Making the Resistance Factor work in Palladium

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PalladiumBrony
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Making the Resistance Factor work in Palladium

Unread post by PalladiumBrony »

(Posted in this forum because it mostly pertains to fantasy/medieval era weaponry)

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.
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Re: Making the Resistance Factor work in Palladium

Unread post by Library Ogre »

I think that your option works pretty well. If they exceed the AR, the damage is transmitted entirely to the target. If they don't beat the AR, the damage goes to the armor, and MIGHT transfer over to you, if they do enough damage. Thus, in your example above, the armor hit would do 11 points to the plate, and 1 point to the target?

How would you determine "clean" misses? As your rule stands, you either have a flat % chance to miss (i.e. if your natural roll is under 4, meaning everyone misses 15% of the time), or some people will never have a clean miss (i.e. your modified roll is under 4, meaning a +3 to hit means you always hit)? And that doesn't take into account the possibility of a parry or dodge.

You might take a look at Hackmaster Basic, which has a similar set of armor rules, that work pretty well. Both sides roll a d20p+bonuses. If the target is using a shield, any time you miss by less than 10 points, you scored a "shield hit", which does less damage and adds the shield DR into the equation (and may break the shield). If they miss by more than 10 points, or if they miss and the target isn't using a shield, it's a clean miss (this may seem unfair, but since most shields effectively add +10 to your defense, shield users get hit less often, and take less damage about 50% of the time they do get hit).
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Re: Making the Resistance Factor work in Palladium

Unread post by PalladiumBrony »

Mark Hall wrote:How would you determine "clean" misses?


Yeah, sorry that's on me. Let me try and run through the system from start to finish, I just didn't elaborate since so much of it I intended to stay unmodified from standard Palladium:

Your opponent takes a swing at you in melee, or shoots at you: If they roll a modified 3 or less in melee, or a modified 7 or less at range, they just plain miss entirely. A natural 1 is also a complete miss, regardless of modifiers (which means that even a person with a cumulative +10 to strike can, theoretically, miss at least 1/20th of the time). Assuming any kind of hit, the opponent may at this time try and dodge or parry as normal.

If your opponent hits, but does not beat your AR, then your suit of armour absorbs incoming damage according to its RF for the given type of damage (impact, chop, cut or piercing), and any damage which exceeds your armour's RF is transmitted to you. If your opponent DOES beat your AR, you take full damage - the opponent managed to stick his blade into a gap in your armour, or hit an unguarded joint or something).
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Re: Making the Resistance Factor work in Palladium

Unread post by Library Ogre »

So, if I have a +10 to parry, Hard Leather, Soft Leather, Padded and Cloth armors are only useful for ambushes? And cloth armors not even for that?
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Re: Making the Resistance Factor work in Palladium

Unread post by PalladiumBrony »

Mark Hall wrote:So, if I have a +10 to parry, Hard Leather, Soft Leather, Padded and Cloth armors are only useful for ambushes? And cloth armors not even for that?


Well, leather and cloth armours are at least "decent" at protecting against cutting damage (-5 damage against a slashing attack isn't to be sneezed at in most fights!). However you'd be in real trouble against an opponent that does blunt damage like a mace, warhammer or really big stick. And yes, a suit of full plate steel will always provide more raw protection than a suit of cloth, leather and so on, but they have a couple of major disadvantages: They're heavy, slow (comparatively) and EXPENSIVE. Cloth and leather armour would be much more affordable, and - if I've got the right idea in my head - light armour would really encourage dodging, backing off and similar tactics (Basically "avoid damage by not getting hit") where steel plate and similar would, to a much greater extent, allow the wearer to just not care - against most opponents with bladed weapons, he can afford to pretty much just stand there and tank the damage. I mean, he's still probably gonna want to parry, but he's going to be much less worried about his reduced mobility, compared to the poor guy who can only afford a padded Gambeson - if HE gets hit, he's going to be having a very bad day.

