Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tobtor
I have difficult answering your question as I do not understand the armour system (or do not agree with the premise). Armour can withstand multiple hits (yes they get worn down over time, loosing rings etc, but not by one or two hits!).
...
I always think giving armour a damage resistance is much better. Then certain weapons (such as "spiky things" for mail, cutting things for padding etc) can reduce the damage resistance. Thus a mail might have between 4 and 8 of DR depending on quality, then sword cuts deal 1d6 damage, a narrow-pointed spear also 1d6 (or possibly 1d8 or whatever), but with a 50% reduction to DR giving it a change to hurt the opponent (thus reducing the armour protective value to 2 or 4 depending on quality, thus many hits will still be ignored).
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Max_Killjoy
That's similar to what we did in the old homebrew.
Every weapon had a damage and a "penetration" value, and every armor had a "reduction" value.
(No "armor makes you harder to hit", either.)
The system is a
Powered by the Apocalypse hack. For reference, here's the combat rules as they currently stand.
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Stats
Characters have five main stats. Each ranges from -3 to +3. The two most directly relevant to combat are brave and strong.
Brave means courageous, thrill-seeking, lacking in self-preservation, able and willing to throw yourself into danger without faltering.
Strong means physically strong, strong-willed, tough, aggressive, violent and skilled in the doing of violence.
Basic Moves
For anyone not familiar with Powered by the Apocalypse, the game revolves around actions called moves. A move is triggered when a player character does something that creates uncertainty in the fiction. Almost all moves involve a roll of 2d6 plus relevant modifiers, usually a stat. A total of 10 or higher indicates a complete success--the character accomplished exactly what they wanted. A 7-9 indicates a partial success--they get part of what they want, or succeed with complications. A 6 or lower is a failure, which usually gives the GM open-ended license to inflict badness as fictionally appropriate.
In Drifters, much of combat is based around two basic moves: throw yourself into danger and do battle.
Throw yourself into danger
When you throw yourself into danger, or steel yourself to endure, roll +brave. On a 10+, you do it. On a 7-9, you flinch, hesitate, or stall; the GM can offer you a worse outcome, a hard bargain, or an ugly choice. On a miss, be prepared for the worst.
Do battle
When you attack an enemy in combat, roll +strong. On a 10+, you inflict harm, evade or stop their counterattack, and keep them at the distance you want. On a 7-9, you inflict harm, and they retaliate, inflicting harm back on you, or moving to their preferred range if they can't. On a miss, be prepared for the worst.
Peripheral Moves
There are two peripheral moves that will also come up a lot in a fight: harm and armor.
Harm
When you suffer harm, mark off a harm box and roll +current harm. On a 10+, you're incapacitated, out of the fight. On a 7-9, you're struggling; take -1 forward. On a miss, you're fine for now. If you're at 4 harm, don't bother rolling, because you're dead.
When you rest up in town, if you're at 1 harm, heal up to full health. Anything more serious will require treatment.
Armor
When you protect yourself from harm with armor, choose a piece of armor you're wearing and roll. On a 10+, the armor stops the hit, but you won't be able to use it again this fight. On a 7-9, as above, and the armor gets in your way; take -1 forward. On a miss, the armor stops the hit, but breaks in the process, and won't be usable again until someone with the appropriate skills takes time to fix it up.
More on Combat
When you get in a fight, the first thing you need to figure out is what range you're fighting at. This is determined by your weapon. Too far, and you can't reach; too close, and you don't have the space to swing properly. The ranges are shot (bows, slings), thrown (thrown weapons), reach (longspears, glaives), close (most other melee weapons), and hand (daggers, bare hands). Sometimes, the location of the fight will determine the range--if you're fighting in a closet, you're at hand range. Failing that, compare your weapon with your enemy's; the person with the longer range gets to pick. You can't attack someone outside your range, unless you can close the gap somehow, which will probably mean throwing yourself into danger. If you have the range advantage, your enemy can't hit you, but may get a chance to close the distance as per your do battle move. The same applies if either of you wants to retreat to a longer range.
Besides its range, every weapon has its own strengths and weaknesses. Common weapons are listed here with theirs.
(Still working on the weapon list, but below it, I'll have a list of each characteristic and what it means.)
Weak means it can't get through armor. If your opponent is wearing any, you're out of luck. This will mostly apply to unarmed attacks.
Deadly means if it's not stopped by armor, it inflicts 2 harm. Keep in mind that helpless, unaware, or unsuspecting targets can't use armor, even if they're wearing it. (I hadn't mentioned that last part yet here, but it's detailed in the full rules as part of the move for attacking such targets.)
Cheap means any time you have a chance to pick up new weapons, you can get one essentially for free, no bargaining or spending treasure needed. Expensive means it'll cost you 2 treasure instead of 1 (or double the price of other weapons, whatever that is at the moment).
Two-handed means you can't use a shield with it.
