Comments | vastin: Accelerant - Armor/Carrier Mechanic

vastin

Accelerant - Armor/Carrier Mechanic

Nov 08, 2008 20:52

So here's an old blast from NERO that turns out to be remarkably simple to implement in the Accelerant system:

( The Armor/Carrier Defense mechanic )

larp, game design, accelerant

Comments 7

vastin November 9 2008, 15:30:08 UTC

Hmm. I'm thinking that one additional step you'd need to take here would be to create a trait exception for some special attacks to be able to penetrate the armor mechanic.

- 'Guard by Armor' cannot be used to defend against skills delivered by 'stealth' or 'piercing'.

This lets you define certain melee attacks as armor defeating.

russiandude November 10 2008, 01:57:12 UTC

Clarification - does this mean if you are taken down with pure uncalled damage, you would technically be at full armor?

vastin November 10 2008, 05:15:16 UTC

Not at all. Uncalled damage will take off armor and then body points, as usual ( ... )

vastin November 10 2008, 05:18:05 UTC

As a further clarification, I believe that any effect in the game that would instantly reduce you to 0 body will also wipe out your armor. For example, 'Death'. Death doesn't INFLICT any damage, and the melee version of it could be Guarded against using the armor variant above - but if you were to take a Death effect (say from a spell), I believe it would reduce all your points to zero - including those granted by armor and spells - instantly.

egowumpus November 10 2008, 19:58:47 UTC

You indicate:

"As long as you have at least one point of armor remaining when you are struck by a non-damaging called weapon or missile attack, you may call 'Guard by Armor' as a defense against that attack ( ... )

vastin November 10 2008, 20:13:49 UTC

The basic assumption of the system is that a called melee or missile attack has to 'touch' you to take effect and the armor is simply holding it at bay. In practice in NERO this was quite easy to track, and NERO's implementation was made more complex by the existence of effects that specifically inflicted Body damage, circumventing armor. Accelerant has no such effects ( ... )

vastin November 10 2008, 23:43:38 UTC

One part of the implementation you mention IS a low complexity variant, which is that the 'Guard by Armor' effect could be changed to 'Reduced by Armor' where the called attack effect is converted to a single point of damage instead of being negated entirely.

This would still protect the armored player from non-damaging called effects, but now such attacks would inflict a point of damage, making them more effective.

This variant would be nice for games that DO feature a lot of armor (5 or higher), to help mitigate its effectiveness.