Blasted Armor Saves!

[Sentack]

It is offical now, Enlil is now BANNED from ever using his normal dice while rolling armor saves EVER again. He must now use the offical cruddy old (As one player said, looked like they came out of a box of Monopoly) dice for all armor saves.

So Enlil, he posts on here, ran the first session of his game last night with myself and four others joining in on the fray. Over all, I feel the group had a great time, the adventuring group sounds like this horrid party of people with shaddy backgrounds and questionable dealings. We're most likely all going to die but have fun doing it. It's great.

Before we started the game though, Enlil ran a little practice combat with the five of us vs 5 random goons he made up. 4 guys with just a club or dagger and one boss thug with I think a club and shield.

And all I can say is, Enlil was rolling his armor saves like crazy. I think very few of this goons ever lost any armor due to failures on 1's let alone they actually failed their armor save. And we're not talking about he had to roll 1 success on 3 dice. He had to roll routinely 2 successes on 2 dice or just one success on one die and he STILL made it and again, not just once in a while, repeatedly!

Okay so occasionaly we did get a hit in, but when one of our players rolled a 5 success strike, shifting the blow to the head and adding one to the VA of the attack.. and the targets armor still succeded without losing any armor.. that kind of disheartened one of our players to the system a little. Not much but it was upsetting.

Still great game, I can't wait till the next session.

Tony

[Thor]

Heh! Sounds like you guys need to start looking for weapons with a bit more VA.Try a mace or hammer! Then he'll need 3 successes! And if he doesn't have that much armor dice, he doesn't get to roll. :lol:

If you really want to get nasty, try a mace or hammer with a Great Strike with the additional VA option. Let's see if he can get 4 successes. 8)

[Sentack]

One of our more melee-ish type players DOES have a big mace with her. And indeed, she was actually doing some pretty impressive blows durring the combat. The one who had the big blow that got obsorbed by armor, He's using a slightly modified spear (A Trident, which was treated like a spear but with some disarm benifits and penalties) which I think may not have had any VA.

It wouldn't have mattered though, Enlil was rolling armor saved like crazy. He would routinely succeed against an Ob 3 with 3 dice or Ob 2 with 2 dice. It was like the dice just enjoy laughing at us as our characters wiffed constantly at our foes.

But indeed, Big Mace doing a Great strike would be most hurty against thugs in light armor. No armor save! Yaaaa!

Enlil already had a reputation in our group for making mass Armor saves with another game, Mordheim, where he had these Knights with armor. In that game it was more reasonable that he would succeed because he only failed rolling a 1 on a d6. But again, he would never roll a 1 with something like 30 Armor save rolls. It was just silly!

Enlil, banned from Armor save rolls ever again.

Tony

[Mickeroo]

I think the best way to get by armor is a good ol' fashioned pistol. Up close, these have a VA of 4. Unless I'm mistaken in the way the mechanics work, that means the defender needs 5 sucesses on their armor roll. Anything less than chainmail's torso, plate mail, or full plate has no chance.

Of course, there's a 1/6 chance the gun won't fire, and if that happens, a 1/2 chance the gun toter will shoot himself.

[luke]

i would like to point out that, mechanically in BW, a 5 on 5 with ready opponents is very dangerous. You've got a flip of the coin's chance of winning. The mechanics encourage ambush and dirty fighting.


Second, I just want to be sure that Christian and you all are testing armor correctly: Base Ob for armor is always 1. If I whack you with a stick (no VA), you have to pass an Ob 1 armor test to absorb the blow. VA is added to that obstacle. So if I have a mace with VA 2, you have to pass an Ob 3 armor test when I hit you.

Third, if your weapon doesn't have any VA, and you're fighting armored opponents, you're not using the right tools for the job. BW armor works. And swords and stuff have been set to their historical counterparts, not to their hollywood versions. For committed fighters polearms, axes and maces are the order of the day. For folks with no interest in those types of weapons, there are still a myriad other combat options available in the form of Push, Charge, Beat, and Lock.

-L

[Thor]

Yep. Locking up that heavily armored opponent is a great tactic (especially if you have good Power. Once they're fully immobilized, you can stab 'em through the visor at your leisure. :twisted:

[Mickeroo]

Wait, what do you mean a 5 on 5 is very dangerous? Aren't the chances of passing an ob 5 with 5 dice very low, something like 1 in 32? Doesn't that mean that running up and shooitng someone close range is in your favor, whereas hiding farther away reduces the VA of the gun and therefore your chances of peircing the armor diminish as well?

[Thor]

Wait, what do you mean a 5 on 5 is very dangerous? Aren't the chances of passing an ob 5 with 5 dice very low, something like 1 in 32? Doesn't that mean that running up and shooitng someone close range is in your favor, whereas hiding farther away reduces the VA of the gun and therefore your chances of peircing the armor diminish as well?

He meant that an even fight, with five characters against five opponents, who know the characters are coming and are prepared, is very dangerous. Ambush and surprise are the best ways to attack, if possible.

[Sentack]

We did all the armor checks properly, it was just Christians rolling for armor made it harder then it should have been.

As for the fight itself, we have 2 melee based types, one that DOES have a mace so she's got that +2 VA going for her. The other main melee type a spear which has a +1 VA and it turns out my characters Javlins have a +1 VA but I forgot about it. One other guy had only a Dirk and the last guy, well a club.

Also, the targets were supposed to be noteably 'weaker' then us by a die or two with lower quality arms in general. So it wasn't 5 equal opponents vs Us. It was 5 goons vs us with crappy gear.

And again it wasn't the system that failed us really. It was Christans blasted armor rolling skills that did us in! He was constantly getting 2 and 3 successes on equal number of dice, it's noteably unusual, not the norm!

Tony

[Kublai]

but when one of our players rolled a 5 success strike, shifting the blow to the head and adding one to the VA of the attack..

Just to be sure you got the rules down, you can use extra successes to shift the location of the blow, but not to increase VA.

Right?

[Redoid]

Isn't there a rule saying that one can spend 5 successes to bypass armour? Or did I dream it?

[Sentack]

Err wait, nevermind then. Maybe it was to increase the blow from a incidental hit to a mark blow then. I forget. My memory was a bit hazy in the morning.

Tony

[Mickeroo]

I'm pretty sure that you can spend sucesses to hit an unarmored area, if there is one.

[Viper]

You can spend successes to move a hit to an unarmored area, yes, but you can't spend them to punch through an armored one.

[Enlil]

Well, as the roller in question, it was rather ludicrous. 4 of the 5 thugs had only leather armor, and the leader had plated leather. Two thugs had knives, two had clubs, and the leader had an axe and shield.

It was the first test combat, and started a little slow. But I eventually got the hang of it. The highlights were the rock that the defenseless merchant threw, the firebomb that lit a random house on fire, the mace wielding maniac ignoring armor, and the trident armed sorta-knight utterly holding off the leader with the superior length of his spear/trident and superior speed.

I did roll a lot of one success on one die, two successes on two dice, three successes on three or four dice (for the leader). Most fustrating for the players. A blow to the chest with a javelin the would have resulted in a traumatic wound was stopped with two successes.

So, summing it up, those cat's eye dice are evil.

Christian