Experience Points

[JLV]

Honestly, it just seems like we've drifted completely away from the topic of "Experience" now...

[Jack O'All Trades]

I like capping attributes insofar as I never played PCs well past about 42 points. But there's a problem with a cap at just 40.

Should a top-tier medieval knight be clumsier than the average person when in their combat plate armor?

I'd say to represent realistic plate-armored knights from the late middle ages you need ST 15. With plate as DX -6* you need DX 16 to match the 'average' of 10. That leaves 9 points for IQ. That doesn't quite seem fair. I think there either needs to be a slightly higher cap (42 - 45ish?) or armor needs some reworking, perhaps in the form of advanced talents that slightly weaken DX costs of armor. (As Man to Man/GURPS acknowledged, TFT's DX modifiers are unrealistic. They're fun, fairly well balanced - though in 1 on 1 with similar abilities it seems DX trumps protection pretty thoroughly - but they make it hard to understand why an average Roman Legionnaire would wear Chainmail or why any non-Beserker Viking would want it if they could find it.**)

*Arguably this is because a knight's suit of armor should better be represented by Fine Plate. And perhaps they spend the big bucks on a +1 DX sword. But I've always interpreted both of those upgrades as being a step above the normal combat gear of even the warrior elite - perhaps I need to check the economics of that.

** Okay, I do think that with some testing it turns out that armor is generally more viable the more you get into 'organized' and large scale combat. There's liable to be more harassing fire by small bows and javelins, its easier to work together to get flanking bonuses, it's easier to use friends to shield you if you take an unlucky hit through your armor that causes -2DX, but still.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Jack O'All Trades

I like capping attributes insofar as I never played PCs well past about 42 points. But there's a problem with a cap at just 40.

Should a top-tier medieval knight be clumsier than the average person when in their combat plate armor?

No. But I also think that the TFT DX penalties for armor are the problem, rather than a proposed cap.

Raising the cap won't remove the problem unless the GM is super-generous with the attributes/EP he gives to knights. (That's what I did when I was a 12- or 13-year-old TFT GM and saw Excalibur and put some knight nations in my campaign - "oh, they must all have super-high DX if they're wearing plate!" Later (and still) I was a bit embarrassed by the illogic/imbalance of doing that.)

A higher cap is irrelevant because it takes years of (hopefully quite deadly) gameplay to get up to 40 points anyway, so the number of people in the a logical/fair game world who get even that far would be low. (Well, I guess that even more rational would be to have an actual non-EP character development system where knights raised to combat all their life would be rather good even at age 18.) In any case, the cap has no effect on anyone below 40 points, which hopefully is most people.

For 10 or 20 years now, there have been TV shows and common Internet conversations pointing out that even plate armor doesn't make people particularly clumsy if it's well-fitting and they've trained to use it. As you mentioned, even when GURPS appeared in 1986, the offensive DX penalties for armor were -1 for plate, -1 for a full-visor helmet, and 0 for anything else (the weight still drops people's Move and Dodge, but that only affects defense not offense, the opposite from TFT).

To me it seems like I'd have a talent (or a couple levels of talent) for armor-wearing training, which reduces the DX penalty for armor by 2 (or half). Thus a knight would tend to have no DX penalty for leather, -1 for chainmail, -2 for fine plate, and -3 or -4 for people in untailored plate.

Originally Posted by Jack O'All Trades

I'd say to represent realistic plate-armored knights from the late middle ages you need ST 15.

Why ST 15?

[JLV]

I could definitely go for an "Armor" talent or two, and have thought it was a serious oversight in the original game, clear back in 1981.

I hope Steve is including one (or more) in the new version!

I could see keeping the current -DX adjustments for folks who DON'T have the armor talent, but reducing it by 1 for each of the armor talents (assuming there were two) as you describe above. To me, at least, that seems to be a very elegant solution to the problem all the way around.

[Steve Jackson]

If such a talent were included, it would be a Must for every starting fighter, and an effective +1 (or more) DX bonus to every starting fighter. Aht would require some thought.

[JLV]

Okay, that's a valid point, though I would argue (mildly) that warriors could still USE armor, it's just that they would be at a DX disadvantage while doing so until they learned a talent for it.

Think of the peasant boy/girl who becomes a warrior and picks up some armor along the way, but needs to get some training to get good with it...

