The Invulnerability Problem

[Chris Rice]

I remember 5 or 6 points of armour was the most anyone has ever had in my games. Players liked to have some armour but not be too encumbered as I always had lots of physical obstacles to overcome; streams, narrow crevices, tricky climbs etc. So too much armour would go against you.

Running away was also a common tactic and you’re running away from nothing at MA6.

[larsdangly]

That scans for me too, but the new tweaks in the Talent rules offer the ambitious hero 3 juicy looking points of protection (Toughness I and II; Shield Expertise, not even considering the MA talents). This means you can get to pretty respectable protection scores with modest DX penalties and no magical funny business or crazy materials.

E.g., a totally unarmored warrior with a tower shield can get to 6 points at pretty middle-of-the-road levels of experience, e.g. a stat block like: ST 14, DX 12 (10), IQ 10, Toughness 2, shield, shield expertise, bastard sword and tower shield.

And of course a moderately experienced knight sort of character can readily get to 9 or 10 protection with a DX penalty of 4. e.g. ST 12, DX 14(10), IQ 10, Toughness 1, shield, shield expertise, broadsword, small shield and fine plate = 9 points of protection (another pretty simple 36 point character).

[JimmyPlenty]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Dhallak has 13 "hit points" and armor and enchantments that stop 13 hits per attack.

What do they have? What armor/items?

In what order did they receive them?

[JimmyPlenty]

You could also say that the "direct and consistent" touching an amulet to metal armor could make the "iron effect" with magic come into play.

Make amulets of X-Flesh only work on leather or lighter.

Won't work on rings, boots, or whatever.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by JimmyPlenty

What do they have? What armor/items

Henry is deliberately obscure but as an example Toughness I, large shield with +2 enchantment, shield expertise, fine plate with +2 enchantment and a stone skin ring stops 18 in front. He's probably thinking of some subset of that plus maybe a couple of other things.

[larsdangly]

The other side of the equation is the damage being resisted. I would say that in the real world, where PC's have to earn the required XP and find or make the equipment, you have your work cut out for you if you want to reach armor protection values greater than 10-12. That is awesome and makes you effectively immune to damage from regular-success attacks that do 1 or 2d base damage (so, any mundane one handed weapon and most missiles).

But the game contains a bunch of other offensive weapons that present significant risks to this character. The 2 handed swords and axes; charging halberds and poleaxes; heavy crossbows and arquebuses; pikes; lances; a giant's club; breath from a 7 or 14 hex dragon; any grappling or entangling attack that can render you totally immobile in the presence of an armed foe; a petard blast; a full-strength lightning bolt or wizard's wrath; hammertouch. And, of course, adding magical weapons to this mix just opens things up further (e.g., a flaming bastard sword wielded in two hands does 4d-1 damage, averaging 13 and frequently reaching values of 15+).

This is all eminently reasonable. The reality is that a person in well fitted late-period plate armor was extremely difficult to kill unless they could be dismounted, isolated and immobilized. Most fantasy games don't represent that but they should.

[hcobb]

Dhallak m’Thorsz Carn is at page 61 of the Ardonirane book.

Somehow he doesn't have Shield Expertise.

My fixes:

Stone/Iron/Diamond Flesh items cost like most utility items 1 ST/minute. This is enough to keep them from being used all the time.
Armor and shields can only be enchanted to stop as many additional hits as the item itself stops (no enchanted silk robes for you), but shield expertise does extend the useful enchantment by a point.

[JimmyPlenty]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

Henry is deliberately obscure but as an example Toughness I, large shield with +2 enchantment, shield expertise, fine plate with +2 enchantment and a stone skin ring stops 18 in front. He's probably thinking of some subset of that plus maybe a couple of other things.

A fighter with a +2 damage bastard sword (two handed) with weapon expertise and a shrewd blow will do 4d to the back which only stops 13 hits.

HTH pinning attempts may not be bad either to nullify the target.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Stone/Iron/Diamond Flesh items cost like most utility items 1 ST/minute. This is enough to keep them from being used all the time.

This makes them less useful against assassins, but only slightly less useful in skirmishes, which after all are what we mostly care about in TFT.

Armor and shields can only be enchanted to stop as many additional hits as the item itself stops (no enchanted silk robes for you), but shield expertise does extend the useful enchantment by a point.

Helps a bit, but still allows impressive amounts of armour at moderate cost.

I don't think these fixes really address the problem, unless you're trying to achieve something that isn't obvious to me.

Making magic items much more expensive, especially anomalies like stone flesh and blur, might help. Throttling the rule of five down to a rule of one or two might help.

[Shostak]

I've been toying with a house rule that could make life more difficult for hard-to-hurt figures: Any physical attack inflicting 10 damage before protection requires the target to roll 3d/adjDX or fall down.