A World Where Protection Amulets Made Armor Obsolete...

[Mister Trent]

Imagine if you will a fantasy setting in which armor became largely obsolete due to the proliferation of magical amulets that generate a protective field around the wear. The protection provided by these amulets is on par with or better than heavy plate armor but does not encumber the wearer. Armor is hardy ever used in battle anymore, and traditional suits of armor have for the most part been relegated to being collector's items and decorations for castle interiors. Any thoughts?

[bigbywolfe]

I think the first person to perfect a large scale "dispel protective magics" spell will end up very rich or very dead in short order. 
 

[The Weapon]

Ok, so if you wear the protection amulet and the armor are you even tougher?  I could see at least leather with some reinforcement still being worth it.  Or do they not stack?  

 

Is the protection they offer so good that people are practically invulnerable, or just better than armor (given that armor slows you down)?  

 

If the former I could see fights becoming grappling matches for the amulets.  If the latter then I could see more lawlessness as people walk around fully protected without having to be encumbered or obvious.

[L. Marcus]

I think the first person to perfect a large scale "dispel protective magics" spell will end up very rich or very dead in short order.

 

Yas, but the same could be said for the one who invented Mass Dispel Armor.

 

As for the OP, it doesn't have to impact gameplay very much unless you really want to. Combat - especially drawn-out fighting - would draw less END or LTE, depending on the rules in use.

 

Perhaps a peasant can afford an amulet that gives 3 rPD/3 rED; a man-at-arms can get 6 rPD/6 rED; and a duke and the king can afford 9 rPD/9 rED.

 

And of course it gives the artists an excuse to draw chain mail bikinis.

[mhd]

This will lead to lots of relentless brawling. Possibly even parkour.

 

And it'll take about 6 months to a year until someone will invent a very limited form of said amulets for, erm, down there.

 

One of the big questions is how this will influence weaponry. What are the specific weaknesses of said force fields? As opposed to armor, there are probably no gaps or weak spots, so small pointy bits will be less popular. Does it collapse if punctured? Can it be circumvented by the usual "very slow" attacks, whether it's blade or grappling? Does it just spread force or absorb it? Can I overload it?

[Markdoc]

In my game, magic armour is just DEF, so people can (and do) wear armour amulets (or more usually bracers, or something similar that cannot easily be grabbed: you don't want to be the middle of an armoured melee, protected only by a fashionable shirt). However, most magic armour is made to look like armour, because it serves an important visual function as well. It's just as effortless to wear as bracers (it's magical after all!) but provides space for heraldry, and gives an imposing "Now I am going to war" kind of vibe. Higher up the scale, it also includes useful functions (strength enhancement, flight, life support, etc)

 

Cheers, Mark

[assault]

However, most magic armour is made to look like armour, because it serves an important visual function as well.

 

I suspect it would be easier to enchant something that looks like armour to behave like armour too. Symbolism and all that.

 

More generally, tattoos would be an ideal medium for protective magic, applied when someone becomes accepted as a warrior.

[Outsider]

If you read erfworld, this would be what they call "signamancy"

[Outsider]

As to the original question...  If these amulets are so common as to be ubiquitous: 

 

1) People will use only the heaviest weapons, ones previously preferred for dealing with foes in heavy plate.

(Everything is coming up Anime)

 

2) People will use weapons that circumvent straight PD/ED, even if they're awkward.

(Flamethrowers/Flaming Oil for everyone! (RKA(e), penetrating (+1/2)) 

 

3) If magic defense is this common, how about magic attacks?   Physical weapons get replaced with magical "Shadow Blades" that dont attack vs PD/ED.

(HKA/NND/Does Body, or Drain (Body) Slow recovery (heals back).

 

4) The goal of fighting becomes to restrain one's opponent rather than wound him.  Once sufficiently restrained, you can either take his amulet (then kill him) or, if that isn't possible, simply suffocate him to death.

(A battle consists of opposing groups carrying nets and pillows...)

 

 

Basically, if you can't overwhelm it, you go around it.

[Markdoc]

In a way, if such amulets became common, it'd be the same as if heavy armour became common, which in late medieval Europe and Japan, it did. People just shifted to heavier weapons (option #1 above). In a fantasy world that would mean a mix of big hitty two-handed swords, axes and maces, and magical weapons.

Historically, it also meant the decline of bows and longbows, which don't perform well against heavy armour, and the rise of weapons (guns) which could. In Fantasy Hero, missile weapons are unrealistically effective, so you won't necessarily see that.

 

Cheers, Mark

[mhd]

I think combat would probably be very boring looking. Your armor is pretty great and doesn't encumber you, so you'll carry around huuuuge purely offensive weapons to get something through. Unless there's a way to actually defeat armulets, it's probably closer to a sporting match than what we'd consider a pitched battle. So, basically, Greek hoplites meets anime meets American handegg meets Takeshi's Castle.

