Re: Which optional rules do you use for muscle-powered weapons and armors?
 

Yeah this is pretty much my take on it, ST based damage actually scales with ST based HP reasonably well.

The problem is unless you use a design system to make thicker and thicker armour to counter attacks of increasing ST, DR from armour tends to stay a lot more static and so yep is loses it effectiveness as ST goes up.

I.e if you want DR to keep up with ST based Damage that scales with ST you have to let DR also scale with ST in some way. and the system defaults to all hand held weapon damage scaling with ST but armour DR is pretty much a range of static options in the equipment lists.

I've messed with various house rules down the years but ultimately I use edge protection from LT, allow armour to be tailored to it's wearers ability to wear it and tend to truncate* the range of ST's for humans before they hit the levels of Gorillas and Bears. I personally don't have too much problem in my games.




*this is a specific game choice for several reasons and not a system wide solution.

Re: Which optional rules do you use for muscle-powered weapons and armors?
 

I have often used the rule where relative skill level modifies effective ST for using weapons/techniques with that skill (if positive). So a character with ST 10 and Broadsword at (Attribute)+10 counts as having ST 20 for damage purposes, beats, etc.. I also have it gove DR against attacks of that skill equal to relative level (if positive). This makes unarmed combat skills very powerful though, as it is cumulative with the damage bonuses of unarmed combat.

Re: Which optional rules do you use for muscle-powered weapons and armors?
 

I guess we could look for other precedents, like the difference in cost between various levels of piercing in Innate Attack, or the Ammo Options enhancement?

Re: Which optional rules do you use for muscle-powered weapons and armors?
 

It's mostly a problem of "It should have an armor divisor, but the divisor should not be 2, it should be something like 1.3".

Re: Which optional rules do you use for muscle-powered weapons and armors?
 

For games that features inhuman ST levels, Better Fantasy Armor can help bridge the gap between damage and DR.

I also recall a thread about "Armor Master" as a defensive counterpart of Weapon Master being created a while ago. Has anybody ever tried something similar in their game? I just had an idea of turning Armor Mastery from DF into a leveled trait, I think it would be good for the Knight-like characters but it makes me worry about DR disparity between the fighters and casters/supports.

Re: Which optional rules do you use for muscle-powered weapons and armors?
 

I use Lifting ST for armoires.

Re: Which optional rules do you use for muscle-powered weapons and armors?
 

Nice!


I've not tried it but it highlights another area where the same issue applies. The system allows a range of ways of increasing handheld damage over and above ST and weapon, weather it's cinematic traits like weapon master, skill bonuses to damage for unarmed skills, combat option like AoA or determined etc.

But on the other side a DR6 breastplate tends to be a DR6 breastplate all the live long day. Armour just acts as an inert wall of protection.

(I think there was 3rd ed. rule that had armour adding to defence more directly "PD" IIRC, but I don't really know 3rd ed.)

I shouldn't worry too much about DR disparity, just have your knights face harder hitting opponents than you supporting cast. Which they likely are doing anyway being knights.

Another possible way to go and to tie armour into a more active role in defence, is to have a kind of "graze" rule that adds to DR rather than reduces damage. For example say you miss an active defence by one MoF, the attack lands but you multiply your DR by 1.5 (rounded down), miss your defence by two MoF your DR by 1.25 (round down).

This would give the armour wearer more of a safety margin if the system is allowing their opponents to blast through their DR.

You could make this an optional rule that costs a perk to access

(this just thought I had in response etc your post this is in no way play tested etc)

Re: Which optional rules do you use for muscle-powered weapons and armors?
 

"PD" was "Passive Defense". Even if you took no Active Defense you could roll agaisnt your Passive Defense to stop an attack. With PD3 or 4 from a shield and another 3 or 4 from armor (even without magic) it wasn't a huge chcne but it ws better than nothing.

The important bit was that when you did take an Active Defense you added your PD to your total defense and rolled v. that. There was no "add" to your Parry in the basic calculations so if you had Broadsword-16 and Combat Reflexes your total Parry was still only 9 or less if you had no armor or shield. With armor and shield you could easily hit 15 or less.

You will note from the above example that with combat normalized for users of both armor and shields, combat without these aids worked very, very poorly. 3e sprouted a lot of kludges over the years trying to mitigate these problems but gained more problems with the solutions. 4e came as close to jettisoning the concept of PD as it could retaining only DB you gain from a shield or magic.

If you wonder what you were suppsed to viaulize PD doing that was asomehat mysterious. When you got to UT it actually was Deflector Shields granting you or your spaceship a bonus to all active Defenses.

I don't miss PD and I doubt many others do either. Not having to deal with PD is a good reason to not go back to 3e.

Re: Which optional rules do you use for muscle-powered weapons and armors?
 

One of my biggest issues with PD was that it could, and often did, vary by hit location, so your chances of parrying or dodging a blow had to be adjusted after the hit location was rolled. This slowed things down and added another layer of calculation to combat.

Then there were things like "how much DR does armour need for it to give PD vs bullets?". Yep, better without it.

Re: Which optional rules do you use for muscle-powered weapons and armors?
 

It was a bit shaky, yes. Fencing combat worked very well, a bit too well.

4e combat works fine for unarmoured people with knives. Our information about people spending hours at a time fighting in underground passages wearing heavy armour is a bit limited.