[Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury

nerdvana · 01-11-2015, 06:08 PM

I have an armoury question and felt this was likely the best place to ask it. Armoury (Body Armor) has a specific note that shields is not covered by it so are shields handled by Armoury (Melee Weapons) instead or would they have their own specialty not listed in the RAW?

malloyd · 01-11-2015, 06:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nerdvana

I have an armoury question and felt this was likely the best place to ask it. Armoury (Body Armor) has a specific note that shields is not covered by it so are shields handled by Armoury (Melee Weapons) instead or would they have their own specialty not listed in the RAW?

Yes. Read the paragraph at Melee Weapons again. See that "as well as all kinds of shields". Personally I'd have no problems in letting you use Body Armor at no penalty too, but some people get upset when multiple skills will cover exactly the same task.

nerdvana · 01-11-2015, 06:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by malloyd

Yes. Read the paragraph at Melee Weapons again. See that "as well as all kinds of shields". Personally I'd have no problems in letting you use Body Armor at no penalty too, but some people get upset when multiple skills will cover exactly the same task.

Doh! Thanks for pointing that out. Completely missed that.

Verjigorm · 01-11-2015, 07:13 PM

Making weapons and armor, duh. :)

But seriously, Armoury(small arms) can be used at low levels and with minimal equipment. With a circular saw with a carbide blade, a set of good files, a good drill and a vise, you can make a variety of firearms out of common piping. Oh, a torch helps too.

The simplest zip guns are shotguns or .22s with simple slam-fire pins. You make two lengths of pipe, one the size of the shotgun shell, one slightly larger than the other one, so that they will slide inside each other. Rig up a simple pin set up, load a shell into a barrel, slide it into the reciever(heh), and then slam it back to fire a 12 guage shotgun shell! Poof! That can be done with off the shelf parts from any hardware store(or plumbing store) and wrenches, hammers and nails. And JB Weld. Probably a base time of 4 hours or so to plan and build. It's a single shot weapon that requires a ready action to take apart after firing, a ready action to remove the spent casing, a ready action to draw a casing, and a ready action to load it into the barrel, then another ready action close the breech(HAHAHAHA. "the breech" he calls it..). That's a 1(5) ROF, and a Fast Draw Ammo roll can shave that down to 1(4). No safety, no sights(use a fluorescent zip tie around the barrel with the catch up as a bead if you wanna get fancy), a crude stock at best. It's dirty, nasty and cheap.

But it's also something you can build with a bare minimum of equipment or materials. And if you're a decent shot, turning some pipes and washers into a shotgun is better than using it as a club. It takes a bit of time to do, but it's not hard. Useful if you're playing some sort of "weapons specialist" type who is separated from his firearms for whatever reason. Being able to fashion a crude gun is a useful ability if you are already heavily invested in firearms.

You can also scrape the phosphor off of matchheads and use that as a crude propellent for a muzzle loader built from pipes and wood.

With access to a vise, drill, saw, torch and power, you can make simple single-shot weapons out of pipes and barstock in a day or two with a safety! I wouldn't drop it. Unless you built in an ejector of some sort, it's going to be a ROF 1(5) weapon as well. But it's a little bit safer.

These weapons are not built to very high tolerances and use low pressure rounds. The sloppy tolerances help to keep them from catastrophically failing, as much of the pressure of firing is vented and lost through gaps between the action. This creates a noisy and impressive shot though, with lots of smoke and fury. You're going to get less performance out of these weapons(I'd say atleast -1 per die) for cartridges they can safely handle.

The more time you have, the more you can do. With sufficient time, using nothing more than the aforementioned power drill, torch, power saw and some miscellaneous tools(hammers, screwdrivers, punches, etc) you can manufacture a working gas operated semi-automatic, magazine fed smoothbore rifle. Not ideal, no, but it's better than those jokers trying to use muzzle loaders and those crude pieces of junk I started the thread with.

Armory Melee weapons is good for taking those wall hanger pieces of junk you find in a looted pawnshop and turning them into real weapons. For many of them you can cut off the crappy rat tail tangs and then cur down a portion of the blade to make a true tang, slap some wooden grips on there, then wrap it with wire. It takes about 4 hours for simple modifications.

