About armor

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    • Hello! I'm new to the forums (and the game really) but I've been a fan of shard since I first heard of it awhile back. Anyway, I've been reading though some of the combat rules and something is kind of worrying me.

      Armor, on the whole, seems largely useless.

      With the exception of suthra armor which can be tuned to be healing subdual damage over time most of the armors really don't seem to prevent enough damage to be useful, especially if someone gets a multiplier. Maybe I'm wrong and misreading it or something but on the whole it looks like your points would be better spent focusing on dodging or something. If someone's wrong please by all means correct me but I think some sort of houserule for this might be needed for games I'd run else I doubt I'd ever see someone able to use a heavily armored character effectively.

      Once again though, I'm rather throughly in love with the game on the whole and I suspect this might be more a case of me misreading something somewhere.
    • RE: About armor

      To be honest, I agree with you.

      What you're seeing is the double dipping effect of the system in which excess successes on the attack roll both add to the damage and also provide a multiplier so once you're hit the damage quickly and geometrically becomes worse.

      The simplest solution, which makes armor still useful, is to ignore the multiplier.

      Alternatively you could apply the multiplier to the damage that gets through the armor.

      So an attack with a 6 damage sword with 4 net attack successes against a target wearing 3 armor would deal 14 damage to the target.

      Example:

      damage 6 + successes 4 - 3 armor = 7 x 2 (success level for 4-5 successes) = 14 damage.

      Using the rules as written:

      [6 + 4] x 2 = 20 - 3 = 17.

      Not a huge difference at first but once the multipliers kick in Shard gets deadly FAST.

      >>ReaperWolf
    • Maybe there's another way to work with this. Like maybe the higher quality the armor is the harder it is to get a multiplier or something.

      Like...with leather maybe makes it take an extra success to get the highest level multiplier or something. I don't want to completely kill the deadliness of combat i just want to make a heavy armor wearer viable if someone would want it.
    • RE: About armor

      Yes, which is why I suggested in another post that multipliers be used only for PCs (and very important NPCs) but not for anyone else. Or they can be discarded altogether. But yes, Shard combat can be very deadly and you can kill an opponent in one shot.

      If you look at some of the source material that inspired Shard, however, particularly Chinese martial arts movies, you'll see good guys kill minions with one shot all the time (hence my "only let PCs use multipliers" rule suggestion). It's only when they fight the boss (the dude with white eyebrows) do the fights take ten minutes (or more) of screen time and involve all manner of advanced moves and techniques.

      -Aaron
    • RE: About armor

      Yep,...as Aaron said, there are a number of ways one might mitigate the concern of combat being "too deadly"...

      And remember,...the points of armor are taken off of the damage of every single attack that gets through the defensive roll...

      Honestly, when I run my game,...it's never really much of an issue... It's only on the very rare occasions that a degree of success gets through defense enough to cause the really deadly multiplier-benefitted strikes... In such cases, it really comes down to the fact that, every once in awhile, a character (or NPC) rolls so much better than their opponent that they SHOULD have the feeling that they are cutting right through the armor to deliver an amazingly-damaging blow: quite fun when you are the dealer of that blow, but horrifying when you happen to be the unlucky receiver of such a skilled blow...

      But remember,...those particular "so-amazing-that-you-get-a-multiplier" rolls only really happen rarely (since defense successes cancel out attack successes), such as when the opponents are mismatched in skill level, or when an opponent is so unlucky (or foolish) as to remain close to their opponent after they have run out of Combat Actions to defend with... If you find yourself weak on Combat Actions during a melee round, the best thing to do is to retreat to avoid getting overwhelmed.... Never hang around if you suddenly get outnumbered or find that you don't have enough actions to properly defend yourself...

      Remaining in or near combat in a defenseless state is just asking to get hacked to pieces or beaten to a pulp...

