I think I’ve figured out how to do shields and magical armour/weapon magic in my Glorantha Hack, but could use some extra pairs of eyes on it.
It’s based on standard AW conventions for weapons, harm and armour. A decent sword or axe can do 3 harm and a decent set of the best armour gives 2 amour. The premise is that using a shield should effectively give you an extra point of armour in some circumstances. You can also get up to a+1 harm and/or +1 armour from magic. Within those assumptions I need a system where no character is ever completely invulnerable.
Fight in Close Combat
When you fight in close combat, nominate an opponent
within reach with which to exchange Harm as established,
then roll+Might. On a 10+, choose 2. On a 7-9, choose 1. On a miss, they choose one against you:
•You inflict terrible harm (+1 harm).
•You suffer less harm (-1 harm, or -2 if you have a protective weapon).
•You ignore armour provided by any protective weapon they are using such as a shield.
•You gain the advantage: take +1 forward, or give +1 forward to an ally.
•You force them where you want them.
•You seize or hold some objective by force.
•You win free and get away
•You force your way through
[weird strikeout fixed]
Shields have the ‘protective’ tag. NPCs with a protective weapon get +1 armour by default, but note a PC can negate that using the move. Conversely PCs must take a pick on a hit to gain the extra protection of a shield.
I think this does what I want. The most armour an NPC will have is 4 armour (2 mail, +1 magic, +1 shield). But a character with a 3 harm sword and no magic can on a 10+ negate the shield and inflict terrible for 4 harm against the 3 remaining armour.
Conversely a PC with 2 armour mail and +1 armour magic is still vulnerable against a 3 harm adversary. On a miss the PC gets no protection from the shield and the opponent can inflict terrible for a total of 4 harm.
Can anyone see any problems? Better ways to do it? The move is a bit of a kitchen sink, but spitting it creates its own problems IMHO but maybe there’s a way?
What benefit does this offer over the system of establishing effect and risks through discussion – ie that which typically governs all actions?
Mark Cleveland Massengale I’m not sure what you mean. The same benefit any of the moves with defined optional outcomes provide, such as Go Aggro, or Read a Sitch. It is player empowering by providing them with reliable, defined benefits chosen at their discretion, rather than at the whim and discretion of the GM.
I like your modification. Using an ap effect against shields is a good way imho.
What strikes me is the naming of the move. How do you want to deal with shields in ranged combat? Protecting against missle fire was one of the important functions of shields.
How does this work when fighting NPCs? They don’t make a choice except on a PC’s miss, so they’ll never get to choose to take advantage of a shield or to negate the PC’s advantage from a shield.
I’d go with:
A) serious weapons do 3 harm
B) light/cheap armor is 1, serious armor is 2; shields give +1 armor
C) on a 10+, spend 3; on a 7-9, spend 2, on a miss, spend 1 but your foe spends +1. You can buy each more than once:
• strike hard, +1 harm
• fight defensively, -1 harm
• achieve your tactical goal
An NPC will spend 0, 1, or 2 as well, depending on their skill at arms (+1 spend if you miss). Whoever spends the most on “achieve your tactical goal” gets it; ties are a fictional wash.
(This is basically cribbed from the AW: Dark Ages playtest.)
As for magic, don’t let it change harm or armor numerically. Make it more interesting.
A magic shield might just be unbreakable and can turn away spells and other harmful magic, or add terrifying to your attacks, or give you a move like “when you hold the shield aloft and do not flinch, it creates a dome of protection that turns aside all missile fire and ranged attacks.”
A magic sword could bee AP, or give the wielder +1 spend, or add a choice like “destroy 1 armor” to the Fight move. Or it could strike even ghosts or spirits. Or it’s wounds might never heal. Or it is bane against __, and will kill __ with even the slightest scratch.
Jeremy Strandberg lots of neat ideas for magical effects, thanks. Noted.
I do cover how shields work for NPCs in the first paragraph after the move description. They get the +1 armour automatically, but it can be negated by a PC taking the third pick in the move options. So the protective tag is reversed wrt NPCs and PCs. For PCs you have to take a move option to get the benefit. Against NPCs you have to pick a move option to negate it.
I’ve never come across Dark Ages. I did consider using a system similar to that and even wrote it into an earlier draft. It’s my fallback option if this approach fails. I’m not quite ready to say it’s failed yet, but it is significantly more complicated and that might kill it. Particularly the asymmetric rules for shields wrt NPCs.
Falco Graf I have a move for taking missile fire, in which protective weapons can give extra protection, in a similar way to the melee move.
Simon Hibbs My fault. I responded to you instead of another game by accident.
Seems your goal is to avoid invulnerability by either side in a fight, given all ranges of possible harm/armor factors. You seemed to have achieved that, theoretically at least. But I immediately notice something problematic.
