Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 04:50:31 -0700 (PDT) From: Gordon Landis & Jennifer Kiehl Subject: [7th Sea RPG GM] Adding armor OK, 7th Sea doesn't have armor (other than dracheneisen - but it's a particular kind of armor, mostly for Eisen only, only covering some of the possibilities). In many ways, I like that choice - certainly a complicated "armor class" system, with 20 different types of protection, maybe hit locations ('cause you only get armor protection where you have armor), and etc. doesn't fit in the style I'd want to play the world/genre of 7th Sea. But some players just like armor - and as a GM, I can imagine places where it'd be cool. Now, as mentioned parenthetically above there is dracheneisen if you want "heavy duty" armor - but what I'm interested in here is (e.g.) a player who just wants his character walking aroung in a well-tailored padded doublet. It fits the picture they have in their head - no surprise, as movies/novels/etc. often include 'em - heck, the current "main" picture on the 7th Seas website has a man in what sure looks like a padded armor vest to me (he's also wielding two swords, which I think - hope - will be a School in one of the next few supplements). Now, my players are not (usually) minmaxing munchkins out to squeeze every last combat advantage they can out of a system - if they were, we'd have a bunch of full-dracheneisen clad tanks wandering about, and I'd face the frightening prospect of running a campaign set entirely in Eisen - until they began their new-fangled "lightnings-krieg" against the rest of Theah ;-) On the other hand, it is nice to have some game-rules utility/justification for doing things, so after that long introduction, here's my hopefully simple, non-intrusive and munchkin-proof armor rules: There are three levels of non-dracheneisen armor - minor, standard and major. Minor is stuff like padded vests, leather jackets, or perhaps even just good elbow-length gauntlets and/or tall boots (maybe non-donovan light shields?). It is effective only against "normal" weapons. Standard is chain shirts, heavy/boiled leather and the like (including large shields?), effective against normal and heavy weapons. Major is cuirass & helm, plate mail, and similar heavy/more enclosing armors, effective against normal weapons, heavy weapons, and missles (including musket fire?) "Effective" means that the hero can "parry" using the armor. A standard Active Defense parry, at the level provided by any currently useable defense knack (perhaps adding Parry(armor type) knacks for players to develop if they so choose?), which results in (e.g.) "I take the rapier-thrust to my chest, twisting my torso at just the right time to make his sword-tip skitter across my leather vest". Do it well enough, and you could get a drama die out of it... We'll keep it that simple to start, with common sense/GM fiat handling things like what happens if you fall into water while wearing a bunch o' iron. Possible future enhancements include advanced knacks/Schools/tricks that give (e.g.) free raises when parrying this way, or reduce the interrupt action-die cost, or "automatic" (no action required) armor-parries for true masters of armored-fighting... (I had a much more detailed description, w/ examples, but the hard disk crashed, trashed the file - and other, "real world" important files. So... hours later, my disk is repaired, I'm exhausted, but I'm going to send this message out, damnit! Appologies if I become incoherent at the end...) Gordon -- Contents Copyright (C) 1997,98,99 by ALDERAC ENTERTAINMENT GROUP, INC.