Dwarves don't wear plate....

[Machpants]

Hi All
I am about to start my first campaign. One of my players went through the entire creation process with a Surface Dwarf Fighter, got to the equipment part and had to start again.

Why?

Cos Dwarves are massively punished in heavy armour, an average Dwarf has a Speed of 9. Even with Journeyman Armour Talent in plate he has a move of 4. that is not enough to fight with, every enemy will run rings around him and he will not be able to do his job. Close an engage with the enemy.

He has a Dex of 0 so for him in plate it will be 3!

In DnD Dwarves aren't (although gnomes, halflings, etc are) punished in heavier armours. A move of 20 instead of 30 is not the same as a move of 4 instead of the average human 11.

What think you of this forum?

Personally I am going to institute a house rule: the Armour Talents make the speed penalty half (rounded up). I also (cos I don't like Rogue's being better in heavy leather than fighters) going to change their Rogue's Armour feature to a free Armour Talent at Novice (special: you are unable to get better than Novice through any training).

MP

[steveman]

Of course dwarves don't wear plate armor. It's complete tomfoolery for them to do so, when crawling around tunnels and fighting in tight places a short sword and some heavy mail is far more effective than a two-handed axe and inflexible metal plates.

P.S. there are no "fighters" in DA, there are "warriors".

[Machpants]

Yeah whoops slip of the tongue! One rules set change is not going to over ride 25 years of gaming parlance! I am still a DM, never a GM or referee or whatever

Anyway the point is still valid, especially as a lot of the imagery in the rule books shows Dwarves in heavy armour and TBH it is not practical for dwarves to wear anything heavier than light chain at the most.

And Dwarves live in tight tunnels? My player is playing a Surface Dwarf Although I have no clue what their cities are like, never having played the PC game.

[baronzaltor]

its not really that dwarves are punished so much as low dexterity characters in general. theres only a 2 yard difference between human and dwarf speed afterall.

to be fair dwarves do wear heavy armor pretty frequently in dragon age, even if its not the best idea for them, its certainly part of the dwarven flavor.
they are some of the best armor smiths in thedas, so its hard to imagine dwarves not useing some of the "dwarven massive plate armor" that they invented.

the problem is that when you adjust the armor talents to help out dwarves you you give elves and humans, or just high dexterity characters almost no penalty at all when dealing with armor.

if you want to house rule it, i think the best thing to do would be to take into consideration what this system did not... dwarven size specific armor with its penalties adjusted for dwarves. my human warriors heavy plate is going to be heavier than his dwarf buddies heavy plate because my warrior is twice his size. dragon age was made to be more simplified so as to not concern the players with such semantics, but if its really an issue for the game its the route i would take. that way adjustments for dwarves dont effect the other armor wearers.

so id just find a way to proportionaly convert suits of armor into smaller scale for dwarves..obviously these suits couldnt be worn by non dwarves due to size.
this can have its drawbacks...once you have said that armor is specific to size..that means the sweet suit of magic heavy mail someone finds is either dwarf size or human size, and so sometimes certain items may be exclusive to one type or the other.

[Ferai]

As you say, D&D dwarves only move 20 ft, but suffer no movement penalties due to armour or encumbrance. I'd just roll with that idea.

Besides, everyone knows that dwarves are natural sprinters and dangerous over short distances.

And I would think the Legion of the Dead most definitely wear plate. I don't think I'd call any of the dwarven tunnels seen in the video game any tighter than a human city's streets through a city and in fact would say the dwarves build on a scale that far outstrips their own.

[Machpants]

Yeah those are good points, making it better for the faster PCs. Maybe going the DnD route and halving speed penalty for proficient armour for Dwarves only.. adding it into the Surface Dwarf background. Would there be something else required to balance this benefit, to people reckon? TBH I don't think so, the 8 starting speed penalty is a big downer on Dwarves. They don't get more Health o anything to balance do they? I don't have my book in front of me.

I'd prefer that to the armour sizing complexity.

[Banesfinger]

I'm going to take a guess that in the next boxed set (level's 6-10) you'll probably see an "Advanced Armor Training" talent, which removes all penalties to speed.

(We'll find out soon enough after downloading playtest copies of the next boxed set in Sept).

[steveman]

Or talents will go past Journeyman level, into Expert and Master. Much like real world hands-on jobs use similar titles for rating competency level (based on certification tests and time worked).

