More Armor Makes You More Killable?

[coldwind]

It's not as simple as just defining armors three ways, you'd also have to define which weapons fall into which categories. And also come up with rules on how to use weapons "off-category". More realistic, sure. Perhaps not very difficult, but it is 1-2 more steps each round of combat, which can drag things out.

[aprewett]

Yep, thats what I was saying in my post, and I have no problem with the system as written. But my confusion was coming from peoples posts who seem to have a problem with the system maybe not mirroring realism expectations.
So either there is some fundamental flaw and we need a new system or we accept it as is. I just was not getting were the thread was going.
I should not write things with jet lag, probably should not write at all as I think I may have killed too many brain cells when I was young.

Allan

[Zorbeltuss]

Way I understand it, the question in the OP is whether or not the system as it is right now, works out such that the heavier armors offer worse protection than lighter ones.

Not so much about how much realism there should be to it.

[Carriker]

Just so.

And what I've taken from this thread is that if you are wearing heavier armor against a more skilled opponent, you're likelier to take more damage. Against a skilled opponent, however, you're better off in lighter armor.

This summary pretty much matches the "reality" of Martin's world, truth be told, regardless of whether or not it matches our understanding of historical martial sciences. You wear heavy armor on the battlefield, against a large number of less-skilled opponent. But when, say, fighting a duel or otherwise engaging someone who is skilled, it's not uncommon to see much lighter armor.

I'll admit that I'm not really seeing much of an issue of conflict, all things considered.

[Zorbeltuss]

Opponent's skill doesn't come into it at all.

It's how much damage the weapon does (multiplied per degree of success) that is the only factor that matters.

Against The Mountain with his greatsword and obscene amounts of bonus dices in strength, you want padded.

Against a standard knight with a lance, you want splint.

Against a guy with longsword, like Ser Vardis that fights with honor, you want splint.

On the battlefield, you want splint.

In tournaments, you want full plate, and that's pretty much the only situation where full plate isn't an idiotic choice.

If you expect your opponent to fight dirty, you want Breastplate.

If you are using acrobatic defense, you want padded.

[Pytorb]

Here's a quick idea on the secondary concern about wearing heavy enough armour to seriously eat into your Combat Defence...

To score a critical hit you must not only roll at least double your opponent's combat defence but also at least double their Armour Rating. This can be after effects such as Shattering or Piercing have reduced their Armour Rating.

[zebuleon]

i have also played around with making the AR take away from the Base damage not the Total damage. then the balance has to be adjusted for the high AR's making some cases near impossible to damage.

Off the top of my head I could do something like each degree removes like 2 points of AR. so if you hit a full plate opponent with 3 degrees his AR would then be 4. but if base damage was say 6, you would do 6 points of damage((6-4)x3). Still offering some protection even with a good hit.

This kind of represents you hitting him in a vital or weak spot on the armor. I'll have to experiment some with my group though.

I should note i'm not about realism I really don't care about how accurate it is nor am I about min/maxing the system, I just hate having things that become worthless. It kind of defeats the purpose of having them. I've had to do that to a few benefits as well because they really aren't worth the points to get them. but that's a different discussion.

[njall]

Just so.

And what I've taken from this thread is that if you are wearing heavier armor against a more skilled opponent, you're likelier to take more damage. Against a skilled opponent, however, you're better off in lighter armor.

This summary pretty much matches the "reality" of Martin's world, truth be told, regardless of whether or not it matches our understanding of historical martial sciences. You wear heavy armor on the battlefield, against a large number of less-skilled opponent. But when, say, fighting a duel or otherwise engaging someone who is skilled, it's not uncommon to see much lighter armor.