      That's what you've got to expect when playing with the rules as they are written, certainly... And since players have the advantage of being able to use Story Points to keep such moments from being truly deadly (NPC don't get that option), it certainly makes for a great sense of risk when in combat, without feeling there's nothing you can do to barely save your own hide in those rare cases.... And they are rare... I know,...because I've been running the game using the rules as written for years...

      When they DO happen, and the player happens to be on the receiving end,...things get quite exciting indeed! But most of the time it's the NPCs who always seem to be on the receiving end of the really hefty damage multipliers... Because my players seem to pick their battles carefully, and plan ahead to ensure they can gang up on the more powerful foes,...that's how it usually ends up working for them,...and they love it! This type of strategy use is something I highly recommend...

      The reason I personally don't choose to use the option of having armor calculate before the multiplier, is because the damage multiplier is a reflection of the skill of the one making the strike, and has nothing to do with their target's armor... Factoring the target's armor in BEFORE the attacker's damage multiplier causes the math to essentially multiply the effectiveness of the target's armor AS WELL as the damage being done to them, which makes no sense to me (or my players, for that matter)... For our game, none of us feel that the better a player rolls when striking his opponent (thus giving him a multiplier), the more his opponent's armor somehow also protects him from the player's awesomely-rolled strike... Those two should simply not be related...

      Awesomely-rolled attacks should cause awesome (and sometimes deadly) damage... To our gaming group, the fact that PCs only can use Story Points to avoid those terrible strikes that sometimes land against them is appropriate balancing enough...

      Remember,...combat in SHARD is not just about wading in to battle willy-nilly... Martial arts combat can (and should) seem like a terrifically swift and deadly event when real weapons are in play, and the opponents have a strong desire to see each other dead...

      To make sure your character is not the recipient of a horribly painful defeat, careful tactics must be used once the rolls determine just how many Combat Actions you really have to play around with... The fewer you end up having for a round, the more carefully you must decide how to use them, to avoid landing yourself in a sticky situation where you suddenly run out of Actions to defend yourself with...

      Additionally, it's always good to remember that not all combat in SHARD is meant to be "to the death"... This is a very ritual-based world, and stylized martial combat is more about the elegance of the effect, and less about how much blood flows... Think about the kinds of movie combats that SHARD lends itself to recreating... Consider a typical Jackie Chan action sequence where, though he's often dealing with multiple foes, he always attempts to use the environment around him to handle them one or two at a time, maneuvering himself through the surrounding terrain in ways that keep them from ganging up on him all at once... Half of what he does are attempts at putting either space or obstacles between himself and his opponents, to make sure he has enough "actions" at any given moment to deal with whatever foes are nearest to him, while keeping the rest out of range...

      Also, you'll notice that his goal doesn't seem to be trying to kill them... Instead, most of his attacks are used to disable and stun his opponents, who even after they are essentially "defeated" are still quite alive, and usually squirming on the ground in pain, or merely unconscious... The rules for SHARD are designed to easily allow for that, and in fact encourage that with the special maneuvers that defeat your opponent with Subdue damage primarily (thus keeping them alive), which are actually easier to perform than those that cause only Fatal damage... Even generic strikes (not using the location table) assume that an uneven amount of damage caused always favors Subdue over Fatal damage... It doesn't matter what kind of damage you do to your opponents (Subdue or Fatal), when an opponent reaches zero Stamina they have been defeated, and combat is over for them... That doesn't have to mean they are dead...

      Assume that logic should be also used by the GM as well when running the NPCs... Creating situations where a character can possibly get defeated, then captured,...can have much better story possibilities than opponents who are always out to slaughter the PCs only...

      Bloody battles to the death all the time can actually get boring... But the rules really are made to allow not only NPCs to be defeated (but not necessarily killed), but PCs as well... The nature of the system only seems really "deadly" if it's being played like a fight to the death every time... Try mixing it up a bit, and assume that a player's swift defeat doesn't not always meant that player's demise... It'll lead to much better story-driven games,...I assure you...

      Scottie ^^