No Love For Armour?

[FireHorse]

If we can have ultra-rare materials, then I want my armor made from Kevlar.

Err, I mean… Kevlarite. Ium. Kevlaritium. Yeah, that's the stuff. Weight of hardened leather, strength of fine steel plate. Handcrafted by secret (and patented) processes known only to a reclusive enclave of Dwarven armor-smiths, whom only wealthy kingdoms have enough gold to hire.

[hcobb]

Goblin sized Water Armor is 9.8 pounds so c.f. Repair at ITL 25.

But remember that a good guy in shining fine plate armor doesn't stop a goblin with a staff so don't leave home without your club (or whatever) staff.

[Jeff Lord]

Re: "Water Armor"

From ITL pg. 98:

"The drawback is that once it’s damaged, the rips slowly
lengthen, and no one knows how to fix it."

Not even wizards who know the Repair spell. But hey, YMMV.

[KevinJ]

Originally Posted by FireHorse

If we can have ultra-rare materials, then I want my armor made from Kevlar.

Err, I mean… Kevlarite. Ium. Kevlaritium. Yeah, that's the stuff. Weight of hardened leather, strength of fine steel plate. Handcrafted by secret (and patented) processes known only to a reclusive enclave of Dwarven armor-smiths, whom only wealthy kingdoms have enough gold to hire.

Aramid fibers are of little protection from cutting or sharp stabbing weapons. The best Kevlar armor still requires a .002 inch thick titanium steel stab plate to stop a knife from killing you.

[hcobb]

To have a reasonable chance against the branded light crossbow bolts (which have no historical counterpart) with non-magical protections you really need to layer Shield Expertise on top of Fine Plate. (Also non-historical, outside of jousting.)

[larsdangly]

I would add it isn't clear there is a Fantasy Trip precedent for 'branded crossbow bolts'. My reading of the relevant rules doesn't support this idea.

But it is true that there are several attacks in the game (heavy crossbow, arquebus, charging pike axe, battle axe, great sword, charging lance) that can only be mostly deflected most of the time by someone in fine plate with some sort of additional 'add ons' like Toughness talent an/or a small shield (preferably with shield expertise). You can get to 8 with no shield, and that is pretty good against the average result from most of these (and makes you functionally 'bullet proof' against spears, draw-bow arrows and other light hand weapons). I find that to be pretty close to historical uses and benefits of late-medieval plate armors.

[JustAnotherJarhead]

If I had a dollar for every mention of a "branded" weapon....

I'm thinking this fantasy wouldn't be allowed in most campaigns, so why discuss it as a viable strategy?

Now...that Armor Talent for high Dex/strength is potentially a huge game changer.

I can recall where that one character with fine plate, sword & board was just simply ALWAYS the last man standing, as even 2d6 weapons were of little threat. Even surviving the occasional critical hit (which most dont)

He was always just trying to slip by in the round and not get the -2 DX from enemy strikes, if he could shake off the round without a DX penalty he was gonna put the hurt on em next round, absorbing 8 hits from every strike changes the game, I can't imagine how deadly he would have been with even less armor penalties!

that also opens the door for...enchanted armor on top of that, to get really crazy, there are Rich characters.

Now...all that said. I am a fan of high strength modifiers of Original TFT, I would like to see something similar in the current rules, maybe on scale with the Toughness talent, but for sheer raw strength? Also, i'm not a fan of attribute capping, I'd like to see Strength go higher.

[larsdangly]

I would recommend against any additional talents that let you effectively trade 500 XP for 1 point of DX; there are a couple of them already on the books (e.g., Missile Weapons) so you might imagine it couldn't hurt to add a couple more, but Melee is a game where small advantages have big consequences so it is easy to engineer something that effectively makes only one 'build' the obviously best choice for combatants. I play with house rules but try to steer away from anything that is functionally necessary for all characters who are supposed to be competitive in combat.

One thing I would advocate is a reduction in armor penalties based on ST, sort of like the old version of 'advantages of great strength', but re-cast to respond to the reduced range of character stat totals.

[hcobb]

Reducing armor DX penalties by one, at least for characters with toughness, would help to reduce some of the balance issues.

Combine with enchantments can't provide more protection than the underlying material. So a +2 Small Shield stops two hits total for an average user, but four hits for a figure with Shield Expertise.

Finally Stone (etc.) Flesh enchantments cost 1 ST/minute and double armor DX penalties when active.