Sword & Scoundrel - Early Thursday Teaser Edition

[thorgarth]

Will be waiting anxiously for it to dive right into the midst of it in terms of mechanics and their systematic interaction.

[thirtythr33]

Someone who is in better physical shape is going to be able to bear a load better than someone who is less strong. The easiest way to represent that mathematically is in a penalty based on encumbrance.

Firstly, I'm not saying there shouldn't be a penalty for encumbrance. I'm saying you shouldn't throw out the direct CP penalty for wearing armor in exchange for ONLY having a penalty based on encumbrance.

The encumbering nature of armor comes from decreased flexibility and shifting center of mass just as much as it comes from raw weight. That can significantly decrease performance on the very first piece of armor, regardless of weight.

You are effectively double counting Brawn in skills and armor. We will consider Alice with Brawn 5 and her friend Bob with Brawn 4. They are wearing identical equipment of Enc 5 and are trying to climb the same Req3 tree (A Brawn test).

Alice has no Enc penalty and rolls 5 dice at Req3.
Bob has -1 Enc penalty and rolls 4 dice at Req4.

The fact that Alice is supposed to perform better at this tasks is already accounted for with her getting to roll an extra dice. Her higher Brawn shouldn't be BOTH getting her more dice AND reducing the number of modifiers. That means that situation modifiers (like Enc) shouldn't be dependent on Attributes.

Similarly Brawn will increase your natural AV as well as increasing the amount of armor you can equip, double counting the difference between strong and weak characters. The gulf between Brawn 5 (wearing AV3 Maille Blk3 and sword and helmet) versus Brawn 7 (wearing AV6 Plate Blk5 and sword and helmet) will be an astonishing 4 armor on each location (or 5 if you include the DR difference too).

Plate alone is 5 bulk. Add a sword and a dagger to that and you're already at 7.

So someone with Brawn 7 can swim a river and climb a tree in full plate with no penalty. Does that sound right to you? AFAIK, noone has ever swam more than 5m in full harness. You can put a band-aid on the sneak example with a sound modifier... But are you going to put another band-aid modifier on swimming too? At what point is putting separate band aid modifiers on sneaking, climbing, swimming and jumping in plate too much and you instead just put a blanket rule on plate or modify the encumbrance rules somehow? Increasing the Enc of plate isn't viable, because it should be reasonable to use for people of both high and low Brawn.

Unless your character is specifically brawn-focused, you're taking penalties.

This won't happen. Noone will take penalties the way this is set up. If you are assuming that most people will be taking penalties then Brawn is is the God stat for combat since lowering Enc by 1 is the same as increasing CP by 1 but it also gives you AV and DR (1 Agility would only give you 0.5CP to boot!). People will instead figure out what equipment they want to wear and then set their Brawn to whatever is required to use it without penalty. You just can't justify 1 Enc penalty for a spare dagger after you have hit your Brawn limit, let alone a cumbersome item that costs 2 dice. This steep gradient between "no penalty" and "can hardly function" is the reason people just load up on armor to their limit and drop shit that doesn't give them stats. This is the same encumbrance system every other game uses and most people prefer to just ignore its existence.

The entire point of the BoB system was that you actually had to make a choice between control (CP) and defense (AV) and you can't ignore it. For it to work you have to actually penalize a strong person putting on that very first breastplate while also not making it totally non-viable for a weakling to wear full plate and a shield. This new system does neither of those and the old one did both well. Other than Torchbearer, the BoB armor CP penalty rules are probably the only encumbrances systems I have ever seen that actually add to the game and are worth putting effort in to enforce properly, as opposed to just eye-balling it (which is literally what TROS did).

[thorgarth]

I´ve decided to go ahead and start reading the BoB download file to try to understand what some of the changes already mentioned would imply, especially in terms of the d10 change to d6 and the BTN from 6 to 3 IF I understood correctly. And if I did understood correctly the loss in terms of granularity indeed has an impact on the chances for success (as it was bound to happen).

