Armor Use, some suggestions and a quick question.

[Enepttastic]

Soooo, like I said elsewhere, I decided to muck about with armor a touch and I've a couple of suggestions for tweaking the Armor Use skill after learning a bit about how the skill is done at the moment.

But before that, have a quick question:
Why does steel armor weigh the same as iron? One of the massive perks of steel is that it's lighter and stronger than iron. Admittedly, if I understand right, this may be due to how crafting's done mechanically but is there any intention to tweak this eventually?


Ok, back to Armor Use
Right now, one can only gain skill-ups in two ways:
-Succeeding with an armor check
-Being trained(Via the 1 pt skill up granted)

This leads to a rather odd situation when it comes to someone who decides to go from no skill and buys plate. Between being burdened and the low skill, a character has very little(or possibly none, can't tell due to the hidden rolls) chance to skill up.

Now, when I broached the subject in-game, it was suggested that I start with lighter armor so I can actually get the skill ups and I ran into some resistance when I honestly stated that I feel that makes very little sense. While there's some parallels in the use of leather armor compared to using plate they're completely different beasts altogether. How one handles themselves in leather armor is going to be rather different than how they'd act in plate.

For example, light leather armor is there as protection when you couldn't avoid taking damage and how you move in it is going to reflect that. Admittedly, that may raise a point for reducing leather armor's weight a touch, for how it's meant to be, probably shouldn't weigh as much as it does.

Plate? You may still attempt to dodge/parry attacks but you're also going to rely on it to take some of the damage and thus, learning how to use it will also involve how to take/deflect the blows correctly. It's kinda like a shield in that regard, just having it helps but knowing how to use it can prolong its lifespan as well as better protect you.

Thus, like I said, it's a bit odd having a single skill cover the usage of all types of armor. To me, the system's not dissimilar to having say a "Pointy Weapons" skill but in order to actually have a chance of using a spear effectively, I gotta train my it up with daggers first. Yeah, spears and daggers have a similar premise(pointy end goes into other guy) but learning how to use one isn't going to dramatically increase my ability to use the other. Honestly, how the weapon skills are done in connection with the base melee skill is something I really like about Clok's mechanics which brings me to...

Armor Use Overhaul Suggestion:
Make a skill for the major armor types while keeping "Armor Use" as an accompanying skill similar to how weapons skills work with the melee/marksman skills.

Categories:
Leather(Covers all Leather-based armors)
Metal(Non-Plate)
Plate(Do I really need to?)

Conversely, could go with Light, Medium, and Heavy and have some of the heavier/sturdier leather armor types classified as medium.

Mechanically I'd could see this being handled a few different ways. For each of em, we'll assume that our Target Number is 50 while the Armor Use and Plate skills are at 100.(Note I'm well aware that these examples may very well require substantial tweaking based on how the underlying mechanics behind Clok work. Please keep that in mind when responding)

Method 1: Weighted Mean

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Armor Check = {(Armor Use * 25%) + (Plate * 75%)}
Armor Use rolls 20
Plate rolls 40
Armor Check = {(20 * 25%) + (40 * 75%)} = 35 = (5 + 30)
35 is less than 50 so armor check fails.

Skill gain could be split in the same 1:3 ratio

Method 2: Combined

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Armor Check = (Armor Use  + Plate)
Armor Use rolls 20
Plate Rolls 40
Armor Check = (20 + 40) = 60
60 is greater than 50 so check succeeds.

Skill gain split still suggested.

Method 3: Double Rolls vs TN

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Armor Check = Plate
Plate rolls 40
40 is less than 50 so check fails, proceed to roll Armor Use, increase TN(optional)
Armor Use rolls 20
20 is less than 50(or higher) so check fails fully

Method 4: Weighted Mean 2

Code: Select all

Option 1: Armor = ({(Armor Use + Plate) * Plate Boost} / 2)
Option 2: Armor = ({(Armor Use + Plate) / 2} * Plate Boost)
Option 3: Armor = ({Armor Use + (Plate * Plate Boost)} / 2)

Plate boost would require determining a curve what the boost is. For simplicity's sake, let's just say the boost starts at 1.00 and goes up by .01 for every iteration of *1. Thus rolling 1-10(0 could be either be bad and nuke the entire armor roll or just be considered part of the 1-10 structure) would be 1.00, 11-20 would be 1.02 and so on. Depending on the option chosen, the boost would essentially be added to the average of the Armor Use and Plate rolls or just to the Plate roll which is then averaged with Armor Use.


