Vambraces, Helmets and Gloves

[JohnPaulB]

I tried a search for armor parts on this site and in ITL and didn't find any.

So your character can be fully armored per
Cloth
Leather
Chain
1/2 Plate
Full Plate.

But in the lower ends of armor, what do helmets, vambraces, greeves and gloves do?

What I used to do is declare that they did not count as anything unless that part of the body was specifically hit. They didn't affect DX, but a Helmet wearers vision might be affected (though that doesn't happen in the RAW.)
That would go for any mini armoring: like bikini chainmail or iron codpiece or heavy boots.

In other words, if you were only wearing leather gloves and then picked up a hot poker stick which originally would have inflicted something like 2 points damage to your hands and left it limp, you had two turns of holding it without damage.

If you were wearing an iron helmet and something dropped on your head, you were protected for 4 points. Probably knocked to the ground, though.

So Vambraces, greeves and gloves I consider as +1 protection
Chainmail gloves = +2 protection from cutting.
Helmets = the protection they are made out of.

What do capes protect you as?
Does it stop damage or does it add to the enemy DX to-hit dice?

[larsdangly]

This is more granular than the level of abstraction found in TFT. If I were to do something of this sort I'd just port over the armor system from GURPS. There are quite a few 'nuggets' of rules in GURPS that fit fine in TFT, and you won't fully gurpsify your game if you only bring in a couple of them.

[hcobb]

I would rather just port Cidri as a setting for GURPS.

[Skarg]

Yeah. You could make a pro-rated armor system for TFT, but unless that's the only thing you want to get that detailed with, you might want to look at GURPS, where the combat system is designed with support for that.

There are only one or two places in the TFT rules that mention parts of armor, IIRC, with regard to thieves taking off gloves to pick locks.

[JLV]

I think there was also something about helmets restricting vision/hearing (you might be easier to surprise), but I may be confusing GURPS with TFT, or it may have been in original TFT somewhere, but not in Legacy...

I do know that in something somewhere (maybe the Space Gamer designers' notes? Advanced Melee?) Steve said something about not worrying about that level of detail much and instead just assuming that armor sets were full armor sets (leather cap or full helmet, or whatever seemed appropriate with the set of armor being worn).

One thing you should keep in mind when porting "GURPS-isms" over into TFT is that the combat turns are vastly different in time scale and the armor and weapon effects as such have to be adjusted to account for that.

(That's one problem with playing TFT for 40 years, and GURPS, and other RPGs -- it all sort of mixes together in your mind after a while...)

[JohnPaulB]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

This is more granular than the level of abstraction found in TFT. If I were to do something of this sort I'd just port over the armor system from GURPS. There are quite a few 'nuggets' of rules in GURPS that fit fine in TFT, and you won't fully gurpsify your game if you only bring in a couple of them.

Actually, I wasn't intending to granularise it, but I guess I did.

I play a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) figures in miniatures game style. Some unarmored figures had vambraces. Some unarmored figures had leather helmet. (The bikini chainmail was a joke.)

If the figure "bought" Cloth armor, he has the benefit of cloth all over his generic body. If they didn't "buy" regular armor, they got no overall benefits. The intent was to give the lead figures some benefit to sub-armor that isn't in the rules. That seemed to be: making it zero benefit unless the attack hit a part of the body that had the sub-armor.

[JLV]

Though I did see some RPG or another use a highly specialized sort of armor (rings of various sizes on legs and arms of Amazon warriors) to "equal" a higher armor class in order to get around the "chainmail bikini" stuff. I thought it was quite clever, though frankly, I can't remember what RPG it was in now...

[mark hill]

my table has been using parts-armour and layering for a long time, a separate table for helmets, but obviously thats not for everyone, and TFT was really not designed to be that detailed

An idiot-simple version might be for 'body only' armour, no limbs or helmet, just halve weight and cost, reduce the Dx and movement penalties by one step

GM applied penalties: youd have effectively no armour in fire or explosions .. foes of DX 12+ will go for a targeted shot 50% of the time .. and if youve got bare legs, well, wild animals ALWAYS go for the legs

JLV .. yeah me too, the rules from diff systems get all mixed up in yer head :)

[hcobb]

ITL 149: "Armor must be enchanted as a whole. You could not have a helm that stopped 5 hits, a breastplate that stopped 5 more, gauntlets that stopped 5 more apiece, and so on."

ITL 155: "Common items which often carry spells are amulets, weapons (especially swords), staffs, jewels or jeweled carvings, belt-buckles, cloaks, boots"

So are boots part of a suit of armor or not?

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by hcobb

ITL 149: "Armor must be enchanted as a whole. You could not have a helm that stopped 5 hits, a breastplate that stopped 5 more, gauntlets that stopped 5 more apiece, and so on."

ITL 155: "Common items which often carry spells are amulets, weapons (especially swords), staffs, jewels or jeweled carvings, belt-buckles, cloaks, boots"

So are boots part of a suit of armor or not?

Your quote from ITL 149 is about the Weapon/Armor Enchantment spell. ITL 155 is about all enchantments.

I'd say that boots can be enchanted either individually or as a pair, with any enchantment other than Weapon/Armor Enchantment, which specifically requires a full suit to be enchanted as a whole. i.e. If you have a suit or armor enchanted with W/A enchantment, and part out the boots, the W/A enchantment stops doing its thing until all worn by one person at the same time.