Armor Questions

[Sunwolf]

Looking at the armor rules and have a couple of questions for clarification.
Impedance Penalties?  Do they stack, my assumption would be yes but perhaps you are supposed to take the worst one.  If they do stack I can't see any semi-adept (such as the Ranger) being able to wear armor and cast spells, it would take too many spell points.

Manuever Penalties?  Do they stack or do you take the greatest one, I assume they stack.  Also for the bracers, greaves, etc. that have a - for penalty does that become -1 if untrained or do only the zeroes for torso armor change to -1 if unskilled.

Lastly (for now) can you wear only say bracers and greaves and no torso armor and what benefit would it have if your opponent was targeting that location with a called shot?

[imported_Rasyr]

Looking at the armor rules and have a couple of questions for clarification.
Impedance Penalties?  Do they stack, my assumption would be yes but perhaps you are supposed to take the worst one.  If they do stack I can't see any semi-adept (such as the Ranger) being able to wear armor and cast spells, it would take too many spell points.

Yes, the Impedance is supposed to be stacked, at least that was the original intent. It was done mainly to prevent the "armor plated mage" syndrome (which is a  problem in many games using a certain percentile system).

However, those rules were written before I wrote the Talent and created the rules for Semi spell casters and upon reflection that does increase the number of spell points by an extreme amount.

I am thinking about updating the Impedance rules for Semis so that they only pay Half (rounded up) of the total Impedance sum. Thus a suit of full plate would have an Impedance of 9 for a Mage or Dual Mage (and non-Adepts), and 5 (half of 9 is 4.5, rounded up to 5).

I was also considering allowing Impedance to be reduced by the character's Magic Stat Bonus (and the Talent, Impedance Reduction, would reduce it by the same amount again).

Manuever Penalties?  Do they stack or do you take the greatest one, I assume they stack.  Also for the bracers, greaves, etc. that have a - for penalty does that become -1 if untrained or do only the zeroes for torso armor change to -1 if unskilled.

The -1 for untrained Soft and Reinforced Leather is for Torso armor, not to the greaves/bracers. I will need to add errata for that (and for where I say "Rigid Leather" instead of "Reinforced Leather")

Lastly (for now) can you wear only say bracers and greaves and no torso armor and what benefit would it have if your opponent was targeting that location with a called shot?

Not sure if you are referring to what benefits the bracers/greaves would have against called shots to THOSE locations, or against called shots to the body?

To those locations -- they provide higher AR against attacks called shots to the locations that they cover.

Called shots to the body -- this is simply a normal attack (i.e. it is assumed that all attacks, unless otherwise indicated by making it a "Called Shot" are to the body), so these items supply their normal AR (1 point for a set of bracers, and 1 for greaves) against attacks to that location...

Does that make sense?

[Sunwolf]

Thanks for the Quick Answers.

I like your suggested changes for Impedance, though they would ideally need some testing.

[imported_Rasyr]

Yes they would. In the meantime, however, there is always the Impedance Reduction talent from Libram Novus #3. It is 10 points, but allows the character to use his Magic Stat Bonus to reduce

Another potential idea is to create a smaller Talent that reduces Impedance by a set, static amount (i.e. 5 CP to reduce all Impedance by 2 points -- since the Impedance Reduction Talent expects to reduce Impedance by 3-4 points eventually -- i.e. it is expected that players will buy stat increases for their Magic Stat to eventually max it out).

Call it "Impedance Training" (or perhaps -1 Imp for 3 CP, and allow it to be taken twice), and then also make the Impedance Reduction Talent Trainable IF they happen to have the Impedance Training Talent. That would be a whole level's worth of development to eventually get rid of most Impedance costs.

It would allow for characters, such as semis, to slowly increase their ability to overcome Impedance, while still making it difficult for armor-plated mages to be running about...

[Fidoric]

I don't feel that impedance penalties are too much for semis. Granted, due to their higher SP full adepts are better able to cope with impedance penalties. But after all they are expert spell casters. OTOH, when SP are lacking, semis often have other skills to deal with contingencies.

Both can buy impedance reduction, but full adepts have to buy armor talents or suffer from additional penalties. Most semis have those armor talents included in their professional abilities. Actual semis are most impaired by heavy armors.

