Weapons and Armor, part 2

Continuing on from Part 1...

Idea Three: Add More Fate Dice

The idea of having weapons and armor be a constant benefit (+1 to +4) and leave the variability to skill differential and 4dF (luck), didn't really have a desireable feel in relation to the source material. So there was the idea that you could just add more Fate dice, based upon the weapon or armor you were carrying. The better the weapon or armor, the more dice you added.

Pro

• You only need more FATE dice, and that's it. The fact that it also supports sales of FATE Dice is just a happy coincidence.
• Conceptually, it's a relatively easy adjustment to understand.
• Stackable bonuses are easier to factor in.

Con

• Would still require multiple dice configurations (see last article), though keeping track of a number of dice is easier than working with multiple dice color combinations.
• Scaling - Again, scales too fast for the different weapon / armor versions.
• Devalues character skills, especially once you start factoring in stackable bonuses.

So, with all that out of the way, here's what SoG is currently using...

Current Iteration: Spirit of Greyhawk Weapons and Armor

• Roll the usual 4dF for Hit / Defend actions, using Skills/Stunts as per normal. That determines the success/failure of the attack, any extra degree of success are extra shifts of stress.
• If the attack is successful, any damage from the weapon (i.e., beyond the shifts generated by the margin of success) is determined by rolling a particular number of Fate dice assigned to that Weapon. Any extra shifts from the weapon are added to the shifts from the margin of success in the prior step and the net stress is assigned to the defender.
• If the defender has any armor, roll the Fate dice assigned to that armor.
• For the Weapons and Armor dice, any "+" result counts as a +1 for either a Weapon’s damage or an Armor’s protection.

The value of the armor’s protection is then subtracted from the total damage--anything not yet absorbed by the armor is counted against the stress track.

Example:

Fighter
Melee Skill (+2)
Athletics Skill (+1)
Weapon: Battle Axe (Weapon dF: 3)
Armor: Chain Mail (Armor dF: 5)

Thief
Melee Skill (+1)
Athletics Skill (+3)
Weapon: Dagger (Weapon dF: 1)
Armor: Padded Armor (Armor dF: 2)

The Thief stabs at the Fighter first (let's just say he's faster). Fate Dice are rolled as normal...

Fighter's dice are White, Thief's dice are Green

• Attack (Thief): Skill (Melee, +1) + Dice (4dF, result: +1) = +2
• Defense (Fighter): Skill (Athletics, +1) + Dice (4dF, result: -1) = 0
• Result: +2 - (+0) = Attack succeeds, +2 shifts damage.

Weapon / Armor dice are now rolled...

Fighter's dice are White, Thief's dice are Green

• Thief's Weapon Damage: Weapon (Dagger 1d, +0 result) = +0 damage
• Fighter's Armor Defense: Armor (Chain Mail 5d, +2 result) = +2 defense
• Result: Attack Shifts (+2) + Weapon Damage (+0) - Armor Defense (+2) = 2+0-2 = 0 physical stress to the Fighter

The Fighter hacks at the Thief. Fate Dice are rolled as normal...

Fighter's dice are White, Thief's dice are Green

• Attack (Fighter): Skill (Melee, +2) + Dice (4dF, result: +2) = +4
• Defense (Thief): Skill (Athletics, +3) + Dice (4dF, result: -2) = +1
• Result: +4 - (+1) = Attack succeeds, +3 shifts damage.

Weapon / Armor dice are rolled...

Fighter's dice are White, Thief's dice are Green

• Fighter's Weapon Damage: Weapon (Battle Axe 3dF, +1 result) = +1 damage
• Thief Armor Defense: Armor (Padded Armor 2dF, +1 result) = +1 defense
• Result: Attack Shifts (+3) + Weapon Damage (+1) - Armor Defense (+1) = 3+1-1 = 3 physical stress to the Thief

Rules about Bonuses

Weapons with an enchantment that improves the chance to hit can use that extra die during the first roll, using the "die face of '+' counts as +1" result, before rolling damage. So any extra shift(s) from the weapon would count towards both success and damage (similar to the source material). An extra die color would probably help here.

