The other day i read a line written by Kaptain O of these forums where he mentioned that he didn't think it made much sense that some armours have a defence value indicating that the wearer is actually better at dodging attacks. I don't know if the defence value is thought to represent the deflective capabilities of the armour or what but I agree with Kaptain O. It doesn't make much sense to me either and its actually something thats been bugging me with other systems too for a long time. There almost never any advantage for a fighter type to wear lighter armour compared to heavy armour even if that fighter had ninja agility. For most fighters it’s just a race to get your hands on that full plate unless you have a particular roleplaying reason not to.
This made me try to make some small changes to the armour system of WFRPG 3 to make it a bit more appealing to wear light armour for agile characters.

The stats for most armours don't change just the meaning of the defence value. Instead of automatically adding misfortune dice to the opponent attacker it represents the maximum misfortune dice you can penalize your opponent with. How many that will be, will be dependent upon your ability compared to your opponents. after all you might be fast but if your opponent is just as fast you will still have a hard time avoiding his strikes.

-If your agility is equal to your attacker's then you give him 1 misfortune dice
-if your agility is higher than your attacker's then you give 2 misfortune dice
-if your agility is more than twice as high as your attacker's then you give him 3 misfortune dice.
these are cumulative with any active defenses.

Armour maximum defense soak
cloth unlimited 0
robes 3 0 (robes are more cumbersome than cloth)
Leather 3 1
brigandine 1 1 (some armours are not as good as others though they are cheaper and more available)
Mail shirt 1 2
chain mail 0 3
scale 0 4
ulthuan scale 1 3
breast plate 0 5 (soak change to 5 so it wouldn't be the same as scale)
full plate 1 5 (I want to represent that the full plate is better and more flexible than half plate and chain, and should in fact be less cumbersome than the that, but I'll leave that up to the experts. my only experience come from the armours I sell in my shop and from that I know that chain is at least as heavy as any plate armour we have.)

The shields remain as they are. They still add defence dice to the attacker same as RAW. As long as your opponent is hitting the shield he is not hitting you.
Should you be encumbered you will add one less misfortune dice to your attacker for each point of encumbrance above your limit.

System arguments and thoughts.

With this system most characters will add 1 or 2 misfortune dice to the attacker and only characters with 5 or 7 agility will add three dice. You might argue that characters with 5 or 6 agility in leather and a shield will add 1 extra misfortune dice to attacker than a RAW character with mail shirt and a shield will which admittedly is a lot. But characters with very high agility will most likely have low strenght (or other weaknesses) which will limit the amount of equipment they can carry. A character with high agility is likely to carry a ranged weapon (3 or 4 encumbrance), ammunition (1 or 2), a hand weapon or dagger (2 or 3), a leather armour (3), cloth beneath his armour (1) and a back pack with different practical things (food and water etc.) (1-3). Added together it gives an encumbrance of 11-16 which is pushing it close to the encumbrance limit of an average strength 3 high agility character. Add to that a shield of 2 to 4 encumbrance and you will soon start loosing your defence bonus again.

On the other hand agile characters should be harder to hit than heavily armoured characters as they will take a lot more damage if they are hit than those with high soak value. And should a player desire to spend 7 XP on agility 7 he will lack in other areas so it should be only fair that he is very good at dodging.

Since the natural limit of this system is three misfortune dice is may seem silly to make cloth’s defence rating unlimited but that is simply to make it future compatible. At some point there may be spells that increase your agility or defence dice etc.

I would also use a house rules like imposing a penalty on characters who try to move silently in heavy armour. Add one misfortune to their check for each soak value. Like spellcasters. And if your characters are surprised they do not gain any bonus from the ‘passive defence’ until they have acted, though they may still use active defences.

I’ve been playing with other ideas that included coordination and specializing in Dodge etc. but found that they quickly got too complicated and I feel that complex rules are not in the spirit of this system and also too few careers gained the benefit from it. Besides I have a feeling that at some point that Specialized dodge will have an effect on another active defence card. If one deem this system too favourable for agile characters it would be easy to reduce the effectiveness by removing one misfortune dice from each of the above lines, making it 1 dice for higher agility and two for more than twice as much agility.

Try it out and let me know what you think. I have tested it a bit, but more people makes for better play tests

I think one of the main advantages of the system is, at least during combat, you do not have to compare stats at all. You just get a 1 Challenge dice and Misfortune dice = to their defense.

The Dodge card is dependant on Agility as your 'defense'. Improved Dodge is for those characters who have increased Agility (co-elves-ugh).

As a thought for a more concise House Rule, you might want to allow a character to spend Fatigue to reduce the Recharge on the Dodge cards. It seems to be appropriate that dodging would tire you out. And it's a really simple small addition to the game.

