Armour pricing help

[torilen]

Well, pricing based on features and such...I didn't mention that because you had already touched on that above...
saying that it would be hard to price fairly because your features vary so much.

When I get the chance, I'll message you with my exact scales - I don't have them in front of me right now. But, to
start with:
I usually go with 1 combat die = 100 gold to start with - both weapons and armor.
For weapons, I add a bit extra for reach/diagonal attacks (15 at least, 50 at most)
For range weapons, add a bit extra (maybe 30-60 gold).
If a weapon offers more than one ability (regular attack and throw attack, for example), use the basic price for
the combat dice offered, then add another 25 perhaps for the extra ability. (so, a dagger would be 125 gold)
For armor, if it gives a movement penalty, decrease the price a bit (say 10-20 per 1 space penalty, perhaps)
If armor offers any attack ability, simply add the proper amount, based on your weapon price scale.

If anything is magical, I would maybe go with 100 gold extra for each additional combat dice offered if it is one use,
per quest, then another 25-50 gold for each additional use per quest. If it has some other magical ability, you can
judge how useful it would be in your quests, but I would not go any less than 50 gold extra per use per quest, and
you could go up to 150 or so per use per quest if it is REALLY useful in your game.

If an item offers two different magical effects, use your basic price scale as discussed above, and add a bit more,
maybe another 20-40 gold, simply for the variety available.

As I said, when I get my equipment list in front of me, I'll message you with my exact pricing ideas
Cheers.

[Patroclus]

...

When you have the ability to greatly improve your statistics as seems to be the case in your system (current maximum is 8 defense before shields and artifacts)...

...

I've checked your cards and they have lots of good ideas (though I can't help you with the pricing because I don't know how much gold you give in your quests), but about the high scores for stats I want to tell you my idea that you could find useful.

We love HQ because the combat is simple and you don’t have to check many numbers as AHQ for example, where you have to ask the Weapon Skill of the enemy, check your character sheet's table to see how much you have to roll to hit him, and if you hit you check again the number of dices you have to roll for damage, and then you ask the Toughness of the enemy to see if the damages you roll have succeeded and then asks how many Wounds he has to see if he dies. (And if you roll 1, you fumble, and instantly the defender gets a free attack and he does the reverse checks to attack you…)

So, the good is that the combat is simple, the bad is that even if you have custom strong monsters it’s impossible to increase the Attack or Defense of your heroes too much or else you will have to roll so many dices that it is impossible to hold them in one hand.

Of course, you can add some skills on your items (as you already did) but I have an idea that it can be a solution for the development of more powerful heroes. Let’s say that it is some kind of “level up”. When one of your heroes reaches too many points on Attack or Defense, e.x 7 or more, the group “gains a level” with the paradox that you will decrease all the Attack and Defense scores of the Heroes and the enemies by 1. So, if the Barbarian has 4 Attack and 7 Defense points you will count it in your game as 3 Attack and 6 Defense but also the Chaos Warrior will have 3 Attack and 3 Defense, and the Goblin will have 1 Attack and 1 Defense (1 should be the minimum score).

With that you’ll avoid the numerous dices but of course the balance has affected, so you have to put more powerful monsters to keep the tension high.

And before each quest you will say. This is a “level 1” dungeon which means -1 to all stats. “level 2”, -2 to all stats, etc...

in my opinion, I still believe that additional skills are the best option for character development, but this idea can help you if you want to raise your stats out of the limits.

[torilen]

That is a very interesting idea Patroclus - I may have to write that one down for when I have a group to play with.
That would certainly remove the need for so many dice. Just gotta make sure you keep real good track of group
level and make sure you drop all the monster dice by the right amount, or it could end disastrously.

[Templar]

Lot of good ideas here, thanx a bunch guys

This is, I promise, the last of my armour pieces...my shields:

Now, the two first are pretty straightforward in pricing, and the leather one is primarily for my druids/mystics to find/buy early to increase their defense, should they need it (and as I said, my quests are rather nasty )

Shields.JPG

Otherwise I was thinking...
Tower shield - 175?
Spearman's shield - 200?
Pavise - 300?? (this is a hard one )
Great Parma - 450?
Spiked Buckler - 500 (from another thread)

[Count Mohawk]

I think your prices for the Leather Parma and the normal Shield are a little low. 100 and 150, or 100 and 200, would be a little better.

The Tower Shield and the Great Parma are approximately equal - both can add 2 to your defense in certain circumstances. I would price the parma slightly higher due to melee combat being much more prevalent than enemy crossbow users. 500 and 600 seems appropriate, and due to all shields being useless if you have a two-handed weapon, you could probably get away with 400 and 500 instead if your equipment runs on the cheap side.

