Dan,

Have you decided what route you are going with armor? I noticed you had given a class defense bonus so I was curious if you were going to do Aromr as Defense, Amor as DR, or some conglomeration of the two?

For now I'm going with armor as DR just like in Star Wars. I looked at the option in Unearthed Arcana that gave both and it didn't really appeal to me...I kinda felt like you lost in both directions. Because the LOTR campaign would, by nature, be low-magic, classes that can't wear armor would be very vulnerable (i.e., no bracers of armor, no rings of protection, at least not commonly). The Defense bonus helps mitigate this somewhat, and also takes some of the stress off heavy armors, since your Defense isn't going to change whether you're in full plate or a chain shirt. Honestly, think about it: how often did you see/hear of heavy armor being used in Tolkien's world? When he describes armor he almost always describes it as mail. Thus, I want something like full plate to be exceedingly rare and the mark of a truly wealthy or powerful person.

All of this is, of course, subject to change if I find a better option or it just doesn't play out effectively.

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Belief is easy. Doubt is hard.

In the same vein... what are you going to do about Critical Hits? Are you going to do the Critical Hits go straight to wounds, or are you planning on doing a damage multiplier?

Crits will work exactly as in Star Wars.

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Belief is easy. Doubt is hard.

This does bring a question to mind for me: are you going for a books-only approach here? Frodo's mithril shirt saved him from a cave troll's spear thrust, which even a very substantial DR wouldn't come close to covering (troll's STR bonus). Perhaps in the case of a critical hit, an aspirant attacker would have to roll a modified d20 against an armor rating (for each type of armor, modified by material and quality of construction, enchantments, etc.). But anything other than common armors would be of almost artifact rarity.

The movie made some strange choices - if you think about it, the more armored a screen character, the more likely they are to get pwned. The redshirts of Minas Tirith in plate mail come to mind. And yet the lamellar worn by the Rohanians was very effective, and also the zero armor worn by the main characters (except Frodo).

I am not advocating either, but it seems you've gone to great pains to balance playability with authenticity, so I thought accounting for that Moria incident would be cool.

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"If anyone does not hate his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple."
- Lord Soth, Luke 14:26

"Da frog-man, she am dancing!"
- Lord Soth, Revelations 4:16

I definitely want to avoid increasing the number of die rolls and changing the focus in combat each round by having a d20 to roll against armor types.

I'm going to have magical armor grant its enhancement bonus to the armor's DR. The Unearthed Arcana says it does not apply this way, going instead to the armor's armor bonus, but because we're going to use a class Defense bonus, that won't work. I've looked at the various armors, and I think it will be fair to allow that extra DR. For example, full plate gives DR 4. That means that full plate +5 still only gives DR 9, which is no more than you could get in Star Wars with a mastercrafted suit of powered armor. I'm ok with that, especially when you consider the armor's DR will only protect you when you're down to wounds or critted. Also, for the record, I intend full plate to be exceedingly rare.

According to the Unearthed Arcana, a chain shirt grants DR 2. If we guess and say it was enchanted to be a +3 chain shirt, that gives Frodo DR 5/--. It's possible that the troll spear (note that it was an orc spear in the book) wasn't a crit and instead ate through all his vitality in one hit and still had enough left to deal wound damage to him. After discounting the armor's DR, the hit only dealt one or two points of wound damage to Frodo and he was more or less ok (in the book, after they escaped Moria his shoulder was bruised very badly and the mail had bitten into his skin and Aragorn had to work on healing him for a while).

Another option is to say that the dwarf-mail Frodo wore had the fortification property and simply negated a critical hit.

As you can see, there are multiple ways to "explain" how a particular incident might have worked. The "redshirts" you refer to were more than likely NPC classes, and as such didn't have vitality, just wounds.

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Belief is easy. Doubt is hard.

Not to pick too many nits, but you said "book only" and then brought up the cave troll. In the book, that was just a big orc with a spear, not a cave troll (the animated version was actually pretty acurate in that regard). So a modest DR could have made the difference.

If you want to go by the books, you need to then decide if you are also going to go by the movies. And if so, which has precedence.


EDIT: slow post :)
Edited by Ki Ryn on Dec 18, 2006 at 11:28 AM

Oh, and the "non armored" main characters were, in fact, wearing mail, if you look closely.

Here are the armor DR values:

Light
Padded - No DR
Leather - DR 1/-
Studded Leather - DR 1/-
Chain Shirt - DR 2/-

Medium
Hide - 1/-
Scale Mail - 2/-
Chainmail - 2/-
Breastplate - 2/-

Heavy
Splint mail - 3/-
Banded Mail - 3/-
Half-plate - 3/-
Full Plate - 4/-

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Belief is easy. Doubt is hard.