Armour Discussion

[oldmick]

I put this out as a discussion topic to see what other people think.

Armour is only effective where it actually covers so if you get hit on the lower arm and your armour only goes to the elbow you are counted as having no armour.

Medium armour stops single throughs so if hit by a single through you take a single but its not through but only if the blow hits the armour phys rep

Heavy armour stops double throughs so if hit by a double through you take a double but its not through but only if the blow hits the armour phys rep

Extra Heavy armour stops triple throughs so if hit by a triple through you take a triple but its not through but only if the blow hits the armour phys rep

[Lori]

I don't think it is the time to be changing any of the rules.

As it is, the rule book has had changes approved for it for over a year that have not made it into the PDF copy, so people are working with the wrong information (also full of typos, incorrect names for skills, and missing and conflicting information within it).

We should, instead, be insisting that the two documents that I sent well over a year ago with the PDF problems in them be implemented. One of them was just writing issues, no discussion needed. The other was incorporation of already approved changes to rules wording due to errors introduced when the wrong, heavily outdated, rulebook text was updated (i.e. before Piety was a path). Neither of the correction on my two documents required any discussions to be incorporated into the PDF - something I offered to do myself, but was told it would be done "soon".

[Dan L]

I shall be working very closely with both GC and the Rules team to get the referred issues resolved.

[shunteddd]

The problem with as hit armour with a health increase system like skully is that it can very quickly get to the point where you have so much armour of different values it becomes impo
ssible to keep track.

[Mendac]

Interesting Mick.

I like the ideas behind it but am very much in the not at the moment camp.

a

[oldmick]

I am not surgesting it should be changed now I was more interested to hear what people think

[mark]

I personally don't like the majority of the changes there.

Armour should cover the whole location (reasonably). If it doesn't on me and I get hit there then I personally take it as hitpoint damage, not armour. So we agree on that point.

There should be no immunity to through, other than that given by crafted/magical items or vet picks. Giving immunities to 'mundane' armour doesn't sit right with me and negates the necessity for crafted armour.

[oldmick]

I agree crafted armour would need to be looked at and on reflection I think through damage from spell should still unblocked but it bugs me that a person in full plate meets a person with a dagger doing double through he is going to loose but in reality (and I know comparing real life to larp is a mistake) the person with the dagger might get one blow in that ignores armour if he was not spotted before he gets flattened into the ground.

[shunteddd]

Historically battles between two fully suited combatants DID come down to wrestling and daggers.

[mark]

The issue with heavy armour vs dagger users is a roleplay one. The heavy armour user will undoubtedly get a hit off but the person with dagger/daggers will likely feel compelled to have to get a few hits off. In reality, like you say, it would be very different.

[Kennyboy]

As this is purely a discussion, what about a cool down timer on through? Even 5 seconds would be enough? Simulate lining up a new weak spot.

[robin]

putting a 'cooldown' on it would severely weaken any dual-wielders, as it means they would only be ably to effectively hit an armourmed person every 5 seconds (you can hit that fast with pole-arm) making it pointless to have through at all

EDIT: and/or making it pointless to dual-wield

[mitchella35]

Skully has never used that style of system for armour locational covering, because it adds hit points (as opposed to armour reduction) it would be a lot of "book keeping" for the player between armour and hit points. It's bad enough now realising when you're out of armour to start counting real hit points across all the body locations without then having to work a running total for both based on where you get hit at the time. Just about the only concession I've given is that if someone hits me on an "uncovered" part of my body and uses poison but the location is armoured then I'll take the poison.

Through is only as powerful as it is because of the number of hit points it gives in skully so if you lower the number of hit points then you fix through anyway without the need for this complication. In addition I don't like effectively nullifying skills by simply having bigger armour. You can nullify an entire damage skill tree with level 4/5/6 and 7 skills by wearing ex heavy at level 1? This strikes me as vastly unfair.

To comment on your analogy of "real life" (which LARP doesn't seek to be and I'm always wary of) but your Dagger user isn't usually going to be on the front lines, he's going to be off to the side, coming in behind the guy in full plate while he's fighting someone else and knife him between the plates and the odds are the Plate Wearer won't get another blow in. I saw Nathan Hoyle do that all the time as Fhyll. Get the drop and you don't need to worry about the other side. The problem in skully comes from armour and people not roleplaying the blow and being willing to take a shot to get inside and dagger spank. You won't get away from that with those changes because the guy with two daggers can get blows off faster than you can.

Cooldowns are awful with weapon hits in my opinion and I agree with Robin that they would make the skill unusable. You could argue exactly the same thing for triple and double.

[shunteddd]

As work got in the way and I couldn't answer fast enough so what tony said.
As varren I wear technically 4 pieces of armour on each arm. Leather gloves, Padded cloth bracers, smaller Studded leather bracers and chainmail all covering overlapping and different areas. That becomes eight different pieces of armour to keep track of hits on on my arms alone.

EDIT: Edited for clarity

[Lori]

Spamming of DoubleThroughDoubleThroughDoubleThrough as fast as a person can slur it together needs to be stopped by refs. It has been discussed before as breaking rule 7.

Unfortunately, we do not have enough refs in most battles to be able to ref this sort of thing. What I see is that we have usually one ref on the monster side, maybe one on the player side, but they are largely helping with plot and direction, and maybe another. There should be 2 to 3 dedicated people at each battle helping players keep to the rules, watching both player characters and monsters. They could look out for people hitting too hard, etc. They would also be available then with a Master Surgeon bag and a rulebook for people to take aside to ask a rule question. It would also make spotting genuine injuries and getting them real life first aid treatment more efficient.

I would be happy to be involved in such a role for the February linears, if needed.