You can take rebar and heat it up and shape it into survivable spikes or short blades and affixed to hafts or handles for a variety of different weapons.

Armoury can be used to fashion a shank from almost anything. Taking a newspaper and rolling it up, then wrapping it with wire from headphone sets stripped of the rubber insulation will make a rather lethal stabbing implement. heavy enough paper(like poster board) can be folded and taped to make a crude shank that will stab someone. It probably won't kill them, but multiple stabs to the throat would probably prove a point.

Armoury body armor allows you fashion body armor from buckets, street signs and cars with some shears, drills and/or punches, rivets, hammers and plastic. I think you could probably get DR 2-3 from multiple layers cut from plastic buckets, body panels of cars and street signs riveted together. There's my much talked about paper armor(an inch of paper will protect pretty well against a lot of low velocity things), though it is really improvisational(it's going to fall apart, quickly). But there's a lot of everyday stuff that is out there that can be turned into crude armor to protect you from bludgeons and light weapons.

It's a really useful skill, and complemented nicely by scrounging in a survival or post-apocalyptic setting.

simply Nathan · 01-11-2015, 11:22 PM

Back when I used to try using the full-sized GURPS skill list, I removed the requirement to specialize by type, not wanting to charge multiple times for the ability to repair and maintain melee weapons, body armor, and missile weapons. Now I've smashed Armoury into a familiarity of the same core skill as Smith, Carpentry, Masonry, Architecture, Leatherworking, Sewing, Artist(also no longer specialized), and Cooking. It's still going to mostly serve as background flavor.

dripton · 01-12-2015, 11:40 AM

One of the PCs in my Dungeon Fantasy game has Armoury (Body Armor). So far she's only used it for identifying the value of armor as treasure, and for routine armor maintenance. (For example, she went swimming with armor on in the last session, and knew how to correctly dry everything to prevent rust.) If they ever find good armor that doesn't fit (quite likely, as one PC has Skinny), then she'll get a chance to resize it.

In a low-tech game, it's a nice flavor skill, or possibly a job skill, but not super-important for the average PC in a civilized area where NPC armorers are available. I could see it being more important if the PCs are far from civilization.

malloyd · 01-12-2015, 12:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dripton

In a low-tech game, it's a nice flavor skill, or possibly a job skill, but not super-important for the average PC in a civilized area where NPC armorers are available. I could see it being more important if the PCs are far from civilization.

This is true of any craft skill. Adventurers are normally specialists, who trade their rare skills for manufactured goods made by people who did specialize in making stuff.

If you are playing in a campaign where it is likely the GM will drop you naked somewhere, crafting skills can be very useful for the first few sessions after that happens - if you expect that do invest a point in Armoury/TL0, being able to chip a good stone edge can be really invaluable - but otherwise don't come up much.

Ulzgoroth · 01-12-2015, 02:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dripton

One of the PCs in my Dungeon Fantasy game has Armoury (Body Armor). So far she's only used it for identifying the value of armor as treasure, and for routine armor maintenance. (For example, she went swimming with armor on in the last session, and knew how to correctly dry everything to prevent rust.) If they ever find good armor that doesn't fit (quite likely, as one PC has Skinny), then she'll get a chance to resize it.

In a low-tech game, it's a nice flavor skill, or possibly a job skill, but not super-important for the average PC in a civilized area where NPC armorers are available. I could see it being more important if the PCs are far from civilization.

If you use the damage to armor rules from LTC2 and have the PCs operating even slightly away from a base or logistics tail, they might have significant use for someone who can manage at least minor armor repairs in the field.

Dungeon Fantasy doesn't usually track that sort of gear upkeep, which takes away the major routine utility for having an adventuring armorer.

Varyon · 01-13-2015, 10:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dripton

In a low-tech game, it's a nice flavor skill, or possibly a job skill, but not super-important for the average PC in a civilized area where NPC armorers are available.

Particularly in a cinematic campaign, you can easily have a heroic armorer who can make higher quality gear than the local NPC's, or at least can do so at less cost and greater speed. Finding a Very Fine Balanced Greatsword in town is highly unlikely, although you might be able to find someone that can craft or order such a thing. You're going to be paying around $21,600 for it, and are probably going to have to wait for some months before it's ready.

