Armour for LODESTAR

“But Amber, what the fuck is this LODESTAR crap?”

So, first post about this on the blog and we’re getting right into the weeds of some mechanical stuff - I should probably give some introduction as to what this is. LODESTAR is my high fantasy and science fantasy TTRPG built on Mothership’s Panic Engine. It hasn’t always been like that, I’ve been designing it for about a year now, but this iteration is the one I’m happiest with and will be sticking with to the end. It’s about people, adventuring and what the fuck that does to the relationships you have with others (and, of course, has no explicit social mechanics). It’s still being worked on, and this is the first blogpost to hold me accountable to doing that.

Part of how we interact with people as we travel the world as adventurers is, of course, trying to kill one another. It’s grim and intimate and generally all around Bad™, and so naturally we want to protect ourselves from incoming violence. I sat down to hack away at making some armour rules, and came to the general principle of armour being something that requires consideration and construction - what you can afford as a travelling person matters, and the choices you make in the assembly of your protection say something about you. Also, that assembly shouldn’t just be nonsense - it should be logical, purposeful armour that has layers and is something you wear to survive, not for sex appeal.

After thinking this through, my friend Tangent joined the call and proceeded to whisper fell ideas into my vulnerable ears, which really means that after a bit of back and forth about intentions, she proposed a neater system than what I was trying in that moment, and assembled a list for me to build from. This is the “final” list we came to, with some modification and further iteration.

But first, I should probably explain how this works.

Damage to Armour

If you take damage that is lower than the AP of your armour set, the damage is reduced to 1, plus any bonuses from the type of weapon being used. If you take damage above the AP of your armour set, reduce the damage by your AP, and then the outermost layer breaks - Plate > Chain > Quilt > Arming. You then drop down to the next highest armour level your components qualify for.

If you’re wearing Full Plate (AP 12) and someone deals over 12 damage to you, your Plate layer is marked as broken, and you drop down to Full Chain (AP 6). Should your chain break, you drop to Quilted Armour (AP 2), and if you have an arming jacket on underneath that, breaking that will drop you to Armingwear (AP 1).

Armour Levels

Armingwear

AP1

Armingwear offers little protection in and of itself, however it provides an essential “arming platform” for many more protective sets, hence the name.

Soft Layers
Arming Jacket and Belt

Quilted Armour

AP2

Quilted armour is more expensive to manufacture than a simple arming jacket, but offers greater innate protection and is fundamental to set construction for the most protective armour available. Quilted armour, being a soft layer, can be worn over an existing arming jacket.

Soft Layers
Quilted Jacket
Quilted Leggings

Chain Shirt

AP3

A popular and fundamental layer of protection, layering a simple chain shirt over a jacket provides suitable impact softening against attacks from bladed weapons.

Soft Layers
Any Jacket
Chain Shirt

Breastplate

AP4

The simplest, most sure-fire way to gain solid protection against the vital organs is to layer a well-fitted cuirass over a base jacket layer, providing strong defense against stabs and slashes. Cuirasses don’t come cheap, however.

Soft Layers	Hard Layers
Any Jacket	Any Cuirass

Chain Hauberk

AP5

A chain hauberk extends down past the knees and covers the arms, providing greater coverage than a simple chain shirt. The heft of it is notable, however, and as such requires a quilted jacket to support it properly.

Soft Layers
Quilted Jacket
Chain Hauberk

Full Chain

AP6, [-] Celerity

Full chain is complete coverage from the neck down, introducing leg and hand protection to ensure greater overall safety while not investing in expensive plate armour.

Soft Layers
Quilted Jacket
Quilted Leggings
Chain Hauberk
Chain Chausses
Chain Mittens

Brigandine

AP7

Brigandine is armour with the textile exposed outwards, with metal plates internally that have been riveted on. Brigandine is more flexible than a standard cuirass, allowing comfortably for self-donning and for general purchase without need for exact fitting. The lack of chainmail keeps the flexibility that’s innate to the armour present.

Soft Layers	Hard Layers
Any Jacket	Brigandine Cuirass
	Pauldrons
	Brigandine Half-legs

Half Plate

AP8

Gearing oneself up with the solid metal armour available to you is never awful, and Half Plate is exactly that - covering the head, torso, forearms and shins. Its protective and flexible with the lack of chain, but has little else to protect you other than the plate itself.

Soft Layers	Hard Layers
Any Jacket	Any Cuirass
	Vambraces
	Greaves
	Open-faced Helmet

Full Brigandine

AP9, [-] Celerity

Full Brigandine is a heavier, more defensive expansion on regular Brigandine - by introducing full-plate arms, greaves and a chain hauberk, Full Brigandine sacrifices mobility for layering defence should the plate break.

