Weight & Encumbrance (Split from RAT)

[Delirium]

The weight of armor and weapons needs to be seriously looked at.

A person of average strength should be able to wear full leather armor and weaponry and be at light encumbrance, no problem.

High strength characters have a ridiculously overpowered ability to actually wear armor AND hit more/harder.

Either tie endurance to strength for encumbrance purposes, or lower the weights of armor and weaponry across the board. Or both.

[nauta]

The weight of armor and weapons needs to be seriously looked at.

A person of average strength should be able to wear full leather armor and weaponry and be at light encumbrance, no problem.

High strength characters have a ridiculously overpowered ability to actually wear armor AND hit more/harder.

Either tie endurance to strength for encumbrance purposes, or lower the weights of armor and weaponry across the board. Or both.

Oh! And then maybe people can stash their armour in their packs when they go into the bar!

[Jingo]

Whoah there. Let's not get too hasty. (I've only been saying this for the last ten years.)

[hyzhenhok]

Probably the only way to get people to play with armor realistically would be to implement wear and tear just from wearing it and exposing it to the elements. (This would also make the armor repair skill less useless.)

You'd probably want to code in some quick-dress/undress commands so the change doesn't unduly affect playability. I'd implement a >strip and >dress command. When used on their own, they would dump your worn items into the room, or pick items up from the room and wear them. They would also be able to target containers, so you could >strip shelf and >dress chest for easy organization of and access to your outfits.

[Quell]

Probably the only way to get people to play with armor realistically would be to implement wear and tear just from wearing it and exposing it to the elements. (This would also make the armor repair skill less useless.)

You'd probably want to code in some quick-dress/undress commands so the change doesn't unduly affect playability. I'd implement a >strip and >dress command. When used on their own, they would dump your worn items into the room, or pick items up from the room and wear them. They would also be able to target containers, so you could >strip shelf and >dress chest for easy organization of and access to your outfits.

I think just having a quick undress, quick redress code would work for most people.

9 times out of 10 when my characters are dressed inappropriately it's out of laziness. The other 1 time out of time is because I forgot what I was wearing. Neither of these situations are ideally fixed by armor decay.

[BadSkeelz]

I actually forgo changing out of armor into something more comfortably usually because I don't want to be carrying the extra few stones of comfortableness around in my pack.

[Jingo]

Just make encumbrance (and weldable encumbrance) a race-based integer and soften stat thresholds across the board.

Jesus. Just make all stats race based integers that only have a marginal threshold of two or three.

[CodeMaster]

I love the idea of adding endurance to the encumbrance calc in some way.

[wizturbo]

Pretty sure Armageddon's carrying thresholds are based on D&D which is extremely punishing for low strength characters, and extremely forgiving for high strength characters.  The weight of items isn't the issue, if those are reduced then high strength characters can walk around with a wagon full of shit in their packs instead of the already massive amount of crap they can haul now.  Also, going through all of the armors and weapons in Arm and editing their weight doesn't sound like a very fun task...

Just give lower strength characters more base encumbrance, problem solved.

[BadSkeelz]

Armageddon items do tend to be pretty damn heavy, which doesn't help matters. While it could be argued that an "average" strength Zalanthan has no business wearing 40 pounds of leather armor and swinging a 15 pound longsword, without a means to ensure our PCs have good stats or the ability to raise functionally poor stats it means any combat PC is probably going to be prioritizing strength in the hopes of getting very good or better so they can equip themselves without taking a defense penalty. A market of high-strength PCs encourages the creation of items fit for these high-strength PCs (heavy armor, heavy weapons, heavy draw bows). Since the speed of new item creation is limited, it skews the supply of items towards those fit for high strength PCs.

I suppose this is all off topic to my original point of why my PCs don't dress sexy. I do wish things like clothes and rings had less weight than they do (I think jewelry might already be less than stone a piece, it just can't display that).

[nauta]

I'm not sure I mentioned this idea, but what if:

You could rent your armor or clothes at the bar/stables for free or a nominal fee of one sid.  In fact, what if the command would also just switch you out of the set you have on for the set you have rented, ala hyzenhook's suggestion above.

Either that or make the Morph's Magick Bag Of A Spare Shirt and Pants, which weighs zero and contains a spare shirt and pants.

[Delirium]

"As leading sword expert Ewart Oakeshott unequivocally stated: "Medieval Swords are neither unwieldably heavy nor all alike - the average weight of any one of normal size is between 2.5 lb. and 3.5 lbs. Even the big hand-and-a-half 'war' swords rarely weigh more than 4.5 lbs."