It’s worth nothing that one eventuality you may not be considering is the need for a GM to adjust the given harm-math in play due to other factors not mentioned. For example, the thing that happens to harm dealt when an unarmed mob pummels a single person with light armor. Or the thing that happens to harm dealt when someone’s 4-armor protection is completely subverted through setup actions. These factors deserve attention (scale of either side, quality of the opposition, and the potential of exploited vulnerabilities)
And if such harm modifications do exist in play (I think they would emerge if not called out specifically), this makes me wonder if you shouldn’t be more explicit about the minimum risk involved for the FiCC move to even trigger (1 harm, for example). Because if so, there are potential ways to avoid harm (or assure it) given the right factors.
Also, the edge-cases deserve a bit of rules attention or author-GM advice (IE: At what point do the factors indicate assured harm? Can the GM do this, and what recourse should the players use? What about assured consequences, such as being labelled a murderer, that aren’t harm?).
Mark Cleveland Massengale Sure, this is only one move out of the context of the rest of the system. There are other issues such as AP tags and weapons, armour, magic etc that go beyond the limits I stated above. There are character moves that tweak things in various ways. My concern in balancing this move is that, within fairly standard conditions commonly in effect most of the time that it’s reasonably balanced.
Jeremy Strandberg outlined the Dark Ages approach to this. As I said I considered a similar approach of allowing +1 harm to be taken more than once. The reason I wanted to explore another approach is that allowing picking the same thing more than once clearly makes a 7-9 hit inferior to a 10+ hit. That sounds obviously the case, but if you look at AW battle moves it’s always possible to do max damage on a 7-9. The most you can usually choose is Terrible Harm and you can only choose it once even on a 10+. This means that while a 7-9 hit is forces you to make more compromises, if you’re prepared to accept those compromises you can still get whatever it is you most want. That’s a strongly player empowering feature of the system. I’m beginning to think though that allowing 2 picks on a 7-9 is good enough that its acceptable.
The issue is that this isn’t how shields work. (I’m president of one of the world’s largest Historical European Martial Arts Clubs if you are wondering)
Assuming my opponent is wearing armour that either covers little enough that I have somewhere to strike or are wearing armour I can penetrate with a 1 handed weapon, a shield is more important and protects better than armour (next comes a helmet btw).
If one person has a shield and they are fighting someone carrying a single handed weapon, the single weapon user has almost no chance to win. A two handed weapon is a different story. Reach is everything.
So if you are playing a game where shields are common, they will be very common (in battle, not walking around). If you are walking around, you will carry a buckler which is a small centre cropped shield that you can generally hang off a belt.
So with all that said, shields essentially create reach against the unshielded just like a longer weapon does against a shorter one.
When two people with shields fight, what they have in the other hand doesn’t make much difference unless there is a significant weight or reach advantage.
I would probably just have a rule that says you have to make some kind of athletics or other battle prowess move to get around a shield or longer weapon before you are allowed to attack when there is a significant reach advantage. Either than or just bake these advantages into the “choose x” list.
Stuart McDermid Thanks for helping out with this, much appreciated.
I appreciate shields create a very different dynamic in combat. They really should be a bigger deal than these rules make them, but without complicating the system too much. Making a move in order to make a move just doesn’t scale beyond maybe a one-off unusual situation.
One problem framing rules for something like this is that it only really matters in asymmetric engagements. If both combatants have shields, nobody wants to have to use special rules to model the shields in the combat. There’s two ways to handle that. One is you have special game mechanics for non-shield against shield. That’s awkward. The other is you make the shield mechanics lightweight enough that even when both sides have them the mechanics don’t slow things down too much. The latter option might not be ideal, but I think from a game design perspective it’s the best way to go.
Finally, PBTA game systems don’t concern themselves with how a character does something. It’s purely about the impact of what they do on the fiction. However complicated, tactical and technical the difficulty of getting past a shield is, if the statistical effect is making it harder to inflict damage then frankly doesn’t +1armour do the job.
After McDermin’s post and your answer I don’t think changing the battle move at all is necessary.
Adding another move just to get around shields is cumbersome and faulty game design – at least for a PtbA game, even if it would be more realistic. Getting around shields bigger than a Buckler is really bothersome (I practitioned HEMA too).
My idea is to handle shields with a modificator to battle and wound moves. Using a shield could give a +1 or +2 modificator, enemies with shields impose a -1 or -2 modificator. In symmetric combat they cancel each other out but in asymmetric combat it allows to keep yourself safer while being more aggressive (in other words: dealing more while suffering less damage). But the dice can still go against you, so the game aspect still remains.
Weapons with more reach could be handled the same way. Someone with shield and one handed weapon still has to be careful against a spearmen e.g.
Falco Graf and Stuart McDermid It seems to me if both combatants have shields then their effects should essentially cancel out. Along with Stuart’s point about shields giving a reach advantage against an shieldless opponent. So basically Shields give both a defensive and an offensive benefit.
So how about if shields give both +1 armour and +1 harm. Thats a really substantial advantage against a non-shield user, involves no rules complications and cancels out if both combatants have them.
They should also be particularly useful against missile fire, but that’s really a separate issue.