[Loswaith]

... I also (cos I don't like Rogue's being better in heavy leather than fighters) going to change their Rogue's Armour feature to a free Armour Talent at Novice (special: you are unable to get better than Novice through any training).

MP

I'd be careful on giving Rogues the Novice Armour talent because it opens up the use of Light and Heavy mail to them. While they realy are only gaining the 1 point of speed over warriors when waring Heavy Leather.


Also dont forget that heavy armour is a huge 10 points of damage reduction, so while an opponent is 'running around' the dwarf, the dwarf isnt taking much damage.
Likewise a human or elf are also reduced by -5 making it still only the racial differences with reguards to speed.

[Machpants]

note the caveat: only novice available

Oh you edited yeah I know, city elf warriors are especially good in that respect though cos they all get +1 dex so a total of 5 yards faster than the equivalent dwarf. The elf +2 speed is a lot for no balancing penalty IMO

[Hellebore]

Yes it is pretty strange. The game starts by giving elves 50% more speed than dwarves and as Armour will even at low levels only affect speed (as the talent ignores Dex), elves effectively have a 50% buffer on their movement before wearing fullplate actually becomes a problem for them.

Whilst it might make sense that wearing plate is cumbersome and thus reduces dexterity, it doesn't make sense that a tough and strong creature is slowed by it, regardless.

What I did originally was have a Min Str requirement for armour and the difference between str and that value was the penalty. Thus the stronger someone gets the better.

However I've refined this to an Encumberance system with the same effect. You add 2+Con+Str to figure out a creature's Encumbrance Capacity and if the amount of Enc is higher than this they suffer penalties.

Dwarves, being tougher and sturdier in general, start with 4+con+Str in this scheme.

As Elves also start with a large boost in speed for no real given reason, the above follows the same logic. It still doesn't entirely balance them out though, because the base speed of elves is SO much higher (50%) than a dwarf. They can take FAR more movement penalties before they're in the same boat as a dwarf. ie dwarf move 10 elf move 14 (same Dex). Dwarf suffers -4 movement to get 6, elf needs a -8 penalty to get to the same point (twice the penalty)...

What I've done for elven speed and dwarven Enc. is to make them Focuses that add to those instead of tests. ie Dex (Speed) adds +2 to your speed value (something I've given to several animals). Elves start with this focus, but there is technically no reason anyone else couldn't get it - subject to GM approval (there should be an obvious reason why you've gotten it, not just 'I wants to be fasta!). Similarly, the dwarven capacity above is Con (Fortitude) increasing EC by 2. Which again could be taken by anyone, but dwarves start with it.

With this elves start with the same base move as a human (plus 2), making the difference less. Dwarves have a lower base move, but they get +2 to tests to resist spells (as per dwarfen resistence from the game) as a balance. Thus they generally work out to be more balanced and interesting accross the board (IMO).

Basically for the gamer types, the game is saying that the best kind of tank warrior is an elf because the way the system penalise for armour, they are affected the least. Which is generally counter to how the background describes the setting.

Personally I think the dwarves need rebalancing against the other two anyway - freemen get +1 con at start and 10+Dex speed, making a dwarf a slower freeman. The only distinguishing feature is the slightly different table for dwarves to roll on. Hence why i did the above.


I'm currently revamping my esoterica rules to incorporate the above (and some other things) and will post it soon, along with a collaborative effort on Esoterica 2: Bestiary...

Hellebore

[Machpants]

For some reason I had it in my head elves got less health, but that is another system I guess. That would balance it, humans get the normal class amount dwarves +5, elves -5 at 1st level.

However still makes dwarves useless in may situations in heavy armour LOL

[Hellebore]

Yeah there are different ways to approach the problem but it all comes back to the large gap between dwarf and elf movement and how that interacts with the penalty rules.

You could 1/2 (rounding down) penalty for dwarves, but even then a dwarf with 0 dex in fullplate would move at 6 whilst a 0 dex elf with fullplate at -5 would be moving at 7.

Dwarves could get a rule that means they never suffer more than -2 to their Dex for armour, or they could just completely ignore the penalty altogether (a bit much perhaps).

The reason I went with enc. vs capacity was to get a gradiating scale. As a character gets stronger and tougher they are encumbered less. Which is as it should be.

However, the encumbrance level for plate armour would be murder on a first level character - again (IMO) as it should be. Characters should be starting with lower level armours and graduating to higher ones as they advance.