The intention with these suggestions is to come up with a mechanic that allows a character with experience in armor a better foothold when changing types(via Armor Use) compared to someone who's never donned a suit before while still allowing someone to decide to jump right into a suit of Plate armor and still get skillups. With that in mind however, I do suggest one more tweak:

Allow failed skill rolls to grant reduced skillups in specific circumstances. Specifically when below a certain threshold of skill as well as any time the character's under active tutoring for an armor skill. This is something I honestly would like to see quickly if possible to offset the need to wear undesired armor before being able to actually wear heavier stuff. One can learn as much from their failures, if not more, from their successes anyways.

[Vinz]

I think a great deal of this is subject to balancing issues.

The idea of wearing plate mail at character creation lends to some interesting progression. Remember anyone CAN wear armor and be protected. Simply throwing plate mail on and walking around will indeed grant you the reduction in damage from everything. You just will have a super hard time doing anything that the bulkiness of the armor interferes with. I totally understand where your coming from and having to slowly build up can be troublesome but realize too you don't have to put plate in every location. Wearing just a breastplate and some leathers will give you a BIG advantage in keeping your vitals all where they belong and still give you good skill gains. Heck, just wear the breast plate by itself for a bit and try it out.

The other thing i always try to keep in mind is people WERE trained for awhile in how to wear plate-mail. It didn't move very much, it was incredibly heavy, loud and required a lot of maintenance. Knights had a crew of people to help them do certain things they couldn't do on their own. Its also why people tried to come up with so many variations on it. More flexibility lead to more chances of the plate separating or articulating points failing.
Its just one of those things.

I do think it would be neat for some skill gains while your wearing bulkier armor, but just remember plate is the big daddy of armors. If everyone could start at the end, then there would be no need for progression in general.

This is all just my opinion, i'll leave it up for our balancing crew and dev for their opinions, i could be completely missing the point. So! Just my two cents.

[Enepttastic]

At the moment, I'm actually playing the character because the longer I sat in chat while typing up the OP as well as my post in the Caravan thread, the more I liked the idea of a Gigan woman in full plate punching the everloving hell outta everything. Now I just gotta figure out her character so I can actually RP.

Since I am, I want to say that slowly training Armor Use isn't the problem while in full plate. I spent a chunk of time fighting and didn't see a skill up until I bit the bullet and swapped the breastplate out for a leather one. Now? I'm actually getting some skillups and it's slow as hell but I'm fine with that. Actually, after realizing I had excess junk in my pack, I may be able to go back and wear the full plate while being in yellow encumbrance, derp. If that's the case, I'll admit some of the wind may be taken from my sails but there's still enough to work with. I'll check next time I'm in Shadgard since that's where I banked the breastplate.

That said, gonna quote ya here and there to help me stay focused on a single point at a time.

Wearing just a breastplate and some leathers will give you a BIG advantage in keeping your vitals all where they belong and still give you good skill gains.

This still doesn't alleviate part of the issue with Armor Use as-is: wearing leather shouldn't be a stepping stone in learning how to handle plate. In truth though? Best option might actually be plate helm, breastplate, gauntlets, and sabatons with leather vambraces and greaves or what I'm doing and full plate with rigid breastplate. The weight difference is about the same but the first option puts more protection on the torso while reducing it some of the arms/legs

I do think it would be neat for some skill gains while your wearing bulkier armor, but just remember plate is the big daddy of armors. If everyone could start at the end, then there would be no need for progression in general.

