Be fair, now. You showed up with a great mace and great struck, already an Ob5 armor test. You were already going to win easily.
Let’s do another example - you have a superior longsword and a 4D sword skill. Respectable, but not a master. You’ll probably roll 3 successes on a good roll, which gives you 2D to play with. You could either upgrade the hit to a mark hit and hope to penetrate the armor with your VA1 or VA2 on a great strike, or you could spend one success to move it to his arm and one success to declare you’re aiming at his elbow joint, raising your VA to 2 (3 on great strike) but inflicting only an incidental blow.
Well, that’s still one success you’re not using for a raise. Against a gambeson I’d probably only spend for VA if I rolled 5 successes on the strike. I’d use my first two MoS dice for raises, since there’s a good chance you’ll fail your armor roll anyway. Maybe if I was just trying to drive you off I’d use my second MoS die to move the hit off the chest and the third MoS die for VA, figuring a mark hit will force a Steel test.
Okay, I’ll be fair. I’ll hit him with a Hammer and a regular Strike. He’s rolling 7D v Ob 4. Chances are he’ll make it, but 7D v Ob 4 is one of the tougher (mathematically) Routine tests in the game. I’m swinging a Run-of-the-Mill hammer with a regular Strike against, again, the best armor in the game.
Should I be able to make it that easy to penetrate that?
I add that 1 success to VA every single time even if I get 2 successes.
Why?
A SQ Longsword is VA 1. He’s going to make an armor test vs Ob 2. That’s possible for Reinforced Leather and there’s a good chance everything above that can make it. Heavy mail is almost guaranteed.
With a VA 2 my SQ Longsword stands a good chance of getting through, especially if I use my other success to shift it to somewhere other than the breastplate.
I only want to Wound him, because the vast majority of Fights are not stopped by a Mortal Wound. They’re stopped by a Steel test. If my opponent is forced to make a Steel test, my chances of winning just got WAY higher. If he Hesitates, chances are I win.
Who cares. A guaranteed hit is way better than getting a maybe slightly better hit.
Even if my opponent passes his Steel test he’s going to be either at +1 Ob or -1D. Either is way better for me than giving him the chance to make an Armor test on the off chance I give him a -2D.
Now he’s not only less dangerous to me, but I’m going to be hitting him more often under more favorable circumstances.
Why? I add 1 VA and the gambeson will most likely fail. I have a guaranteed hit. The add on a knife is 1. With 3 successes I get a 100% guaranteed Mark hit.
With 4 successes I get a Superb hit, he gets a tough armor save, and probably a B6 Wound. That’s a Midi. He’s know at -2D for everything, and he has to make a Steel test for pain against his Hesitation with -2D to his Steel.
Why do you need a Mark hit to force a Steel test? ANY Wound forces a Steel test. Not to mention a Gambeson breastplate B2 v Ob 1 stands a solid chance of success. I would not ever describe that as having a “good chance for failure.” He’s got a 50/50 chance with only 1D!
A failed Steel test = victory and sometimes death for the opponent in BW.
He stands and drools, I cut him down. He swoons, I hack off his head. He runs, I can chase and cut him down, He pleads for mercy, I cut him down.
I’m really, really not. I think you’re underestimating how brutal having to make a Steel test for taking a Wound in Fight is.
Well, you’ll need another success to make it guaranteed, since the gambeson has 2D in the chest. So that’s 4 successes manages a certain mark hit against a guy who barely bothered to bring armor at all. It doesn’t seem like a cataclysm to me.
Well, maybe, if you have a 5 Power. A B6 isn’t a Midi wound against the duelist or the goblin from the Rogue’s Gallery, but a light wound is likely to force a steel test. If he’s alone, he’ll be in trouble, although he might escape you running and screaming. Especially since he’s only wearing a gambeson.
Superficial wounds don’t force steel tests. To do a light wound on an incidental hit against the duellist in the Rogue’s gallery you’d have to have an effective power of 9. It’s certainly possible, but if a player is that bent on making a murder machine I’m inclined to let him be the best murderer in the kingdom and find other conflicts. King Arthur had a scabbard that made him invincible, but there was still plenty of drama in his life.