For a game that is supposed to have 20 levels the first box seems allow characters to 'finish' things very early on. If a 1st level character can wear fullplate, what's left for them? Fullplate dragonbone is still fullplate, it's only the material quality/type that has changed. Hence why I created material types.

Hellebore

[Lyger]

However, the encumbrance level for plate armour would be murder on a first level character - again (IMO) as it should be.

You can make the case that a first level character would have had the training to wear such heavy armor, especially if he was from a social class that could afford to outfit him in it.

If a 1st level character can wear fullplate, what's left for them?

But doesn't that make new and better stuff into a campaign motivation? Also consider that the heaviest armor that you can manage shouldn't always be the only stuff that worth wearing. It's worthwhile, from my personal standpoint, to create situations in which going with something lighter is the best thing. In the real world, Knights didn't always go for the heaviest stuff they had, and I suspect that they had good reasons for that.

[Hellebore]

You can make the case that a first level character would have had the training to wear such heavy armor, especially if he was from a social class that could afford to outfit him in it.

Armour traing requires strength and constitution training - you can't just be abstractly trained to be able to wear 20kgs of steel. Thus if someone was from a social class that could afford to have them trained in armour, they would start with higher strength and constitution to offset the inescapable weight. That or they would outfit them with superior quality armour that has a lower encumbrance value (something my Quality rules take into account - magnificent quality armour is at -2 Enc making it easier to wear).

This is because 'armour training' IS strength/stamina training with some dex so you won't overbalance thrown in for good measure (however high dex is no good if you are too weak to actually carry the equipment).

But doesn't that make new and better stuff into a campaign motivation? Also consider that the heaviest armor that you can manage shouldn't always be the only stuff that worth wearing. It's worthwhile, from my personal standpoint, to create situations in which going with something lighter is the best thing. In the real world, Knights didn't always go for the heaviest stuff they had, and I suspect that they had good reasons for that.

I agree that new and beter stuff is good, but you can't get better than fullplate in terms of armour. There isn't a 'tank armour' option above fullplate. The material might get better (dragonbone) but dragonbone fullplate is still fullplate. Meaning that anyone capable of wearing fullplate can wear dragonbone fullplate, from as early as level 3. That you haven't allowed them to purchse/find dragonbone fullplate doesn't change that they can still use it at that point.

I think that the jump between dragonbone fullplate vs leather to fullplate won't be anywhere as big. That's mainly what I'm talking about. Characters appear to get rewarded far more greatly at an earlier level than they will at later levels (given how the mechanics work).

Hellebore

[steveman]

Armour traing requires strength and constitution training - you can't just be abstractly trained to be able to wear 20kgs of steel.

And said training is no where nearly as difficult as you imply. In the span of 3 months I went from a drug abuser with no muscle mass but a lot of body fat into a physically fit U.S. Navy Sailor able to pass the Physical Readiness tests of a decade ago. Before I singed up I wasn't able to walk 5 miles with just a backpack full of school books. But after that training I came out of it able double time march 10 miles with a 40 lb pack and a loaded M-16. And believe you me, the training I went through was nothing compared to what a formalized solider/city guard would have to go through when knowing that literal demons could be knocking at their door.

And I have since then gotten involved with the SCA. And steel plate armor, while heavier than my old pack on a scale, fits the body better than a hiking rack and stresses my body less. After I broke my back I could no longer do the long marches or the running, but I can still wear a suit of plate armor for a day and barely be sore.

Now, I have a very important question. Does your system add more fun to the game than minutiae, or is it just a peace of mind thing?

[Machpants]

Well IRL aside (my experience of armour is G-pants and ejection seat!) I am now leaning towards a more balanced solution.

the problem is not just dwarves are slow but elves are fast... and these happen with no balance (and I know balance isn't everything but.....).

So as we are using minis but not the grid I am now leaning towards:

dwarf/human/elf

Move: 9/10/11
starting health: +2/+0/-2

So the differences are still there, an elf is faster than a dwarf, but also frailer. But both not by much, the extremes are not so pronounced. And if you are a dwarf warrior (not fighter.. not fighter... not fighter...) you can put some of your level advancements into dex, not just strength.


what think you?