Ambushing the enemy always gives you an advantage, no matter what armour you're wearing, but yes, lighter armours would generally favour that tactic :-D
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Re: Making the Resistance Factor work in Palladium

Unread post by ShadowLogan »

Create a table based on the RFs to provide (any one of which likely takes some time to get right and setup) one or more:
-static damage reduction value to be used for a given attack type
-dice damage resistance to be rolled, reducing the damage inflicted)
-AR modifier for the given attack type

Use the RF value as the number of times you can ignore (or take reduced damage from) a successful strike's damage of that type (repair cost is as per point of AR or SDC?). This would be easy to execute and setup quickly. It would require tracking four RF pools, deciding on how much damage is ignored, replenishment, and when it comes into effect (can a player decide when to use it or not).
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Re: Making the Resistance Factor work in Palladium

Unread post by Library Ogre »

ShadowLogan wrote:Use the RF value as the number of times you can ignore (or take reduced damage from) a successful strike's damage of that type (repair cost is as per point of AR or SDC?). This would be easy to execute and setup quickly. It would require tracking four RF pools, deciding on how much damage is ignored, replenishment, and when it comes into effect (can a player decide when to use it or not).


Actually, I REALLY like this method. As said, it's pretty simple to manage, and obviates the need for armor SDC to be tracked... and also puts a bit of game into it. Do you take the blow, or use up one of your armor's "charges"?
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Re: Making the Resistance Factor work in Palladium

Unread post by kiralon »

PalladiumBrony wrote:
Mark Hall wrote:So, if I have a +10 to parry, Hard Leather, Soft Leather, Padded and Cloth armors are only useful for ambushes? And cloth armors not even for that?


Well, leather and cloth armours are at least "decent" at protecting against cutting damage (-5 damage against a slashing attack isn't to be sneezed at in most fights!). However you'd be in real trouble against an opponent that does blunt damage like a mace, warhammer or really big stick. And yes, a suit of full plate steel will always provide more raw protection than a suit of cloth, leather and so on, but they have a couple of major disadvantages: They're heavy, slow (comparatively) and EXPENSIVE. Cloth and leather armour would be much more affordable, and - if I've got the right idea in my head - light armour would really encourage dodging, backing off and similar tactics (Basically "avoid damage by not getting hit") where steel plate and similar would, to a much greater extent, allow the wearer to just not care - against most opponents with bladed weapons, he can afford to pretty much just stand there and tank the damage. I mean, he's still probably gonna want to parry, but he's going to be much less worried about his reduced mobility, compared to the poor guy who can only afford a padded Gambeson - if HE gets hit, he's going to be having a very bad day.

Ambushing the enemy always gives you an advantage, no matter what armour you're wearing, but yes, lighter armours would generally favour that tactic :-D

Light armour isn't designed to stop a blow, its more designed to stop incidental blows from incapacitating, like long cuts. If you get hit full on you don't get your guts sliced open, but you do end up with broken bones/internal bleeding and will still usually get knocked from the fight but you wont be dead. Look at the fights they have these days with blunted steel weapons and real steel armour, a decent smack on the helmet drops people and down is a very bad place to be. Chainmail does very little (well nothing) to stop a punch for example, but if that scimitar dragged across your belly you are still OK. Rigid Armour is what is needed to take blows.
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Re: Making the Resistance Factor work in Palladium

Unread post by Axelmania »

As an example, page 79 classifies which swords are chop/thrust (like Abbasi) and which are cut/thrust (like Ahir) but applying this to weapons from other games which don't have parallels in this book might get tricky.

It would be interesting if there were mechanical differences between these types of attacks too, like some being more damaging, harder to hit with, penalizes parries but not dodges, etc.
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Re: Making the Resistance Factor work in Palladium

Unread post by kiralon »

When I was sword fighting I found dodging waay easier then parrying if you had the room. Step back, he missed.

