Re: Armor up!
 

I have one called DEADEYE... it reduces Aimed Shot penalties by half (rounded down).

Re: Armor up!
 

You have a problem with people running away too much? In my experience fights lock in place and nobody gets to run. If they do run off the map, and get chased, then we have out of combat movement to handle it.

Bit surprised at this. MA 10 is eight feet per second, how slow does realism require?

Re: Armor up!
 

I've toyed with, "If the game doesn't allow using this optional rule for an unskilled character then you can use it if you have this talent, and if the game does allow it for an unskilled character then this talent halves the modifiers."

Re: Armor up!
 

Issues:

• It's a fixed cost but the benefit is much greater for heavy armour. So using this system partial light armour is generally better than ordinary light armour, whereas partial heavy armour is worse.
• There are rounding issues with halving penalties.
• I think if you don't have armour on your legs then the first thing that gets better is probably the MA penalty so it's a bit strange it's the same.

In more detail:

• Partial leather is probably better than leather: instead of 2 hits stopped for -2 DX we get 2 hits stopped or -2 enemy DX for -1 DX. Probably it's better than cloth as well though the MA is an issue.
• Maybe partial cloth is awesome, depending on how the halving rounds, I suspect not.
• Partial half-plate ... that's a weird name... would be -2 DX (rarely, 4 hits stopped, but most opponents will bypass it) for -2 DX which meh I probably wouldn't.
• Partial improved plate is -2 enemy DX (very rarely, 6 hits stopped) for -2 DX, which sucks compared with 6 hits stopped for -4 DX.

Alternatives:

• I would suggest an enemy DX penalty proportional to the protection of the armour, but equal would be too effective and with anything less rounding would mess you up.
• Maybe armour should allow tradeoff of DX vs MA.

That could be an issue in some campaigns but for most I still think partial leather sounds kind of sweet.

Re: Armor up!
 

Usain Bolt sprints outside of combat at 42 hexes per turn. What would you say his MA is?

Re: Armor up!
 

Arguably 50, if you pick the two seconds of the race where he's running fastest.

Normal human 10, Running +2, Expert Running +2, +2 Special talent like all Olympic sprinters, +1 special talent because he's Usain bolt, something for not having a sword in his hand and good shoes and all that, bonus for intensive training just before Olympics... I don't know, low 20s?

Anyone else got thoughts?

Re: Armor up!
 

Rather than this light medium heavy business, have you considered just -2 DX per point of protection?

Re: Armor up!
 

No because I cap modifiers at +/-10 and your formula would put my 'Find the Soft Spot' roll at -18 vs full plate (see my original post). I suppose I could lower it to -1 DX per point, but that runs into a different issue IMO, namely that I don't believe even lesser armors should be trivial to bypass. -3 DX is the lowest penalty that feels appropriate for something like this and even then, it's not something an untrained fighter can attempt.

Plus the groupings are already baked into my framework so it just seemed reasonable to hang this on them too.

Re: Armor up!
 

Sorry David, I overlooked this post of yours from last year. I can relate to so much of this!

Me neither and I really don't intend to. I dislike too many of the changes. Plus I began writing my own rules-set from scratch decades ago while continuing to play in what's now a defunct but long-running CLASSIC campaign. I've no desire to resume play until I've finished my own rules after all these years, rules that deviate too far from TFT to even call it that anymore. Although some of the differences were play-tested between 1980 and 1998 within the CLASSIC campaign I was in, a nearly identical period as your own variant tests.

This is the part I've hemmed and hawed over the most for decades. It was only this year I finally ripped up my other approaches to settle on skill points determined by the formula (IQx2) - 6, which only differs from yours by 1 point. Dang, that's close. The same formula will apply when IQ increases, meaning 2 more skill points for each 1 point IQ increase. My XP costs to do that are more gentle than TFT. And no purchasing skills, languages, or spells with XP, that being perhaps the least favorite of the LEGACY changes I wish to avoid.

Wending back at least slightly towards the subject of this thread, an active defense roll was almost the first house rule my group added to our campaign around 1980. The defender simply rolled 3 vs adjDX to parry/block the entire incoming attack from their front hexes, using up their action for the turn to do so. This was entirely satisfactory for 20 years of heavy play time. I've dabbled with more "sophisticated" ways of doing it for a couple years, but anything else uncomfortably adds too many rules and extra dice rolls. After long deliberation I've decided to revert my system to this old, well-tested house rule and just keep play fast and simple in this regard. I have expert and master skills that allow for partially bypassing armour, without any resort to aimed shots.