Topic: Time/activity to don armour

[DangerMan]

How long does it take to don (put on) armour(s)?

Have I gone blind!? Why am I not able to find any rules on this?

[Ecthelion]

You can take a look at the House Rules document on my homepage. It contains a section on this. There have been (optional) rules in one of the old RM2 Companions, but AFAIK the RMSS/RMFRP books do not contains such rules anymore.

[yammahoper]

RM2 Arms Companion has don/doff table for all AT's.  RMCI might have too, I really do not recall.

[DangerMan]

Wow.. They split each rounds of combat into three phases, made every mage need to know the value of three dozen variables in order to cast a spell  and introduced three pages of skills, but could not include something as essential as how long it takes to put on armour? I find this hard to believe..

[Cormac Doyle]

Umm ... if someone ambushes you, you don't have time. If you're not in combat, knowing the time to the minute is unnecessary.

[DangerMan]

Nah.. Say the outrider comes running, and says the bandits are closing in on the camp. Say you do want to fight them, as they have got the kool aid, which you want, but you would like to don that bloody chain first. The outrider says he estimates they'll be at the camp in 2 min (or what ever).

[Grinnen Baeritt]

Or.... you need to know how fast you can get rid of it an emergency....like a snakes crawled inside.. or you are in deep water...that is rising at 2" per second. The GM's guide has rules for drowning.. and the penalties suffered due to encumberance.. but not the times taken to strip off stuff.

Presumably some times you could shorten by cutting straps etc.. or by having help. I can imagine a situation where a fighter wearing plate mail gets knocked out, and the remaining characters cannot easily carry him due to the weight...do they leave him? or stirp him of his heavy armour so that they can better carry him to safety?

I'd probably use a base time required as the M/M Penalty suffered by the character for wearing it .. in seconds. (i.e. 10% activity = 1 second) to correctly put it on.

If rushed, the character would then roll a S/M (using the armour skill bonus to determine the actual time taken,  thus trained characters would automatically be able put it on (and take it off without damaging it) faster and have a best chance in doing it faster in an emergency.

Halve the base time for taking it off normally, half it again for simply "cutting straps" and/or half it again for having assistance.

[Arioch]

Nah.. Say the outrider comes running, and says the bandits are closing in on the camp. Say you do want to fight them, as they have got the kool aid, which you want, but you would like to don that bloody chain first. The outrider says he estimates they'll be at the camp in 2 min (or what ever).

Make an Armor skill maneuver, succeed and you manage to wear it in time, fail and you'll have to fight without it

[pastaav]

A possible reason for not having the table for armor don/doff is that contents of the old table was pretty much rubbish if I recall correctly. In real life the time needed to don an armor differ very much depending on circumstances.

A chain mail shirt takes a few seconds to put on, but if you are talking about more heavy armor then you need help. Think about it like a racer car that makes a pit stop, who is present and get the work done matters very much for how much time it takes. With enough trained helpers present you can cut the time down to almost nothing, but every missing helper means loads of extra time.

As a reference I can get my LARP leather armor on without assistance if I have like five minutes to spare. With a friend present that I have not seen the armor before I can get it on within a minute. 

[Marc R]

Also you get into details like "OK, you pull the chain on over your head, but don't get your belt on so it's flapping loose around your waist.". . .what's the penalty for half on armor?

[rdanhenry]

It also matters how the armor is being stored, the exact design of the more complex armors, and such. There's enough variability that assigning a difficulty and rolling against the appropriate Armor skill is probably not only easier, but at least as realistic as any set of specific times with modifiers would be.

[Dark Schneider]

Think about it like a racer car that makes a pit stop

Then...¡5 seconds! 
plus the pit lane

I think any armor can be set by your own, but if you have someone near, it is unnecessary to do it alone. Simply add time and maybe a maneuver roll, a failure means more time.

IMO the key is set a time for each piece of any armor type (leather, chain, plate), maybe you have time to put the shirt and the leg greaves, this gives you AT10, 14 or 18 but you have no arms protection against crits.

ATs 15, 16, 19 and 20 are special cases as they are complete armors.

[DangerMan]

Al right! Now I know.. This weekend I hade my bachelor party thrown, and I got to try on a full plate armour.  This gave me some perspective on donning armor. It had a chain shirt underneath the plates, as well as leg and arms plate greaves.  From this experience the following seems certain now:

- Forget about donning any armour made up of chain or plates when ambushed.
- Forget about wearing any such armour when in a city or when on the road.
- I you fall in the water while in plate, the one and only option is to start walking

The damn thing took me 10 minutes to don, and that was with two trained helpers. After an hour of weapon training - bastard sword and shield - I was soaked in my own sweat. Then I had to fight a gnoll, a guard, an evil sorcerer and rescue the princess, and of course they made me carry my bedroll, waterskin, rope etc etc, as no adventurer leaves his gear behind when doing his job. As a finale they made me run up five stairs to get the treasue, and carry the casket down the same stairs. Man, I was utterly spent...

Good times! 

[yammahoper]

The best don/doff armor rules I have seen for RM are in the RM2 Arms Companion.  Each AT is covered in a beautiful little table.

There is also a skill to help reduce required time.