And it´s not just a matter of the TN 9 and 10 issue, which would be a bit redundant due to overkill, but of overall %. A BTN of 6 in d10 is quite different from a BTN of 3 in d6, not only in itself but especially considering the application of an advantage or disadvantage. Using the d10 system going from BTN6 to BTN 5 (via -1 advantage) would mean that you would go from a 50% chance to a 60% chance of success, whereas using a d6 with a BTN3 means not only having a base 66.66% chance of success/dice BUT going from BTN 3 to BTN 2 (via advantage) would mean having a 83.33% chance of success/dice.

It´s a fact that in terms of modifier granularity outside wound and encumbrance effect the modifiers are a basic +1 or -1, but still the impact of that single change is disproportioned in a d6 while far smoother in a d10 system.

And I simply cannot phantom the reason for the downgrade. Not only that but d10 are sexier than the vulgar d6. I would definitely prefer to use this Band of Brothers draft than the new d6 system all in all unless there was a very convincing mechanical reason to downgrade to a d6.

[thorgarth]

Unless your character is specifically brawn-focused, you're taking penalties.

This won't happen. Noone will take penalties the way this is set up. If you are assuming that most people will be taking penalties then Brawn is is the God stat for combat since lowering Enc by 1 is the same as increasing CP by 1 but it also gives you AV and DR (1 Agility would only give you 0.5CP to boot!). People will instead figure out what equipment they want to wear and then set their Brawn to whatever is required to use it without penalty. You just can't justify 1 Enc penalty for a spare dagger after you have hit your Brawn limit, let alone a cumbersome item that costs 2 dice. This steep gradient between "no penalty" and "can hardly function" is the reason people just load up on armor to their limit and drop shit that doesn't give them stats. This is the same encumbrance system every other game uses and most people prefer to just ignore its existence.

The entire point of the BoB system was that you actually had to make a choice between control (CP) and defense (AV) and you can't ignore it. For it to work you have to actually penalize a strong person putting on that very first breastplate while also not making it totally non-viable for a weakling to wear full plate and a shield. This new system does neither of those and the old one did both well. Other than Torchbearer, the BoB armor CP penalty rules are probably the only encumbrances systems I have ever seen that actually add to the game and are worth putting effort in to enforce properly, as opposed to just eye-balling it (which is literally what TROS did).

Actually Metal, Magica and Lore RPG system also has a decent "encumbrance" system, where it regards the effect of weight on combat, specifically on initiative (which in that system means not only who acts first but also who may act more times in a round). Personally I then added a house rule that added the effect of certain situations to the fatigue mechanic, not only the effect of weight carried but also the impact of certain armor not only in the reduction of the number of rounds before fatigue may set in but also in the modification of the fatigue roll (for instance, Great Helm applies a -3 penalty to the roll, while using heavy layered armors would mean you have to test for fatigue two rounds earlier than the default).

[thorgarth]

In any case it shouldn't be very viable for a weakling to go full plate, using a shield and wield a weapon, say an arming sword and expect to be successful vs a lighter and/or stronger opponent. One should weight (pun intended) their options and choose wisely. Don't expect to wear a full "siege plate", weighting 53kg (example from the Tower of London), and be able to function if you weight 60kg, with not a muscle to your name...

[EinBein]

The Dark Eye has actually an encumberance system like old BoB's, but with a twist:

There are flat encumberance values for each piece of armor (depending in the optional granularity down to small fractions), but each fighting style (actually weapon groups) deducted a certain flat amount of the total encumberance. For example clubs and axes didn't require much finesse, so they deducted 4 from the total encumberance, while fencing weapons required freedom of movement and thus only deducted 1 from the total encumberance.

The weapons were then more or less balanced via the choice of maneuvres available, modifiers on offense and defense per weapon and extra damage depending on high strength, also on weapon basis.

[thirtythr33]

And it´s not just a matter of the TN 9 and 10 issue, which would be a bit redundant due to overkill, but of overall %. A BTN of 6 in d10 is quite different from a BTN of 3 in d6, not only in itself but especially considering the application of an advantage or disadvantage. Using the d10 system going from BTN6 to BTN 5 (via -1 advantage) would mean that you would go from a 50% chance to a 60% chance of success, whereas using a d6 with a BTN3 means not only having a base 66.66% chance of success/dice BUT going from BTN 3 to BTN 2 (via advantage) would mean having a 83.33% chance of success/dice.