(Plus, it might give you a new opportunity for a magic item -- "Armor of Skill -- allows someone without the Armor Talent to wear this particular suit of Armor as if they had the talent.")

(Edited to add: Part of my problem here is that I don't know what your intentions are for starting skills. How many will a starting character be able to have? Given that they are now earned via XP, I'm wondering if you're planning on only giving a starting character three or four talents to begin with, or what other kinds of limits might be placed on them.)

[Chris Rice]

My own SCA experience teaches that:

- Real leather armor is no worse than an overcoat. I fought in a "boiled" leather cuirass and kidney belt.
- Real chain is HEAVY. I owned (still own) a mail shirt but did not fight in it, as it does not distribute crushing blows as well as does boiled leather. It sure looked good at court, though.
- Real plate is HEAVIER, but if well fitted does not interfere as much with your movement as you might think. But I did not have the strength or the budget to wear plate, so my experience is limited mainly to fighting them. (Protip - if faced with a big man in plate, run for help. If that's not possible, hit him in the leg so he goes to his knees and THEN run for help. He will yell at you. Ignore it.)
- A serious HELM is what really cuts down on your vision and interferes with your balance, and helms are not broken out as separate items in TFT. Helms are required in the SCA as a safety measure, so I have zero experience of fighting bare-headed against anything more serious than boffers.
- It's not hard to learn to wear armor! It's just tiring to train enough to carry the extra weight.

[larsdangly]

You could make a good, possibly better, version of TFT with some slightly less punitive armor penalties. But you couldn't do much without shifting play balance a lot. The only changes I would recommend would be to 'fix' the armors that are clearly bad deals (i.e., anything where the DX penalty exceeds the armor bonus) and then consider sliding in a talent that is something like 'maneuver in armor' to reduce DX penalties by 1. Another thing I've done in my 'maximum house rule' version is to have ST requirements for armor, just as there are for weapons, and to reduce the DX and MA penalties by a little if you exceed those requirements substantially. Anyway, if you shift things by more than a point you will create a situation where an unarmored person really can't fight an armored one on even terms. Honestly, that would be much more realistic. But it would be a different sort of 'trade space' for characters than exists in the game now.

[Rick_Smith]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

If such a talent were included, it would be a Must for every starting fighter, and an effective +1 (or more) DX bonus to every starting fighter. Aht would require some thought.

Hi Steve,
I've had some players asking for 'armour' talents for a while. I resisted for two reasons. Learning how to wear armour seems trivial. A week or two to get comfortable, rather than months of training for other talents. Second, it is a dominate strategy for any fighter.

I cobbled something together for them with a steep memory cost, but that won't work in the new TFT. (My talents increased your ST for purposes of Great ST Bonuses for wearing armour, and gave minor benefits on judging the quality of armour and the time to get in or out of armor.)

I suggest that we don't bother with armour talents. If you want to add a few more talents, I think that there are higher priorities.

Warm regards, Rick.

[Steve Jackson]

Here, as an example, is my current DEATH TEST 2 experience draft.


EXPERIENCE POINTS
In Death Test 2, which is explicitly a combat adventure, experience may be awarded as follows:


Each room you entered – 10 XP for each survivor.
Each room you fled without “clearing” all visible, conscious foes: -5 XP for each survivor.
For leaving a party member to fight or die while you fled: -15 XP for each one who did it.
Each opponent of ST 12 or less that your party slew: 5 XP for each survivor.
Each opponent of ST 13 or more that your party slew: 10 XP for each survivor.
For putting in the deathblow on any foe: an extra 5 XP to the one who did it.

GM’s Discretion: The game master can give out extra experience points (or take them away) whenever he feels it proper. These bonuses or penalties should be small (usually not more than 10 at a time) and should reflect the performance of the characters. Examples: a heroic-knight*type character stands alone in a tunnel against three foes, or volunteers to open a door that is probably trapped, to save the rest of the party: 10 XP. Maybe more, if the foes are dangerous. The same heroic figure turns and runs when confronted by a bear: lose 10 XP for acting out of character. Points should be taken away for actions that are very stupid (unless the character is supposed to be stupid, in which case the GM might award XP for dumb actions!)

Spending Experience
Regardless of the number of XP earned, no character should be able to gain more than one attribute from any trip through this labyrinth. Leftover XP can be spent other ways or just turned into gold (see In The Labyrinth).