Ammo means it uses a limited supply of projectiles, which you can run out of.
(My plan was to also have characteristics that let weapons bypass different types of armor, but obviously I'm still nailing down just how that works.)
More on Harm
When you get hurt, you take harm. Most injuries are 1 harm--that includes normal weapon strikes. Drifters have 4 harm boxes. 1 harm is scrapes, bruises, and shallow cuts--painful, but not serious, and they'll get better on their own with time and rest. 2 harm is a real, telling injury that hurts a lot and needs help to heal, but isn't life-threatening. 3 harm is a mortal wound; if you don't get help within a few minutes, you'll bleed out and die. 4 harm is death--you might have time for a few last words, but no healing can save you now. Remember, though, that even 1 harm can take you out of a fight if you get unlucky with your harm move; this is where armor can really be helpful.
Most NPCs, human or otherwise, die at 2 harm, though some really tough ones might take 3. There's also d-harm, or direct harm. D-harm is for things like poison, or falling off cliffs; normal armor can't stop it.
You can equip up to four pieces of armor: padding, mail, a helmet, and a shield. As per the armor move, you can use it to avoid harm. Mail is expensive to buy, though not to repair. Armored NPCs don't roll for armor--they just spend it to absorb hits, 1 piece per hit. Certain non-human creatures also have 1 or more n-armor, or natural armor, which they can spend the same way. N-armor might be ignored by certain types of weapons (a skeleton's n-armor might be ignored by blunt weapons, for example), or by certain other kinds of harm, like fire or silver. N-armor can stop d-harm, unless the d-harm is of a kind that specifically bypasses that creature's n-armor.
Treasure
Treasure is abstracted as points, found in the course of adventures or given as payment by NPCs. In terms of relevance to combat, 1 treasure buys: a new weapon; a new piece of armor; the repair of two broken pieces of armor; or full treatment by a healer (all assuming you get a fair deal, which you often won't). Anything cheap is free of this price, anything expensive doubles it.
I think that about covers it. Anyway, the gist of it is,
PbtA systems don't make damage granular enough for weapons with AP ratings to be viable. Granted, the original
Apocalypse World does armor as simple damage reduction, but the armor system I'm using is essentially copied from
Sagas of the Icelanders; I thought it more fitting for a dungeon-crawling fantasy system with more focus on combat than vanilla
AW. The reason for the fragility of armor is that fights are extremely short. Most fights between unarmored combatants will come down to just one or two rolls; with that kind of lethality, a single piece of armor absorbing one hit nearly doubles your survivability, which is a big deal. Also, keeping your armor in working order is meant to be a huge part of the resource allocation game--you only have so much treasure to throw around, so do you spend it on a bed for your stay in town, or on fixing the broken helmet that might save your life? It's definitely unrealistic for armor to fall apart so fast, and the only real explanation here is "because games", but I'm comfortable with that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tobtor
No weapon should really ignore armour. Swords might cut through padding, but it will still not go as deep as without padding etc.
See above. I'm sure realistically, no weapon completely ignores any type of armor, but at the level of granularity I'm working with (very little), it makes sense to abstract it as such. It's a case of rounding the effect of armor to "no damage" or "full damage", and the former doesn't work.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Vitruviansquid
I, and apparently most gamers, are perfectly okay with unrealistic interactions as long as they make mechanical sense. Fire Emblem's sword beats axe, axe beats spear system doesn't have any justification as far as I can tell, but it works perfectly well in their context of a turn based tactics game.
Couldn't agree more. Hopefully my above responses have made it a little clearer where I'm coming from.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Vitruviansquid
I'm not sure about the gameplay utility of this system either. Damage resistances tend not to work in a system where you can only control one unit. So if I built my character to be good with a sword, but a sword doesn't do well against mail armor, am I just screwed in a fight against someone wearing mail? That's not fun, nor does it make sense for realism - in reality, mailed warriors with swords killed each other all the time by using their swords on the body parts not covered by mail, sometimes requiring a bit of close quarters struggle. Or, if it's not a big deal to use a different weapon, does this mean that all player characters will want to have access to a large breadth of weapons? If that's possible, what's the point of having this different weapons system to begin with?
If weapons are supposed to feel different, where does this difference in feel come in? Am I more likely to encounter some armor types than others? Is it a bigger deal to be able to pierce lamellar than it is to be able to pierce gambeson? What makes a player choose one weapon types or armor types over the others, besides what all the other players are choosing?
As I've hopefully explained, all weapons
can get through all armor, so you can totally kill someone in mail using a sword. It'd just take a roll or two longer than using a weapon against which mail is ineffective. My goal is, indeed, for PCs to want access to a variety of weapons. The main limiting factor on that will be what your class allows you to start with (in standard
Apocalypse World and
Dungeon World fashion, each class offers a different selection of starting equipment), and how much treasure they have to spend on buying new weapons, or replacements for ones they lose when they blow their moves and the GM gets to take their stuff.