Right. and going from 50% to 60% is a 20% increase in successes (.6/.5=1.2) and going from 66% to 83% is a 24% increase in successes (.83/.67=1.24). It is barely a difference. Add to that the fact that most rolls are opposed rolls, the increase is base chance at success is symmetrical, further mitigating the difference. What's more, the variance on BTN3 on a d6 is lower than that on BTN6 on d6 meaning that there are actually significantly less outlier results. As an example, 10cp vs 10cp at TN3 (out of 6) has a 3.0% chance of someone getting MOS5 or more. 10cp vs 10cp at TN6 (out of 10) has a 4.1%.

In any case it shouldn't be very viable for a weakling to go full plate, using a shield and wield a weapon, say an arming sword and expect to be successful vs a lighter and/or stronger opponent. One should weight (pun intended) their options and choose wisely. Don't expect to wear a full "siege plate", weighting 53kg (example from the Tower of London), and be able to function if you weight 60kg, with not a muscle to your name...

If I'm not mistaken, you are referring to a set of jousting armor. It's encumbrance is decidedly not important since the wearer has to do nothing other than sit on their horse. Almost any armor actually meant for use on foot weights less than half that, in the 15-25kg range during the late middle ages. Joan of Arc, a 17 year old girl, found it beneficial to wear full plate armor. If you were a weakling, would you rather go onto a battlefield in a suit of plate, or without? It should be obvious that picking up armor should be advantageous to your survival regardless of strength, excluding the absurd extremes of someone who already needs a walker to move around.

Total your bulk. If it's higher than your Brawn, the difference becomes Encumbrance. This is both an increased req on physical tasks and a CP penalty in combat.

It occurs to me you could set it up like this:

• Approximately scale up the Bulk of everything by 2.5x and adjust (ie approx Bulk of Sword is ~2, Hauberk is ~7 and Full Plate is ~12.)
• Individual items now have Bulk 0 (all the insignificant stuff) to Bulk 5 (Tower shield)
• You take Enc for each MULTIPLE of your Bulk over your Brawn
• Change Enc to give -1CP and -1 dice to skills instead of +1Req

(It's coincidental but these bulk values also lines up pretty close with the kg weight of those items. 1h swords are 1-5-2kg, Hauberk is 5-9kg and full plate is 15-25kg.)

Eg, So for average guy of Brawn 4
0-3 Bulk you have no penalty.
4-7 gives -1
8-11 gives -2
12-15 gives -3
16-19 gives -4

Full plate (12) + Longsword (2) + Dagger (1) = 15 Bulk = -3 Penalty (Same as your example)

You would write the threshold values on your character sheet and just compare the Bulk of your equipment. For Brawn 8 it would look like:
Light (-1): 8
Medium (-2): 16
Heavy (-3): 24
Extreme (-4): 32

This guy with the same 15 Bulk is at -1 Penalty, which seems more reasonable.

This method:

• Starts the penalty low, so even Brawny people are guaranteed to get a penalty in plate armor
• Such a low threshold also makes it clear you really don't get to conveniently forget about it
• Keeps the increase shallow enough that a weaker character can still wear significant armor and be effective
• Scales with every point of Brawn, no dead levels
• Actually less math involved than in Enc minus Brawn method, once you have your threshold table filled

For example clubs and axes didn't require much finesse, so they deducted 4 from the total encumberance, while fencing weapons required freedom of movement and thus only deducted 1 from the total encumberance.

This is why I liked the idea of adding CP penalty to weapons. You could add 1CP penalty to bows and None to Crossbows to represent the relative ease of learning and using a crossbow compared to a bow.

[Benedict]

It occurs to me you could set it up like this:
Approximately scale up the Bulk of everything by 2.5x and adjust (ie approx Bulk of Sword is ~2, Hauberk is ~7 and Full Plate is ~12.)
Individual items now have Bulk 0 (all the insignificant stuff) to Bulk 5 (Tower shield)
You take Enc for each MULTIPLE of your Bulk over your Brawn
Change Enc to give -1CP and -1 dice to skills instead of +1Req

(It's coincidental but these bulk values also lines up pretty close with the kg weight of those items. 1h swords are 1-5-2kg, Hauberk is 5-9kg and full plate is 15-25kg.)

