Revised Armors

[Ardanis]

Vanilla

Leather (2)	2  0  2  0
Studded (3)	5  4  3  4
Hide (4)	   4  2  4  2
Chain (5)	  7  5  3  5
Splint (6)	 6  7  8  7
Plate (7)	  10 7  7  7
Fullplate (9)  13 12 9  12

 

First post

Leather (2)	2  1  2  1
Studded (3)	5  4  3  4
Hide (4)	   6  5  4  5
Chain (5)	  7  6  4  6
Splint (6)	 8  7  6  7
Plate (7)	  9  8  7  8
Fullplate (9)  12 11 9  11

 

Last page

Leather (2)	2  1  3  1
Studded (3)	5  4  2  4
Hide (4)	   5  4  5  4
Chain (5)	  7  6  4  6
Splint (6)	 7  7  7  7
Plate (7)	  9  8  7  8
Fullplate (9)  12 11 9  11

Should leather be better against blunt than studded?

Splint then might as well be set to base 7. I'd go with 7-6-8-6

 

That being said, I jus had a very crazy idea...I could make them use light armor animation. Ashen Scale and Armor of Faith's bams in particular do look like in-game light armored avatars (take a look at them), and the armors' color palettes (which for some reason get extremely messed up if you simply switch the animation from 3A to 2A ) should do the trick and make them still look as medium armor. I'm saying this because splint armor ends up working much like leather and hide armor with low anti-piercing properties and high anti-blunt ones...

Let's see...

Hide is brown 3A, splint - metal 2A. Studded uses different color from leather. Full plate is probably more decorated than simple plate.

[Ardanis]

Speed Penalties

We've already talked about it, but now I'm positive it's actually a must - change movement penatly to SF malus.

Reason one - people tend to hate inconsistent party movement (poor Boots of Speed...)

Reason two - you really want to use light armor when backstabbing or shooting a bow. Heavy crossbow will be the same in leather or FPM, but if you want to interrupt casters then bow is so much better in leather.

 

Suggested values:

leather, elven chain - none

studded - 1

chainmail, hide - 2

splint - 3

plate - 4

fpm - 5

medium shield - 1

tower shield - 3

 

(a heavy armored warrior may find difficult to catch an unarmored mage who tries to run away

If he has SF=8, then it will indeed be difficult to hit a moving target. Yay for spears and flails

[Demivrgvs]

Should leather be better against blunt than studded?

Mmm, studded's rivets made it uneffective against blunt while the softer leather better absorbs the hits, but I don't know if that makes studder leather worse than plain leather against a bludgeoning weapon. Yarpen, who seems to know quite a bit about medieval warfare, do suggested it in the first page (see here).

 

Anyway, just to clarify, using your interesting way to portrait armors' effectiveness my current table is this:

Leather (2)	2  1  3  1
Studded (3)	5  4  3  4
Hide (4)	   5  4  5  4
Chain (5)	  7  6  4  6
Splint (6)	 7  6  8  6
Plate (7)	  9  8  7  8
Fullplate (9)  12 11 9  11

 

If we want leather armor to be better than studded leather against blunt weapons we have two options:

- raise leather armor bonus against it to 2

- follow Yarpen's suggestion and put a +1 penalty on studded leather while keeping leather armor at -1 bonus

 

That being said, whatever we do to leather armor we should do the same with hide armor imo, as the latter pratically is the same thing with a more resistant but heavier material (e.g. especially within D&D/BG where hide armor is often made from magical beasts such as trolls or dragons).

 

Splint then might as well be set to base 7. I'd go with 7-6-8-6

Ehm, actually that's how splint already works in my table without changing its base AC.

 

That being said, I jus had a very crazy idea...I could make them use light armor animation. Ashen Scale and Armor of Faith's bams in particular do look like in-game light armored avatars (take a look at them), and the armors' color palettes (which for some reason get extremely messed up if you simply switch the animation from 3A to 2A ) should do the trick and make them still look as medium armor. I'm saying this because splint armor ends up working much like leather and hide armor with low anti-piercing properties and high anti-blunt ones...

Let's see...

Hide is brown 3A, splint - metal 2A. Studded uses different color from leather. Full plate is probably more decorated than simple plate.

Hide with chain mail (3A) animation?

 

Anyway, as I said I think splint mail with light armor animation (2A) would look great once I re-work on the color palette (I'll try to do it tonight and let you know), but making leather and studded leather distinguishable simply using a different color is impossible, they are all brown!