It is actually still the same since this system is really only for characters.

when characters attack they still get the challenge dice and any defence dice of the monsters as they are written. when the monsters attack the GM will still have to ask the player what defence he has. with this system he just asks for his agility instead.

the whole point of this house rule is really not to make agile characters better dodgers but rather to make it attractive for those characters to wear lighter armour compared to heavy.

Only for the PC's that might work.

But I would be hesitant to have the 'god-stat', which is my term for games in which one stat is so much better than all other stats.

PC's will generally raise either their ST for most melee OR their Agi for ranged attacks (or the few melee attacks that use Agi). Then they will have to raise their Toughness.

I would be worried that you're giving a double bonus for Agi here. One because they can take the Agi based Action cards (allowing them to use their Agi for hit and damage) AND then providing them with their base Defense values (albeit if they take the correct armour).

I guess you could make the argument that Str gives the double bonus as it is used for your standard melee cards and because Str determines your Encumbrance value which is the only reason to limit heavier armour.

I guess my thought is that I personally am still too new to this system to want to make what I think is a large change. I like more subtle changes at the moment. I guess I can theory machine it, but none of my players have gotten enough money to even afford the heavier armour yet. So maybe this is something I would re-visit.

But I hope it appeals to somebody else who does test it out.

I understand your concern about the god-stat as it has been mine too and I will surely have to test it some more before I can make certain that it is not overpowered compared to other stats/types of characters. but its a long way to agility 7 which is where you have the first real chance to have three mis. dice.

hmm. lets compare. as you mentioned yourself with RAW the strenght stat is quite powerful as it gives you:

- better parry

- better chances with almost all melee attacks (the agility one has a recharge of 2) and no ranged IIRC

- and 1-3 defence and high soak with better armours and shields (average 2)

compared to RAW agility :

-better dodge

-better chances with 1 melee attack and most ranged attacks

-and 1-2 defence and low soak with shield

this is assuming the player goes for maxing the main stat and stays with 3 in the other.

with the system above the advantages of strenght would be:

-better parry

-better melee attacks as above

-most often 1-3 defence and high soak with better armours and shield (average 2)

while agility has:

-better dodge

-better ranged and one melee

-defence between 2-4 and low soak with shield (most often 2-3 with shield or 2 without)

conclusion:

the armoured fighter stays more or less the same but the agile fighter has become a more attractive melee class. the STR fighter has slightly less defence dice but a lot better soak while the agile fighter has medium to high defence but very low soak. It kinda makes sense to me.

The GM can also rule that if the player is fighting three or more enemies alone it will be harder to dodge. a thought. that is why i like this system. its really easy to make up rules on the which makes sense. I think there even is an assist rule already...

but I'll give it som thorough testing once all this christmas foolery is over

cheers

Lucas Adorn said:

I like the idea of this, but I'll have to think it over a bit more before I give you a full thought on it. One thing I have to say upfront is what this does is get eerily similar to the standard opposition system. With that being said, I think Defense (except for armor) could be hacked and the normal opposed resolution could be dropped in its place. I honestly don't understand why it isn't. Comparing stats (when dealing with only six of them) really isn't that hard and the system is easy enough to translate it. I don't know. It just makes sense to me is all. It also clarifies the vs. on all the action cards. I honestly do not understand why the system works the way it does.

Personally, I'd rather seen this and have armor create the defense - in terms of misfortune dice - (since it is preventing the attack from delivering a powerful hit - by restricting the number of successes and boons or stopping it entirely by creating a failure. Damage is already lumped in with the attack roll, I do not see why armor is not. Just my quick two cents on the subject. I'll read this over more later after christmas though.

commoner said:

Interesting. But the opposition system will give out too many blue dice, will it not ? Maybe then you can eliminate the basic 1d difficulty for Melee attacks.

Maybe all this could be avoided by simply making an Action card called "Acrobatic Dodge"

Acrobatic Dodge (Stole the name from GURPS) recharge 2

Reaction Defense

Res: May not wear armour that gives 3 or more in Soak, 3+ Agility, May not be encumbered, Coordination trained. must have the action card dodge.

This works just like a dodge (cannot be combined with any other Dodge action card) with the following exceptions.

If your Agility is lower than the attackers agility, his attack is added 1 misfortune die (+1 MFdie if you are Trained in Coord. skill)

If your Agility is equel to the attackers agility, his attack is added 2 misfortune dice (+1 MFdice if you are Trained in Coord. skill)

If your Agility is higher than the attackers agility, his attack is added 1 challenge die(+1 MFdice per point in your Coord. Skill)

For each point of Agility you have above twice the attackers agility, he gets another misfortune die

Example: Orc with 2 agility (Strength 4) against super elf with 6 in agility (an 2 in Coord.)most roll:

4 Blue dice(or some reckless)1 Yellow die, 2 Challenge die and 4 Misfortune die.

Don´t kill me if this is way to good(or bad) just think about the option of dealing with this as an action card.