Eg, So for average guy of Brawn 4
0-3 Bulk you have no penalty.
4-7 gives -1
8-11 gives -2
12-15 gives -3
16-19 gives -4

Full plate (12) + Longsword (2) + Dagger (1) = 15 Bulk = -3 Penalty (Same as your example)

You would write the threshold values on your character sheet and just compare the Bulk of your equipment. For Brawn 8 it would look like:
Light (-1): 8
Medium (-2): 16
Heavy (-3): 24
Extreme (-4): 32

This guy with the same 15 Bulk is at -1 Penalty, which seems more reasonable.

This method:
Starts the penalty low, so even Brawny people are guaranteed to get a penalty in plate armor
Such a low threshold also makes it clear you really don't get to conveniently forget about it
Keeps the increase shallow enough that a weaker character can still wear significant armor and be effective
Scales with every point of Brawn, no dead levels
Actually less math involved than in Enc minus Brawn method, once you have your threshold table filled

Totally agree with thirtythr33 on that one.

Don't forget that the new bulk/encumbrance write-up has a serious flaw: a penalty of +1REQ is equal to a penalty of -2CP.

Which means that apart from all the complications already illustrated by thirtythr33, you double penalize skills as opposed to proficiencies.

[thirtythr33]

If you like streamlining, it is also rather convenient that plate could be 1 Bulk per hit location covered.
17 Bulk for total plate coverage would put Brawn 4 at -4 and Brawn 8 at -3.
For Maille it could just be 2 Bulk per 3 hit locations, rounded up.

Then you can just let people mix and match whatever weird armor combinations that they want to come up with that make sense.

For weapons, it could be 1 Bulk per range band. (0 for hand to 5 for extended)
And for Shields, it could be 1 Bulk per area is covers, including arm (1 for buckler to 5 for Scutum)

[Agamemnon]

Firstly, I'm not saying there shouldn't be a penalty for encumbrance. I'm saying you shouldn't throw out the direct CP penalty for wearing armor in exchange for ONLY having a penalty based on encumbrance.

The encumbering nature of armor comes from decreased flexibility and shifting center of mass just as much as it comes from raw weight. That can significantly decrease performance on the very first piece of armor, regardless of weight.

You are effectively double counting Brawn in skills and armor. We will consider Alice with Brawn 5 and her friend Bob with Brawn 4. They are wearing identical equipment of Enc 5 and are trying to climb the same Req3 tree (A Brawn test).

Alice has no Enc penalty and rolls 5 dice at Req3.
Bob has -1 Enc penalty and rolls 4 dice at Req4.

The fact that Alice is supposed to perform better at this tasks is already accounted for with her getting to roll an extra dice. Her higher Brawn shouldn't be BOTH getting her more dice AND reducing the number of modifiers. That means that situation modifiers (like Enc) shouldn't be dependent on Attributes.

Similarly Brawn will increase your natural AV as well as increasing the amount of armor you can equip, double counting the difference between strong and weak characters. The gulf between Brawn 5 (wearing AV3 Maille Blk3 and sword and helmet) versus Brawn 7 (wearing AV6 Plate Blk5 and sword and helmet) will be an astonishing 4 armor on each location (or 5 if you include the DR difference too).

1. If they are climbing a tree and we have assumed there is a reason to actually test them climbing a tree, then the context is key. If it's THE WORLD'S LARGEST TREE, it's going to be a Grit test. If they need to climb up the tree before the worgs eat them, it's Speed. If it's just a tricky climb, it's Agility. The only time it would ever be Brawn is if the question was literally "can you carry this heavy thing into the tree?"

2. Brawn only figures into damage at 4, 7, and 10 because that's how the tap values work. The overwhelming majority of combatants are going to be 4-5. The character who over-invests in Brawn is going to be someone who is making sacrifices in some other important area. Our attributes are so tight that there is no dump stat. You need everything, regardless of character type.