 

The mechanical properties would influence this a big deal. For example, let's say the amulet is the equivalent of uniformly distributed padded plate. That means that your movement isn't restricted in any way, and your opponent can turn that against you. Expect a lot of strong, burly wrestling types to try joint manipulation. So we're moving the fanboy spectrum from Thalhoffer-dweebs to MMA-twerps (and your force field won't even hide your Affliction shirt!).

 

It also would be a great excuse to bring in your favorite style of combat to the exclusion of all others. So the armulet is even better: You're almost invulnerable and there's even some kind of repelling force to deter grapplers. But wait, there's more: To defeat it, clever wizards focused the energy of dying stars into a miniscule point and the gravpier was born. So the only possible style you've got is epee fencing. (I'm sure I could come up with some kind of magobabble to rule out arrows)

 

Or maybe biological matter isn't deterred by the force field, in which case throw away all your weapons and let's get ready to bareknuckle rumble.

[assault]

This situation implies that defensive magic is considerably more powerful than offensive magic. Otherwise, the natural answer to a magic amulet would be a magic weapon.

 

And then the arms race continues...

[The Weapon]

 

Or maybe biological matter isn't deterred by the force field, in which case throw away all your weapons and let's get ready to bareknuckle rumble.

 

I challenge you sir, thrown porcupines at 10 paces!  

[mhd]

This situation implies that defensive magic is considerably more powerful than offensive magic. Otherwise, the natural answer to a magic amulet would be a magic weapon.

I would assume that the OP is postulating a time where the arms race hasn't caught up yet, or that the laws of magic favor the defense.

 

Unless we can make a super-super weapon that's powered by armulet tech. What offensive thing can we do with cling-sheet force fields?

 

 

I challenge you sir, thrown porcupines at 10 paces!

Not too get too nerdy about biol-magical warfare featuring force fields and living projectiles, but quills, like hair are dead matter. Which is also why there's a big industry for full body Brazilians in the magical amulet age.

[Old Man]

It occurs to me that in the late Middle Ages, when full plate was fairly commonplace, fighting styles seemed to devolve into a sort of jiu-jitsu with knives.  Swords were of limited use, and were often gripped by the hilt and blade and used like quarterstaffs.

[Markdoc]

Actually the preferred primary weapons in that period seem to have been spiky things (hammers, beaked maces and the like), two handed pole arms (glaives, guisarmes, glaive-guisarmes, glaive-guisarme-glaives, glaive-glaive-guisarme-glaives, etc ) ... and swords. The first two classes speak for themselves - weapons designed to pierce or crush armour with either a spike or two-handed leverage. The gripping by the blade thing may or may not have been common (I know we see it in illustrations in a few fechtbuch, but not in any contemporary illustrations, and a lot of blades featured a sharp edge all the way down to the hilt, making it a dangerous practice, even with a  gauntlet), but it's clear from design that they were not used like quarterstaffs, since they featured rigid stabbing blades. The goal seems to have been not to try and slash through the armour (you basically can't) but to aim for gaps and holes with the point. Various contemporary accounts make it plain that a skilled swordsman could put the point into the eyeslot of an opponent's helmet, for example, and I imagine that would spoil anyone's day.

 

Pretty much every warrior carried a dagger, and there are plenty of contemporary illustrations showing men-at-arms grappling with daggers, so I get where you are coming from, but I get the very strong impression that this was not the preferred approach, but something you did when you were forced to, for example in the press of the melee.

 

In the situation the OP listed this wouldn't help, since the goal with a dagger is to stick it into a gap where there isn't heavy armour and a forcefield amulet wouldn't have any. I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it, but this might make swords obsolete too, since in the late medieval period this seems to have been their major route of attack as well, leaving you with the AP and +1 STUN weapons as you preferred option.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Not too get too nerdy about biol-magical warfare featuring force fields and living projectiles, but quills, like hair are dead matter. 

 

So are fingernails, which would make punching through a forcefield that excluded dead organic matter a painful affair - at least the first time you did it ...

Of course if the forcefield did not exclude dead organic matter then a simple wooden club would do the trick. If only living matter passed through, a club freshly cut from a tree should work.

 

cheers, Mark

[Old Man]

You could generate some interesting effects depending on exactly how the force field worked against different attack types.  How is it with blunt attacks, or very sharp piercing attacks?  What about choke holds or joint locks?  Electricity?  Liquids and gases?  Basically if the field is weaker against any of these attack types, we would of course expect attack philosophies to seize on them.

[Clonus]

You could generate some interesting effects depending on exactly how the force field worked against different attack types.  How is it with blunt attacks, or very sharp piercing attacks?  What about choke holds or joint locks?  Electricity?  Liquids and gases?  Basically if the field is weaker against any of these attack types, we would of course expect attack philosophies to seize on them.

 

I had a setting for an abortive novel where magicians had developed spells to turn aside common metals (copper and iron) and warp wood.  The result was a burgeoning number of weapons made out of exotic materials like silver and obsidian as well as a growth of barehanded combat techniques because it was impossible to put a flesh-repelling spell on oneself.  (Well you could but the results would be...messy).  

