06-13-2019, 02:45 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Sep 2018
Location: North Texas
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MA Questions
Why are MA penalties always presented as fixed values rather than deductions? There's clearly a humanoid bias there, but there are also creatures with higher and lower MA scores that could be impacted by encumbrance or armor penalties.
For example, what is a centaur character's adjusted MA when wearing leather barding? Half plate?
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“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.” -Vladimir Taltos |
06-13-2019, 09:29 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Arizona
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Re: MA Questions
Honestly, I personally have always felt that the MAs should be dependent on some combination of ST and DX to determine your actual MA. Perhaps something as simple as MA = (ST + DX)/2 (with suitable racial bonuses/penalties). This would, in turn, solve all of these conundrums that constantly come up, though it would mean that MA could literally vary from turn to turn based on encumbrances, damage, etc.
I suspect that the original decision to go with flat MAs with flat values for penalties was to make it "simpler," but in this case, I think making it just a bit more complex at the front end would have made the whole thing a LOT "simpler" in the end, since all these edge cases and special exceptions would have been eliminated from the beginning. (That, of course, is just my personal feelings on the matter, and may not reflect anyone else's, YMMV, etc., etc., and so on.) |
06-13-2019, 11:24 PM | #3 | |||
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: MA Questions
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Per ITL pg. 66 and 132, it is per weight encumbrance, with armor weight being 250% that of a human suit, so 40 pounds for leather, 112.5 pounds for half plate. A ST 14 centaur would have its full MA up to 56 pounds carried... at which point, ITL trips over its attempted simplicity by saying MA drops to 8... So the GM has to decide if that means literally MA 8 (probably not), MA -2 (maybe) or 8 MA for a normal human, so proportionally that'd be 80% of the MA of a creature with some other MA (I think that makes the most sense - some may balk, but I see no good simpler alternative to getting appropriate numbers). I would also quibble with the flat 250% weight for ALL 2-hex creatures. I think a centaur might want not just horse barding but most of a human suit of leather armor as well, which might or might not weigh more, but probably would reduce DX by the full amount, not the reduced barding amount mentioned on ITL 132. So to answer, I get Centaur MA at a full 24 outdoors / 12 indoors in leather, but half-plate barding brings a ST 14 centaur to just over 8 x ST, which is human MA 4, so 40% would be MA 9.6 outdoors, or MA 4.8 indoors, and an extra -2 DX, and only able to carry another 27 or so more pounds of gear. Quote:
Last edited by Skarg; 06-13-2019 at 11:30 PM. |
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06-14-2019, 12:26 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: London Uk, but originally from Scotland
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Re: MA Questions
"TFT's simplicity bias. It doesn't even get through the human encumbrance rules without suggesting many people will want to ignore them."
Yes exactly - I always ignored them. All that's "essential" for TFT to my mind is: Melee, Wizard, the Talent rules and the Bestiary, and perhaps not even all of those. I've always felt the rest of ITL is "reference material" to be added if required and to taste. I never used; the Job Table, Encumbrance, Experience, Magic Item creation and probably lots of other stuff. Like I say, it may be useful to refer to, but none of it is essential. |
06-14-2019, 03:29 PM | #5 | ||
Join Date: Sep 2018
Location: North Texas
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Re: MA Questions
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__________________
“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.” -Vladimir Taltos |
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06-14-2019, 03:41 PM | #6 | |
Join Date: Sep 2018
Location: North Texas
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Re: MA Questions
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__________________
“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.” -Vladimir Taltos |
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06-14-2019, 06:40 PM | #7 | |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: MA Questions
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A ST 14 horse is the weakest nag. Horses in TFT have ST 14 - 38, so their armored and mounted MA tends to be more reasonable. Centaurs either want an adjustment of some sort (which would of course logically be necessary, since they have both a human part of their body and a horse part of their body), or they're intended not to be able to wear heavy armor for thematic reasons. Really though I think it's that the level of attention stopped short of developing a solid answer, leaving it to GMs to figure out what to do about it. And a hand-waved answer may be just fine for most GMs and/or players. However a player actually playing a PC centaur and wanting to understand and have a logical play experience may run into this quickly, and might have not such a great time if the GM isn't up to generating satisfactory answers. But that's what simple published rules get you, and TFT does a vastly better job of setting up a logical framework than most... it just also leaves some of us with an appetite for more details, which we can either work out ourselves, on on forums (q.v. the house rules sub-forum here), and/or partial import and/or migrate GURPSward. |
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