A general houserule I've worked out for crafting is to have a character's skill directly determine the speed at which they work. Skill 12 for an Average or harder skill (or Skill 14 for an Easy one) corresponds to Average income for purposes of labor for that TL, and every +1 to skill is +1 SSR to income. So, at TL 3, Armory (Melee Weapons) 12 corresponds to $700/month in labor - you can craft things at a rate of $3.5 per hour. Skill 20 is +8 SSR - $15,000/month and $75/hour. So, that $21,600 sword costs around $100 in materials, for $21,500 in labor. That's going to take you 287 hours, or a bit over a month. With Skill 20 you can afford to take some Haste penalties - a -5 (rolling against 15) will cut time in half, and in a pinch you could risk a roll against 12 (74% chance of success) to drop time to a bit over 57 hours - if you're willing to work 10 hour (rather than 8 hour) days, you can have that weapon ready in a week (and you could drop time further with relevant Craft Secrets - still need to determine how those should work for my variant). A typical armorer makes a bit under $500 in a week, so assuming you're displacing one to rent space at a smithy, you're looking at around $600 for a 74% chance of getting a $21,600 sword in a week.

Railstar · 01-13-2015, 09:28 PM

My main use of it has been medieval: a squire used the Armoury skill to make repairs on behalf of his knight-master. Later on, he would use it to adjust scavenged pieces of armour to fit when he started recruiting followers, meaning they had viable armour sooner. For instance, if he fought a dozen guys wearing mail shoulder-mantles he might cannibalise those mantles into skirts for the abdomen or sabatons for the feet or otherwise adjust the shaped mail into a new shape.

Looting; you can get a little more mileage from damaged armour found on the battlefield if you’re able to patch it up a little, whether using it or selling it for profit. So this is an economic benefit if not a direct functional one.

With black powder weapons, being able to safely over-charge your firearm can be useful for x1.1 damage and range (requiring Armoury). It might make little difference with a puffer pistol (2d-1 damage) but a wall gun on the ship’s rail (5d+2 IIRC?) does an average of 2 extra damage, which can be helpful when it takes a while to reload and you’re trying to blast through the rails or boards of the other ship. If you only get one shot then it might as well be a stronger shot.

That +10% damage might matter even more if you can use it with cannons; a broadside from a series of 4 lb. ship’s guns (6dx3=approx. 60 damage) does +6 damage per shot. Again, combine this with careful loading and you make that volley count. If you have 10 of these with a broadside that’s an extra 60 damage to the other ship. It might help you tear a larger hole into the other ship when firepower is limited.

Note the Firearm Quality rules in Low Tech require Armoury rolls, and the description implies you modify a pre-existing weapon, so you can upgrade your loot quite handily. When all your NPC backup has their firearms improved with increased reliability and accuracy it can pay dividends in the long-term. Like the OP mentioned, +1 effective Accuracy is a good use of downtime. If you’re able to equip your guys with this as standard, then it helps build loyalty for the unit to see that you are making sure they’re well-armed and if leading a unit of 20 guys giving everyone that extra +1 is going to matter when they take their first volley.

So for me, a combination of Armoury, Scrounging & Rank meant leading a unit with better than average logistics and just making that company stretch their budget a little bit further. The benefits are not immediate but gradually over time it can lead to continuously improving equipment due to cutting costs.

Occasionally you could combine Armoury with Soldier or Combat Engineer and improvised pavises to create barricades and cover. They might not be of noteworthy quality, but they are still essentially easy fortifications to set up on demand.

The thing that stands out to me is these improvements seem fairly granular, or useful on a large scale rather than individually. Those benefits might be meagre in general, but if you are a TL4 officer with Rank 2, commanding 20 people, and all of those have re-sized looted armour, upgraded petronels, and frequently reinforce their position with the help of a pavisade, then that Armoury skill is definitely getting its points-worth.

01-11-2015, 06:08 PM	#1
nerdvana Join Date: Nov 2006	Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury I have an armoury question and felt this was likely the best place to ask it. Armoury (Body Armor) has a specific note that shields is not covered by it so are shields handled by Armoury (Melee Weapons) instead or would they have their own specialty not listed in the RAW?

