allow for strange 
combinations, as you say.  Theoretically, a gladiator figure could deck 
himself out with multiple pieces of armor in a redundant fashion, as 
long as he would allow for the DX penalty.  I was trying to be 
simplistic.  

>So it seems to me that if sectional armor is going to be 
implemented, then it must be flexible enough to provide for weird
combinations of hits stopped and DX adjustments, or else you are 
going to have to bite the bullet and use hit locations.  Other-
wise you are simply left with "Light, Medium and Heavy" Gladiator
Armor which is equivalent to Cloth, Leather and Chainmail re-
spectively.<

I guess I could generalize to that level but I don't like it very much.  
You lose the differntial between similarly armored but differently armed 
gladiator classes, as in the Samnites and Early Thracians.



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