Armor-Resistnce Factor compared to A.R.

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stray1989
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Armor-Resistnce Factor compared to A.R.

Unread post by stray1989 »

Ok so long story short my house hold is about to run a 1st ED Palladium game. I have a pile of the books and am having trouble understanding some information for use. I just got hold of the Compendium of Weapons Armor and Castles. Now we are looking into armor for basic character creations. Initially we used the player's handbook but have moved into the compendium for equipment, we found the needed information for weapons but cant really find anything concerning S.D.C or A.R. for the armor. Instead we found something called armor value and resistance factor. How do we apply this information to our characters? Is armor value the equivalent to A.R?
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Re: Armor-Resistnce Factor compared to A.R.

Unread post by ShadowLogan »

Not familiar with 1E (2E), but I do have the Compendium of Weapons and Armor (which is C&P into CoWA&C). I would have to say no, that the various "resistance factors" are to certain types of attacks, so would be used to alter a base the AR against an attack of a given type.

What you should do is try and find a few armor examples from 1E that are stated out in the Compendium to work out the conversion information for armors not covered. I suspect that Palladium will use the Chop Resistance Factor (as indicated in the book as a one-hit/general class) as the determining factor in the end AR. The mass of the armor probably also has more to do with the resulting protective SDC value IMHO than the various resistance factors.
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Re: Armor-Resistnce Factor compared to A.R.

Unread post by Prysus »

stray1989 wrote:Ok so long story short my house hold is about to run a 1st ED Palladium game. I have a pile of the books and am having trouble understanding some information for use. I just got hold of the Compendium of Weapons Armor and Castles. Now we are looking into armor for basic character creations. Initially we used the player's handbook but have moved into the compendium for equipment, we found the needed information for weapons but cant really find anything concerning S.D.C or A.R. for the armor. Instead we found something called armor value and resistance factor. How do we apply this information to our characters? Is armor value the equivalent to A.R?

Greetings and Salutations. If I understand it correctly, the Armor Value (which is just broken up into the various Resistance Factors) is a different/separate system than the A.R. system of Palladium. The books was written more as a generic rule system that can compliment any system, instead of solely for Palladium (it's just published by them).

From my reading, the Resistance Factor is more like Damage Reduction to certain types of attacks. Each of the weapons list how they can be used (Cut/Chop/Thrust/Impact). So let's say you're wearing Padded Armor (I chose one this for a reason) and you're facing 4 different enemies. If the enemy hits you (regardless of their roll), that damage will be reduced. So the opponent has a Thrust weapon and rolls 14 damage. The armor absorbs 2 points of damage and you'll take the other 12. If that opponent has an Impact weapon and rolls the same damage, the armor takes 3 damage and you only take 11. So the better armor types will make it a lot harder to hurt you, but in a different way than the A.R. system. The Dex RF will result in a penalty to your P.P. (alternately, it might represent the maximum bonus you can achieve from High Quality Weapons, found on page 5). There is no S.D.C. value to the armor, and it'll basically last as long as you do.

That's at least how I'm reading it. As it's designed to be a generic system used in multiple systems, it can have many interpretations. Hope some of that helps. Farewell and safe journeys for now.
Last edited by Prysus on Fri Aug 19, 2016 11:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Armor-Resistnce Factor compared to A.R.

Unread post by Library Ogre »

The RF was implied, but never quite stated, to be straight damage reduction... if you have an RF of 6 against an attack that rolls 14 damage, you take 8 (14-6) damage.

Now, for PF, I had a few houserules for using this. First of all, I found it easiest to use PF armor, but simply subtract 4 from the AR to get the aggregate RF... rather than track RF for 4 different types of damage, it was a single RF rating. Armor SDC went down by the amount of damage it absorbed, so a piece of armor with an RF of 10 and SDC of 40 that was hit for 30 points of damage would take 10 damage, pass 30 damage on to the wearer, and become RF 10, SDC 30 for future attacks. Furthermore, I allowed critical strikes to do double damage OR ignore armor, at the attacker's choice (most would do the math and choose the better). Triple damage CS could ignore armor and do double damage, or do triple damage. Magic damage (electrical, spells, etc.) tends to bypass armor.

FWIW, I prefer Hackmaster on this, but it has similar rules to what I outlined above.
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