Hi guys

Its been bugging me a while now, I know its not a big deal but every time a play it just seems strange to have a wizard with a shield. Yes i know a very stereo typical thing to say but its true.

Now i think it would be better if instead it was:

Light armour/leather instead of helmet

medium armour/chainmail instead of shield

heavy armour/plate instead of armour

with this idea in mind you could have limits of who can wear what.(example the wizard can only wear light armour)

P.s this would free up things like shields and helmets to be +1 armour bonous cards or shield could be that your allowed to reroll the dice of an enemy in battle.

Hi jsutcliffe,

I really like your idea and I would propose to go beyond that by sugestingsomething like this, there should be 3 types of each equipments availablefor example:"light armour" could only help save your life but no bonus point, "medium armour" help save live and +1 bonus in battle, "heavy armour" help save live and +2 bonus.

Same can be applied to shield, swords and other objects and after that restriction could be applied on some characters on which level of object they can wear

This could be "homebrew" material......

Cheers

Armor doesn't help you win battles... quite the opposite. Anyone who has actually sparred with weapons at full force knows this. In fact armor isn't always better the more protective it gets because it slows you down, limits maneuverability, and you get hit more often... sometimes a lot more often. And heavier armor isn't always just an issue of plate. There were always layers of other armoring underneath... more loss of mobility, more weight, and its HOT in there.

By the way, basic soft leather for armor sucks! Thick felt is better, even a celtic great kilt wrapped properly is preferable. Hardened leather, typically cuiri bouille, was pretty good to a point, but had a lot of pentration points a good opponent could hit most of the time. It also didn't allow for as much underlay armor such as padding as did the design of later plate froms.

Like most things in a many board games, the armor cards represent what happens when the notion of a bonus or deficit is thought of first and then justified with a title and illustration. Partly because most players aren't interested in anything more than that, just a justification for getting an edge. But the notion of switching to armor types instead of armor parts would work so long as the rule of "one armor card only" was used. Most players groups I've encountered ditched that notion and use "stackable" or "graduated" armor rules.

For armor types in Talisman.

cuiri bouille / felt & padding = a "helmet"

steel splint, band. or lamilar = a "shield"

plate'n'mail (there's no such thing as "platemail") = "armour"

And to be really realistic... plate armor, such as field plate and not the ridiculous jousting plate used in many movies, would give you a -1 in Battle. Yes, later versions were well made, well articulated and maneuverable, but the underlayers were still a problem... and it was **** expensive stuff on a scale that Talisman could never represent... and why it was only worn by nobility. Field plate would be about a 3,4,5,6 for amour roll but would definitely give a -1 Battle... or it could be the same as the "armour" card, but you lose if you roll a tie with the opponent.

The shield becomes a special case. Armour is about protection once you are hit. A shield is about keeping you from getting hit. Armor is passive protection; shield is active protection. Using a shield takes skill, or it quickly becomes a deficit for the amateur... and it gets used by your opponent to pound you down to your knees, take away your mobility, and kill you. So with a shift to armor types instead of armor parts, keeping shields around needs new mechanics. Overall, it would add to your Battle roll but ONLY for establishing a Draw. Hence, if you lose, you'd add the Shield bonus of +1 and see if the difference created a Draw. A Shield at +2 in Talisman doesn't work realistically or statistically unless you switch to a 2D6 combat system.

If you're interested in notions of other armor cards that still work within the current Talisman armor system, then visit TalismanIsland.com and download "In the Balance, Part 2" and have a look at the alternative forms of "armour" Purchase cards. These basically allow lower cost/price and lower protection point "armour" in house rule systems with stackable / graduated armor rolls (see some of the documentation in the package as well). You can certainly add them into your Purchase deck by themselves, or even use them to replace the helmet, shield, armor combination parts.

Hi JCHendee,

Thanks for your lenghty input into this topic, very interesting. Now I'm not too sure that many players would like to go that far into realism for Talisman but maybe some basic classes for armour, swords and other objects might smoothen the "wizard with shield" things that was pointed by jsutcliffe previously and I agree with him that a wizard shouldn't use the same type of shield as a knight would for example.

The +0, +1, +2 class system would be quite simple to introduce into Talisman but there might be better solution out there but this is the one that came to my mind first.

BTW I like your "In the balance" homebrew stuff, very nice.

Cheers