01-11-2015, 07:13 PM	#4
Verjigorm Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Charlotte, North Caroline, United States of America, Earth?	Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury Making weapons and armor, duh. :) But seriously, Armoury(small arms) can be used at low levels and with minimal equipment. With a circular saw with a carbide blade, a set of good files, a good drill and a vise, you can make a variety of firearms out of common piping. Oh, a torch helps too. The simplest zip guns are shotguns or .22s with simple slam-fire pins. You make two lengths of pipe, one the size of the shotgun shell, one slightly larger than the other one, so that they will slide inside each other. Rig up a simple pin set up, load a shell into a barrel, slide it into the reciever(heh), and then slam it back to fire a 12 guage shotgun shell! Poof! That can be done with off the shelf parts from any hardware store(or plumbing store) and wrenches, hammers and nails. And JB Weld. Probably a base time of 4 hours or so to plan and build. It's a single shot weapon that requires a ready action to take apart after firing, a ready action to remove the spent casing, a ready action to draw a casing, and a ready action to load it into the barrel, then another ready action close the breech(HAHAHAHA. "the breech" he calls it..). That's a 1(5) ROF, and a Fast Draw Ammo roll can shave that down to 1(4). No safety, no sights(use a fluorescent zip tie around the barrel with the catch up as a bead if you wanna get fancy), a crude stock at best. It's dirty, nasty and cheap. But it's also something you can build with a bare minimum of equipment or materials. And if you're a decent shot, turning some pipes and washers into a shotgun is better than using it as a club. It takes a bit of time to do, but it's not hard. Useful if you're playing some sort of "weapons specialist" type who is separated from his firearms for whatever reason. Being able to fashion a crude gun is a useful ability if you are already heavily invested in firearms. You can also scrape the phosphor off of matchheads and use that as a crude propellent for a muzzle loader built from pipes and wood. With access to a vise, drill, saw, torch and power, you can make simple single-shot weapons out of pipes and barstock in a day or two with a safety! I wouldn't drop it. Unless you built in an ejector of some sort, it's going to be a ROF 1(5) weapon as well. But it's a little bit safer. These weapons are not built to very high tolerances and use low pressure rounds. The sloppy tolerances help to keep them from catastrophically failing, as much of the pressure of firing is vented and lost through gaps between the action. This creates a noisy and impressive shot though, with lots of smoke and fury. You're going to get less performance out of these weapons(I'd say atleast -1 per die) for cartridges they can safely handle. The more time you have, the more you can do. With sufficient time, using nothing more than the aforementioned power drill, torch, power saw and some miscellaneous tools(hammers, screwdrivers, punches, etc) you can manufacture a working gas operated semi-automatic, magazine fed smoothbore rifle. Not ideal, no, but it's better than those jokers trying to use muzzle loaders and those crude pieces of junk I started the thread with. Armory Melee weapons is good for taking those wall hanger pieces of junk you find in a looted pawnshop and turning them into real weapons. For many of them you can cut off the crappy rat tail tangs and then cur down a portion of the blade to make a true tang, slap some wooden grips on there, then wrap it with wire. It takes about 4 hours for simple modifications. You can take rebar and heat it up and shape it into survivable spikes or short blades and affixed to hafts or handles for a variety of different weapons. Armoury can be used to fashion a shank from almost anything. Taking a newspaper and rolling it up, then wrapping it with wire from headphone sets stripped of the rubber insulation will make a rather lethal stabbing implement. heavy enough paper(like poster board) can be folded and taped to make a crude shank that will stab someone. It probably won't kill them, but multiple stabs to the throat would probably prove a point. Armoury body armor allows you fashion body armor from buckets, street signs and cars with some shears, drills and/or punches, rivets, hammers and plastic. I think you could probably get DR 2-3 from multiple layers cut from plastic buckets, body panels of cars and street signs riveted together. There's my much talked about paper armor(an inch of paper will protect pretty well against a lot of low velocity things), though it is really improvisational(it's going to fall apart, quickly). But there's a lot of everyday stuff that is out there that can be turned into crude armor to protect you from bludgeons and light weapons. It's a really useful skill, and complemented nicely by scrounging in a survival or post-apocalyptic setting. __________________ Hydration is key

