Armour Blocks Some Dice
 

The post on partial armour made me think about how armour works in TFT. One problem is that armour can make you invincible against some foes. I wondered if there was a way to implement armour differently in TFT, without particularly making it more complex.

Idea: Armour blocks some damage die rolls, or at least reduces them.

Effects:

• We can if we choose implement partial armour by having different parts of the body represented by the numbers reduced. For instance, a very good helmet might change any 6 to a 1, while a light helmet reduces any 6 to a 4.
• We can implement the difference between a bastard sword (good against armoured targets) and a sabre (good against unarmoured targets) by giving them different numbers of dice. Or, if we're feeling heretical, different kinds of dice.
• Armour is no longer completely protective (unless we want it to be): some numbers are likely to get through.

Issues:

• A 2d weapon is now inferior to a 1d+3 weapon so the weapon chart would have to change a lot.
• The damage system was supposed to capture lots of things and we've pushed it back to just handling hit location, that's not so good.

Anyone got any thoughts?

Re: Armour Blocks Some Dice
 

Do you mean that a light helmet reduces exactly one 6 result to a 1, as opposed to a very good helmet which changes all sixes to ones?

Re: Armour Blocks Some Dice
 

I didn't mean that, I meant to say the light helmet reduced 6s to 3s or something like that and mistyped. But your way might also work. It would give the feeling that light armour is fine against light weapons. It would make doubles a terrifying thing, which might not make sense. There's a lot of ways to do this. The ones I see at the moment don't work right but a bit more thought might change that.

Re: Armour Blocks Some Dice
 

Have armor add dice instead.
Cloth armor stops 1d-3 hits. (All of these are never less than zero)
Leather armor stops 1d-2 hits.
Chain stops 2d-4 hits.
And so on.

Re: Armour Blocks Some Dice
 

I can't see how that improves gameplay. No more dice rolls please.

Re: Armour Blocks Some Dice
 

I am sympathetic to the idea that lightly armed combatants could use some help getting their attacks through armor. But I wonder if allowing bypass penalties to the attack roll is better.

• Make a standard attack roll: armor stops its full protection rating
• Attack at -3DX to bypass half of armor's protection rating (round down)
• Attack at -6DX bypass all of armor's protection rating

I think that this reflects both how armor actually works and how weapons can be wielded to work around armor. Those misericordes worked well, but needed to be aimed carefully.

It might be worth capping adjDX at 8 or even 7 for such attacks , to keep high-DX figures from being too advantaged. It should be hard to get past someone's armor!

Re: Armour Blocks Some Dice
 

I have a similar rule for this called 'Finding the Soft Spot'. A figure may make a targeted attack against an armored opponent w/ the goal of hitting them someplace where the armor provides less protection. This vulnerability is harder to find or access in heavier armors so the penalty is specific to each category of armor... -3 DX when attempting this kind of strike against foes in LIGHT armor, -6 DX vs. MEDIUM armor and -9 vs. HEAVY armor. A successful strike will bypass half (rounded down) of the armor's protection. I also have talents which improve these odds.

Re: Armour Blocks Some Dice
 

Would that also be a way to address partial coverage in armour? Two kinds of armour have the same penalty, one has a better mean, the other a smaller standard deviation? Maybe not enough resolution.

Re: Armour Blocks Some Dice
 

If I ever fiddled with this idea at all, I'd use your approach. Probably: an expert with a weapon can bypass 2 hits of their target's armor, and a master with a weapon can bypass 3 or 4 hits. 4 sounds a little too extreme though.

Re: Armour Blocks Some Dice
 

[QUOTE=TippetsTX;2538220]
RAW gives us talents that improve the odds: the Expert and Master weapon talents. Do you replace those, or do you have additional talents that stack with those?

Re: Armour Blocks Some Dice
 

Both. My version of the EXPERTISE/MASTERY talents are different though they still provide a DX bonus. I also spun off some of the bundled abilities from RAW (like shrewd blow) into their own talents, but that's a topic for a separate thread I think.