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Damaging Armour and Gear


drunkonduty

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So I'm avoiding my intro to stats assignment.

 

I was thinking about arms and armour taking damage.

 

Now I realise there are rules for this. But does anyone bother playing with these rules in fantasy games?

 

My take is it's potentially a lot of extra work. But it could be fun for a certain style of game.  Something along the lines of the heroes are on a long quest in the wilderness and their gear becomes slowly eroded by encounter after encounter. It turns a given scenario into something of an endurance test. I wouldn't do this all the time! But as a change of pace... yeah.

 

I imagine many players would hate it either because it hits them in the kewl. Or they just don't want the extra paper work.

 

Has anyone tried this? How did the players feel?

 

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Yeah it occurred to me that it might be better if the GM tracked this.

 

I haven't got my books handy but do the focus breaking rules include grades of broken or is it simply on/off?

 

My personal preference is that armour should fall apart a bit at time, with DEF going down until its finally useless. Weapons getting OCV and even damage penalties until they also fall apart.

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One of my projects includes rules for calculating the BODY of Foci based on their Mass (which is how the BODY of Objects not defined as Game Elements are typically calculated). Once you have a BODY Score (either by calculating it, or using the arbitrary values given in Fantasy Hero​), you simply have to define in your campaign guidelines what conditions cause what kind of Foci to take damage (aside from being Attacked directly that is).

 

For example, melee weapons might risk taking damage when you Block with them or when you use them to attack something with significantly more physical defense than they possess. Similarly, armor might risk taking damage when an attack does significantly more damage than their defense; and if you are using hit locations, such damage might only destroy the part of the armor covering the location struck (leaving the rest of your armor intact).

 

In anime, it is an extremely common trope for characters to lose bits of their armor (especially helmets or masks), or break their weapons during the course of major battles. For example, the version of Bell Cranel I've posted in the Downloads section breaks all of the normal equipment I put on his character sheet during the course of the episode that character sheet represents while fighting a powerful foe.

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I am using a homebrew variant of the Breakable Focii rules in my Gantz-inspired campaign for the soft suits. According to the RAW, each time an object's DEF is exceeded, it loses one of its powers (from highest Active Cost to lowest). I'm tweaking that slightly so that each time the DEF is exceeded, all powers lose 20% of their "effectiveness" (basically, their Active Points). After five such hits, the suit has lost all effectiveness. This made more sense to me since the suit really has only one source of power and all powers derive from it, sort of like a Multipower pool, and it is like the pool is losing 20% of its points each time, effectively reducing all the slots by 20%.

 

I plan to make this easier for the players to track by having "gear cards" made up for the soft suit in each of its five stages of effectiveness. I also plan to have gear cards for the special weapons too. That way their inventory of gear is whatever cards they have on hand. As gear gets destroyed, they just hand the cards back to me. And as the suit loses effectiveness, they switch out the current card for the next one in the set.

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The simple version per existing RAW is that an Object with Human Mass (100 Kg.) has 7 BODY. Each halving of mass reduces that value by -1, and each doubling of mass increases that value by +1. Complex Objects (like a computer), tends to have 2 less BODY, and acquires an Activation Roll as it takes damage.

The full rules I devised for my project allow characters to assign Size, Mass, and BODY traits to Foci much like the Expanded Focus rules (from one of the APGs I forget which) do, and modifies how Foci respond to BODY damage (they become nonfunctional at 0 BODY, and are destroyed at negative their starting BODY, much like characters). Large and/or Massive Foci also have increased modifier values to account for their inconvenience. Those full rules were also intended to replace the existing awkward Mass modifiers for Armor.

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I was also thinking along the lines of using 1/2 BOD, 0 BOD and -BOD as thresholds for reduced effectiveness.

-1DEF/OCV; 1/2 DEF, -2 OCV; and FUBAR, respectively.

I can't think of very many weapons that would actually become harder to hit with as they take damage (bent swords perhaps?). In most cases the damage is superficial up until the weapon ceases to function (either occasionally or entirely). You also need to consider the odd devices which don't qualify as weapons or armor... For example, a jetpack or cloak of levitation (Flight, OIF).

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Most weapons would get harder to hit with when damaged: the head is coming loose and is wobbly, the axhead is bent and you have to compensate to hit with, etc.  That makes sense, but I think its simpler to just apply a damage reduction.  Your sword does less damage as you mangle it.  Losing magical powers I think should be all-or-nothing, since the enchantment shouldn't be tied to the physical shape of the weapon.

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For the odd devices I would keep it much the same as weapons and armour: -1 to appropriate skill checks, -2 skill checks; FUBAR.

 

Reduction to powers (be it metres of flight for a cloak or HKA for an (unmagical) axe) is certainly worth considering. I worry that it might become too much to track, even with nifty zslane-cards.

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