Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Lawkeeper 08-28-07, 05:01 AM	Hello, I'm currently working on a critical hits and wounds system to use as a variant, and I noticed that it'd be much better if it was possible to keep track of what armor protects each body part. Rather than browsing through the various armors of core and everywhere else and noting which protects what part, I'm thinking about letting armor be worn as assortment of different body-parts, so that for example the difference between chain shirt and chain mail would be the absence/presence of leggings. So, does anybody know if there's already a well-written variant doing this ? I'm especially looking for one which doesn't adopts the armor as DR or defence bonus variants of the UA, since I'm not sure I want to use these variants. Thanks by advance
tarkin 08-28-07, 10:30 AM	The 3.0 book Oriental Adventures has something like that.
Lawkeeper 08-28-07, 12:32 PM	The dastana and cha-har aina ? Yes, those are my initial inspiration for this, when I had the idea of a full set of chain shirt, dastana, cha'ar ain & buckler, all in mithral to get the lowest ASF possible with the highest armor bonus possible.
RobbyPants 08-28-07, 12:39 PM	You'd have to convert the AC's a bit, but the 2E book Combat & Tactics did this. Basically, you would select the type of armor you wanted on each body part and add up it's fractional AC component. Once all the body parts were added up, you rounded the fraction (if any down) and would be set. You'll have to change the AC from 2E to 3E though (as 2E AC started at 10 and worked down, i.e. a person in chainmail had an AC of 5, not 15). Just to give an example of how it might work (I'm making these numbers up): Lets say your torso is 40% or your AC, your head is 10%, each leg is 15%, and each arm is 10%. You then "weight" the AC of each part accordingly (to make it easier, there would be a table, so you wouldn't have to do the math each time). So you could try and "create" breastplate using this method. If you have a heavy metal helmet (full plate), a heavy breast plate (full plate), and each arm and leg has studded leather. Torso (8 * 0.4) = 3.2 Head (8 * 0.1) = 0.8 Leg 1 (3 * 0.15) = 0.45 Leg 2 (3 * 0.15) = 0.45 Arm 1 (3 * 0.1) = 0.3 Arm 2 (3 * 0.1) = 0.3 _____________________________________ Total = 5.5 (round down to 5) It's a bit of bookkeeping, but the basic idea is there.
Lawkeeper 08-28-07, 12:42 PM	I get the idea. I suppose the same could go for other variables, like ASF, ACP, MaxDex and weight, but... what about the category for movement ? How to determine whether it's a light, medium or heavy armor for all movement matters ?
RobbyPants 08-28-07, 01:47 PM	How to determine whether it's a light, medium or heavy armor for all movement matters ? There are all kinds of ways. The easiest way is to just use the AC as a threshold. This isn't the best way to do it though. For example, both a chain shirt and scale mail have an AC of 4, so that won't always work. A better way would be to weight each portion with the percentages, and just figure out which is higher. In the example above, you end up with 50% heavy (40% torso + 10% head) and 50% light (10% per arm + 15% per leg). It makes sense to have it average out to medium (just like breast plate). So if some total came up 80% light, 20% medium, I'd call it light. Of course, if you got 50% light and 50% medium, you'd have to figure out which way to lean. I'd suggest calling it medium on a tie. You have to be careful to watch a system like this. You can probably combine things to get a higher than normal AC boost for a categroy...
Devlonir 08-28-07, 02:21 PM	I get the idea. I suppose the same could go for other variables, like ASF, ACP, MaxDex and weight, but... what about the category for movement ? How to determine whether it's a light, medium or heavy armor for all movement matters ? I just made a wonderful post of half a page giving proof of the fact that if you follow the same percentage system on everything, from price to AC, from Max Dex to ACP and ASF, it would be balanced... but i accidentilly clicked it away :S and lost all my writing :cries: But if you do the math yourself you will find it out. And about determening light/medium/heavy. Just look at the table of normal armor and youll see that the highest ACP for light is -2, medium is from -3 to -5 and heavy is -6 and more. Just follow that same guideline. And remember that -5.1 rounded down is still -6. If you do it any other way, you will have the possibility to create a fullplate with 1 piece of breastplate and have an AC 7 max dex 1 ACP -5 MEDIUM armor. A medium armor thats better than anything except the Full plate.. completely abusable by Barbarians with their fast movement and other classed that depend on medium armor but dont wanna put much points into Dex. ---------------- Edit: Oh yeah, to make it easy, round Arcane Spell Failure up to the nearest 5 to keep it completely balanced.
Lawkeeper 08-29-07, 08:05 AM	There are all kinds of ways. The easiest way is to just use the AC as a threshold. This isn't the best way to do it though. For example, both a chain shirt and scale mail have an AC of 4, so that won't always work. A better way would be to weight each portion with the percentages, and just figure out which is higher. In the example above, you end up with 50% heavy (40% torso + 10% head) and 50% light (10% per arm + 15% per leg). It makes sense to have it average out to medium (just like breast plate). So if some total came up 80% light, 20% medium, I'd call it light. Of course, if you got 50% light and 50% medium, you'd have to figure out which way to lean. I'd suggest calling it medium on a tie. You have to be careful to watch a system like this. You can probably combine things to get a higher than normal AC boost for a categroy... Yes, I think I might try this first. Defaulting to medium in mixed cases seems the best solution too. Thank you.
RobbyPants 08-29-07, 10:09 AM	Yes, I think I might try this first. Defaulting to medium in mixed cases seems the best solution too. Thank you. You're welcome. Although I should add the disclaimer that I personally have never tried a system like this in 3.x (and only did so once in 2E). So I can't say for sure if it will work out well. ;) Also, if you don't mind doing the hard work for your players, I'd recommend coming up with a little table for each type of armor and body point to post the decimal ACs for them. That way they can just reference it and say "what do I get for a chainmail coif? +0.5 AC. Cool." (or whatever numbers you use). That's the way I saw it presented in the book.
Lawkeeper 08-30-07, 08:56 AM	You're welcome. Although I should add the disclaimer that I personally have never tried a system like this in 3.x (and only did so once in 2E). So I can't say for sure if it will work out well. ;) Also, if you don't mind doing the hard work for your players, I'd recommend coming up with a little table for each type of armor and body point to post the decimal ACs for them. That way they can just reference it and say "what do I get for a chainmail coif? +0.5 AC. Cool." (or whatever numbers you use). That's the way I saw it presented in the book. Yes, I remember it. I might actually go dig in my archives to recover it.