I’ve played the game and failed Steel tests and had opponents fail Steel tests. It’s pretty devastating when you’re fighting alone. Perhaps we’ll have to disagree.
Never said it was a cataclysm. It’s not, but forcing him to make a B2 v Ob 2 armor test or a B2 v Ob 1 armor test is an easy decision.
If he’s alone? A Steel test in a Fight is trouble versus an opponent alone or not.
He might escape me running and screaming, but I’m left with control of the battlefield and I’m alive. I can then pursue him, shoot him down with arrows, or let him flee. I get to do what I want. He gets to run and scream until his Hesitation is over.
You’re right about the Steel test, but it’s still a +1 Ob to anything else he does.
If I’m wielding anything with a decent +Power, it’s pretty easy to do a Light Wound with even an Incidental hit. Power B6 +3 from a Longsword is a B5 Wound. That’s a Light Wound for your Duelist. Not sure where you got effective power of 9 from. Then he gets to make a Steel test and add a -1D to everything he does.
I’ve never seen a failed Steel test be anything but devastating in a Fight whether the character had allies there or not.
I think you’re adding a rule that will have a serious impact on major Fight mechanics while only helping, at best, edge cases that I’ve only seen 1 time. And that time was when the players did not know what they were doing, and were ill-equipped to do it.
In my experience, those are two conditions which do not last in any campaign. Maybe your experiences have been different. I would really encourage you to be cautious with giving more VA. Make it requires 2 successes at minimum.
Remember, too, that if he hadn’t worn the gambeson your certain B6 would have been a certain B9 to whatever part of his body you fancied to chop off and he’d be bleeding out or dead. He’s still glad he wore his armor.
If it’s not right for your game, that’s cool. I just think you’re overstating the effect this rule would have, and I think the examples we went through above support that. Maybe it will be useful for other folks’ games, folks who want to have very skilled fighters overcome armored opponents more quickly than they would otherwise (though certainly not without risk!).
Sure, it doesn’t make armor worthless it just makes it much less worthwhile. It will also make Avoid and Block a lot more valuable in Fight.
I really don’t think I am. I’ve only seen Fights ended by a Mortal Wound once or twice. More often than not I see them ended by failed Steel tests and a pile of Incidental and Light Wounds.
Your experience must be very different from my own.
I understand the frustration. I dont buy the “armor works” argument. We are generally talking about open face helmets here or an open face chain coif. In these cases, the only thing protecting the face is skill and technique, not armor. I imagine what was bothering the player is that he felt the system didn’t model the reliance on skill and technique to protect the face, and I get it. I imagine he felt his character should have been able to exploit an advantage the mechanics suggest that he had (through stats) in skill and technique and that the rules just fell short on this point. I get it. Okay.
That said–he brought a knife to a swordfight (or other longer weapon–I don’t think you specified). Dagger Guy can’t just stab a guy in the face. Sword Guy can. Sword Guy can cut-and-step-back, or deliver a jab-like thrust and step back as Dagger Guy tries to close or stay closed. In addition, it’s hard to straight up stab someone in the face with a knife, as opposed to say, cut the forearm. We have natural instincts to protect the face. Someone in armor has even further advantages–for instance, he can trade a glancing cut on the forearm to gain a critical momentary advantage–or perhaps to shield his face (technique).
Really, this is a desperate kind of combat for Dagger Guy. A guy with a misericorde/stiletto/rondel against an armored opponent with a longer weapon must prevent his foe from exploiting huge advanatages–in reach and tactical options. Now, Dagger Guy got on the inside, you said–but even that’s not necessarily enough. (I suppose it depends on what the skills represent and all, mind you.) Sword Guy can block a swipe at the face with an armored part of his body, or if he has armor on his hand and they’re in grappling range, Sword Guy can grab the business end of the stiletto and have a lot more control over it. It’s not an insuperable hurdle–just a very serious one. It’s, you know, kind of heroic.
