GURPS Low-Tech: Instant Armor

[Puppetminion]

Double checking that I understand some things about the Pectoral (pg 20) that aren't explicitly mentioned:
* It always protects the vitals from the front, even on an abdomen or "lower chest"/location 10 hit yes?
* Aiming at the "lower chest" is the same -1 as the "upper chest" and would never hit the pectoral right? Which also means as I see it the stuff about aiming at the upper chest but avoiding the pectoral is not likely to come up all that often.

Some other comments:
I'm surprised the helmet stats don't include the padding. From a "grab and go" and "avoid footnotes" perspective I would have thought only needing 1 set of numbers for head armour would be better, with those who want a seperate padding cap doing a subtraction rather than everyone else doing addition.

Possibly clustering the notes so all the notes that affect DR were together would make it easier to quickly check in play.

When I saw references to mittens I was hoping the table would include chain mittens. Darn. Did they not really ever exist or something?


Also, cool book.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Puppetminion

Double checking that I understand some things about the Pectoral (pg 20) that aren't explicitly mentioned:
* It always protects the vitals from the front, even on an abdomen or "lower chest"/location 10 hit yes?

It protects the vitals on the chest only. Nowhere else.

* Aiming at the "lower chest" is the same -1 as the "upper chest" and would never hit the pectoral right? Which also means as I see it the stuff about aiming at the upper chest but avoiding the pectoral is not likely to come up all that often.

Probably not

Possibly clustering the notes so all the notes that affect DR were together would make it easier to quickly check in play.

Notes have to be listed in the order that they appear in the tables.

When I saw references to mittens I was hoping the table would include chain mittens. Darn. Did they not really ever exist or something?

Yep. They were called mufflers. They'd have exactly the same stats as regular mail gauntlets so there is no point wasting a line entry for them. You could argue that expert tailoring wouldn't reduce Ham Fisted penalties. In other words, only fingered gauntlets could be expertly tailored.

[Puppetminion]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

It protects the vitals on the chest only. Nowhere else.

I find that ... surprising. Not from a realism perspective, that's where the hunk of metal would be after all, but because it just says protects the vitals, which sounds like the term of art (to steal a phrase I've never used before). Not sure I'm being clear here, but staring at this paragraph I can't improve it.
Wait, if you hit the chest and roll a 1 would you hit the pectoral? If not then I'm thinking about the tables the wrong way and once I make that mental adjustment everything is fine.

Re: lower chest

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Probably not

Well, that certainly makes the words spent talking about how to avoid the pectoral more important. My problem is that (ignoring the vitals) I can't see why adding a new sub-location you can aim at for the chance of hitting more armour is better than adding one you can aim at to definitely avoid that armour. Purely a game play thing, I can see my players wanting the latter far more than the former.

Considering I was wrong both times, I'm glad I brought it up. Easier to remember it now than fix my thoughts later.

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Yep. They were called mufflers. They'd have exactly the same stats as regular mail gauntlets but I probably wouldn't allow expert tailoring to reduce DX penalties.

Neat. Possibly cheap chain would have mufflers rather than gauntlets.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Puppetminion

Wait, if you hit the chest and roll a 1 would you hit the pectoral?

Yes, on a small pectoral. Larger ones would also protect on a 2 or 3 or more.

[Puppetminion]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Yes, on a small pectoral. Larger ones would also protect on a 2 or 3 or more.

Sorry, I put that stupidly.

What I meant was: if you hit the chest (not specifically the upper chest) and roll a die to see if you hit the vitals and get a 1 do you hit the pectoral.

Put another way, does the random vitals effect on a torso hit reflect hitting the same bit of skin you aim at for a vitals hit, or is it the weapon burrowing through generic flesh somewhere else to hit essential bits. Since I first encountered the 1 to hit the vitals in the context of limiting torso damage I tend to think of it as the former.

[Beoferret]

Dan, thanks for including the pectoral in this release. I did have a question: in the depictions, I've seen, it looked (to me at least) like it was located right smack in the middle of the chest. Wouldn't this lead to protection for both the lower and upper chest? And would you consider a Samnite triple disk breastplate to be an example of the largest form of pectoral (since it didn't protect the sides of the torso like a breastplate conceivably would)?

[DanHoward]

I thought of doing it both ways. The lack of a playtest meant that I had less people to toss around ideas with.

[Trachmyr]

Has any thought been made as to whether or not to errata the cost of Light Leather?

Since the cost for just the Torso is the entire cost of Winter Clothing that it's based upon, which is sipposed to include the cost of sleeves, handwear/footwear and pants! I'm Guessing the cost should be divided by at least 3 ($60), and possibly lowered a bit below that (at about $50).

[Landwalker]

I just now noticed that none of the Arm and Leg tables, nor any of their respective sublocations, have Heavy Plate or Heavy Segmented Plate on the list.

Are we to take this to mean that one realistically cannot have Heavy Plate or Heavy Seg. Plate covering these areas, even on fairly non-flexible sublocations like the forearm and shin? Or were these simply left off the list for space and implicit extrapolation (despite the fact that both armor types appear for the Chest, Heavy Seg. Plate appears for the Abdomen, and Heavy Plate appears for the Groin)?

Edit: And if the former, is this because of physical limitations (i.e. such armor cannot plausibly exist there), or because of historical tendencies and preferences (which would mean such armor could have existed there, but didn't for whatever historical purpose)?

[PseudoFenton]

Originally Posted by Landwalker

and Heavy Plate appears for the Groin

Well what guy doesn't want the best protection they can get down there??