We're playing a one-shot DFRPG game tomorrow. I'm running an orc unholy warrior named Otto the Terrible. I almost ran an assassin, because I'd always wanted to, but the unholy warrior came out better.
I only had $1500 for gear, because it was tough to spare a lot of cash for gear without giving up on some good advantages. I could have really equipped him well, but it would have meant giving up on an advantage I wanted.
Picking armor was tricky. I ended up going with a partial set, covering the areas I felt were the most important for a delver:
- skull (twice over)
- torso
- feet
- hands
. . . in that order.
I went for:
Heavy Scale helmet (open-faced) - DR 5
Light Cloth helmet (open-faced) - DR 1
Scale Body Armor - DR 4/3
Heavy Leather gloves - DR 2
Heavy Leather boots - DR 2
That gives Otto the Terrible DR 8 on the skull, DR 4/3 on the body, and DR 2 on the hands and feet. His arms and legs are unarmored.
I wanted a crossbow sling, but they're $200. I barely had the 1 point available for $500 for armor. I was thinking of a Dwarven Dueling Halberd, but I couldn't afford it. A regular one is nice and cheap, but not enough to afford better armor, and it's not a survivable plan. Oh well. I could have gone DR 2 everywhere . . . but nah, I'd rather have one good location armored than a lot poorly armored. It's really hard to armor up well with DFRPG costs.
Otto is Light Encumbrance without his sleeping blanket, Medium with.
DFRPG Armor can be a real challenge at 250 points/$1,000. Heavy Cloth / Heavy Leather is pretty much bog-standard for so many warrior builds unless you drop 5 points into extra cash for $3,500. A lot of manipulation is required to get the kit right. Armoring up the skull is a great strategy. Nothing on the arms will be interesting, but if you don't encounter too many high skill enemies who will try to exploit that (assuming that enemies with Axe/Mace-13 for example may not try targeting the arms too often), it probably won't be a huge issue.
ReplyDeleteI do like that a lot of the DFRPG metal armor is lighter than the Basic Set, but the increased cost is rough!
What's also interesting--perhaps another post for another day--is what starting cash folks should get if you start people off at lower point values (75, 150, 200, etc.). If they get $1,000 at 150 or even 200 point delvers, that's a pretty decent deal--those delvers will probably have far better gear by the time they reach 250 points than starting delvers.
DR 1 or 2 on the arms isn't going to help enough to really matter against a high-skilled opponent, so why waste the money on it when I could have heavier torso and skull DR instead?
DeletePart of the Delvers to Grow book is loadouts, so we'll be addressing this problem one way or another in that book as well!
DeleteI pretty much figure a starting character will likely not have any armor in DFRPG, in Basic Set DF armor for starting characters was more accessible
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