At 1:52 PM +0100 16/4/02, Benedict Adamson scribbled:
>In BA, Issaries has made official the common house rule that
>augmentation may be automatic, at +1/10.
>
>An obvious extension of this rule to +^1/5 to give edges, used with
>Magic Armour abilities, and such like. But why stop there? Why not
>have an Armour ability, and add it to the Warrior (etc.) keywords.
>Similarly, have a Weapon ability. Use these to replace weapon and
>armour ranks.
>
>A default Warrior (Weapon 17, Armour 17) would have a ^3 offensive
>and defensive edge, as now, but could start with metal armour, ^4
>(1W) or ^5 (5W). The Weaponthanes of the tribal King (Armour 10W2)
>have magic armour (^10), of course. Anyone can improvise (default
>Weapon 6) a simple weapon (^1). It works rather nicely.
>
>The rules for weapon and armour ranks seem like an 'add on'. I like
>rules to be 'clean'. Is this approach better? I think it better sits
>with the idea that mundane equipment is not worth describing, but
>gives the option of being The Black Knight (Armour 10W3) if you want.
>Also, armour and weapons being reduced to the same as other abilities
>gives a few more options for contests (weapon breaking, for example).
The trick to the weapons and armour rules is that they were
designed so that if its unimportant to the narrative, you can ignore
them completely. Just 'yes, everyone is heavily armoured, its all
rank 5, it all cancels out'. If you really want to make the weapon
and armour rules simpler, its that easy.
Assuming that most peoples weapons are appropriate for the
situation is pretty decent. Notable magic weapons are better off as
abilities, that can be used to augment when it seems appropriate, and
used for other more interesting things when the narrative deems it
appropriate.
While your rule seems easier, in practice it means that the
situation where you can ignore ranks occurs less often, so its
actually more complex, as its saying that there are always fiddly
differences in rank that should really be taken care of.
Cheers
David