What nobility wears - aka who doesn't have *#&# all over

Wraith said:
Oo. Now that is a mechanic I like!

It allowed for a lot more effective ways to threaten someone with imminent doom, as someone down to one max body (like an innocent peasant or someone throughly beaten up) could be reduced to a death count from a single two-point hit from one-handed weapons- which meant if you had a sword up to someone as an NPC, the PC's knew you really -could- kill the person in one shot, barring high-level healers or a surgeon (in either case, you couldn't move the victim more than one step a second). And if you had a bunch of unfortunate hostages, like an entire family...well, it was a lot more effective than "Rush em, I got plenty of Cure Lights.

Likewise, bigger-damage monsters were scarier- as they'd cripple or otherwise maim you faster -and armor was much nicer, because it could soak up some of those large hits that'd eat into your body points twice as quick as the goblin dinking you for base damage. Ditto large-damage spells.
 
Really, I think my ideal damage mechanic would go like so :

Body rises by level and class as it does currently. Max body drops by 1 per time incapacitated, to a minimum of 0. A PC at 0 max body is unconscious until max body can be restored via either Surgery, Regeneration spells, or tag refresh. Surgery is an advanced version of the First Aid skill, which halts the death count if one is in progress and has a 10 minute sustained action (as opposed to First Aid's 2) that will bring an incapacitated PC back up to 1 body and restore 1 maximum body. Maximum body would be restored naturally to full via 'a day's rest' aka at tag refresh. Add 'Regenerate' as a high-level Earth spell and monster effect that would allow restoration of maximum body during game.

To go along with this much more deadly mechanic, I would make a slight modification to the armor rules. Armor would once again breach at 0, unless strengthened (per the blacksmithing rules for resisting shatter), or rendered. I would also add a new blacksmith-creatable armor ability called 'Fortification'. Fortified armor would provide a threshold of 1 per 15 points of the maximum armor value of the suit, rounded up. Therefore, a fighter at max starting armor with a 30 point tag would have a threshold of 3. Once that suit breached down to 29, it would reduce the threshold to 2, and to 1 at 15. Arcane Armor would not be eligible for this bonus unless it was attached to an armor rep of the suggested number of points that had been Fortified. Consider it a trade off for not having to wear a rep and getting free waylay protection. :mrgreen:

In this way, getting knocked down is much more of a concern, and physical armor better reflects the ability of plate to shrug off light blows without harm to the wearer. After all, it is exceedingly hard to hurt someone in heavy metal armor with a light swing. At the same time, even monsters and characters with low swing numbers can be effective via critical attacks, slays, and the plethora of magic and monster effects that increase damage. Also, the threshold never reaches 5, so the smallest direct damage spell, Stone Bolt, is never made irrelevant.

What do we think?
 
Honestly I don't see how adding a max body reduction mechanic to the game while at the same time adding a "Regenerate" ability to restore max body changes much. It just adds one more layer of complexity and removes the point of inflation one step more.

As for the armor, well I don't like thresholds in the first place, and if it applied to magical damage (which I think you could just let it not apply to) your forgetting about Wands, which can easily do 3 or less damage.

I'm not trying to say I wouldn't like possible changes but those are the obvious issues that come to mind for me immediately. Also why add back breaching? Honestly I think removing that has helped make suits of physical armor so much more appealing already.
 
Dreamingfurther said:
Honestly I don't see how adding a max body reduction mechanic to the game while at the same time adding a "Regenerate" ability to restore max body changes much. It just adds one more layer of complexity and removes the point of inflation one step more.

I'm actually really comfortable leaving Regenerate out, but mostly put it in there because I figured there would be loud and long complaints if there wasn't an instant fix to every possible condition. ;)

Dreamingfurther said:
As for the armor, well I don't like thresholds in the first place, and if it applied to magical damage (which I think you could just let it not apply to) your forgetting about Wands, which can easily do 3 or less damage.

I'm not trying to say I wouldn't like possible changes but those are the obvious issues that come to mind for me immediately. Also why add back breaching? Honestly I think removing that has helped make suits of physical armor so much more appealing already.

Where wands are concerned, they are not meant to be an infinitely repeatable damage ability anyway, but have the advantage built-in of always having an elemental carrier. As such, lacking a little utility against hardened targets doesn't seem entirely unreasonable.

I mostly added breaching because it will scale the benefits of Fortification to keep the player well aware that they can be worn down. Breaching also keeps blacksmiths in work, and provides more reason to circulate the coin instead of becoming an entirely component-based economy. Production characters need love too. However, to go with the current situation of everything being a race for components and formalists, we could just as easily use Fortify as a ritual effect that is a lesser version of Celestial Protection Aura that requires an armor physrep as the target instead of being able to be put on a spirit.
 
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