Why did this never occur to me before?

I'm writing up the magic item section for TSR-East. Realized I'd not put in the note on 10% of magic armors being cursed. Noticed the lower encumbrance values for magic armors.

I'm sure this has occurred to many of you, but since I've never been a real stickler for encumbrance rules (eyeballing it seems to work OK), I never had this idea before in 35 years of gaming. And I don't remember seeing this in any published modules, either.

A cursed magical suit of armor. It has the normal plus value to improve AC. But it has double encumbrance instead of half encumbrance. And like normal for cursed items, once worn you're compelled to always wear it.

Random armor thoughts for TBH

Jeremy has been running the Rad Hack off and on, and it's obviously a variant of The Black Hack.

There are some things I like about TBH system and some things I don't. One that I'm not too fond of is how they handle armor. And apparently it's not just me, because apparently lots of TBH variants use different rules for armor. The Rad Hack uses the standard rules. Here they are, taken from this website: https://the-black-hack.jehaisleprintemps.net/english/

ARMOR POINTS¶

Armor provides protection by reducing all incoming damage. Each type will reduce damage by a limited amount. Armor Points are regained after a character rests. Once the player or monster has used armor to absorb its maximum amount, they are too tired or wounded to make effective use of it again - they then begin taking full damage.

TYPE	POINTS
Gambeson	2
Leather	4
Chain Mail	6
Plate & Mail	8
Small shield	2
Large shield	4

Monsters have 1 point of armor for every HD above 1, to figure this out quickly simply -1 from their HD - They can also carry shields. (All to a maximum of 10)

 Now, Rad Hack, being post-apoc mutant weirdness rather than medieval fantasy, uses generic light/medium/heavy armor, which you assume is probably cobbled together from sports gear and S&M bondage gear, like in a Mad Max movie. That's just cosmetic, though. The rules are the same.

So in TBH, armor provides damage reduction, but only once or twice (maybe three or four times if you have really good armor and are fighting low level mooks) per encounter. But then you rest, and the next encounter it's back to its full value again. It works, but the rationalization behind how it works is strange.

Now, the most popular innovation of TBH (and maybe it's not their original innovation but it seems to be one reason why people love the system so much) is the Usage Die. Instead of tracking every arrow, bullet, wand charge, or number of times per day you've used a special ability, they come with a usage die. After you use the item, you roll the die. If it comes up a 1 or 2, it drops to the next lowest die type the next time you use it. And if it's a d4 and it comes up 1 or 2, it's depleted (until you can buy more, rest for a day, put in a new power cell, or whatever makes sense for the resource being depleted).

Now I don't scour all the various hacks of TBH the way Jeremy seems to, but I'm wondering if anyone has set up armor to provide a smaller amount of damage reduction, but on every hit taken, but every time you get hit you need to roll a usage die for it. It might make more sense that way.

I'd probably set it up as every type of armor reduces damage by 2. Or maybe 1/2/3 for the armor types, plus one more if you have a shield. Light armor (gambeson, leather) and shields get a d4 usage die. Medium (chain) gets a d6. Heavy (plate) gets a d8. Once the armor is depleted, you don't get the damage reduction any more. You need to either get it repaired or replaced.

Of course, I'm running a Robot character, who has built in 2 points of armor.  I'd probably be needing a lot more repair than I do now in this system. But I think it makes a bit more sense from an in-game fiction standpoint, uses existing game mechanics, and still provides a good amount of damage reduction.

Chanbara Armor Poll Closed

Super Simple Armor is the winner.

I'll revise it.  I was thinking that I'll have two types of light armor - concealable (for the shinobi, mostly) and non-concealable.  One type each of medium and heavy armor.

Various descriptions of what each type could entail. 

I worked up the encumbrance system today.  Similar to Delta's "stones" system, I'm using vague "encumbrance units" and a PC can carry up to 1/2 their Str. score with no penalty.  Up to Str. with modest penalties to speed.  Up to double Str. at max, but severe penalties.

A full backpack, a bag of loot, a large weapon, a bulky piece of normal gear, light armor - all count as one encumbrance unit.

Medium armor counts as 2 EU.  Heavy armor is 4 EU.

Medium weapons are only 1/2 EU, and Small weapons are 1/4 EU. 