So someone with Brawn 7 can swim a river and climb a tree in full plate with no penalty. Does that sound right to you? AFAIK, noone has ever swam more than 5m in full harness. You can put a band-aid on the sneak example with a sound modifier... But are you going to put another band-aid modifier on swimming too?

If you're going to make the argument that 5m is the cap on swimming with a full harness regardless of strength, isn't a "band-aid" exactly what you need? There is no tweak to CP or encumbernece or dice that is going to impose a hard-cap of 5m on swimming without someone outside of the rules going "no, you really can't swim in full-plate to any effectiveness."

And it´s not just a matter of the TN 9 and 10 issue, which would be a bit redundant due to overkill, but of overall %. A BTN of 6 in d10 is quite different from a BTN of 3 in d6, not only in itself but especially considering the application of an advantage or disadvantage. Using the d10 system going from BTN6 to BTN 5 (via -1 advantage) would mean that you would go from a 50% chance to a 60% chance of success, whereas using a d6 with a BTN3 means not only having a base 66.66% chance of success/dice BUT going from BTN 3 to BTN 2 (via advantage) would mean having a 83.33% chance of success/dice.

Right. and going from 50% to 60% is a 20% increase in successes (.6/.5=1.2) and going from 66% to 83% is a 24% increase in successes (.83/.67=1.24). It is barely a difference. Add to that the fact that most rolls are opposed rolls, the increase is base chance at success is symmetrical, further mitigating the difference. What's more, the variance on BTN3 on a d6 is lower than that on BTN6 on d6 meaning that there are actually significantly less outlier results. As an example, 10cp vs 10cp at TN3 (out of 6) has a 3.0% chance of someone getting MOS5 or more. 10cp vs 10cp at TN6 (out of 10) has a 4.1%.

This all sounds like a feature, more than a bug given that
1) At TN6, you have a better chance than you did at TN10
2) Dis/advantage now make more of an impact than they did before
3) We wanted to make each rank more meaningful in difference
4) We had an entire thread predicated on someone complaining about outliers results.

In any case it shouldn't be very viable for a weakling to go full plate, using a shield and wield a weapon, say an arming sword and expect to be successful vs a lighter and/or stronger opponent. One should weight (pun intended) their options and choose wisely. Don't expect to wear a full "siege plate", weighting 53kg (example from the Tower of London), and be able to function if you weight 60kg, with not a muscle to your name...

If I'm not mistaken, you are referring to a set of jousting armor. It's encumbrance is decidedly not important since the wearer has to do nothing other than sit on their horse. Almost any armor actually meant for use on foot weights less than half that, in the 15-25kg range during the late middle ages. Joan of Arc, a 17 year old girl, found it beneficial to wear full plate armor. If you were a weakling, would you rather go onto a battlefield in a suit of plate, or without? It should be obvious that picking up armor should be advantageous to your survival regardless of strength, excluding the absurd extremes of someone who already needs a walker to move around.

It's always beneficial to wear armor from the perspective of not getting killed, especially if your job is to sit on a horse and direct the fight or be a figurehead. The important question here is did Joan of Arc actually fight? And if she fought, did she fight on foot or on horseback?

Then the secondary question is are you of the opinion that a 17 year old girl would move around in plate as easily as The Mountain that Rides?

She's probably 110-120lbs. A 55lbs harness is half of her total bodyweight, to say nothing of what her actual physical strength output might be.
Hafthor Bjornson is 240lbs. The same harness (or even slightly heavier) is a quarter of his bodyweight, and we'll for the sake of argument pretend that he's just a very strong man instead of a literal world record holder.

Nothing even now prevents someone in Brawn 3 from wearing plate, but if your character has the physique of a middle-aged accountant, they aren't going to move around in it nearly as well as someone who has trained to get the physical strength to move around in 50lbs of armor.

Total your bulk. If it's higher than your Brawn, the difference becomes Encumbrance. This is both an increased req on physical tasks and a CP penalty in combat.