 

Within V3 most full plates set major and minor color palette too, whereas plate mails doesn't, but nothing of that matters because these armors work exactly the same way...if you see a heavy armored opponent (4A) you can't go wrong, blunt weapons will work best.

[Ardanis]

Chainmail is the only armor that has bonus/penalty to every damage type. Hmm.

 

P.S Regarding halberds though the whole "piercing is always better than slashing" thing remains true. Otoh, making morningstars deal crushing et piercing dmg as per 3E table could be interesting as with the proposed table piercing weapons are going to be better than crushing ones vs leather, hide and splint armors.

How would it be implemented? Splitting damage into two sources within one header leads, as you've pointed out, to double effectiveness against stoneskin. Or double header instead, as with halberds? But then I can't really picture how it may be explained.

[Demivrgvs]

Chainmail is the only armor that has bonus/penalty to every damage type. Hmm.

Is it a problem?

 

P.S Regarding halberds though the whole "piercing is always better than slashing" thing remains true. Otoh, making morningstars deal crushing et piercing dmg as per 3E table could be interesting as with the proposed table piercing weapons are going to be better than crushing ones vs leather, hide and splint armors.

How would it be implemented? Splitting damage into two sources within one header leads, as you've pointed out, to double effectiveness against stoneskin. Or double header instead, as with halberds? But then I can't really picture how it may be explained.

I was hoping weapon's Damage Type parameter set to piercing/blunt (6) could easily do that for us...no?

[Ardanis]

I didn't realize there were combined damage types. Off to test it.

 

Btw, what do you think about speed factor penalties?

 

PS Dammit, man! Type 6 uses the lowerest resistance type the target has!

This also means we can omit dual header on halberds and use type 7 for them, with old 1d10 damage and 9 speed factor.

[Demivrgvs]

I didn't realize there were combined damage types. Off to test it.

 

PS Dammit, man! Type 6 uses the lowerest resistance type the target has!

Resistance or AC? We mostly need it to check the latter.

 

This also means we can omit dual header on halberds and use type 7 for them, with old 1d10 damage and 9 speed factor.

When it comes to halberds instead I don't think it would achieve what we want in any case. We want halberds to inflict more dmg via slashing type when using its thrusting attack isn't needed (aka against unarmored foes). If we keep its dmg output fixed the halberd would just work as it ever did, and simply switch to slashing dmg if the target creature has worse AC/resistance vs slashing than it has vs piercing (afaik the former never happens, and the latter may happen a bunch of times in the entire game - am I wrong?).

 

Btw, what do you think about speed factor penalties?

Oh, I missed it somehow. I already said back then I like the concept (actually I thought I seggested it myself) but:

1) I don't see it being a replacement to movement rate

2) afaik multiple speed factor opcodes don't stack

 

1) I understand you don't want to scare people off by having DEX, movement and speed factor penalties all at once, but that would actually be "realistic". If I'm not wrong we discarded this idea because of 2) and because most players seemed along the line of "no way I install another penalty!".

 

That being said, it could indeed be interesting to add this option too, I just don't understand why you'd replace movement rate, which is a must have on my install (I cannot tolerate my low DEX paladin in full plate running around as fast as a sky high DEX rogue in light armor. Anyway, movement rate or not, adding speed factor penalties would probably require a small re-thinking of the whole armor system imo. I know having 2-3 speed penalty may not be a huge penalty (I'd use lower vlaues than your suggested ones, especially considering many weapon types within V3 already has speed factor almost near the cap), but perhaps we could offer a small compensation for those players willing to suffer this realism factor (e.g. better hidden AC bonuses).

[Ardanis]

Resistance or AC? We mostly need it to check the latter.

Both.

 

Speed Factor

1) I don't see it being a replacement to movement rate

Leather-clad rogue with a dagger can still run away from heavy fighter, stop and land a hit while the latter tries to get ready and strike too, then run away again, rinse, repeat.

 

2) afaik multiple speed factor opcodes don't stack

Two penalties seem to stack fine.

Interestingly, when I combined bonus and penalty, the former was ignored and the latter applied normally.

 

That being said, it could indeed be interesting to add this option too

I suppose seven install options is not overwhelming yet.

 

I'd use lower vlaues than your suggested ones, especially considering many weapon types within V3 already has speed factor almost near the cap

1) Proficient (or hasted) fighters will not see a big difference anyway with multiple attacks per round

2) My values are based on the light-light and heavy-heavy weapon/armor combinations. You can only benefit from dagger's low SF if you're not encumbered by a hundred pounds of armor, and if you're already that much slowed down then there's no reason not to pick a heavy weapon too.