Sorry, but may I ask where you're getting this impression? I mean, Syrio f'kin Forel only goes down because his opponent is wearing plate armor, and he's pretty much the epitome of skill in the books.
Oberyn Martell ends up losing (albeit barely ) against the Mountain, and he's immensely more skilled than Gregor... in fact, he'd have killed Gregor pretty fast without his full plate.
Also, Jaime dons heavy armor whenever he can, and, in ADwD, Barristan wins at least one duel against a younger, more skilled and faster opponent just because of his full plate.
Aside from Bronn's duel with Sir Vardis Egan ( who was really a glorified mook, and that, again, ended up losing because heavy armor essentially tired him out, rather than making him take more damage )I've seen nothing but "wearing as much steel as you can really is a good idea if you're going to fight, regardless of your opponent's skill" in the books, TBH...

[Zorbeltuss]

Syrio was knocking out Lannister mooks with a wooden sword, I don't think we can know if it was Ser Meryn's armor or skill that made that tactic ineffective. Nor do we know

It's pretty clear that Bronn is really good at fighting, odds are that Ser Vardis would get butchered within seconds without all that armor.

Barristan vs Gladiator and Qotho vs Ser Jorah for that matter are two cases of armor wins, but the knights were facing opponents that didn't know how to fight against armor, so those are poor cases. I'm pretty sure that Qotho, as a bloodrider, probably qualifies as highly skilled.

Oberyn vs mountain is also a bad example. Heavy armor effectively means that you plan for up close and personal, and that's suicide against Ser Gregor. What Oberyn does is to be lightly armoured so that he has more mobility. He also uses a spear so that he can stab at Ser Gregor while staying outside of the reach of his sword.

Game Mechanically, Oberyn has better reach and better movement, and pretty much insures that ser Gregor never manages to attack him. Ser Gregor has so much armor that Oberyn needs many attacks to get through it, but eventually he'll win. Had Oberyn (or Bronn for that matter) been standing still, he'd go down very quickly because he does not have protection.

Game Mechanically (and in the book for that matter), Oberyn wins using this tactic (only getting killed because he let his guard down), which would usually be the case in real life as well. But it's personal combat, not the battlefield, on the battlefield, you do not have the option of outmanoeuvring your foe as there'll be someone standing in the way, enemy or ally.

In sum:
Armor makes it much, much harder to wound you, but it is also makes you vulnerable to a mobile enemy because he gets many more chances to get in the decisive strike than you do.

[njall]

Syrio was knocking out Lannister mooks with a wooden sword, I don't think we can know if it was Ser Meryn's armor or skill that made that tactic ineffective. Nor do we know

Actually, we do. Arya kind of explains it to the reader when she remembers Syrio's teachings and tries to assess the situation, and she sees Syrio on one side, padded armor and wooden sword, and Meryn Trant, wearing heavy armor, and instantly realizes that Syrio is going to lose just before she runs away.

It's pretty clear that Bronn is really good at fighting, odds are that Ser Vardis would get butchered within seconds without all that armor.

Yeah, which... kind of proves my point that heavy armor is better even against skilled opponents?

Barristan vs Gladiator and Qotho vs Ser Jorah for that matter are two cases of armor wins, but the knights were facing opponents that didn't know how to fight against armor, so those are poor cases. I'm pretty sure that Qotho, as a bloodrider, probably qualifies as highly skilled.

Still, heavy armor wins. I don't see why that's a bad example. "His opponent didn't know how to fight against heavy armor" doesn't mean a thing in this context, heavy armor still turned a possible defeat into an easy win. I don't see how it undermines my point, TBH...

Oberyn vs mountain is also a bad example. Heavy armor effectively means that you plan for up close and personal, and that's suicide against Ser Gregor. What Oberyn does is to be lightly armoured so that he has more mobility. He also uses a spear so that he can stab at Ser Gregor while staying outside of the reach of his sword.

Game Mechanically, Oberyn has better reach and better movement, and pretty much insures that ser Gregor never manages to attack him. Ser Gregor has so much armor that Oberyn needs many attacks to get through it, but eventually he'll win. Had Oberyn (or Bronn for that matter) been standing still, he'd go down very quickly because he does not have protection.