[Hellebore]

And said training is no where nearly as difficult as you imply. In the span of 3 months I went from a drug abuser with no muscle mass but a lot of body fat into a physically fit U.S. Navy Sailor able to pass the Physical Readiness tests of a decade ago. Before I singed up I wasn't able to walk 5 miles with just a backpack full of school books. But after that training I came out of it able double time march 10 miles with a 40 lb pack and a loaded M-16. And believe you me, the training I went through was nothing compared to what a formalized solider/city guard would have to go through when knowing that literal demons could be knocking at their door.

And I have since then gotten involved with the SCA. And steel plate armor, while heavier than my old pack on a scale, fits the body better than a hiking rack and stresses my body less. After I broke my back I could no longer do the long marches or the running, but I can still wear a suit of plate armor for a day and barely be sore.

Well, either I'm not making myself clear or people are just misunderstanding what I'm saying. I've not made any assumptions about the ease or lack thereof of training in armour, I'm talking about the relationship between the ability to wear armour and the penalty it incurs.

I doesn't matter if it takes you 5 months or 5 seconds to learn how to wear armour - if your body has trained for it, then it won't be penalisted. And the stronger and tougher you get the less penalty you will incur.

I'm not sure how many of your PCs are proffessionally paid and equipped soldiers, but mine are generally adventuring vagabond mercenaries who have to pull odd jobs to get enough money to eat. If you want to play a well trained well equipped professional soldier, start it at level 4 and stack points in its Str and Con and voila! Someone that is trained to actually fight a full day in fullplate without dying of exhaustion.

But the rules as currently written will have fullplate reduce a S10 creatures Speed by 5 and a S-10 creatures speed by 5 - if they both have journeyman armour training. Does that sound sensible to you?

And that is what I'm talking about. Not duration, but the relationship between strength and armour training (or more importantly the lack thereof). What I've done is make armour penalties directly related to the wearer's physicality.

As for reenactment; well modern, well fed, immunologically healthy humans spending a few hours every week mock fighting (which is a ridiculous amount of fun ) are not really comparable to middle age mercenaries having to wear the armour continuously all day on an immunologically compromised and quite often malnourished body. You can draw basic comparisons, but reenactment is hardly as strenuous as the real thing and we have lots of advantages physically over our ancestors.

A broken back would have been the least of their worries.

Now, I have a very important question. Does your system add more fun to the game than minutiae, or is it just a peace of mind thing?

Yes it's more fun. It provides a challenge for the players. You might as well ask, is having NPCS that can actually kill your PCS 'fun'. Without challenge the game becomes boring. This kills two birds with one stone. Or that the Min Str rule is just minutae and chuck that too.

It was also a response to a previous thread specifically about encumbrance, so obviously there are some people who like that aspect portrayed.


Hellebore

[Phelan]

Well IRL aside (my experience of armour is G-pants and ejection seat!) I am now leaning towards a more balanced solution.

the problem is not just dwarves are slow but elves are fast... and these happen with no balance (and I know balance isn't everything but.....).

So as we are using minis but not the grid I am now leaning towards:

dwarf/human/elf

Move: 9/10/11
starting health: +2/+0/-2

So the differences are still there, an elf is faster than a dwarf, but also frailer. But both not by much, the extremes are not so pronounced. And if you are a dwarf warrior (not fighter.. not fighter... not fighter...) you can put some of your level advancements into dex, not just strength.


what think you?

As for the Health issue it doesn´t seem necessary to mod that from start. A dwarf has +1 CON, so +1 Health/level, they already have an increasingly larger amount of Health as the game progresses anyway. And I would guess a warrior dwarf is more likely to favor increasing his CON in-game than say an Elf warrior, so the difference should get bigger and bigger.

I would however consider using a "halve speed penalty from armor" rule for dwarves.

[Hellebore]

Well IRL aside (my experience of armour is G-pants and ejection seat!) I am now leaning towards a more balanced solution.

the problem is not just dwarves are slow but elves are fast... and these happen with no balance (and I know balance isn't everything but.....).

So as we are using minis but not the grid I am now leaning towards:

dwarf/human/elf

Move: 9/10/11
starting health: +2/+0/-2

So the differences are still there, an elf is faster than a dwarf, but also frailer. But both not by much, the extremes are not so pronounced. And if you are a dwarf warrior (not fighter.. not fighter... not fighter...) you can put some of your level advancements into dex, not just strength.


what think you?

As for the Health issue it doesn´t seem necessary to mod that from start. A dwarf has +1 CON, so +1 Health/level, they already have an increasingly larger amount of Health as the game progresses anyway. And I would guess a warrior dwarf is more likely to favor increasing his CON in-game than say an Elf warrior, so the difference should get bigger and bigger.

