STR requirements for armor/weapons

[a_ver_est]

Specifically talking about ranged weapons having skill penalties due to heavy armor, I don't think it's unexpected that heavy gauntlets would make your hands less dexterous or a full helmet would restrict your vision to some degree.

Absolutely agree about gauntlets, in fact to shoot an arrow with a medieval bow you should wear a specific hand protection glove which let you feel the pressure of the string while protecting your fingers.

But I am not sure about other type of armor, as far as I understood if archers didn't wear some kind of heavy armor in medieval times were because they can not afford it, at least in Europe, and not because it did not allow them to fire the war bow... but I might be wrong of course.

BTW it is a game, I think that it should allow to the player play with 'historical' gear if he wants but... if he doesn't care I don't see a problem wearing unrealistic armors for an archer or whatever. It might be good if the creating game screens let you choose a hard set up with applies extra historical penalties.

 

[Locklave]

Stamina was always controversial in its application when it came to Warband mods and I can see why they left it out entirely when it came the vanilla experience of Bannerlord.

It seemed to work fine in VC and balanced armor. Currently armor weight is nearly meaningless.

 

[Apocal]

It seemed to work fine in VC and balanced armor. Currently armor weight is nearly meaningless.

Oh, it worked in VC. And I agree totally it distorts things to not have it. But players were very much of a variety of feelings about it and split on whether they actually used the system or not (it was optional). I will disagree that armor weight is meaningless though, unless you mean that it only comes up in sieges and tournaments, since most players fight mounted.

 

[kweassa]

No game really implements the concept of 'stamina' in the right way. What people usually think about 'stamina' would be more of 'running out of breath' in reality. Stuff like armor does impact actual stamina heavily, but it works on a long scale, something like hours under normal circumstances, and much faster under very stressful circumstances.

So, to properly implement stamina, it would sort of be something like a meter... that has a dual function. In the short term, with every consecutive action without pause the meter would decrease and replenish -- ie. "running out of breath" -- but as the overall combat situation drags on the max limit of the meter would very slowly decrease -- and this would be what stamina actually is.

It's true that you can move as fast and agile, even run and catch up to lightly armored opponents even in plate armor -- but that's on the short term. You try doing that throughout the course of the entire battle, and yes, plate armor would bog down on you until it becomes so tired that you'd just probably retreat rather than attempt to move forward even a single foot.

I'm not sure how this can be implemented properly in the game. Especially when battles already end way too quickly. It's not like we fight 6 hour battles for the armor weight to impact a person's overall stamina...

 

[Apocal]

No game really implements the concept of 'stamina' in the right way. What people usually think about 'stamina' would be more of 'running out of breath' in reality. Stuff like armor does impact actual stamina heavily, but it works on a long scale, something like hours under normal circumstances, and much faster under very stressful circumstances.

That's approximately the way it worked in VC. It would deplete quickly, especially if you were running up an incline while swinging a heavy weapon, but as long as you stopped when it went from High to Average, it would replenish rather quickly. But if you ever hit the final state, Exhausted IIRC, then it would take forever to regain and if you were wearing heavy armor, it might not come back at all.

In spite of an easy way of managing stamina -- stopping for a few seconds every so often to catch your breath -- some people still raged against it. A lot of them simply didn't want to manage even that much and would find themselves exhausted quite early in sieges or large battles, then killed. The developers ate a lot of really vitriolic posts about it.

And that was with it being an optional system.

 

[Locklave]

Oh, it worked in VC. And I agree totally it distorts things to not have it. But players were very much of a variety of feelings about it and split on whether they actually used the system or not (it was optional). I will disagree that armor weight is meaningless though, unless you mean that it only comes up in sieges and tournaments, since most players fight mounted.

Sorry, I should have qualified the statement about armor weight. I was being overly simplistic. I mean that athletics can completely cancel out the weight of armor and riding a horse negates it.

I have tons of experience with high athletics builds as I enjoy suicidal foot combat. Weight matters till it doesn't matter.

I agree with your assessment of stamina in VC. It was something that was manageable and really made sense IRL where stopping to catch your breath helps you recover.

 

[Oltaner]

Anyone miss the old method of warband with weapons and armor having a stat requirement to use them? I’m not liking the current set up of high tier weapons and armor not showing up in the game till your a high clan level and such. Warband was nice cause you can see that lordly plate armor sitting in the shop that you couldn’t use and you strived to level up your str to wear it! Now it’s just... oh I have 2million Denars but that high lvl armor hasn’t showed up yet, or it’s “I’m lvl 3 and smithed my way to high money and now I’m wearing all the top tier gear available”.

Yeah I think that should be implemented again, especially for bows, they're way too OP as they are now

 

[geala]

I think people have taken the whole "you're actually more agile in armor than you might think!" to the polar opposite of the original misconception at this point. I remember someone on here recently suggesting to me that Usain Bolt could potentially beat his 100M record in full plate armor because it's "not as heavy and doesn't restrict your movement as much as you'd think!" Just because it doesn't turn you into a turtle doesn't mean your speed and movement are equal to that of your unarmored self. Specifically talking about ranged weapons having skill penalties due to heavy armor, I don't think it's unexpected that heavy gauntlets would make your hands less dexterous or a full helmet would restrict your vision to some degree. Ultimately, restrictions and penalties would be in place as a form of balancing. At the moment, there is no way to build your character to wear armor "better", so every playstyle has equal access to the same degree of protectiveness. Obviously, this is a much greater benefit to playstyles that can fight away from danger, such as archers and horse archers, meaning melee playstyles don't have an inherent advantage in dealing with the higher amount of damage they are more likely to face due to how they have to play. Restricting and encouraging ranged playstyles to use lighter armor would allow TW to balance heavy armor around the realities of playing as infantry in the heat of a battle.

Agreed. I also was to a certain degree an proponent of the armor-has-no-real-negatives "modern" view, till I wore some. Of course plate armor fitted to your body does not restrict you that much, you don't need a crane to get on a horse, you can run and jump and excel at floor exercises. But not as good as without armor. The less the armor the more mobile you are. It makes you hot or cold, it sometimes makes breathing more difficult, it restricts limb movement, it is heavy, sometimes it hinders your view.

Armor is great and it's a nuisance. Two times in my life my health/life was saved by helmets, nevertheless I don't like wearing helmets or would propose that helmets don't hinder you. That there are pros and cons of armor is well simulated in Kenshi for example. Armor protects but at a cost. I would like such a +/- system in M+B, too.

To the topic, I don't like fixed stat requirements for equipment.

 

[kweassa]

Agreed. I also was to a certain degree an proponent of the armor-has-no-real-negatives "modern" view, till I wore some. Of course plate armor fitted to your body does not restrict you that much, you don't need a crane to get on a horse, you can run and jump and excel at floor exercises. But not as good as without armor. The less the armor the more mobile you are. It makes you hot or cold, it sometimes makes breathing more difficult, it restricts limb movement, it is heavy, sometimes it hinders your view.

Armor is great and it's a nuisance. Two times in my life my health/life was saved by helmets, nevertheless I don't like wearing helmets or would propose that helmets don't hinder you. That there are pros and cons of armor is well simulated in Kenshi for example. Armor protects but at a cost. I would like such a +/- system in M+B, too.

To the topic, I don't like fixed stat requirements for equipment.

It also physically distorts your body with many years of prolonged use. I'll have to check the source, but I recall an either 18th or 19th century book on the problems of cavalry cuirasses, and one of the passages was about how it can actually deform your body, thus, supporting arguments of just doing away with armor as a whole.