Game Mechanically (and in the book for that matter), Oberyn wins using this tactic (only getting killed because he let his guard down), which would usually be the case in real life as well. But it's personal combat, not the battlefield, on the battlefield, you do not have the option of outmanoeuvring your foe as there'll be someone standing in the way, enemy or ally.

In sum:
Armor makes it much, much harder to wound you, but it is also makes you vulnerable to a mobile enemy because he gets many more chances to get in the decisive strike than you do.

Sorry, still disagree.
In this specific case, for example, Oberyn didn't go for a decisive strike.
Instead, he poisoned his spear and tried to wear down Gregor. Yeah, in the end he managed to land a couple of good hits, but, again, only because he was fighting as dirty as he could, with poison, longer reach and a lot of running around and only when Gregor is, again, tired and, later, worn down by poison. Before he finally connects, all of his blows keep bouncing on the Mountain's armor. This is not what would happen if we tried to play out the scene in the rpg, at all: Gregor would be hit just about every time ( Oberyn has what, fighting 5 at least, I suppose ) with two degrees of success at the very least, thus he'd go down pretty fast, assuming Oberyn can dodge his blows.
Also, keep in mind that the only reason he has to fight as dirty as he does, and basically has to walk a very fine line just to stay alive is, again, Gregor's full armor.

To clarify, in the books, heavy armor doesn't really make you less mobile, or worse at defending yourself,
it will just tire you out faster if you're trying to keep up with the light armored guy's mobility. That's very different from making you more vulnerable against skilled opponents, since those same skilled opponents would just kill you faster without it instead of having to run around in circles hoping that you don't land a good blow for half a hour.

[Pytorb]

Here's another quick, totally unplaytested idea for armour. How about if you are wearing sufficiently heavy armour (Brigandine, Half Plate or Plate) the maximum degrees of success that can be scored against you for damage is reduced from 4 to 3? This could be raised back to 4 by a sufficiently good co-ordinate roll to allow a large group of men to essentially mob a knight and kill them. Shattered Heavy Armour would also not limit the degrees of success to 3.

[Kival]

Sounds very artificial, it's too much outside the rest of the rules for me, if you understand, what I mean.

[Pytorb]

I was trying to keep the easy to hit, hard to hurt feel of heavy armour and it just felt easier to do this than to increase the armour value of certain armours then remembering to change it in every stat block where needed. It is a bit of a cliff-edge I admit, so maybe Splint and Brigandine should have a maximum of 3.5 degrees of success (rounding down). It is also a bit of rules shift but hopefully no more than counting the number of sixes for criticals or ones for fumbles which don't really come up anywhere else.

[Zorbeltuss]

Easiest quick fix is to reduce armor penalties on Brigandine, Half-Plate and Full Plate.

Like maybe make Brigandine have AP -3 and Half/full plate AP-4, would at least fix the problem that only an idiot would use those armors in battle. Because clearly, Full Plate is the armor of choice for a Knight that can afford it in Westeros.

[Kival]

Because clearly, Full Plate is the armor of choice for a Knight that can afford it in Westeros.

At least in central Westeros. I would not want to use a Full Plate in the Dornish Desert and eventually I'd also not want it in the north but I don't know so much about the interferences between extreme cold and plate armour.

[wundergoat]

In my experience, having heavy armor can lead to more damage being done, particularly against armor defeating weapons like greatswords and longaxes, or anything with powerful for that matter. The main issue is that it is all fine and dandy until someone can start reliably getting damage past the armor, which usually happens around 5 fighting. 5 fighting is also significant since its not too hard to get to and rolling that many dice generates VERY consistent numbers.

One solution my group has used is adding a "resistance value" to armors that scales with degree of hit. For example, full plate would have a rating of 8/2, where it negates 10 damage versus a 1st degree hit and 16 versus a 3rd degree hit. The powerful weapons still go through it like butter while making it more effective against lower damage weapons and maintaining the CD penalty.