The Spearman's Shield lets you take the first shot at any monster that approaches you if you are also a spear user. Depending on the strength and availability of Spears to the Heroes, this could be good. How many times can a Hero with this shield poke approaching monsters, though? If it's just once, it's actually quite balanced and should only cost 350 or so. If it's any number of times, it could make combat against melee-only, otherwise low-level monsters trivial at best, although if the strongest spear the Heroes can get hits for only 2 attack dice, there's not much potential for combat trickery. The shield used in this way should price around 500 or 600.

The Pavise is another of the +2 Defend shields. How wide is its area of effect? The shield is obviously stronger if you can block attacks from the side, whereas it is actually quite poor as a choice of barrier if it affects only the forward arc. As for the secondary effects, making all of your attacks into full-turn actions seems like a fair trade for being able to take the better of two rolls when firing a ranged weapon. The price on this piece depends greatly on how lenient you are with the interpretation of its text in favor of the Heroes - I would put it somewhere between 450 and 800 gold.

And finally, we have the Spiked Buckler. It's not terrible at defending, but as with the Gorer helmet its true power is the ability to deal damage outside of your normal attack actions. The Spiked Buckler's damage scales with the rest of your armor and is not limited to once per combat, which can get really silly if your Hero has the Full Armor Suit and the Close Helmet and is rolling 9 defense dice for an average of 3 shields. You may want to consider reworking that ability; it's a cool idea, but as printed has the potential to be grossly overpowered relatively early. Game balance would have me price this no lower than 800.

[Templar]

I think your prices for the Leather Parma and the normal Shield are a little low.

Well, the normal shield is priced 100 for realz in the game...this might be a bit cheap, but I'm gonna keep the price for that reason. The Leather parma is just half that. Perhaps it should be 25, so a hero can just snatch it up with some spare change if he wants to.

How many times can a Hero with this shield poke approaching monsters, though?

Only one time, I will specify this better. The best one handed spear in my armoury is the normal spear. I have an artifact that lets a hero attack twice in one turn though, maybe this should carry over to use with the shield?

How wide is its area of effect?

As you say, it is the forward arc only it defends against, since you prop it down in front of you. But also, in my mind, this is also a stand in for the kind of huge tower shields sometimes used in games by tank classes. In this case, the shield can only be used to the front and you can not attack if you move 'cause it so heavy to move around fast

fair trade for being able to take the better of two rolls when firing a ranged weapon

Well, perhaps I stated it wrong...I meant reroll all dice you want that are not black shields...so with the crossbow, if you get , you can reroll the white shield, but not the black.

The Spiked Buckler's damage scales with the rest of your armor and is not limited to once per combat, which can get really silly if your Hero has the Full Armor Suit and the Close Helmet and is rolling 9 defense dice for an average of 3 shields. You may want to consider reworking that ability; it's a cool idea, but as printed has the potential to be grossly overpowered relatively early

I hear you. How about this then? The extra white shields rolled can be ued for an immidiate attack on the monster defended against.
This means that, as you said, whith max armour of nine dice you should roll an average of 3 . since you are defending, the enemy have at least rolled one , so there are on average 2 extra . This means 1 hits against the monster on average...

This is assuming that the monster only rolled 1 and with max armour. Also, any black shield rolled in the attack will count as a save. So if a attacks you and rolled at least one he has a 2/3 chance [rolling a or with the second die] of mitigating another buckler hit. This means that there will be 0 or 1 unsaved hits on average. Against a , this seems pretty ok to me

Thank you for all your comments Mohawk, it has really helped me move forward on this issue

[Count Mohawk]

fair trade for being able to take the better of two rolls when firing a ranged weapon

Well, perhaps I stated it wrong...I meant reroll all dice you want that are not black shields...so with the crossbow, if you get , you can reroll the white shield, but not the black.

For this one, you could reword it to say "you may reroll white shields when attacking with ranged weapons", unless you think rerolling a Skull would actually be a good idea at one point.

I hear you. How about this then? The extra white shields rolled can be ued for an immidiate attack on the monster defended against.
This means that, as you said, whith max armour of nine dice you should roll an average of 3 . since you are defending, the enemy have at least rolled one , so there are on average 2 extra . This means 1 hits against the monster on average...

This is assuming that the monster only rolled 1 and with max armour. Also, any black shield rolled in the attack will count as a save. So if a attacks you and rolled at least one he has a 2/3 chance [rolling a or with the second die] of mitigating another buckler hit. This means that there will be 0 or 1 unsaved hits on average. Against a , this seems pretty ok to me

To be fair, the most likely result when using the Spiked Buckler, at least until the lategame, is that the Hero will only beat his enemy's roll by one shield, if at all. I think the buckler will be more balanced by your suggestion though, as long as the monster attacking doesn't get to roll for defense against the Hero's attack beyond any black shields that appeared in its attack roll.

Thank you for all your comments Mohawk, it has really helped me move forward on this issue

You're welcome!