One fine way to mechanically model the skill required is something like locks. Dagger guy binds up his opponent, pins his foe against the wall or table or such, or uses his shorter weapon to tie-up his opponent, and then delivers harmful blows (or one really good one) while his opponent cannot move well. Another way to reflect the higher level of skill required is as Mykellsss suggests, which I think is fine too. If you want a more gritty feel, go with locks and pins before dealing a lethal blow. If you want a more heroic feel, go with something like Mykellsss’s angle.
Here are some images to feed the imagination–images from Talhoffer (86v through 96v) and Morozzo. Now, while the guys in the images don’t have armor on, its universally understood that many of the techniques were used against guys in armor and by guys in armor–and that the short weapons were not just for putting a wounded knight out of his misery.
Would you permit an ASSESS action to notice a weak spot in your opponents armour? In which case, what sort of ob are you looking at.
Aside from the ever suggested LOCK then tear off the helmet with a PHYSICAL ACTION, and assess followed by PHYSICAL ACTION (or PUSH) to cause falling damage-- down stairs, off walls, into wells-- can create a fair bit of damage with some VA.
As an alternative, or supplementing the SQ dagger, a dice trait which allows great strikes with daggers. Or even more powerfully LOCK and STRIKE.
Neither of these are easy, but as many others have pointed out-- medieval battles were won by people in armour wielding dangerous weapons. Not so much half naked dagger ninjas.
I always knife people from behind in a dark alley, maybe when they’re drunk and disarmed. Fighting with armored knights is a good way to get yourself killed. It’s not impossible, but damn, life’s too short.
I like this suggestion a lot. How about the Ob is the amount of VA you’re trying to bypass? Or, the entire VA of the armor you’re trying to bypass (perhaps more fitting). Also, I’d allow a few other skills to be applicable instead of just a standard Assess. Perhaps Tactics, or Armor-wise, etc.
I suggested earlier that Ten’s suggestion could be tweaked by making the success cost be the entire VA of the armor. You’d have to allocate 6 or 7 successes to find a chink in full plate armor. I don’t see a problem with that!
Which is better? Having to allocate 6 or 7 successes, or requiring an Ob 6 or Ob 7 Assess?
So we’re back to the “it’s not realistic” arguments. I’m warned, thanks. My fantasy game will be a complete fantasy.
Nkenny, Alex_P suggested a trait that allows you to use Assess to spot a weak point in the armor. First I misunderstood him and thought he was suggesting that anyone could assess for weak spots, to which my objection was that that made nerds deadly, since they have high Perception, and I want to keep this approach in the hands of weapon masters. Also, it’s weird that you have to spend an action to notice that your opponent’s face is uncovered, or even that the joints of his armor are weaker than the plates, given that you’ve likely fought armored men before and you know about armor. I suppose Armor-wise could do it, but I don’t really like giving combat applications to wises.
The trait allowing lock and strike with daggers is fun, although not what I was after with this mod. If I have a player looking for a particularly grappley form of knife fighting that might be a great trait to let him learn. Doesn’t expressly help against armor, though. You end up with the same effect as locking repeatedly and then pulling off the old helmet.
As for wrestling and kicking guys down stairs, I know. I’m not a player looking for advice about how to fight armored opponents - I’m a game master suggesting a rules drift to achieve a particular effect in the game.
I know that armor was awesome in the medieval era and should be effective, and as I’ve noted it would still be effective. Armored characters would still have a huge advantage on unarmored characters, but against a really skilled opponent armored characters might script more cautiously.
If your opponent is wearing an open-faced helmet, your assess is to get the timing of the attack right. Think of it as an almost great-strike.
The rules as written are intended to model a certain type of lethal medieval combat. If your setting approves of Knife-ninjas, and I say this in the coolest most respectful way, and a SQ dagger doesn’t cut it-- a dicetrait is there to accommodate your needs. Come to think of it, so does simply swapping the weapon stats or otherwise enhancing the weapon might also cut it.
Knife Master,dt, Freakishly pin-point accuracy and strength allows +1 VA with daggers. Really big knife, magical knife, or special knife technique, swap knife stats for the mace ones. *
As others have noted. The problem with letting players trade margin of success for VA really starts to add up when the axe and spear guy starts to do it… (thus totally invalidating all forms of armour)
If neither of the suggested options hack it and your fantasy setting is less concerned in simulating certain weapon qualities-- perhaps you can remake the weapon options into three or four different themes: long and pointy, heavy smashy, swordy slashy, and shorty stabby. Make them all of roughly equal worth but with a single distinguishing characteristic.