Actually, thinking about it now, that might be broken for PCs with 18 Str and overly severe for PCs with 3 Str.  Maybe I'll adjust the numbers to base 10, with bonuses and penalties for high/low Str similar to BX D&D, like this:

Str 3  Enc. 7
Str 4-5 Enc. 8
Str 6-8 Enc 9
Str 9-12 Enc 10
Str 13-15 Enc 11
Str 16-7 Enc 12
Str 18 Enc 13

One half Enc. value at no penalty, Enc. value at modest penalty, double Enc max at severe penalties.

Cast your vote! All the cool kids are doing it!

Just a reminder, there's a little poll on the side-bar about how best to handle armor in Chanbara, my samurai/ninja adaptation of Flying Swordsmen.

At the time of writing, I've gotten one vote.  I know my readership is down - hard to keep up substantive posts with a) grad school b) playing more than DMing, but ce la vie. 

Anyway, if you have a preference for how detailed you like armor in RPGs, now's your chance to chime in!

And as far as Chanbara updates go, had some time this afternoon and got to work on the Combat chapter.  Details of skill dice and combat maneuvers finished.  Now to detail all the boring nuts and bolts of RPG combat (likely cribbing a lot from Flying Swordsmen).

Thoughts on Armor in Chanbara

So, I managed to get all my grad school reading done, and had plenty of free time at work on Thursday, so I finished up my chapter on equipment for Chanbara.  There are weapons, armors, normal equipment (just a copy/paste from Flying Swordsmen with one or two little changes) and special ninja equipment.

Then, last night, I was watching Kurosawa Akira's 蜘蛛の巣城, or Throne of Blood.  For those unfamiliar, this was the movie where Kurosawa transplanted Shakespeare's Macbeth and changed all the Scotsmen into samurai.  Of course, Toshiro Mifune stars.

Watching it, and looking at all the different types of armor presented in the movie then reminded me of participating in several festivals during my time in Japan where my friends and I was able to wear reconstructions of period armor.

My buddy Justin decked out in a parade

Anyway, I think I may need to go back and make the armor section a bit more general.  I could go full-bore AD&D style and try to cover every single armor type, or AD&D OA style and try a piecemeal armor system, but that's a bit too complicated.  I've maybe got more armors than I need.  I may have hit a sweet spot with Flying Swordsmen, but then since there's not much call for armor there except for NPCs for the most part, I felt safe with a more abstract system.

So I'm a bit unsure on what to do.  Right now, I've got three categories, Light, Medium and Heavy.  Each category has three armors in it.  One, Kote, works like a shield, being able to combine it with what in Flying Swordsmen I termed "corselet armor" meaning just a breastplate and maybe a few other pieces.  There are three of these, two light and one medium.  The other medium and all of the heavy armors would be considered "suit" armors in Flying Swordsmen.

Maybe it's fine the way it is.  I've got most of the major Japanese armor types covered, in a non-historically accurate way.  Or maybe the more abstract FS version would work better?  A super simple way like OD&D/Classic D&D's leather/chain/plate?  3E OA's categorical armor (ashigaru armor, samurai armor, barbarian armor)?  Or should I go full-bore baroque detail AD&D/OA style?

What say you, readership?

Oriental Accents: In which I strap on some armor

Last Sunday we took another little family outing.  This time, we went to the Bokcheon Museum, which is located next to some 4th-5th century tumuli (barrow mounds...no wights encountered, luckily).  The museum houses lots of artifacts from the graves and other similar grave sites around the Busan area, and explain a lot of the Gaya Kingdoms culture in the early to mid-1st Millennium AD (or CE if you're one of those pompous PC types).

Lamellar armor and barding

The Gaya Kingdoms had Iron Age tech (some apparently borrowed from the neighboring and more advanced Silla kingdom to the north, some possibly inspiring elements of Yayoi culture in Japan). 

rusty breastplates

Me wearing plate armor made for someone much slimmer than I am.

Interesting for me was the armor found in the sites.  Cavalry wore lamellar armor (what you normally think of as Chinese/Korean armor, with lots of little rectangular plates woven to a leather or cloth backing).  But there were several examples of iron breastplates worn by infantry, which were solid in the back, hinged on the sides, and laced vertically up the middle in the front (seems like not the smartest way to do it to me, but I guess it worked for them).

the solid back plate

I think both OA books eliminate Platemail (or the 3E equivalents), but there were armors like that outside of Japan.  I'm fond of the tropes of chanbara, but at the same time I hate to limit my OA games to just samurai stuff.  So the next time I run a game of OA, I'll be sure to include plate as an option.

Wearing lamellar

The museum is right next to the reconstructed walls of the Dongnae Eupsong (the location I used for my Chainmail game last year), so I'll post some more about that later.