Bonuses that are "damage only" would be rolled during the weapon damage, as normal.

Stunt-related bonuses (eg., Weapon Specialization) that improve chances to hit would also be treated similar to enchantments. But now stunts can be broke out by improvements to hit and / or improvements to damage.

Design Points

Consistent with the source material, the general approach is that mundane (unenchanted) melee weapons don't make it easier to hit an opponent--it makes the damage count MORE when you hit them. This means it's the player's skill with the weapon that is the most important--and I like that.

Though armor in SoG follows the basic premise of the source material in that it makes it harder to hit an opponent (by an offset to the attacker's shifts), it would be more accurate to say that armor in SoG makes an attack less likely to damage to its wearer.

The scalability of the weapon / armor benefit being limited to only the "+" die result appears to allow a nice degree of granularity without overwhelming the Fate Core scale. Given a cumulative probability of around 50%, I believe it takes 11 dice before the weapon / armor benefit would average a result better than a +4.

Of course it's possible a mundane weapon could score big time (i.e., the halberd above rolls all 4 Fate dice at "+"), but that chance appears pretty small. About a 1.2% chance, if I’m reading it right. However as any observer of gambling stats knows, the POSSIBILITY that a really good roll could result is where the excitement is at.

So with the design approach settled (for the moment), the next step was to actually translate Weapon damage ranges and the Armor classes from the source material.

Translating Armor

Translating armor was the easier place to start, because there are a finite range of possibilities: from unarmored to the best possible (epic, deity-level) protection, there are only 21 values. Starting from the idea in Fate Core that a +4 armor benefit was really serious personal armor, and then fiddling with the dials a bit to take into account things like "shields should count for an improvement in armor benefit" and the like, I arrived at a maximum mundane (non-enchanted) armor benefit of 7 dice.

Statistically speaking, 7 Fate dice (counting the "+" as +1), translates to a 74% cumulative probability of getting at least a +2 benefit.

Overall, armor values have gone from 21 possible levels of protection (10 to -10 in the source material) down to 14 levels (in SoG). Which means going from unarmored (+0 dice), to a conversion maximum (i.e., best possible armor class, god-like level) of +13 dice.

Translating Weapons

The translation of weapons and damage bonuses was more of a balancing act than a straight translation. The balance was more about adding enough granularity into mundane weapon damage to make things interesting (like making sure halberds and 2-handed swords could still be scary), but still leave enough room open at the higher end of the scale for things like dragon fire and so forth.

The source material’s weapons table originally had 9 variations of dice to determine the damage ranges of all the weapons on that table. In keeping with FC’s low-resolution approach, SoG mundane weapons has 5 variations.

Thinking ahead to monsters and some of the unusual damage ranges you can find in other related materials, I may try to put together some guidelines based upon a Fate dice recommendation based upon a source material listing for min damage value and max damage value.

So here’s some sample values (in addition to those listed above) for those who want to just start rolling for those "+"...

Armor

• Shields are good for an extra 1 die to the benefit of the armor being worn.
• Leather armor (2 dF)
• Chain Mail (5 dF)
• Plate Mail (6 dF)

Weapons

• Dagger (1 dF)
• Morningstar (3 dF)
• Quarterstaff (2 dF) (aspect: 2-handed weapon, can be improvised)
• Bastard Sword (3 dF) (aspect: can use 2-handed)

(The screen-caps were taken on the dice-rolling app Pip)

Weapons and Armor, part 1

I wanted to share what I've been most recently working on--integrating the gameworld's emphasis upon weapons and armor into the Fate Core ruleset. Here are my guidelines for success:

• Provide the game with a feel that weapons, armor and upgrades "matter".
• It has to be scalable.
• It can’t slow down the pace too much. Fate Core tends to play at a faster pace, relative to the source material.
• Weapons and Armor can’t totally overshadow character skills. Skills still have to matter. This is more of a personal goal and more consistent with the tenets of Fate Core, rather than an expectation from the source material.
• It has to be able to handle magical weapons / armor, without having to bolt on extra mechanics on top of what was already being implemented for weapons / armor. Additionally it also has to play well with other "stacking" bonuses (Strength, etc.)