[aprewett]

I just have this feeling with this thread, it comes back to metal armours being very resistant to edged attack. Would it not be possible to simply say that the armour has a damage threshold, v's certain types of attacks (like edged) that must be passed for the hit to have effect, or it negates to blunt.
I know I was shown the error of my ways with understanding this thread it just seems that peoples problems come from the damage resistance and impervious factor of some armours.

Allan

[wundergoat]

The axe and blugeon quality trees make them more effective against armor.

Axes less so, but for instance if using the lvl 1 quality, a hit that gets any damage through will then do extra damage.

With bludgeons, the shattering quality will over the course of a few rounds of combat will quickly erode the armored character's defenses.

Piercing as a weapon ability is a bit weak though. My group multiplies piercing by degrees to really show that armor-defeating power.

[DaimosofRedstone]

I liked the mechanics in the GoO-Game:
Fatigue. You could fight in heavy armor quite unimpended IF you were f**king strong.
Also it had a fixed damage reduction on top of protection. Quite like that bit.

[Mrjamespj]

Hmmm...how about there is 0 Armour Penalty for a number of minutes = to your endurance ranks? And for every minute over that the penalty increases by -1. That gives a character with Endurance 4 and full plate 10 minutes before he is suffering the full penalties of his armour, and ten minutes is usually enough for a single fight, sure in a large scale battle he will soon be exhausted, but that's their fault for wearing such heavy armour in a battle that could last for hours. Also maybe a character needs to rest for ten minutes or so to regain one "armour minute".

I think that would work fairly well as most of the characters in the books and especially the tv series who wear heavier armour are still able to move fairly quickly and having trained for years to fight in armour might be able to wear it for a short period of time without penalty. This would add the ability of wearing a target down in combat too.

What do you guys think? I'm wondering whether to bring this in to my own game.

Thanks

James

[Pytorb]

There's already the option under the Fatigue rules to ignore the armour penalty for a round. If you wanted to increase it, you could always create a Benefit where this has a duration of the character's Stamina speciality in rounds instead of a single round. If you wanted to take it even further again you could always add this Benefit from my house rules...

Tireless (Martial Quality)
Prerequisite: Endurance 3 (Stamina 1B)
You are tireless in combat. You may ignore as many fatigue points as your Stamina Speciality before starting to take penalties to test results.

[Fergiejr]

The real issue why armor is nearly useless is from shattering effects on weapons

To learn combat before we played for real, I had two of the Hedge Knights from the books NPCs fight our party (so we all could learn the rules and get used to it)

1 heavy fighter, plate, massive sized, pure fighter
1 light footed, hvy leather, shield and dornish so +2 CD for a total of 16 DC
1 archer type fighter, light armor, light footed,

The plate was nearly destroyed within 3 rounds of combat, with shattering 2 on the ball and chain the armor was useless, but still giving him a really crappy CD

All of the sudden he was still getting a massive armor pen but his AR was lower than the heavy leathers the other two had on! and this was within 30 seconds of the fight

What house rules have you done with shattering? and from the way I read it, it takes effect on 2 degrees of success, "so hit by 5+"...when your targets CD is 8, and you have 4D or 5D its pretty easy to crush 2 AR off them for good.....


So you get to buy new armor every fight? and dont ever use a longsword if you want to fight a guy in plate.......

[Zorbeltuss]

Shattering quality is weird in that, yeah.

[Kival]

Shattering is a very interesting and nice quality but it works a little too fast maybe.

[Fergiejr]

Shattering is a very interesting and nice quality but it works a little too fast maybe.

Exactly, so our group is thinking about reducing its effectiveness....

we are thinking about making it have the same effect of piercing (so shattering 2 reduces the AR by 2 for that hit) and then having a slight chance to destroy some of the AR for good.


Also why are shattering weapons the only weapons that can destroy AR? by game mechanics you could hit a guy with a battleaxe 50 times and never make a dent in his heavy wooden shield, but one swing with a warhammer and its instantly destroyed.....

Was this play tested?


On the play test note....anyone notice a heavy wood club costs 20ss....while a wagon costs 20ss?

Screw the trade skill, just buy wagons and break them down into clubs LOL