Jacob/Armour

I think our armour physrepping rules are too stringent.

I would like to see the following requirements for different levels of AC.

AC 1: Anything that could, conceivably, be interpreted as armour - tough clothing, for example.

AC 2: Something clearly intended to be specifically protective - anything leather, for example.

AC 3: Any decent armour phys-rep - with studs, or toughish.

AC 4: Anything clearly intended to be metal.

No minimum area of coverage, because there are some very cool armour physreps - shoulder guards, for example - that don't cover much, but still clearly ought to count.

Armour counts towards mages' metal limits as at present, irrespective of physrep.

I'm not sure what you mean by this sentence. Are you implying and/or saying that any armour physrep counts towards a mage's metal limit? I was under the impression that non-studded leather did not. --Bluebottle

I doesn't; if we allowed non-metal physreps to count for AC 3 I think we'd have to change things so that it did, or some similar restriction applied. --Jacob

I think the idea was something like "Any 3pt armour is deemed to contain enough metal that it would seriously inconvenience a mage, ie a mage may not wear more than 2pts on any location without asploding." Of course, you'd be allowed to use the same decent studded leather phsyrep for 2 or 3pt armour. And warmetal armour, should it exist, is an exception... --Pufferfish

My understanding of this is that the game mechanics stay exactly the same. The only difference is that the required physrep for armour is made more lax. Don't see any problem with this --Taxellor

I'd like to ammend the minimum area of coverage thing to avoid silly buggers. Suggestion: Although there is no minimum area restriction, the remainder of the location must be protected to a standard suitable for AC 1. So, for example, you can count your arms as AC 3 if you have decent studded gauntlets covering your lower arms AND tough clothing covering your upper arms. Similarly, with tough clothing and impressive metal spaulders, you can consider your chest to be AC4.

An alternative, less lax option is to require that the rest of the location be covered to the standard of the next armour class down - so, you'd need studded gauntlets and the rest of your arm covered with leather for AC3, or impressive metal spaulders and a studded leather breastplate for AC4 on the chest. --Valtiel

This strikes me as rather silly, as covering your entire arm with leather is actually quite difficult, especially considering the physreps available. I would say the above is *less* desirable than what we currently have, as it requires people to own or borrow more physreps than currently. --Pufferfish

AC 1 requirement is only tough cloth, not leather. But I take your point. --Valtiel

You do know that right now, mages can wear cuirboile, and get AC3 without exploding. To say nothing of warmetal chain, and so forth. This is, of course, a bug in the system, but there we go. Also, I support your armour categories, but am unhappy with your minimum coverage rule. I would rather go with '...and appears positioned to catch the majority of blows to that location'. (Noting that a simple majority is half, so this shouldn't be an issue). Also I'd note that (IMO) metal shouldn't be a strict requirement for AC4. Look at my helmet sometime for my argument against this. --I

Cuirboullie should probably be 2 points then. I thought there was essentially a rule that limited Mages to AC 2 at least by extension of other rules. For 3 or 4 points you should have to be making a good effort, what Jacob's suggestion seems to be is that the effort should mostly be aesthetic. I'd certainly be ok with averaging to be allowed so that metal shoulder plates + studded leather could take you up to 3 points. Warmetal certainly used to be unable to make armour, don't know if this has changed, I think it was a warlock balancing thing. Personally I like the current rules and don't think they're too stringent, also if you make them more lax then everybody able to wear it just ends up in more armour so it weakens non armoured classes and makes Through better which has just got a big boost from going though DAC. Some systems have a system where there's +1 for 'would actually work as armour' do you get something like: leather | studded leather/proper boiled leather | Proper boiled and studded leather/ aluminium chainmail | heavy chainmail/ resin/plastic/whatever plate | real plate. This has the advantage of not effectively penalising people who go for authentic physreps which are more cumbersome and harder to operate in but has the disadvantage of not simply going for aesthetic value which people may prefer, and arguably making more money mean more armour.

I think that it is a stated goal of TT's armour system than people who go for authentic physreps ought not to be rewarded beyond the fact that they have cool physreps; I think that effectively penalising those who wear cumbersome physreps is a perfectly acceptable side-effect of this. Not necessarily relevant, but I will note that authentic phys-reps are probably often less cumbersome than cheap ones - Gilbert's drainpipe plate was an absolute nightmare; I came off most linears with bloody scrapes on my shins. --Jacob

My little bit of input on this: there are currently problems with the armour system we have. These are primarily the requirement to change kit as you progress up the levels of the Armour skill; although the low protection value given officially to thick boiled leather is another point to raise. Making the requirements less stringent will certainly help these out. However... there are also downsides to changes; specifically that it makes warriors in general more powerful, and negates a lot of the incentive to wear chain and/or plate. Fundamentally, warriors clad in lots of metal are very cool indeed and should be encouraged - I do like a distinct, significant top spot for heavy metal armour, since it is heavy and inconvenient to wear (often) and looks so damned cool. I intend to wear proper re-enactment grade plate on my legs for my next character - finding that a leather skirt with a few studs provides almost the same protection would be mildly irritating from my point of view there. Sure, relax the 2pt-3pt restrictions. I suppose even opening up 3pt to good physreps is possible. But keep 4pt for proper heavy metal armour, please. To be honest, even if we open up the 3pts slot this alone removes a lot of the incentive to wear it, which I view as unfortunate. If we did that, I'd want chain as 4pt and plate as 5, or something like that. -TheKremlin

Encouraging people to wear chain or plate is synonymous with penalising people who don't/can't have physreps for chain or plate. I think that wearing well-physrepped armour is cool, and that that should be it's own reward. --Jacob