It occurs to me you could set it up like this:

• Approximately scale up the Bulk of everything by 2.5x and adjust (ie approx Bulk of Sword is ~2, Hauberk is ~7 and Full Plate is ~12.)
• Individual items now have Bulk 0 (all the insignificant stuff) to Bulk 5 (Tower shield)
• You take Enc for each MULTIPLE of your Bulk over your Brawn
• Change Enc to give -1CP and -1 dice to skills instead of +1Req

(It's coincidental but these bulk values also lines up pretty close with the kg weight of those items. 1h swords are 1-5-2kg, Hauberk is 5-9kg and full plate is 15-25kg.)

Eg, So for average guy of Brawn 4
0-3 Bulk you have no penalty.
4-7 gives -1
8-11 gives -2
12-15 gives -3
16-19 gives -4

Full plate (12) + Longsword (2) + Dagger (1) = 15 Bulk = -3 Penalty (Same as your example)

You would write the threshold values on your character sheet and just compare the Bulk of your equipment. For Brawn 8 it would look like:
Light (-1): 8
Medium (-2): 16
Heavy (-3): 24
Extreme (-4): 32

This guy with the same 15 Bulk is at -1 Penalty, which seems more reasonable.

This method:

• Starts the penalty low, so even Brawny people are guaranteed to get a penalty in plate armor
• Such a low threshold also makes it clear you really don't get to conveniently forget about it
• Keeps the increase shallow enough that a weaker character can still wear significant armor and be effective
• Scales with every point of Brawn, no dead levels
• Actually less math involved than in Enc minus Brawn method, once you have your threshold table filled

More granular, but does it become too fiddly to use? current bulk descriptors are easy and intuitive. If I have to stop and look up the bulk for each item individually, I'm significantly less likely to bother to look any of that up.

[thirtythr33]

Then the secondary question is are you of the opinion that a 17 year old girl would move around in plate as easily as The Mountain that Rides?

No, but I would find it a better alternative. Joan of Arc and your middle-aged accountant probably have CP of like 6 compared to The Mountains 16. An "equal" 2CP reduction to each is 33% of Joan's effectiveness and 12% of The Mountains. The alternative is that Joan get -3CP and loses half her pool compared to the Mountain with no penalties at all.

More granular, but does it become too fiddly to use? current bulk descriptors are easy and intuitive. If I have to stop and look up the bulk for each item individually, I'm significantly less likely to bother to look any of that up.

What about:
Plate: 1 Bulk per 2 hit location covered, rounded up. (3 for breastplate to 8 for full suit)
Maille: 1 Bulk per 3 hit locations, rounded up. (2 for Byrnie to 5 for Hauberk)
Weapons: 1 Bulk per length. (0 for hand to 5 for extended)
Shields: 1 Bulk per area it covers, including arm (1 for buckler to 5 for Scutum)
Full backpack: 5 Bulk

Means you can calculate your Bulk for any weapon and armor combination without having to open the book at all. Plus it lets you easily stat custom armor combinations.

[thorgarth]

And it´s not just a matter of the TN 9 and 10 issue, which would be a bit redundant due to overkill, but of overall %. A BTN of 6 in d10 is quite different from a BTN of 3 in d6, not only in itself but especially considering the application of an advantage or disadvantage. Using the d10 system going from BTN6 to BTN 5 (via -1 advantage) would mean that you would go from a 50% chance to a 60% chance of success, whereas using a d6 with a BTN3 means not only having a base 66.66% chance of success/dice BUT going from BTN 3 to BTN 2 (via advantage) would mean having a 83.33% chance of success/dice.

Right. and going from 50% to 60% is a 20% increase in successes (.6/.5=1.2) and going from 66% to 83% is a 24% increase in successes (.83/.67=1.24). It is barely a difference. Add to that the fact that most rolls are opposed rolls, the increase is base chance at success is symmetrical, further mitigating the difference. What's more, the variance on BTN3 on a d6 is lower than that on BTN6 on d6 meaning that there are actually significantly less outlier results. As an example, 10cp vs 10cp at TN3 (out of 6) has a 3.0% chance of someone getting MOS5 or more. 10cp vs 10cp at TN6 (out of 10) has a 4.1%.

