Ranged Weapon Quality and Armor Issues

[Thomas Thomas]

Hi, this may just be my own incompetence but I was unable to find the modifiers for ranged weapons based on poor quality, or superior quality arms. Prices were given in the human equipment list and stats were given for run of the mill missile weapons in the weapons appendix but nothing on the quality modifiers.

On a completely different topic, the run of the mill armor I've noticed falls apart very quickly, as well it should. However the more you don the faster it falls apart, it seems like ideally one would want just enough armor to get that one success but little enough that ones are uncommon.
(Discounting called shots of course) For instance say a character is wearing a lot of armor (seven dice worth of chain). Then about 2/3rds of the time he gets hit something breaks. While with say four dice of chain he is still very likely to get a success and almost half as likely to break something. Of course this doesn't take into account high VA values of called shots but it seems like there should be a way of determining whether armor breaks independent of the amount that is worn.

Maybe give each armor type a durability rating (1-6) read difficulty number. Add the VA of the attacking weapon to the durability rating. Run of the mill quality rolls two dice. A success means the armor held, failure and it breaks. Poor quality armor only rolls one die while superior rolls three. This would mean that great maces and the like will really chew through your armor while lighter weapons like knives and daggers mostly just bang against it.

Just a thought, I haven't given it enough thought to see how well it would work but I think it has some potential. What do you think?

[Kaare Berg]

I feel that another die-roll would over complicate matter. In our last session we had three degrees of armour:

A knight with run of the mill armour
A knight with superior
A dwarf with dwarven mail

They were at one point over run by a group of woodtrolls (small tenacious bastards). Blows rained down on the fighting men and they were repeatedly saved by their armour.

The dwarf who rolled extremely poorly lost one die and had a good grumble over shoddy workmanship (ironic since said armour saved him when he was flat on his back and the trolls were hacking away at him)

The knight with superior armour had some thrilling moments as his rerolled ones never came up with that second one. He also remained standing, so he never had to deal with the battered dwarf syndrome.

the knight who had chosen not to spend points on armour saw his armour (and lifeline as he also got pushed onto his back) be gradually chopped away. It saved him, but he lost his leggings in the process.

One can argue that this represents the difference between Iron armour and Steel armour, which is noticable (just ask the french knights that fought Henry V).

then again its your game and these are just my two cents.

[luke]

Hi, this may just be my own incompetence but I was unable to find the modifiers for ranged weapons based on poor quality, or superior quality arms. Prices were given in the human equipment list and stats were given for run of the mill missile weapons in the weapons appendix but nothing on the quality modifiers.


Hi Thomas,

You've pointed out and oversight -- the Poor and Superior Quality Bows and Crossbows are not mentioned in the Weapons Appendix.

And you know what? I am sure I posted them to the forums at one point, but i think it was in the "old days" and all that is lost.

So here are my rules/recs:
PQ missile weapons are Ob 2 to hit -- same as for PQ melee weapons (on pg 29 of the CB).

SQ missile weapons grant +1D to the wielder's skill to reflect their excellent balance and accuracy.

SQ can also be represented by granting instead of normal ol'hunting arrows, access to a quiver full of the special heads listed on p196 of the BW).

-L