Armor and weapon weights are Too Damn High! Also everything wizturbo said.

I guess I should split this out into a new thread since it's not really a random thought any more.

[BadSkeelz]

I'm not sure I mentioned this idea, but what if:

You could rent your armor or clothes at the bar/stables for free or a nominal fee of one sid.  In fact, what if the command would also just switch you out of the set you have on for the set you have rented, ala hyzenhook's suggestion above.

Make it a separate dressing room to hide the spam/maintain the illusion that we're not stripping down right in the Gaj and that'd be kind of cool.

"As leading sword expert Ewart Oakeshott unequivocally stated: "Medieval Swords are neither unwieldably heavy nor all alike - the average weight of any one of normal size is between 2.5 lb. and 3.5 lbs. Even the big hand-and-a-half 'war' swords rarely weigh more than 4.5 lbs."

Armor and weapon weights are Too Damn High! Also everything wizturbo said.

Medieval swords weren't also typically carved out of solid rock or giant magickal bones able to hold an edge. I'm not saying the weight of Armageddon gear is wrong for the setting. It's just really heavy. I wish I could see the weight as an encouragement to use less armor (like Dark Sun art seems to depict everyone as doing) ... but krath are you playing with fire there.

[Jihelu]

Last I checked we weren't carving most weapons out of solid rock.
Most tend to be obsidian tipped or handled.
A pound of obsidian isn't that much though so I could see obsidian weapons having a higher weight than things like wood but I'm not so sure about bone being that heavy as my muscles move my bones around just fine.

[Delirium]

Fantasy game is fantasy. I don't care if we'ere working with stone or oliphant flesh. I am kind of sick of broken systems that offer options but only one viable option.

Because I missed this one in the thread split.

[Dalmeth]

Does anyone really want what armor we can or cannot wear to be determined by random stats?

[Case]

I'll still advocate for an armor wearing skill.

There are ways to way wearing armor 24/7 more punitive, but I'm kinda mixed on it. It would be nice to see people in clothing more often. I make an effort on all my martial PCs to.

[Case]

Does anyone really want what armor we can or cannot wear to be determined by random stats?

Strongly influenced by stat preference. Geez.

[Jihelu]

Simple.
Add the samurai class that fights without armor and uses katanas.
Or everyone roll up pcs that do this and make people who dont feel different
ez

[BadSkeelz]

Samurai fought with tons of armor.

/nerd

[evilcabbage]

samurai who don't wear armor huh.

[Armaddict]

I posted about this not long ago.

Leather armor, in particular...is incredibly heavy.  Was not a big deal long ago when the code was created, because 'manageable' encumbrance was not a big deal.  But there has been modification made to what encumbrance affects, and the strength of agility, which makes walking around at manageable not a good idea.  Plz rebalance leather weights.

As far as basing it on stats...I have no problems with it being based on your strength, but leathers, in particular, are just too heavy for it.

[nauta]

There are ways to way wearing armor 24/7 more punitive, but I'm kinda mixed on it. It would be nice to see people in clothing more often. I make an effort on all my martial PCs to.

Yeah, punitive seems like it'd have a load of bad things attached to it, but what I'd like to see is perhaps ways to make not always wearing your armor / switching clothing made less punitive.

Right now, there are even coded reasons to not.

o Clothes are heavy, and so if you are in the field and your choice is between that torch and that dress and moving from easily manageable to manageable (or whatever): out goes the dress.

o It's a PITA (spammy and requires custom triggers) to change clothes.

o You have to lug all that armour around inside the city.

So on, and so on.  If we can make the Great Clothes Change into something that's easier or at least not punitive, then I think we'd see more people doing it.

[Jihelu]

My original comment about samurai not wearing armor stands.
Just because I'm stupid doesn't mean I can't dream!


Maybe making armor weigh a shit to isn't the issue but adding a bigger benefit to wearing items would be better.
IE:
That 15 stone armor only 'weighs' like 6 stones when wearing or some shit idk isnt it already that good.

[Dresan]

I've brought this up before as well right here: http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,50620.msg927618.html#msg927618 (take a quick look)

Good and very good strength on a human isn't that great in terms of encumberance, even with leather armors. You don't really need to be loaded with much more for it to suck. After all, just two good weapons can be pretty heavy too.