In any case it shouldn't be very viable for a weakling to go full plate, using a shield and wield a weapon, say an arming sword and expect to be successful vs a lighter and/or stronger opponent. One should weight (pun intended) their options and choose wisely. Don't expect to wear a full "siege plate", weighting 53kg (example from the Tower of London), and be able to function if you weight 60kg, with not a muscle to your name...

If

I'm not mistaken, you are referring to a set of jousting armor. It's encumbrance is decidedly not important since the wearer has to do nothing other than sit on their horse. Almost any armor actually meant for use on foot weights less than half that, in the 15-25kg range during the late middle ages. Joan of Arc, a 17 year old girl, found it beneficial to wear full plate armor. If you were a weakling, would you rather go onto a battlefield in a suit of plate, or without? It should be obvious that picking up armor should be advantageous to your survival regardless of strength, excluding the absurd extremes of someone who already needs a walker to move around.

That´s one way to look at it, but on the other hand if one were to compare BTN 6 in d10 with BTN 3 in d6 it would mean that the base diference at default level was already at .67/.5= 1,34 , if you compare .83/.6= 1.38. And yes, the variance in BTN3 in d6 is lower, which is exactly my point. Simply put less granularity, reduce detail.

Armor gives you the ability to soak damage (though not impact, which can and will compound on you and can bring you down on your needs quite fast). Do you think a weaker opponent has the same battle prowess and capacity than a stronger combatant with both using heavy armor? The heavier the more it does protect you (generally speaking) BUT it weights on you, AND in relative terms an opponent using the same kind of armor BUT with higher or much higher strength and endurance will have a huge advantage over the weaker opponent. Sometimes lighter armor is more efficient on 1 vs 1 fighting. In mass fighting heavier armor is definitely safer since it protects you from the multitude of blows that can rain on you from multiple sides, and not just from the enemy you are directly facing. One of the reason I so like the MML system is that the weight carried directly impacts in the movement capacity, which then impacts on initiative and the chance for multiple actions in a given round.

And then if you are weaker and if combat drags the impact on your endurance is much higher, which further decreases combat capacity.

[Agamemnon]

Then the secondary question is are you of the opinion that a 17 year old girl would move around in plate as easily as The Mountain that Rides?

No, but I would find it a better alternative. Joan of Arc and your middle-aged accountant probably have CP of like 6 compared to The Mountains 16. An "equal" 2CP reduction to each is 33% of Joan's effectiveness and 12% of The Mountains. The alternative is that Joan get -3CP and loses half her pool compared to the Mountain with no penalties at all.

First of all, the last writeup of the game had a -3CP penalty for plate. Even with the rules as previously written, Joan of Arc would be losing half her pool and The Mountain would be losing 18%. The only way for there to be an "even" amount of penalty is if we made the armor penalty a percentile of total pool and that seems like entirely too much fiddling.

I'm not sure why you bring CP into it at all, though, because that only muddies the waters even further. It sounds like you're now arguing that the armor penalty system should somehow compensate for the fact that The Mountain invested a huge amount into Attributes AND a huge amount into proficiencies compared to Joan of Arc, and that his huge investment in physical strength and training shouldn't make him noticably better at fighting in plate than an untrained farm girl?

More granular, but does it become too fiddly to use? current bulk descriptors are easy and intuitive. If I have to stop and look up the bulk for each item individually, I'm significantly less likely to bother to look any of that up.

What about:
Plate: 1 Bulk per 2 hit location covered, rounded up. (3 for breastplate to 8 for full suit)
Maille: 1 Bulk per 3 hit locations, rounded up. (2 for Byrnie to 5 for Hauberk)
Weapons: 1 Bulk per length. (0 for hand to 5 for extended)
Shields: 1 Bulk per area it covers, including arm (1 for buckler to 5 for Scutum)
Full backpack: 5 Bulk

Means you can calculate your Bulk for any weapon and armor combination without having to open the book at all. Plus it lets you easily stat custom armor combinations.

But there are 26 locations -- and at least 34 if we assume that you now need to track the backs of the legs and the spine as separate armor locations as you've suggested.

