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Old 09-24-2018, 03:39 AM   #11
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Armor modified for SM?

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Originally Posted by tbone View Post
So why not just do as DF suggests, scaling weight/cost while also automatically reducing DR for scaled-down armor?
Because the DR reduction is nonsense? It should have reduced DR if it's thinner, but that will also reduce its weight by even more than it's already being reduced, and there's not much reason to make the armor thinner unless its thickness is high enough for its bulk to cause problems, which is not really a factor for a halfling until you get well past the DR range of any metal armor given in DF (it's a legit issue for pixies; max practical DR is probably on the order of 20 adjusted for size, so 2 for a pixie. It's also an issue for cloth and leather armors, which are much bulkier than metal).
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Old 09-24-2018, 07:48 AM   #12
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Default Re: Armor modified for SM?

One reason why armor cost and weight aren't scaled to SM is that scaling rules cause debates like this one. ;)

Thickness isn't the be-all and end-all. For fire and cold attacks that have to heat up or cool the armor to cook or freeze the target, the total mass of armor on the hit location is more important. For acid and disintegration attacks that do large-area corrosive injury that degrades DR on every part of the body at once, total area matters. For things like being stepped on by a giant, radius of curvature has a significant impact on structural strength. A lot of damage sources likely to show up in fantasy don't interact with armor in ways that thickness alone covers adequately or at all. So saying that small or big wearers get a fixed DR set by thickness, and scaling cost and mass to their surface area, wouldn't be quite right.

Beyond that, the allowed choices of height and weight at SM 0 can give surface areas that are larger than for some choices permitted for SM +1 or smaller than for some permitted for SM -1 or less, as SM isn't about isotropic scaling, but about longest dimension.

All told, scaling armor DR correctly to the wearer's dimensions is a pain in the rear end. I'm quite willing to admit that no GURPS supplement yet has managed to get it quite right! But we didn't leave it out of the DFRPG for that reason. We left it out because the same things that would demand lots of words to get armor scaling just right in GURPS would demand lots of words in the DFRPG, which already has too many words.

Also – and this is important – the DFRPG is unabashedly an homage to early hack 'n' slash gaming. There, whether you played on the tabletop or a computer, a suit of armor was a suit of armor was a suit of armor. Some digital games let you drag a suit of armor from any character to any other regardless of size. I wanted to keep elements of that without straining willing suspension of disbelief too badly, which is why we have the Fixer-Uppers rule (Exploits, p. 15).
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Old 09-25-2018, 03:06 PM   #13
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Default Re: Armor modified for SM?

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Why were recalculating weight every session? I'm running an SM +2 DF character and I haven't had to calculate anything since I brought her into play (of course I also haven't changed her equipment at all since then).
Every single opponent's equipment, every time a PC wants to buy tools, every time a PC wants to change one piece of armour.

In a group of five plus players this happened often. It was not my favourite thing to do.
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Old 09-25-2018, 10:51 PM   #14
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Default Re: Armor modified for SM?

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Every single opponent's equipment, every time a PC wants to buy tools, every time a PC wants to change one piece of armour.

In a group of five plus players this happened often. It was not my favourite thing to do.
I could see it if everyone was a different size... but how often does that happen?

Also, I foist those chores onto the Players. They want a different SM, they do the math.
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Old 09-26-2018, 07:58 AM   #15
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Default Re: Armor modified for SM?

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Also, I foist those chores onto the Players. They want a different SM, they do the math.
Sure, but avoiding foisting chores onto the players was a stated design goal for the DFRPG. The assumed gaming groups were "total newbies to RPGs" and "veteran GM trying to introduce newbie players to RPGs." As such, we attempted to keep the necessary tasks to moderate levels and, where that didn't work out, foist them onto the GM. Keeping the GM sane despite that is just one more reason why we omitted armor scaling and a whole lot of other rules.
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Old 09-26-2018, 10:37 PM   #16
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Default Re: Armor modified for SM?

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Also, I foist those chores onto the Players. They want a different SM, they do the math.
But mine don't and if they do they get it wrong. And I run a game for new players, driving them away with complexity (that really makes so little difference for the work it requires) is not what I want.

So as I wrote:
"I am so greatful that I dont need to recalculate weight every single DFRPG session"
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Old 09-27-2018, 08:04 AM   #17
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Default Re: Armor modified for SM?

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"I am so greatful that I dont need to recalculate weight every single DFRPG session"
I'm grateful that I don't need to fuss with this when I write game content, too. The reward-to-effort ratio is just too low.

On a more "meta" level, I can say that incorporating characters of radically different sizes is one of the biggest headaches in game design. You can go with a fantasy or cinematic take on it, in which case there's a whole brigade of realism fans who will trot out complicated power laws and biology, and be frustrated with you for not putting that in the book. Or you can go with a realistic take on it, in which case complicated power laws and biology will inform your rules, people who want pixies and giants to work just like humans but smaller will be the ones frustrated, and you'll still face people who think you didn't get your science right. There's no winning formula.

So in the case of the DFRPG, I went with a fantasy take – that is, SM doesn't do anything much – under the assumption that would be acceptable for a game with "fantasy" right in the title, especially one aimed at new gamers. I knew this wouldn't appeal to realism fans, but appeasing them wasn't a design goal.
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Old 09-27-2018, 12:12 PM   #18
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Default Re: Armor modified for SM?

Modifying armor weight for SM would be easier if a slight inconsistency with LT had been allowed -- things like 'Light Cloth Body: $53, 6.3 lb' are dumb.
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Old 09-30-2018, 02:31 AM   #19
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Default Re: Armor modified for SM?

Still I miss the fact that there was an incentive for Barbarians to not be the most heavily armoured characters in the game. On top of that, the only (previously) Size +1 profession in the game is also the only one with 3 Tough Skin, increasing his DR even more.
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Old 09-30-2018, 04:45 PM   #20
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Default Re: Armor modified for SM?

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Still I miss the fact that there was an incentive for Barbarians to not be the most heavily armoured characters in the game. On top of that, the only (previously) Size +1 profession in the game is also the only one with 3 Tough Skin, increasing his DR even more.
There are probably other ways to solve this.

One being DR, Damage reduction, Regeneration, etc with a pact limitation to not wear armour or perhaps only to wear certain types of armour. The GM should also enforce that the barbarian can't just put on armour and take it off to access these abilities.

Other options include codes of honour to not wear armour, vows to not wear armour and so on.
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