01-11-2015, 11:22 PM	#5
simply Nathan formerly known as 'Kenneth Latrans' Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Wyoming, Michigan	Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury Back when I used to try using the full-sized GURPS skill list, I removed the requirement to specialize by type, not wanting to charge multiple times for the ability to repair and maintain melee weapons, body armor, and missile weapons. Now I've smashed Armoury into a familiarity of the same core skill as Smith, Carpentry, Masonry, Architecture, Leatherworking, Sewing, Artist(also no longer specialized), and Cooking. It's still going to mostly serve as background flavor. __________________ Ba-weep granah wheep minibon. Wubba lubba dub dub.

01-12-2015, 11:40 AM	#6
dripton Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Northern Virginia, USA	Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury One of the PCs in my Dungeon Fantasy game has Armoury (Body Armor). So far she's only used it for identifying the value of armor as treasure, and for routine armor maintenance. (For example, she went swimming with armor on in the last session, and knew how to correctly dry everything to prevent rust.) If they ever find good armor that doesn't fit (quite likely, as one PC has Skinny), then she'll get a chance to resize it. In a low-tech game, it's a nice flavor skill, or possibly a job skill, but not super-important for the average PC in a civilized area where NPC armorers are available. I could see it being more important if the PCs are far from civilization.

01-13-2015, 09:28 PM	#10
Railstar Join Date: Jul 2012	Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Armoury My main use of it has been medieval: a squire used the Armoury skill to make repairs on behalf of his knight-master. Later on, he would use it to adjust scavenged pieces of armour to fit when he started recruiting followers, meaning they had viable armour sooner. For instance, if he fought a dozen guys wearing mail shoulder-mantles he might cannibalise those mantles into skirts for the abdomen or sabatons for the feet or otherwise adjust the shaped mail into a new shape. Looting; you can get a little more mileage from damaged armour found on the battlefield if you’re able to patch it up a little, whether using it or selling it for profit. So this is an economic benefit if not a direct functional one. With black powder weapons, being able to safely over-charge your firearm can be useful for x1.1 damage and range (requiring Armoury). It might make little difference with a puffer pistol (2d-1 damage) but a wall gun on the ship’s rail (5d+2 IIRC?) does an average of 2 extra damage, which can be helpful when it takes a while to reload and you’re trying to blast through the rails or boards of the other ship. If you only get one shot then it might as well be a stronger shot. That +10% damage might matter even more if you can use it with cannons; a broadside from a series of 4 lb. ship’s guns (6dx3=approx. 60 damage) does +6 damage per shot. Again, combine this with careful loading and you make that volley count. If you have 10 of these with a broadside that’s an extra 60 damage to the other ship. It might help you tear a larger hole into the other ship when firepower is limited. Note the Firearm Quality rules in Low Tech require Armoury rolls, and the description implies you modify a pre-existing weapon, so you can upgrade your loot quite handily. When all your NPC backup has their firearms improved with increased reliability and accuracy it can pay dividends in the long-term. Like the OP mentioned, +1 effective Accuracy is a good use of downtime. If you’re able to equip your guys with this as standard, then it helps build loyalty for the unit to see that you are making sure they’re well-armed and if leading a unit of 20 guys giving everyone that extra +1 is going to matter when they take their first volley. So for me, a combination of Armoury, Scrounging & Rank meant leading a unit with better than average logistics and just making that company stretch their budget a little bit further. The benefits are not immediate but gradually over time it can lead to continuously improving equipment due to cutting costs. Occasionally you could combine Armoury with Soldier or Combat Engineer and improvised pavises to create barricades and cover. They might not be of noteworthy quality, but they are still essentially easy fortifications to set up on demand. The thing that stands out to me is these improvements seem fairly granular, or useful on a large scale rather than individually. Those benefits might be meagre in general, but if you are a TL4 officer with Rank 2, commanding 20 people, and all of those have re-sized looted armour, upgraded petronels, and frequently reinforce their position with the help of a pavisade, then that Armoury skill is definitely getting its points-worth.