No Love For Armour?

[hcobb]

All my wizard wants for X-mass is Water Armor.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by hcobb

All my wizard wants for X-mass is Water Armor.

I don't even know what that is supposed to mean.

[hcobb]

ITL Index needs to add the entry: Water Armor 98.

[FireHorse]

If we can have ultra-rare materials, then I want my armor made from Kevlar.

Err, I mean… Kevlarite. Ium. Kevlaritium. Yeah, that's the stuff. Weight of hardened leather, strength of fine steel plate. Handcrafted by secret (and patented) processes known only to a reclusive enclave of Dwarven armor-smiths, whom only wealthy kingdoms have enough gold to hire.

[hcobb]

Goblin sized Water Armor is 9.8 pounds so c.f. Repair at ITL 25.

But remember that a good guy in shining fine plate armor doesn't stop a goblin with a staff so don't leave home without your club (or whatever) staff.

[Jeff Lord]

Re: "Water Armor"

From ITL pg. 98:

"The drawback is that once it’s damaged, the rips slowly
lengthen, and no one knows how to fix it."

Not even wizards who know the Repair spell. But hey, YMMV.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by ArmoredSaint

Armor isn't represented as being very effective in this game.

I think it's more complex than that.

In a Melee-style duel between starting characters, armour isn't usually worth it. A point of armour effectively costs 1 DX and about 1 MA, so more than an attribute. But for one attribute spent on ST I can upgrade the damage of my weapon for an average of slightly more than 1 point, more than cancelling out your armour.

Armour comes into its own in other circumstances:

• For more powerful characters, because they've maxed out on upgrading weapons and this is somewhere else to put attribute raises. This effect is weaker in Legacy than Classic, which puts a pretty hard limit on attribute bloat.
• For games that are much longer than a duel, for instance ITL-style campaigns. In this case the player characters fight a large number of battles, each of which they are expected to win, but each of which has a small chance of catastrophe e.g. losing a PC. Armour slows down the battle, reducing the randomness, making the victories more routine.
• Against threats which are individually weak. A wolf, for instance, doesn't do a lot of damage. Armour takes the edge off a wolf very effectively.

[hcobb]

Take a typical starting wizard (ST 6, DX 11, IQ 15) with dagger-staff IV and Brand vs wolf:

Double parry means the wolf is at -2 DX (Fire, ITL 124), four dice to hit against 4 points of defense (Two weapons, ITL 41) giving the wolf an average damage output of 0.33 (standard hits) + 0.02 (double damage rolling a 5) + 0.05 (triple damage rolling a 4) for around a third of a point of damage each turn.

The adjDX 14 occult strike hits 91% of the time and cooks the mad dog from the inside in about three turns.

So the wizard is down three fatigue and one hit from the fight.

Of course nailing the wolf with a light crossbow sniper is a better choice.

[Shostak]

If the wolf chose to fight, it would almost certainly do so in HTH, which would almost certainly mean the swift demise of the ST 6 unarmored wizard. Armor would help keep him alive longer.

[hcobb]

ITL 124: "will not initiate HTH combat"

Two weapon silver dagger staff IV and brand is a wonderful weapon set in Neo-TFT. Witches ought to start with this and build up IQ for Staff V rather than starting with IQ 17 and slowly building DX up. (Of course overpowering impossible odds with Charisma 17 may keep fights from starting in the first place.)

For the most part Animal Handler or Alertness will work fine with IQ 15.