Armor Use (MBP: 80 vs. 70)

[DaCapn]

Okay, so we all know this debate: Is there some kind of hidden maneuver penalty which only surfaces in some super secret hidden formulas that requires armor use training above the 'normal' level?

A little background if you want it right here or haven't seen it (straight from play.net... and we all know how reputable that is):
* By training in armor use skill, this roundtime can be reduced. Each 20 points in the skill removes one second of armor-based roundtime. High bonuses in dexterity and agility also offset this penalty.
* The amount of skill required to train off the excess armor hindrance is ((20 * Hindrance) - 10)
* MBP is: AsG 17, RT Addder 9, Action Penalty -20
* Ranks = (Skill - 100) (For the MBP range, at least)

This came from:
http://www.play.net/gs4/info/armory/armor.asp
http://www.play.net/gs4/info/armory/armorplate.asp#metalbreastplate

So I was at 80 ranks for a while... wearing MBP and things were good... but then I saw that I could get a 4th rank of feint and ranks in survival if I dropped to 70 ranks of armor use. Something strange happened when I did this... I got hit by the Icemule gale for the first time in what must be at least a year and this character hunted pretty much exclusively in areas where the gale is active from levels 25-45 (behind the rolaren gate, greater ice giants, pinefar). It was always my assumption that the gale is based off of PT and survival training to see how well you can 'tough it out.' But then I assisted and the GM said it was like dodging a maneuver...

So I was trying to ask whether my armor use training caused me to get hit. Here's what the GM was able to do (the GM was genuinely helpful)... They got into some MBP, changed to my race, changed to my stats, and took on my skills. They upped their armor use skill bonus to 180 (the 80 ranks equivalent) and said "hmmm... it looks like you have some hinderance that I don't." Again... I was at 170 skill or 70 ranks at this time. They cited the "20 ranks to remove 1 point of penalty" rule and got 9*20=180 skill (using RT penalty) and suggested that my high agility/dexterity was able to compensate so I didn't see an RT penalty but that some penalty remained.

This GM does not deal with armor mechanics... but they CAN look at all the hidden numbers that we can't. Frankly, I just wish this information was just posted on the site... but some will choose to play devil's advocate and pretend like they enjoy the mystery.

So far, to the best of my knowledge, it has been shown experimentally that 70 ranks is sufficient for standing from prone, reducing DS penalty to a minimum, and reducing sweep/cheapshot and other open roll maneuver penalties. Logic follows that all other non-open maneuvers would follow the same rule... but we all know there is no logic in Simutronics.

Comments?

[Latrinsorm]

Just a few clarifications:

"The amount of skill required to train off the excess armor hindrance is ((20 * Hindrance) - 10)"

This line is actually in the section referring to magical hindrance. It so happens to also apply to RT penalty, but explicitly at least it only refers to magical hindrance. This is obfuscated by the fact that the table in that section includes a column for RT penalty, but a couple lines show that the word "hindrance" refers to magical: "In no case will the hindrance ever be less than the value shown." and "the penalty ... will never exceed the Max hindrance shown in the rightmost column."

Second, the only work that's been done with maneuvers has been an examination of the Penalty field. I don't think anyone's identified even how many hidden rolls are involved with CML maneuvers, let alone what affects them. Obviously something like sweep probably doesn't have any, but something like shield bash (or scharge or charge) has at least one.

Finally, as I mentioned briefly earlier, 70 ranks are all that are required to negate the RT penalty for MBP. Agi/dex bonuses are not required. This does not in any way intimate that 70 ranks are enough to minimize all physical penalties. The question becomes just what physical penalties fall into the 80-ranks-required set, and it's very interesting to me that a GM would let you know what one of them was. The reason for that reaction is, as you know, we (the player community) have had this debate repeatedly on the boards. The abrupt cessation of reticence is peculiar, as is its incompleteness.

[DaCapn]

I've just gotten some incredibly solid info and it looks like 71 ranks are needed for RT, 80 for full penalty reduction.

This is how I've been able to rationalize it:
* To reduce the 9 second armor penalty completely, you need 20*9=180 skill. But at 171 skill you are able to remove (171/180)*9=8.55 RT penalty which gets rounded up to 9. So all evidence of RT penalties are removed with 71 ranks of armor. I would have guessed that 70 would be the magic number here, as (170/180)*9=8.5, but maybe their code rounds up for values >8.5 and not >=8.5
* To reduce action penalty to it's minimal -20, you have no benefits of the rounding and need the full 9*20=180 skill to train off all other penalties. We don't know how action penalty is scaled or what really goes on there behind the smoke and mirrors, all we can know is that when we are fully trained for the armor (80 ranks for MBP) the action penalty is reduced to -20 (the lowest possible for MBP).

So it looks to me like high agi/dex can reduce RT penalty but not action penalty. It's pretty possible that the action penalty difference between 70 and 80 ranks is just so small that deviations from a perfectly matching data set are within the expected statistical variance. As for myself, when I get a few more points, I'm bringing armor use back up to 80 ranks.

[LeftOverForGood]

GS code doesn't support/use decimals.

[Latrinsorm]

Not supporting decimels does not mean GS cannot use the functional equivalent of decimels. Each of the following operations is integer-based:

(Skill + 10) = a
a / 20 = b

Let Skill = 170 (70 ranks).
(170 + 10) = 180
180 / 20 = 9

Let Skill = 180 (80 ranks)
(180 + 10) = 190
190 / 20 = 9

No difference as far as RT is concerned.

[Bobmuhthol]

<<GS code doesn't support/use decimals.>>

Hi what do you think damage factors are?

[LeftOverForGood]

Perhaps I should have elaborated.

My point was that saying 'Action A' happens when x>8.5, but 'Action B' happens when x<8.5 doesn't work that well when there's no resulting number in GS code that has a decimal. So it's a little more complicated than that.

And Bob? As far as damage is concerned, while WE might factor damage into amounts with decimals, GS code does not.

[Latrinsorm]

You're missing the point. GS can (and does) function/[i] as though it were using decimals. It's not important to talk about the exact numerical goings-on when [i]functionally the two are exactly equivalent.

In this case, saying x > 7.5 or skill > 170 are functionally equivalent. There's no need to go into the numerical procedure GS uses to express x > 7.5 if we only want to understand the game mechanics (as opposed to the computer science aspect).