I don't think that giving different penalties to adepts and semis is a good way to go. Anyway, what is the difference between an armored and weapon-skilled Mage and a semi ? I think that impedance is a set value. Anyone suffers from it in the same way. Some are better able to deal with it than others, be it because of their more numerous SP, an innate talents or a skill. I do not like the skill approach, but a scalable talent would be great IMO. If you consider different penalties for the same cause, then why not imagine that fighters suffer less from armor penalties to speed than mages...

I vote for a trainable and progressive impedance reduction talent.

[Sunwolf]

My problem with the rules as written is if you have just leather armor, greaves, vambraces and a cap you have an impedance of 4.  A Semi starts with 5 spell points + casting ability possibly as much as a 5 for 9 total spell points.  If impedance is 4 you can cast one spell of only 1 base spell point and it will cost you 5 spell points, meaning you can't cast a 2nd spell.  Semi's by design should be able to do better than that at 1st level.  I agree that everyone should be playing more or less by the same rules but you shouldn't have to spend extra CP at 1st level to use abilities that are supposed to be part of the class.  I would say trainable impedance reduction at 2 levels with the 1st level included in the class design.  Either the 1st level of impedance reduction would be part of semi-adept or you lower the cost of sem-adept by that much to make the builds come out right.

[Fidoric]

I agree with you. Such a talent should be part of most semis.
The problem I can see is that most semis will have the same talents (combat training 1, semi caster, armor light and impedance reduction), leaving favored skills and spells as the only differentiation between them. Maybe it could become a good idea to consider a common semi caster profession like it was done for mages ?

[imported_Rasyr]

The argument about using the same rules is a good one, which is why I had started leaning towards adding new talents to the mix, rather than rewriting the Semi.

If I go with Trainable Impedance Reduction as a Talent (remember the current Impedance Reduction Talent is NOT Trainable, and simply allows for stat bonus to subtract from overall Impedance) that has a maximum cap on how much Impedance may be reduced (-1 IMP for 3 CP is no more expensive than an extra Favored Skill), that should actually be more than enough.

And technically, I don't think that I would add them to the semi classes. Make them available yes, but not give them a free Impedance reduction.  Looking at the building blocks for the Semi Classes, the only one I MIGHT give one instance of this talent to would be the Ranger (swapping out his extra Favored Skill for it). The other Classes simply don't have the space for adding it unless I completely rewrote the class creation rules to change how many points were allowed to be used to create the Classes.

As for semis starting off with 4 IMP. I think that that comes from somebody asking me how they should be equipped, and instead of looking closely (likely cause I was distracted with something else at that moment) and saying that they should  be xx and yy and zz, I believe that I said something along the lines of just use the Archer/Thief equipment.

That was a mistake on my part. I should have taken the time to properly build Semis an equipment list.

For example, for all Semis (with the exception of the Monk, who would use the Martial Artist Equipment list), I would build it as the following:

• Semis (except Monk) - 2 weapons of choice (including scabbards and/or ammunition) and  2 pieces of Armor of the player's choice (Torso, Helm, Bracers, or Greaves of Soft or Reinforced Leather), a spellbook (for recording notes and research about spells) and any casting foci (wand, component bag, crystal, etc) as required by their School of Magic.

This way, they get a choice of armor that they start with, and they get their minimum casting stuff as well.

If I were playing a Semi, I would choose Torso and Helm simply because it would be easy to say "I remove my helm to cast this spell" when not in a combat situation, and thus only have a minimal Impedance to worry about (which, could then be offset by spending 3 points of their starting 30).[/list]

[Fidoric]

This seems sound and fair to me. One potential class that may be severely hindered with current rules would be the "typical" plate-armored paladin. This is something that has already been discussed earlier and I think your solution would deal with this problem nicely. A 1st level paladin (if that profession ever appear in Novus) would have a hard time casting in full plate but after some levels, it would become doable.

[imported_Rasyr]

Yup, the idea is to allow semis to work their way up to be able to use more armor, without making it too easy for Mages to do the same (Mages can, however, afford the IMP a bit more than Semis can)