Here's some ideas I tried, and why I didn't use them. Note that this isn't a criticism or rejection of these ideas, but perhaps my experiences might help some readers with their own efforts.

Idea One: Weapons and Armor have their Own Polyhedral Dice

I had a thought that you could define the benefit of weapons and armor as the value of polyhedral dice (d2, d3, d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, etc) and use those combinations to represent the damage increase / decrease of those items.

Pro

• The polyhedral dice gave a nice emotional connection to the source material. I really-really liked this concept.
• The dice could be thrown at the same time as the Fate dice and were easy to distinguish from the actual Fate dice roll. So, you only needed one roll of the dice to handle IF an action was a success or not, as well as the DEGREE of the success/failure. This was in keeping with Fate Core’s own dice-rolling and didn’t slow down the pace.

Con

• The progression scales up too fast. At Fate Core's degree of granularity, the difference between a d4 and d6 is too dramatic, due to the scale of a "+1" bonus being very different between Fate Core and the source material. For example, the source material's weapons table has 9 different ranges of damage: from 1-3 and 1-10. In order to fit in with Fate Core's scale, you need something closer to DFRPG's 4 levels of damage/protection.
• As a knock-on effect, putting too much value on the weapons reduces the value of a character's Skills. When you start to factor in the various ranges of damage from Monsters, it gets even harder to keep Skills as the most important factor in success.
• Factoring in magical benefits and other bonuses stressed the scaling even further.

Idea Two: Tri-Color Dice

There's been a few versions of this idea--a "+" result for one color of Fate die would result in an additional +1 benefit (let's call this the blue dice), and a "(blank)" or "+" result for another color would result in an additional +1 benefit (let's call this the red dice).

Pro

• It's in the Fate Core Toolkit. Fate fans could easily accept the change.
• It was also considered that there could be certain weapons that possessed color types that gave different effect (white could be considering "bashing" damage, blue could be for absorbing / dealing "slashing" damage, red could be for absorbing / dealing "Piercing" damage). This gave a tactical consideration to weapons and armor selection that I liked.
• The three colors and the context of the die result allowed for a feel of different gradations that doesn’t scale up too fast.

Con

• In playtesting, this concept felt like it needed too much overhead for players to keep track of the various dice "configurations", which slows down play too much for my taste. A player with only one character would need to keep track of two dice configurations: one dice configuration for the defensive/armor setup, and one for the offensive/weapon setup. This gets even worse for the DM, needing two configurations for each monster!
• There's a finite number of tri-color dice combinations--specifically, there are 14 combinations of the progression from 4 white Fate dice up to all 4 red Fate dice. When you start having to factor in the various monster-damage combinations, this finite amount is tough to manage with respect to weapons/monster damage. Because there are a finite number of Armor Classes (21), this could scale okay for armor. However there's a LOT of different dice combinations used to describe weapons damage, especially once you factor in monsters' damage dice. This could also prove tricky when trying to provide conversion guidelines for adventure modules, etc.
• Bonuses that stack (Stunts, Skills, Enchantments) stressed that finite number of dice combinations even further. Additionally, if the colors represented a tactical distinction, then the bonuses just watered that down.
• Last and perhaps only a nit-pick of mine: describing the tri-color dice combinations required creating a Fate dice number/color shorthand, which seemed to be more confusion than I wanted. The best I ever did was come up with something that looked like this: 2dF(W)1dF(B)1dF(R).

The current version of Weapons / Armor modifiers did use something from this idea. The next post, Weapons and Armor, part 2 covers all this.

(The screen-caps were taken on the dice-rolling app Pip)