>In short, "one of the characters is fighting in the nude" will be the rule,
>rather than the exception. In any given fight, one side is going to be
>equipped more appropriately to the circumstances than the other--so give
>that side a bonus, small or large depending.
Well I was deliberately using a rather extreme example. And the biggest disadvantage of fighting in the nude when you are used to armour is that you can make the mistake of relying on armour that isn't there rather than the inherent protection of the armour. You could adjust for every variation but I'm not familiar enough with all the different weapon combat techniques to make more than a guess at the relative disadvantage someone might have with unfamiliar equipment. So rather than fiddle about with minor adjustments I ignore them.
The other issue is that many weapons are counters to particular styles of armour. So you end up with a matrix of fifty weapons with ten styles against twenty types of armour to work out whether someone gets +2. And then a player wants to argue the merits of a particular combination....
Once you get multiple people on each side it gets even worse. One spearman against one swordsman is quite different from five spearmen against five swordsmen. So for soldiers and warriors there should be a separate formation fighting ability. To keep things simple I assume it's the same as their combat ability which is certainly wrong by a much bigger margin than any variations in equipment.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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