Topic: Martial Law combat - do you use armor adjustments?

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

For various reasons, I have been musing on HARP combat systems. From the various polls, it's clear that there are several systems that have found little favour, and that there are several with significant fan enthusiasm, namely HARP Core, Martial Law and Hack&Slash. Like the limited number of criticals in another Old ICE game, HARP Core combat can eventually become stale through seeing the same criticals again and again and I see the same issue with Hack&Slash.

So I'm looking closely at the Martial Law combat system and wondering how many of the folks who use Martial Law apply the armor adjustment rules on-the-fly in the middle of combat?

I've also seen comments suggesting that the adjustments make combat too biased towards the armor-wearing characters and monsters.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[munchy]

We use armour adjustment with Martial Law criticals but not on-the-fly, we use a spreadsheet that does the adjustments for us in combat. The armour-lite characters do not like the adjustments that much but in general it seems a good system. We discussed shortly on the adjustment rules with metal armour and lightning bolts.
There has, however, also at several situations been talk about reintroducing RM2 combat system with its critical tables in order to add a (subjectively-felt) higher chance for deadly critical even with smaller weapons and a higher diversity of criticals afflicted. The problem with good fighters is that they get the high results too often and therefore get bored by them.
I think my players would like the A to E critical division more than the location specific ones as you could always add the location by just describing it but you get to hear more criticals in a combat than as is at the moment. (See the paragraph before.)

On the other hand, I have to tell that when we played RoleMaster 2nd Edition back then the fighters usually got frustrated with not being able to kill their enemies quickly despite having a high skill because of low critical rolls. Also the berserk always got knocked down because of his enemy's high critical rolls.
Back then we tried to find a solution which would allow a one roll attack solution. And now the feeling is just the opposite.
Personally, I think the main reason is hearing the same criticals too often and having the feeling that the killing chances are too little. They on the one hand do not find it dangerous aneough when they attack and on the other hand very lethal when attacked. IMHO the RM2 combat system took more time and was based more on chance than on skill but that chance made people experience more excitement in combat situations.

As I like playing with a spreadsheet I already though about extending the critical tables with a crit for every number and would also buy an application for my netbook or an android phone in order to use it for the game.
With spreadsheets/apps one could even go so far as to incorporate clickable options to pick what you want and also you could add A to E criticals with locations if you like. You could also expand the critical tables - maybe devising a formula would be a good idea. A formula that bases the hits inflicted on the attack (roll) and a little bit of chance with more penalties with slashing weapons, more stun with crushing weapons, bleeding with puncture weapons, etc.

(Phew, sorry about the long post. Got carried away a bit.)

[masque1223]

I use the Martial Law tables, but have never bothered with the armor adjustments.  Hasn't been an issue.

[calmacil]

I've also seen comments suggesting that the adjustments make combat too biased towards the armor-wearing characters and monsters.

I adjust them for this reason. I personally find Plate armour too good in Martial Law.
We've modified the armour adjustments. Chain is the basic crit, instead of Rigid Leather. Plate doesn't reduce the crit as much in our version.

[Cory Magel]

I can't, unfortunately, get into much detail on all the variations of HARP combat systems as I'm really a RM user... but we played one campaign using HARP to try it out and seeing the same criticals repeatedly was one of the two biggest turns offs to the system for me.

[jasonbrisbane]

Our group played harp core but it got stale. Then martial law but the armor adjustments were too deadly for unarmored and plate got too much favour (and doesd magic armor spells affect the table the same way? Then whynot magic shields that have been determined to face the enemy when used trained... Agghhh!!!)

Now we use hacknslash and love it. The damage tables make it interesting when using hammer strike (dmg multipliers)

But we would like to see damage reflected in locations and descriptors that reflect this. I.e. Major healing scaling options that heal nerve, organ damage have no use in that system...

Regards
Jason

[Kasdaye]

We use the armour modifiers in our game and I think they work pretty well as the benefit of plate armour is often offset by the penalties imposed by wearing it (e.g. movement / attack penalties, difficulty to put on or take off, tiredness caused by wearing it, and the inability to do pretty much anything but fight!.. plus if someone is knoced down while wearing plate they are at a major disadvantage)

Without the modifiers we found that wearing armour was pretty much pointless as unarmoured characters have no penalties to movement or attack, and can rack up more impressive DB's than their armoured counterparts using other methods.

It's nice that when you have a player with a monk who's DB can hit 300 sat laughing in the middle of a battlefield, one lucky blow can do serious damage, whereas a knight with a much lower DB will be hit repeatedly but not hurt as much.

However we have also use armour penetration rules as another factor. One of our players has an assassin with a punch dagger. We reasoned that this would be good in finding chinks in armour. So provided the assassin gets close enough to use it, a successful called shot can negate \ reduce armour bonus (depending on armour type. Full plate tends to have chainmail underneath so it would still offer some protection, unless the shot was to the eyes.)