Re: (TFT) plate and half-plate...opinions wanted

[Pasha and or Rick Smith <pnrsmith@istar.ca>]

Hi Stan,
	I have mixed feelings on your comments below 
which explains the long time it took me to reply.

	I agree that no one takes plate or half plate.  We
could very reasonably give them one less point of DX penalty
with out unballancing the TFT rules.  (For my rules, just lower
the no negative numbers by one.)

	I am not troubled by most people jumping right to
fine plate, in those days, if you were rich enough to buy 
plate, you would spend some time and money to 'custom fit'
it to your body.

	The real penalty IMHO is the movement penalties.
These are not terribly realistic, but I won't change them, 
they have a nice play ballance for the game.

	One thing that troubles me is that the players 
(in my campaign at least) tend to get plenty of armor.  This
would be typical for a moderately successful adventure:

Fine Leather 	-3 hits / attack
	weapon armor ench. on it 
		-3 hits  *

Leather Flesh item	-2 hits.
Large Shield	-2 hts.
Warrior		-1 hits.
		----------
Total:		-11 hits.

*	Notes:  I don't allow w/a enchantment to more than 
double the basic defence of the armor so the fine leather could 
get a max. of the -3 protection.  (Minimum an extra 1 point.)

	With out any really expensive magic they are stopping
11 points to the front.  By spending some serious money most 
people are able to do 5 or so points better than that.  This makes 
them immune to most attacks.  *** Sigh  ***  My biggest 
grumble with TFT is it is magic item oriented campaign.  That is
the main reason I've increased the cost of magic items and made
a number of weaker ones.

	With Plate, the w/a enchantment could stop an extra 
3 points so the above adventurer could get up to -17 points. 
 (-15 when attacked from the rear.)

	
	So that is the essence of it.  Lowering the DX
penalties is a good move, except I am loath to make getting 
more armor any easier to get.

	The real solution would be to make the armor
for Plate and Half Plate easier to get (my rules already 
give Chainmail a bonus) and make magical protection 
harder to get.

	Rick


>It seems to me that plate and half-plate are a real losing 
>proposition in TFT, particularly since they have DX penalties
>higher than the protection they provide.  Starting or moderately
>experienced characters with a DX high enough to take the -5 or 
>-6 penalty likely won't have the ST to manage the armor's 
>weight.  By the time their stats can handle the armor, they
>may well be wealthy enough to suit up in fine plate.
>
>I was thinking of extending ITL's "Advantages of Great Strength" 
>downwards, such that at 14 ST half plate would "only" be -4 to 
>DX and at 16 ST plate would be -5.  This would hopefully make 
>these armors a bit less useless to moderately experienced
>characters.
>
>To make this work with Rick's revised "advantages of great 
>ST" rules, the basic DX penalty of plate and half plate 
>would be decreased by one, and a note added regarding 
>"Disadvantages of Wimpy ST" saying that if you don't have 
>at least a 14/16 ST, the DX penalty goes up by one".
>
>Comments? 
>
>------------------------------------
>Stan
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