Oh I can assure you, just because a new character puts themselves in big metal can, there's progression to be had, just like if you gave a new character mastercrafted weapon, just because they have the shiny doesn't mean they can use it effectively. It's something I very much like about Clok, equipment alone doesn't make you a god. This route is totally not an ezmode one to start with and I'm not wanting changes to be made to make it so. Would just like the armor skill to make a smidgen more sense.

[Kunren]

Hmm~ while admittedly I figure movement in leathers and plate is different, I can see the logic of the current system I think. Armor use is all about dealing with the weight and bulkiness of the armor yes? If you look at it like weight training, it makes sense that the heaviest armor wouldn't help a newbie much. You wouldn't benchpress twice your body weight on the first day at the gym, as an example.

[Alicia]

I think a great deal of this is subject to balancing issues.

The idea of wearing plate mail at character creation lends to some interesting progression. Remember anyone CAN wear armor and be protected. Simply throwing plate mail on and walking around will indeed grant you the reduction in damage from everything. You just will have a super hard time doing anything that the bulkiness of the armor interferes with. I totally understand where your coming from and having to slowly build up can be troublesome but realize too you don't have to put plate in every location. Wearing just a breastplate and some leathers will give you a BIG advantage in keeping your vitals all where they belong and still give you good skill gains. Heck, just wear the breast plate by itself for a bit and try it out.

The other thing i always try to keep in mind is people WERE trained for awhile in how to wear plate-mail. It didn't move very much, it was incredibly heavy, loud and required a lot of maintenance. Knights had a crew of people to help them do certain things they couldn't do on their own. Its also why people tried to come up with so many variations on it. More flexibility lead to more chances of the plate separating or articulating points failing.
Its just one of those things.

I do think it would be neat for some skill gains while your wearing bulkier armor, but just remember plate is the big daddy of armors. If everyone could start at the end, then there would be no need for progression in general.

This is all just my opinion, i'll leave it up for our balancing crew and dev for their opinions, i could be completely missing the point. So! Just my two cents.

If you go onto youtube and look up armor movements in platemail... it's quite astounding just HOW flexible people really are in it. Knights didn't have people around them to do things they couldn't, they had people around them to put on the armor and get them on a horse if needed. Other tehn that, a quick release on a gauntlet and they can drink and eat. Sitting and standing, hard but quite easy. They can even roll and perform more complex combat manuvers (though a lot slower and with more needed precision than someone with much lighter armor).

As the other guy was saying, part of platemail's appeal back then was how you could use it as a full body shield. If you see a sword coming in and move your body a certain way you can deflect most if not all the incoming kinetic energy and even use that new position to throw your opponent to the ground. I think people get this romantic notion of knights keeping a sword's length from their enemy and doing 'sword fighting' but true medieval combat in platemail was more like wrestling.

[Sneaky]

If you're training armor use in the caravans or anywhere where the hostiles only get one attack per round it will be slow. If you fight something that does 3 or more per round you'll notice that it actually goes up incredibly fast. I've never taken a lesson in my entire play time in armor use, and I've got it up pretty high because the higher level enemies tend to get more attacks per round. So just keep this in mind.

[Alicia]

I do think it would be neat for some skill gains while your wearing bulkier armor, but just remember plate is the big daddy of armors. If everyone could start at the end, then there would be no need for progression in general.

This is all just my opinion, i'll leave it up for our balancing crew and dev for their opinions, i could be completely missing the point. So! Just my two cents.

I like the idea of the tri-system. It allows for more character diversity and realistically you can't start out of character creation with plate. If that is the mac daddy of armors, that means it is also the mac daddy of cost to buy.

It could also allow for some other mechanics, such as modified tackle damage. Wearing leather/light armors(no armor)? You are actually going to do less damage than you could have if you were wearing medium armor, and even more damage while wearing heavy armor (damage modifier based on the skill. The lower your armor use skill for light armors, the more damage reduction the enemy gets (no armor being a fixed amount), the higher your light armor skill the closer to regular damage you do, and vice verse for the heavy armors. Medium armor could have the benefit of better accuracy or lower energy cost while performing it.