Some games gave bonuses and negatives to strike depending on what weapon was used against what armour, like stabbing weapons easily defeated chainmail, but slashing weapons didn't. In palladium a blow from an axe that did 24 points of damage to the armour and didn't 'penetrate' would still likely debilitate the wearer if it was chainmail in real life, the bonus is that all the bits are still in one handy chainmail bag, so just find something that is fun and doesn't break the immersion for you.

You can differentiate the criticals for example, cutting crits do bleed damage per round, crushing blows like from axes and maces do physical negatives, piercing blows do hard to heal hits from organ damage which requires magical healing or surgery, bandaging just wont cut it.
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Re: Making the Resistance Factor work in Palladium

Unread post by PalladiumBrony »

OK, I feel like I'm really getting somewhere helpful with this, thanks guys... but I still have one major question, maybe one of you guys can help:

What does the DEX stat actually do? The book explains that it's a measure of how much your armour impedes your movement, but that really doesn't help much. Does it give a speed debuff? A penalty to dodge? To parry? All three? Going by the armour values presented in the CoWA&C, the scale runs from 0 to 3, with a higher value being worse/more restrictive... Interestingly enough (and without going into what specific values are, since we're meant to avoid reprinting too much from the books on these forums) despite being several kilograms lighter, the various forms of brigandine armour have a worse DEX penalty than full steel plate. I don't claim to know enough about armour to know if that's wrong.
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Re: Making the Resistance Factor work in Palladium

Unread post by ShadowLogan »

In Palladium Game Mechanical Terms the ARMOR's DEX likely refers to skill penalty for physical skills (prowl, climb, swim) and Spd stat reduction. See PF2E pg279 for examples. I'm not sure if you'll be able to cross reference PF2E stated suits against CoWA&C/W&A to work out a rough table (0=X, 1=Y, 2=Z 3=W) like weapon stats have.
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Re: Making the Resistance Factor work in Palladium

Unread post by Borast »

If you want to make it work...I haven't read the books in several years...I'd say add 1 extra die to each weapon. Or, more simply, consider that the RF as listed is for the torso, and *maybe* the head. The arms would be 1/3rd, and the legs 1/2 the listed RF. (So attack the limbs, not the torso.)
You would also have to take into account where the attack is coming from, since a man in plate armour has a LOT fewer weak spots than someone in plate *mail* armour. That is where book keeping can be a nightmare, since half the arms and legs would use the listed RFs (modified as above), and the other half, the mail RFs (again, modified as above), etc...

That having been said, remember that different swords do different amount of damage, and armour that takes hits, takes damage! So, while a short sword may only do a D6, a broadsword doing 2D6 has a chance, and a flamberge doing 3D6 will, on average do damage at least half the time.


As for the aspect of "layering" armours...that doesn't work as well as one might think. Once you go beyond leather armour, you are already layering armour. Think about it - chainmail is designed to protect against blades and arrows. Maces and clubs essentially ignore it. However, this factor is was considered in real life...you wore a heavy layer of padding under the armour to absorb some of the blow (although, not all of it, since that would not be realistic).
That being said, armour was designed to be a balance between mobility and protection. Once you start layering armours, you start loosing the mobility. D&D dealt with that by halving or eliminating the AC bonus from one's dex based on how heavy/bulky the armour was. Perhaps Palladium could ... borrow(?)... that thought (and if they can't for legal reasons, no reason it can't be house ruled).
So, if you do start layering, you're looking at (increased risk of) heat prostration and heat stroke, lack of flexibility of the joints, highly restricted range of motion (attack and defensive penalties).

Besides, in the real world, you didn't face a plate armoured knight with a short sword and shield. You faced him with a polearm, and either cut him out of the saddle, or attacked his extremities, weapons, HORSE, etc. After all, a man in plate on the ground on his back is called a corpse. Disarm, and deal with at you leisure, since standing-up in plate is HARD. (And doubly so in combat.)
Fun fact - while even the great English longbow could not, the crossbow could pierce the best full plate armour. That is, if not the main reason they were outlawed across Europe, it is a huge one!
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