[Benedict]

are you of the opinion that a 17 year old girl would move around in plate as easily as The Mountain that Rides?

By thirtythr33's suggestion, with the assumption that Joan is B4 and the Mountain is B10, and bulk is 15 (full plate 12, sword 2, dagger 1), Joan would be at -3 dice and 1 more bulk will get her to -4, while the Mountain would be at -1 with 4 more bulk to spare before getting to -2. Not what I'd call "move around in plate as easily".

It sounds like you're now arguing that the armor penalty system should somehow compensate for the fact that The Mountain invested a huge amount into Attributes AND a huge amount into proficiencies compared to Joan of Arc, and that his huge investment in physical strength and training shouldn't make him noticably better at fighting in plate than an untrained farm girl?

Not at all. Especially if she has a CP of 6 while the Mountain has 16. With the above numbers she has 3CP and he has 15CP. With 5 times her CP he IS noticeably better, isn't he?

If you think that a -4 max penalty is too small (I don't), the penalty could double by each level like this:

• None (-0): no Bulk to Brawn-1 Bulk
• Light (-1): Brawn to 2Brawn-1 Bulk
• Medium (-2): 2Brawn to 3Brawn-1 Bulk
• Heavy (-4): 3Brawn to 4Brawn-1 Bulk
• Extreme (-8): 4Brawn to 5Brawn-1
• Deadlift (no other actions possible): 5Brawn

And yes, the Deadlift Level (5 times your Brawn) is the total you could ever hope to lift.

Hafthor Bjornson is 240lbs. The same harness (or even slightly heavier) is a quarter of his bodyweight, and we'll for the sake of argument pretend that he's just a very strong man instead of a literal world record holder.

Ah yes. That. To be honest, I believe that mr. Bjornson's achievements are greatly enhanced by his involvement in GoT as The Mountain.

Mind you, I'm not saying the man is lame or anything like that. He is a professional Strongman, and holds the world record for keg tossing (that's a 15.5 gallon empty beer keg) at 7,15m. That and the legendary Viking feat of carrying a 32-foot, 1,433 pound log for five steps.

As for lifting, there are more impressive specimens of "freaks of nature". Take his raw bench press record:

Hafthor Bjornson (206 cm 110 kg 25.9 bmi)
Raw bench press: 230kg.

Bjornson's raw benchpress is not impressive at all as far as power lifters are concerned. The world record was 256Kg in 1958, the current world record being 335kg:

youtu.be/BOeRI6MDyns

Anyway.

I'm more interested in the difference between a professional soldier (high skill/prof) vs a strongman (high atr). Don't forget, a suit of plate weights about the same as standard infantry gear. Check this:

youtu.be/pAzI1UvlQqw

In all honesty, I fail to see why should The Mountain (or any other B10 strongman) fare exceptionally better than these guys. Because by the current rule he does:

Total your bulk. If it's higher than your Brawn, the difference becomes Encumbrance. This is both an increased req on physical tasks and a CP penalty in combat.

My concern stands: because 1 REQ = 2 Dice. Now if you killed the "Req" part and made it "reduce all your physical pools by Encumbrance" I'd be cool with it.

More granular, but does it become too fiddly to use? current bulk descriptors are easy and intuitive. If I have to stop and look up the bulk for each item individually, I'm significantly less likely to bother to look any of that up.

Depends on how it is implement.

Space permitting, it could fit in the sheet.

You total Bulk in Gear, and you have a small table of the Encumbrance entries with all the numbers readily available. No need to touch the book at all.

As for sheet space, I always felt that stuff like "NPCs" (I tend to call these "doodle space") that take up 7 rows 2 columns are simply redudant. Too little to be actually useful. Always prefered to keep such information in a seperate blank page. An Encumbrance Table in there would be a lot more useful. But that's me.

[thorgarth]

... And by the way Hathor Bjornson has around 440 lbs, whereas it´s estimated that Joan of Arc had around 125lbs. Does anyone actually think both would have the same fighting capacity wearing heavy plate armor?

Again, no doubt that the armor would definitely contribute to Joan of Arc´s survival in the field, but then she wasn´t really there in the melee, swinging to slay the enemy...