Questions About Armor Type and Area Protected

[miked2681]

As the title states, I've got questions about how armor works in the ruleset.

First, I'm curious about the 'Type' field in an Armor item sheet. In the dropdown there's an option for 'Accessory' that seems to work the same as selecting 'Body Armor'. Is there some specific use case for this that I may be missing?

Second, the wiki states that the 'Area Protected' field isn't actually used by FGU for any automation but if I put anything besides Torso (Arms/Legs/Head/whatever else), the armor won't be counted. This seems fine because a basic attack is supposed to target the torso, but I'm wondering if there is any way to have something like a helmet (an armor item set with Head in the 'Area Protected' field) count as armor when making a called shot to the head (which should also not include the Torso armor in this example)? If this is not the case, what are some practical ways to do this during gameplay? Just have to adjust things manually, or use modifiers to make up the difference based on what is covered in the targeted location, before the damage is rolled?

I hope my questions make sense (it's pretty late for me) and I appreciate in advance any help that may be given!

[zarlor]

I haven't tested it in FGU, mind you, but I would think the Accessory slot would be for things like, say, Bracers of Defense, if you will, which may be allowed to stack with armor, whereas if you were to equip two pieces of Body Armor only the best should be used as they shouldn't stack.

On the second point, yeah, it needs to count SOMETHING or there would be no real automation of Toughness/Armor at all, so the standard (even per the SWADE rules) is to use the value on the body as the standard assumption unless there is a called shot someplace else. If a player does a called shot, however, they you need to manually modify the damage to account for the appropriate armor at that location, is all. I think that is what they mean by no automation for that. You could also ask the player to add a modifier into the Modifier box before rolling damage, too, either way should work fine. Since it's super easy to just change the number in Combat Tracker as the GM I would just do it there, personally, as I find that easiest to do. (We use FGU at the tabletop, BTW, so it's super easy to just look at a player and tell them to put something into that modifier box and they STILL forget 2-seconds after you tell them! :D Then again the oldest of us is now over 60 so maybe they're just senile... ;)... naw, they always were that way)

[miked2681]

I appreciate the reply, zarlor! While I'm all for automation wherever I can get it, I agree that it shouldn't be too difficult just to use modifiers if/when needed. I understand fully well about forgetting to do things lol. Me (as the GM) and my group are still new to SWADE so it's still a learning process but I was running a Deadlands game the other night and one of my players mentioned he was moving into position to use the Gang Up rules, which I thought was great, and allowed him to hit that round. And then we both promptly forgot all about it on the next round. I'm only using FG on my side as kind of a record-keeping tool in that game, while the players prefer to play strictly "old school", otherwise I think it would have been easier to keep track of. Either way though, it's been a lot of fun and I'm enjoying the system.

[zarlor]

Yeah, probably half of my group isn't fond of our using FGU for this, but as GM (and our other GM is also using it now) they've learned to deal with it (and even appreciate a lot of the automation, like those very gang-up rules they were convinced FGU got wrong... until I showed them exactly what the rules say and they realized they'd been doing it wrong the whole time :D). One have summoning as a primary power, though, and despite the overall ease once you figure out and set it up right, still drives him nuts, but he's also a bit tach averse so he never really learns it and kind of has a mental block about doing so (heck he can't even get it into his head that to go around a corner you don't just move your character to the empty space and have it run into the wall instead of moving over to the corner and then turning the character around it, so...)

But, yeah, there are a lot of little things in FGU you can use and a few gotchas here and there. It's a bit of a learning curve but I've always found it largely a bit easier and more capable than the other options out there... be nice if it had a web interface for my players, though, so they could more easily use things like tablets or the like

[miked2681]

I love FGU, personally. I picked it up back at the end of 2020 when my sister and her husband decided they wanted to try D&D (he had played 1st edition back when he was a kid) so I got them into 5e and we played for quite a while before I got burned out on DMing. I've had quite a bit of experience with building out my own datasets (items/powers/etc.) and even muddling my way through modifying a few extensions here and there for my own personal tastes (I couldn't code my way out of a wet paper bag from scratch if my life depended on it, but I can sometimes figure out enough of what's in existing code to tweak it a little).

They have since found another group and have gotten used to playing in person with physical dice and all, and my brother-in-law has gotten interested (and quite good at) building miniature landscapes and stuff like that. I talked them into trying out Deadlands with me for my birthday last month and I've run several sessions since. I mentioned at one point that they could use FGU at the table just for character sheets or whatever but they kind of balked at it so I just went ahead and use it on my end for certain things. While I know that certain aspects of FGU could speed up combat and the like, playing in person is good and it's also been fun to get back to more "old school" play style like when I was a kid too. :)