I did this in a Chinese-hybrid setting. I introduced the Sabre skill where two sabres wielded as one had the stats of a footmans axe.
That way-too-formal little stance or gratuitous flourish that the dueling master does before attacking, it’s not just for show – it’s a simple diversion to draw you in while they time the perfect armor-piercing strike.
I feel like I’ve shown that isn’t the case in my exchange with DarthMidget. I’ll try to highlight it again.
Worst-case scenario for my rule. An ax-man with B6 Power and B4 Ax skill (because if he had B6 Ax skill I’d want him to be able to engage armor more effectively - that’s the point of the house rule). He’s wielding an expensive sweet axe, too. What a min-maxing little jerk. He’s fighting an enemy in plated mail - excellent protection, even pretty good against axes. He rolls his 4 dice and, miracle of miracles, he gets 4 successes! A 6% chance of happening. Man, now Ten of Swords is going to eat crow, huh?
First, in the rules as written. He’s got a MoS of 3. He spends 2 for an add and 1 to shift the blow off the chest, declaring it’s a strike to the enemy’s head (because of course it is). The enemy rolls 5D against Ob 3. A 50% chance of success, and if he fails he’s dead dead dead with a B10 to the head.
Second, in Ten’s hack. Again, MoS of 3 because super-lucky roll. He can do it as above, with a 50% chance of an instant kill. He can also make a decision that he cares more about getting through the armor than about instant decapitation. He can spend 1 MoS to shift the blow to the head and 2 MoS to declare that it’s an agile slash to the neck, just below the helmet line where the sallet doesn’t cover. That’s a 97% chance of a light wound. Or he can stay on the torso and dump all three MoS into VA, declaring an upward sweep under the man’s armored skirt and into his groin. 6D against Ob6! A 98% chance of a light wound!
DarthMidget would obviously go for the certain light wound, and I understand that, but it’s still a tactical choice and it’s only predicated on the ax-man rolling really really well. A more average hit for a 4D ax skill would be 2s. You could move the blow to another location or increase your VA - you get a few percentage points out of the increase in Ob vs. the decrease in dice, but it’s not a big shift.
What would have happened if the target had said, “I’m in a Ten of Swords game. Armor is worthless because of his ill-considered house rule! I’ll spend my money on ale instead.”? The 4s hit from brawny the ax-man would have been a for-sure B10 deathblow instead of a for-sure B5 light wound and his next of kin would learn the value of armor.
Alex and Nkenny, I like that interpretation. What would you set the Ob to? The current dice value of the armor’s weakest area? Or maybe the weapon skill of the target? Both pretty tough Obs, but maybe that’s appropriate.
# Assess
That is one of the problems with Physical Actions and Assesses. There are few guidelines to arbitrate their full effect. When these things arise organically in play, I tend to lean to the side of-- Hey, thats cool, lets do that-- however as a preplanned action things seem less clear cut. Had such an assess been attempted in the last fantasy epic we played, I would have allowed an Assess against Ob equal to the helmet armour dice for +1 VA. Given the heat of the moment, I may have allowed margin of success to add to VA, for a single attack.
# VA
Now in regards to your own houserule. It isn’t our place to come and tell you what you can, and cannot do with Burning Wheel. Orthodoxy be damned. The trouble I foresee is twofold. Firstly you are underestimating light and superficial wounds. Suffering a +1Ob is HUGE, and loosing even a single 1D causes an immediate steel check. In other words, being able to up the VA of an attack might enable a fighter to decimate an armoured opponent, with a single attack with your aforementioned 90+% success rate. Holy mother.
Secondly, I can promise you that any savvy Burning Wheel player, toting a sweet axe, will muster more than four dice on an unopposed attack-- particularly with the aforementioned 90+% armour penetration rate. Brawl Forks, persona, balance dice, advantage dice, and artha spent on fate. In my aforementioned fantasy epic we had a Dwarf Ambassador with a balanced dwarven sweet axe, B6 skill, B6 Power and a host of useful Forks. With such a houserule in place, he would have been lightsabering through any opposition. Of course he was quite badass to begin with, without any special VA rules.
