This thread has two major purposes:
To discover if anyone knows exactly how the Resistance Factor system works in the Compendium of Weapons, Armour and Castles
Is it just straight damage reduction? Because with a RF against cuts of 11, that would make a guy in full plate armour completely immune to swords, which they absolutely weren't. -11 to damage inflicted by swords? Jeez! But they ARE extremely vulnerable to blunt instruments, and a layer of padding under that helps to some extent. How does layering work? Presumably if you layer plate over padded, you get the total impact RF of both armours... that could make guys in plate practically unstoppable, even moreso than they were IRL.
To determine how and if that system, or a similar system, could be brought into Palladium
OK, so that system wasn't written with Palladium directly in mind, but I believe it could be done. Here's how I would do it, based on my assumptions about how RF is meant to work (addressed in the previous point):
- Armour still has an AR like in standard Palladium combat, which is used to determine whether a blow hits the armour or finds a completely unarmoured gap and hits YOU
- If a blow hits the armour, instead of absorbing ALL the damage the RF comes into play, and an appropriate amount of damage is absorbed by the armour, while the remainder is transferred directly to the wearer. Say plate armour with a RF of 11 against cutting damage, you get REALLY lucky and do 12 points of damage. The armour would take the brunt of it, the blow opening up a massive gash or dent in the steel, but only a single point of damage would be transmitted to the wearer, the armour saving his life. Whereas with a blunt attack, the same plate armour would barely absorb any of the incoming damage.
This would, in my mind, add an extra, fairly unobtrusive level of tactics into a fight because certain weapons suddenly become next to useless against certain enemies, where before they were pretty much the same except for raw damage output; Your swordsman is no longer going to be as useful as he was in every situation, and your mace or axe-wielding knight is going to have several situations where he really shines.
Any thoughts anyone has on this would be much appreciated.