I would however consider using a "halve speed penalty from armor" rule for dwarves.

Whilst true the same also applies to the Fereldan freeman, so you're still stuck with a slower freeman...

Hellebore

[Machpants]

Yeah your point of the slower freeman hit a chord with me, it is bad balance (although obviously balance is not the only goal in a RPG!). Yes dwarves have +1 on but everyone has +1 something so it is not a balancing factor. Just makes dwarves tougher than old leather... which is right IMO!

I forgot to add that I think the armour penalties are too severe to speed full stop. I am thinking to keep the same penalties to untrained dex, apart from speed. and apply 0,1,1,2,2,3 to speed whether trained or untrained. But not so sure about that cos 10 damage reduction is real big! This part I may leave until after a few games, maybe even a few months (until the player's start getting the heavier armour) before changing.

But the speed and health changes are looking good to go from the start, unless someone comes up with a compelling argument.

[Phelan]

Snipped

Whilst true the same also applies to the Fereldan freeman, so you're still stuck with a slower freeman...

Hellebore

I don´t feel "stuck" with any character of my choosing.

However, another question just occurred to me: Do you recalculate your Speed when you increase your DEX? (If so, I can easily see some absurd movement differences at higher levels.)

[Hellebore]

Snipped

Whilst true the same also applies to the Fereldan freeman, so you're still stuck with a slower freeman...

Hellebore

I don´t feel "stuck" with any character of my choosing.

However, another question just occurred to me: Do you recalculate your Speed when you increase your DEX? (If so, I can easily see some absurd movement differences at higher levels.)

Well, I meant that you're stuck with the same problem that is being discussed now - a dwarf will have a slower speed than everyone else and a fereldan freeman receives the same +1 Con at character creation - making them ruleswise a faster version of the dwarf.

And yes, you do. You add your dex to your speed. As far as I can see, if your dex is higher, your speed is higher because you would no longer be adding your Dex to speed if it's a different number. The same is true of Defence.

Hellebore

[Phelan]

Yeah your point of the slower freeman hit a chord with me, it is bad balance (although obviously balance is not the only goal in a RPG!). Yes dwarves have +1 on but everyone has +1 something so it is not a balancing factor. Just makes dwarves tougher than old leather... which is right IMO!

I forgot to add that I think the armour penalties are too severe to speed full stop. I am thinking to keep the same penalties to untrained dex, apart from speed. and apply 0,1,1,2,2,3 to speed whether trained or untrained. But not so sure about that cos 10 damage reduction is real big! This part I may leave until after a few games, maybe even a few months (until the player's start getting the heavier armour) before changing.

But the speed and health changes are looking good to go from the start, unless someone comes up with a compelling argument.

I don´t think I´m quite so into the balance need as you, so obviously we would feel different here. I can justify a speed penalty to dwarfes since they have shorter legs. The speed bonus for elves who seem to be of same height as humans, however, seems more strange. If anything, I would remove that bonus instead. If you want a fast character, go for the high DEX!

(And add the Genlock magic resistance thing to dwarves, since that seems to have been forgotten.)

Overall, though, I think it it worth to note that the racial features in actual stats are pretty low in DARPG compared to other games. Since it is also level-based, those starting values will mean even less later in the game as attributes go up. It is the choices the player makes that matter the most. Personally, I could see emphasizing CON when levelling up for a dwarf makes sense, but maybe I wouldn´t do it so much for say a Ferelden freeman.

[Phelan]

(Snipped)

Well, I meant that you're stuck with the same problem that is being discussed now - a dwarf will have a slower speed than everyone else and a fereldan freeman receives the same +1 Con at character creation - making them ruleswise a faster version of the dwarf.

And yes, you do. You add your dex to your speed. As far as I can see, if your dex is higher, your speed is higher because you would no longer be adding your Dex to speed if it's a different number. The same is true of Defence.

Hellebore

Isn´t this a bigger problem, not speaking balance-wise but realism? Say you have the Dex-focused character with a starting Dex of 4 who keeps pumping up Dex as he levels. At level 20 he could be at 10-12 in Dex (or 15 if you went wild and had 5 Dex at start) and thus have a movement roughly twice that of a level 1 character. I could see it would make more sense to have the base speed somewhat higher and then add (Dex/2) instead.