Topic: Keep or discard excess Maneuver Bonuses?

[Zhaleskra]

Are Man Bonuses that would raise a character's Maneuver Penalty above zero lost, or are they kept as a bonus to Ag or Qu based skills? I actually like the idea of keeping it, and that magical or otherwise special materials actually make it easier to move.

[Radimon]

I remember seeing a line in Martial Law that said materials can't soften the penalties into a bonus, but I'm away from my books at the moment. I'll look it up later and edit in a page reference when I have the time.

[Zhaleskra]

I've got the PDF up on my computer right now. The only specific thing I found is the Author's Note on page 49 about Armor by the piece and only using the best material bonus for determining the offset to MP for the whole "suit" constructed of multiple special materials. Perhaps this is what you're remembering?

[Radimon]

Maybe so. As I said, I'm not in front of my books at the moment.

[Zhaleskra]

As sometimes happens, sometimes the physical book has more information than the PDFs, e.g., the tables in the back of the physical HARP SF book. I will take a look to see if it's information that for some reason only made it into the physical Martial Law.

Regarding what I already found, it would seem to make sense to multiply the best material bonus by the best increment value, rather than the best material bonus by total increment value (5 on both types of "official" suits).

[Zhaleskra]

Update: Now I'm even more confused. The Maneuver Bonuses aren't multiplied by the Increment Value? That makes the potential problem even worse.

[Radimon]

I didn't find any text references specifically on point, but soft leather armor (Core, pg. 94) made of spidersilk (Martial Law, pg. 49) could be extrapolated to be a bonus (4 points unfitted, 10 fitted). It's listed as 0 modifier among the example suits of armor (Martial Law, pg. 51), so that heavily implies armor penalties cannot become bonuses. I do know that the armor skill won't reduce the penalty past 0 modifier (Core, pg. 38), but the material bonuses are mostly irrelevant because aside from the aforementioned spidersilk armor, no special material has enough material bonus to exceed the armor's basic maneuver penalty.

Just as a personal aside, take special note that armor made from most of the special materials in Martial Arts can't be crafted by anyone with less than 40 RANKS in the appropriate skills! Someone with this degree of skill must be AT LEAST level 14, and possibly higher! A human would probably be at least in his/her mid-forties, and might already be retired, or at least having a midlife crisis. Races that live longer might be better off, but it's a good bet that anyone with that masterful level of skill is no spring chicken, has a reputation for excellence far and wide, is likely employed by royalty or high-ranking nobility for the exclusive purpose of official works (the royal guard's armor, for example). It'll take a lot of convincing, bribing, or other coercive means, even if you plop a house-sized chunk of adamantium down in front of them and say "Make armor out of this for me. 'Spare no expense!' as John Hammond said."

[Zhaleskra]

I found that at least some of Martial Law's total DBs don't work out right for either version of the suit if you do it by piece. Full set of Dwarven Steel Plate Armor was 2 DB higher than listed, for example.

I think you're confusing the Material Bonus (affects DB/OB) and the Maneuver Bonus (subtracted from MP, even below the minimums, before applying Armor skill), the latter of which is often quite high (e.g., 60 for Ithloss, if I recall correctly. So, I wouldn't be surprised if MP was miscalculated, unless they did intend to say it couldn't but didn't actually include that line.

That said, I do like that you can't further improve special materials that aren't the alloys or superior basic materials as the other materials are automatically considered Master. Having to search far and wide to find someone who can even work with this stuff is also a good side quest. After all, the prices are only included for convenience, it's not like people go around selling Adamantine Plate Armor at the local bazaar.

[dagorhir]

I think that the difference between the by the piece and full suits is by design the idea being that there is an advantage of wearing a full suit as opposed to pieces.

That could be somewhere on the forum but I failed to find it.

[Radimon]

In regard to the Maneuver Bonus provided by special materials, even the bonus provided by ithloss doesn't overwhelm the penalties of metal armor. In fact, ithloss is a special case, and one that should come with an asterisk and several other footnote symbols beside it. It's an ultra-advanced alloy created by ancient civilizations that nobody in the game environment knows how to create, repair, or rework. By definition, it's going to be unfitted... unless your character happens to be a clone of the person it was originally made for. Or a time traveler.

Okay, back to the rant about game numbers.

The penalty for a full suit of unfitted chainmail is -120, so the +60 ithloss maneuver bonus only cuts this in half, to the level of ordinary fitted chainmail (-60). If it's plate-and-chain or even full plate, ithloss loses even more ground compared to armor made of other materials. In fact, this inability to have it fitted properly makes ithloss somewhat less valuable and less useful than it really should be. And that's a real shame, considering it's kind of touted by the flavor text as being the ultimate material for forging armor.

To be honest, if I wanted to play a paladin (cleric with combat skills, or an adventurer from the Codex) wearing high-end plate armor, my personal preference would be to get a suit of armor forged from eog. No extra mana for casting spells, on top of +30 DB for the full suit? SCORE! Seriously, sign me up! And it's even a bit easier on maneuvers than normal armor... although, strangely, this bonus isn't as good as standard masterwork items (+5 vs. +10), implying that with the masterwork bonus automatically factored in, eog actually applies a penalty to your maneuvers!

Of course, you have to realize that some of the numbers in Martial Arts are just blatantly wrong (after all, they haven't updated it to the current edition), and you need to use your own judgement in such cases. For example, page 51 says a full set of soft leather armor, without improved or masterwork craftsmanship, incurs a -40 UF MaxMP and -10 UF MinMP (the current numbers are -26 and -6, respectively), and the improved and masterwork variants are based on these faulty numbers. This is not too far outside the realm of the expected, as those were the numbers being used, back in the very first edition of HARP (circa 16 or 17 years ago).

[Zhaleskra]

Not up to the current edition? My copy of Martial Law says "HARP Fantasy" on it.

Anyway, I think the intention was that the Maneuver Bonus applies once you have all your bits of armor on, despite only the author note implying this. While I was focusing on the even below the minimums, unless you're finding this armor left around in unoccupied forges, you're getting someone to make it for you which will result in it being fitted. Regarding minimum levels to make this stuff, I do believe there are some talents that allow you higher max skill ranks per level, but they may be limited in skill category, though I do remember one of those talents being about General skills.

What I was doing was actually lowering the MPs by the MB * the IV, for each piece. Which resulted in things like a full suit of Spidersilk having an MP of +2.5 (I think), if you had 1 rank of armor and 50 in both St and Ag. So I think rather than "hiding" that in an Author's Note, they could have explained it under the description for Man Bonus.

I'd get into the silliness of a Coif giving the same protection as a Chain Mail Cuirass, and that seems better suited to a new topic.

[Zhaleskra]

Summary (as it's too late to modify my last post): Could have been explained earlier, better, by moving the author's note to the first explanation of Man Bonus.

[Radimon]

Wow, you must have a really, REALLY new printing! Mine was printed not quite a year ago, and doesn't have the new HARP Fantasy logo on it. And the PDF copy doesn't, either... which it really should, considering we're supposed to be getting the most recent version when we download it from DriveThru.

[Zhaleskra]

I could look up when I had it printed. Anyway, in addition to the multiplication by increment value error, I was editing the Max/Min MPs by the Man Bonus result, rather than applying to a full set of armor, or collection of pieces that don't quite make a full suit.

As for your Eog, make sure it's not Black or White Eog.

[Radimon]

Right, gotta make sure it's Hispanic or Asian eog.