Soft Layers	Hard Layers
Quilted Jacket	Brigandine Cuirass
Quilted Leggings	Pauldrons
Chain Hauberk	Full Plate Arms
	Brigandine Half-legs
	Greaves

Plate Harness

AP10, [-] Celerity, Requires assistance

The first in the line of the heaviest defence options, Plate Harness is a broad set of full plate armour that covers the vast majority of the body. The lack of mobility and complexity of construction means it requires assistance to take the plate layer on and off.

Soft Layers	Hard Layers
Quilted Jacket	Cuirass w/ Faulds
Quilted Leggings	Pauldrons
	Full Plate Arms
	Full Plate Legs
	Plate Gauntlets
	Visored Helmet

Plate and Mail

AP11, [-] Celerity, Requires assistance

Introducing some chain into the equation of plate armour does increase the cost, however it also provides an extra layer of reinforcement against impact, and an underlayer should the plate armour break.

Soft Layers	Hard Layers
Quilted Jacket	Cuirass w/ Faulds
Quilted Leggings	Pauldrons
Chain Shirt	Full Plate Arms
	Full Plate Legs
	Plate Gauntlets
	Visored Helmet

Full Plate

AP12, [-] Celerity, Requires assistance

Full plate is the full bhuna - it makes no sacrifices for protection, swapping the visored helmet for a locked-in closed helm, increasing lower leg protection with sabatons and ensuring reliable, full coverage underneath with a chain hauberk, chausses and mittens.

Soft Layers	Hard Layers
Quilted Jacket	Cuirass w/ Faulds
Quilted Leggings	Pauldrons
Chain Hauberk	Full Plate Arms
Chain Chausses	Full Plate Legs
Chain Mittens	Plate Gauntlets
	Plate Sabatons
	Closed Helmet

Things Not Yet Fully Considered

Cost

I haven’t yet decided on how exactly money is going to work here. There’s a part of me that wants to stick with the base-100 copper/silver/gold system I used in older versions of this game, there’s a sicko part of me that wants to do regional currency and exchange rates, and there’s the simple part of me that wants to do GP-only. I’ll figure it out.

Helmets

Helmets have been partially considered here as part of plate armour, but I think I’d like to include the Textile > Chain > Plate protective process as part of the requirement to get full protection from it, as well as putting chain coifs into Full Chain. The textile hat is really just for comfort, but I think at this point including a detail like that does matter. I also think I might allow for +1AP by donning a helmet on a helmetless set, if someone wants to add a helmet into their mix.

Shields

I’m gonna come back to these cunts when I know exactly how I’m handling weapons - likely not too different from regular Mothership. For now, they’re probably +1 AP and they break first in place of your highest armour layer.

Weapon Efficacy

Currently, weapons can have the keywords of Crushing, Bladed or Pointed - multiple if applicable. Crushing weapons deal 1 extra damage through metal armour, whereas Bladed weapons deal 1 extra damage through textile armour and Pointed weapons deal 1 extra damage through textile or chain armour. This applies based on whatever the outermost layer of armour is - if someone’s in full plate, bludgeoning them is gonna be most effective.

This isn’t the most accurate to how this armour actually responds, but it creates a somewhat interesting dynamic of weapon vs armour. We’ll see if it sticks.

Leather

As Tangent puts it, leather is, truthfully, “really terrible armour”, and the supposedly ‘studded’ leather from the world’s oldest roleplaying game is just misinterpreted brigandine armour. It’s not really worth including in a serious armour list, but it makes sense that bandits and other folks without access to metalworking setups may find use in it, or nobles who want some level of mobile, fashionable protection.

As such, I think I’ll end up considering leather as AP2 that can’t be worn with anything else. If you’re a bandit, its relatively cheap to make, but if you’re flush with cash you could splash to get something of higher quality and design - it incurs no extra benefit, but it does look rather spiffy.

Doffing This Article

God that’s a shit attempt at a joke. I’m overall really quite happy with this - I’ve never really liked the “armour as fashion” approach that many fantasy RPGs take, and this strips out much of that and puts in place an armour system that has literal depth to it - there’s something deeply gratifying about Full Plate dropping to Full Chain, Plate and Mail dropping into Chain Shirt, and Full Brigandine dropping to Chain Hauberk. There’s interesting progression between layers there. Where Mothership includes a load of little modules on their preconfigured armour, LODESTAR instead makes the progression through constructing your armour the granular part. I recognise that without seeing how I’ve changed health and wounds and such, it may not all immediately fall into place, but this is hitting the right notes for me.

Again, massive thank you to Tangent for working through a hell of a lot of this with me - I look forward to diving deeper with it. She’s just written a Pretty Sick Blog about fun in games, and I really recommend you give it a read - she’s rather fucking clever.