 

And leather has a notable advantage over studded, when backstabbing a moving target (1 or 2 SF makes a big difference here), while providing alot less protection.

[Demivrgvs]

Weapon Changes

Resistance or AC? We mostly need it to check the latter.

Both.

Wow, just WOW! When was the last time the engine did something for us instead of getting in the way?

 

Then I'd say it's settled, morningstars get "Damage type: crushing and piercing", which also makes its current 1d6+1 dmg output look as appropropriate as it could be.

 

Speaking of this, aren't flail supposed to have the same feature? They don't in PnP (see here), but it seems like they should.

 

I'll think a little bit more about halberds, but if there's a way to avoid handling it via double header and non-standard description I'd vote for it. The two weapons we should compare halberds to are spears (faster, less damaging, longer range) and greatswords (slower, much more damaging, less effective vs armors).

 

 

Speed Factor

1) I don't see it being a replacement to movement rate

Leather-clad rogue with a dagger can still run away from heavy fighter, stop and land a hit while the latter tries to get ready and strike too, then run away again, rinse, repeat.

I didn't thought about this...V3 fixed speed factor for weapons can really make a big difference for rogues and light-armored warriors then.

 

2) afaik multiple speed factor opcodes don't stack

Two penalties seem to stack fine.

Interestingly, when I combined bonus and penalty, the former was ignored and the latter applied normally.

That's a really bad news considering we do have a bunch of items with speed bonus, and vanilla's Kensai use it too.

 

I'd use lower vlaues than your suggested ones, especially considering many weapon types within V3 already has speed factor almost near the cap

1) Proficient (or hasted) fighters will not see a big difference anyway with multiple attacks per round

2) My values are based on the light-light and heavy-heavy weapon/armor combinations. You can only benefit from dagger's low SF if you're not encumbered by a hundred pounds of armor, and if you're already that much slowed down then there's no reason not to pick a heavy weapon too.

Yeah, I'm just saying that a lot of heavy weapons (crushing ones in particular) won't care if the penalty is higher than 3-4, but at the same time making a short sword as slow as a bastard sword just by wearing heavy armor may be too much...but I may be wrong.

 

And leather has a notable advantage over studded, when backstabbing a moving target (1 or 2 SF makes a big difference here), while providing alot less protection.

Leather already also has the advantage of not causing -10% penalty to move silently and hide, but this may indeed be even more crucial. That being said, does studded leather really hampers your movement more than leather? I can easily picture hide armor having a higher penalty, but I'm not 100% sure about studded.

[Shaitan]

2) afaik multiple speed factor opcodes don't stack

Two penalties seem to stack fine.

Interestingly, when I combined bonus and penalty, the former was ignored and the latter applied normally.

That's a really bad news considering we do have a bunch of items with speed bonus, and vanilla's Kensai use it too.

Didn't Ascension64 fix this issue?

Edit:

Attacks Per Round Mod Fix=1

No, but perhaps he will?

[Ardanis]

Weapon Changes

Wow, just WOW! When was the last time the engine did something for us instead of getting in the way?

 

Then I'd say it's settled, morningstars get "Damage type: crushing and piercing", which also makes its current 1d6+1 dmg output look as appropropriate as it could be.

The only question is - what to do with maces, that are now quite inferior to MS? I once suggested to treat them as light maces, but you said that was the defining feature of Storm Star.

 

Speaking of this, aren't flail supposed to have the same feature? They don't in PnP (see here), but it seems like they should.

I don't know. But if they do, I say that -1 thaco penalty is justified.

 

 

Speed Factor

That's a really bad news considering we do have a bunch of items with speed bonus, and vanilla's Kensai use it too.

It happens with two 190th opcodes, header's own speed plays no role here. As for Kensai, he doesn't use neither armor nor shields.

 

Didn't Ascension64 fix this issue?

Worth to ask, for it's clearly a bug.

[Demivrgvs]

I've updated the first post to reflect the current table after the discussion with Dakk and Ardanis.

[n-ghost]

The only question is - what to do with maces, that are now quite inferior to MS?

 

Speed factor? Mace is lighter than morningstar and => more swings per round.

 

Also, since MS is quite clumsy, to say the least, => -1 to speed factor, thus making a gap by two points.