[The Weapon]

<snip>The gripping by the blade thing may or may not have been common (I know we see it in illustrations in a few fechtbuch, but not in any contemporary illustrations, and a lot of blades featured a sharp edge all the way down to the hilt, making it a dangerous practice, even with a  gauntlet),

<snip>

cheers, Mark

It's not all that dangerous.  There's a video on youtube where a guy really slams down on a tire using this technique without injury.

 

Title:  Half-swording - Why grabbing a sharp blade in a sword fight is not crazyHalf-swording - Why grabbing a sharp blade in a sword fight is not crazy

[Markdoc]

It's not all that dangerous.  There's a video on youtube where a guy really slams down on a tire using this technique without injury.

I should have specified that the "holding the blade" thing I was thinking of was not guidong the point while thrusting, but the kind of swinging he shows in most of the video.

 

And actually, the video kind of makes the point. Even with the gloves on, he's tapping the tyre enough to make a little dent. A solid blow, even from a wooden training sword, should compress the tyre significantly - much more than he did, meaning he wasn't hitting it very hard - and I trained with guys who could literally compress a tyre of that type with a blow so that the two sides actually touched. Honestly compels me to admit that those two guys had no wrists: their forearms just merged directly with their hands but the kind of blows he is delivering are just going to make an armoured man go "hey kid, knock that off!"

 

I've also watched a professional re-enactor demonstrate this on a training dummy wearing mail, to prove that it was possible with a sharp weapon. He gave it two solid hits, and then I guess his grip slipped, because on the third strike, he sliced his palm right open through a heavy leather gauntlet, and had to be driven to hospital, with his hand wrapped in a blood-soaked towel. So yeah, it's dangerous.

 

Maybe people really did do it in serious fights - or maybe the depictions in fechtbuch reflect the fact that most of them were written by people who weren't professional combatants, mostly for a readership that wasn't expected to engage in warfare. They contain a lot of wacky stuff, plenty of which might have gotten you killed on the battlefield if you tried it.

 

Cheers, Mark

[mhd]

It seems that since time immmemorial, martial arts manuals have a solid foot in the self-help section. There might be some solid advice in "How To Kill Foes And Decapitate People", Holy Roman Empire gym bro edition, but taking everything at face value...

Never mind that you always leave stuff out so that people actually come to you and don't just buy the books. Those seminars bring in the real money. (also cf. trap streets & stone lice...)

 

But to get back on topic: Wouldn't it be interesting if those amulets really work awesomely well, with few easy exploits and are plenty cheap, taking all the fun out of war? That would be a hotbed for scammers trying to teach you fake ways to circumvent the force field. ("One surprising trick to slit someone's throat!")

Sounds almost Pratchettesque.

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

I ... would not have interpreted that image that way.  To me, it looks like the unarmored guy is going for a hook-and-move - which he could do with pressure against the flat of the blade.  But hey, that's me.

[Doc Democracy]

It seems that since time immmemorial, martial arts manuals have a solid foot in the self-help section. There might be some solid advice in "How To Kill Foes And Decapitate People", Holy Roman Empire gym bro edition, but taking everything at face value...

Never mind that you always leave stuff out so that people actually come to you and don't just buy the books. Those seminars bring in the real money. (also cf. trap streets & stone lice...)

 

But to get back on topic: Wouldn't it be interesting if those amulets really work awesomely well, with few easy exploits and are plenty cheap, taking all the fun out of war? That would be a hotbed for scammers trying to teach you fake ways to circumvent the force field. ("One surprising trick to slit someone's throat!")

Sounds almost Pratchettesque.

 

I really do love this idea.  There is, in Fantasy gaming, this sentiment that once you have a magical amulet it will work, as if they all came off the same assembly line with great quality assurance programmes to ensure they performed to standard.

 

Obviously this does not happen.  Obviously there should be differences and places where the crafter got something wrong, cut corners or simply tried something different and it only looks like that kind of amulet...

 

This kind of thing would begin to make some campaign differences - as you would be looking for the marque of good craftsmen or reliable guilds.  Stuff without the right stamp or glyph would be subject to doubt as to its quality and then there would be line in counterfeit goods where sub-standard junk was being sold with counterfeit marques...

 

So much additional detail that you could add and where you could legitimately undermine a players reliance on an item which suddenly stops working.  Or as mhd pointed out had a fatal flaw that people might know about and exploit...

 

Doc

[Markdoc]

This kind of thing would begin to make some campaign differences - as you would be looking for the marque of good craftsmen or reliable guilds.  Stuff without the right stamp or glyph would be subject to doubt as to its quality and then there would be line in counterfeit goods where sub-standard junk was being sold with counterfeit marques...

I haven't made a big thing out of it, but players in my game have learned to be sceptical when somone offers to sell them a "magic item". We still chuckle (well, I chuckle, anyway) over the goblin who tricked the party out of almost all of their loot by selling them a pot of oil that would let the oiled blade "cut through anything" - demonstrated by casting an illusion on an old rotted tree trunk to make it look like a boulder, and then letting them hack hunks off the "boulder".

 

Cheers, Mark