# Heroic level play
And that is the point right there. Burning Wheel supports heroic play right out of the box. Our tools are Grey stats, tweaked weapons, or powerful dice traits. If your knifefighter is meant to be an exceptionally dangerous brawler, his stats, skills, and traits need to reflect that. Hit your party with a trait vote, just give him the relevant trait, or – even better – have him write a belief about becoming the most deadly knifefighter in the world! The tools are all there.
If a player starts out with a B4 or B5 Power, a B3 Axe Skill, and there’s a decent amount of combat in your campaign, it is not going to take long for him to have those stats.
And a Sweet Axe? Yeah, it’s awesome, but it’s not magic. While it shouldn’t be trivially easy to get, it’s not OP or anything like that. A RoM hammer and mace have similar have similar VA, and the hammer is nearly as deadly.
He’s fighting an enemy with the 2nd best armor in the game. Yeah, I’d hope it’s pretty good against everything.
4 successes is not as unusual a scenario as you describe. If the Fight lasts any length of time and with Fate, Persona, FoRKs, Help, and advantage dice involved, you’re going to see your B4 Axe man hit 4 successes (or more) sooner or later.
4s is not some insurmountable difficulty to achieve.
Yeah, that’s a good strategy, and, as you prove, there’s already plenty of ways to get past tough armor and still potentially kill people.
Of course…
5D v Ob 3 isn’t anything like a guaranteed failure when there’s Artha involved. If the defender is a player, he can drop Fate or Persona on his armor test and improve his chances for that test.
4 successes on 4D isn’t super-lucky. Sure, it’s unusual, but I’d say it’s a scenario we’ve all seen a couple times.
Don’t exaggerate to try to prove your rule.
Yeah, I take the hard-to-beat Light Wound, so whatever my opponent has planned he’s got a -1D to it and he’s making a Steel test. I may win the fight right there.
I’ll take a 98% chance at victory over a 50% chance nothing happens any day of the week.
One thing I didn’t catch the first time I read this thread is that you can spend 1 success for +1 VA? I thought it was +1 VA max. That seems very excessive to me.
I increase my VA, and he takes it on the chest. He rolls 6D v Ob 4. That’s a test he can make, but so is a 5D v Ob 3 if I move it to the head. They’re pretty equivalent.
Why would I hit his chest? Because I want to start breaking down his armor there. It’s the place he’s going to take most of his hits, so in the future when I get 2 successes I can get more traction on the chest if he’s lost 1 or 2 armor dice.
Also, taking the hit on his breastplate makes him roll 6D. He’s probably going to roll at least a single 1 on that. Armor damage.
Of course, if he fails the armor test then I give him a B5 hit. The same happens if I hit him in the face, but he’s got less of a chance of an armor failure and the same chance of defeating my blow.
Let’s not start tearing down strawmen.
And, as both Alex and Nkenny pointed out, there are plenty of ways to do something like what you want without instituting such a major change to a sub-core game function.
Why don’t you try their suggestion, then, if it doesn’t work out, move on with a more drastic change instead of jumping right to drastic change.
PS - I’m really not trying to crap all over your idea, I just think there are implications to your suggested rules change you haven’t considered adequately enough.
That wasn’t intended for you… I was responding to NKenny’s statement “thus totally invalidating all forms of armor.” Not a strawman.
I’m okay with characters who spend Artha overcoming an armored opponent quickly, and I’ve played and run the game enough to understand the consequences of light wounds and Steel checks. I think perhaps my assumptions about what an experienced character designed to be a dominant fighter should be able to do are different than those of many of the gamers here. If somebody designs a character to be Legolas, I’m totally okay with him putting an arrow through the cave troll’s mouth and into its brain, especially if he’s spent a couple Artha to do it.
In any case, I think we’ve all laid out our arguments and any potential reader who stumbles across this thread can decide for himself. Thanks for all the input, DarthMidget. +rep for you.
