The Gaming Den

PoliteNewb wrote: Not particularly; it mostly depends on your opponent (what weapon he's wielding, how skilled he is, and what his base damage number is with it). Honestly, if you're going to wear armor at all, you're probably best off wearing as much as possible (and using a shield to offset the defense penalty from the armor). If you're going for agility and maxing defense, you probably want to avoid armor altogether.

Which again is sort of par for the course. You see some sellswords with bits of armor, but it's either light/no armor or full plate and a shield. Robert Baratheon was notable because he ditched the shield in favor of his warhammer.

Interesting... So I generally want to tank to the max with plate, shield and something one-handed and powerful, or play an Empire Greatsword / Swirdmaster of Hoeth and dance around with a big killstick. I imagine my first character's going to be an heir-type (does this add any wrinkles to play?) so tankfighter seems best for him...

EDIT: Advice I've seen is

Put Athletics/Agility/Awareness all at 4. Take the Armor Mastery and Blood of the Rhoyne qualities. Equip a large shield and full plate. If you decided to max Fighting at 6, you should almost always use the Cautious Attack option. Your CD is 15, your AR is 11 and you're still rolling 5D (plus some bonus dice probably) to hit people. You haven't even used up all your DP's at character creation yet. A good choice to round out the combat monster is Weapon Mastery, with your high attack rolls, that +1 will become a +2-4 most of the time.

...which is ridiculous. It all centers around the attempt to hit them first and the system is simplistic enough that the above IS the best way to make a fighter. That will beat every single other build.

How about social combat? How useful is Magnetic, say. Or buying the Heir quality, besides being a stepping stone to Valyrian weaponry?

Silent Wayfarer wrote:Interesting... So I generally want to tank to the max with plate, shield and something one-handed and powerful, or play an Empire Greatsword / Swirdmaster of Hoeth and dance around with a big killstick. I imagine my first character's going to be an heir-type (does this add any wrinkles to play?) so tankfighter seems best for him...

EDIT: Advice I've seen is

Put Athletics/Agility/Awareness all at 4. Take the Armor Mastery and Blood of the Rhoyne qualities. Equip a large shield and full plate. If you decided to max Fighting at 6, you should almost always use the Cautious Attack option. Your CD is 15, your AR is 11 and you're still rolling 5D (plus some bonus dice probably) to hit people. You haven't even used up all your DP's at character creation yet. A good choice to round out the combat monster is Weapon Mastery, with your high attack rolls, that +1 will become a +2-4 most of the time.

...which is ridiculous. It all centers around the attempt to hit them first and the system is simplistic enough that the above IS the best way to make a fighter. That will beat every single other build.

That build is pretty stacked for combat; that said, I don't necessarily agree that it will beat every other build. It leaves you pretty thin for other abilities; your Animal Handling is max 3, so mounted combat could screw you. If you don't go mounted, enemies can probably keep out of your reach since you're carrying some Bulk penalties from armor/shield. Also, it talks about hitting first...but you're taking a -6 penalty to your Agility check for initiative. And even with AR 11, some foes with powerful reach weapons (like boar spears or lances) can still kill you (not to mention crossbows).

You're also losing damage capacity, since there aren't a lot of one-handed powerful weapons.

How about social combat? How useful is Magnetic, say. Or buying the Heir quality, besides being a stepping stone to Valyrian weaponry?

Can't really say, since I never played those by straight rules. Honestly, the Heir quality seems like a "feat tax".

Honestly, ASOIAF seems like the perfect setting for GURPS. It's a low tech realistic world that actually benefits from all the inane bullshit that ends up in the Low Tech supplement. I didn't actually play the ASOIAF RPG but it seemed inconsistent and poorly tested from what I read.

PoliteNewb wrote:That build is pretty stacked for combat; that said, I don't necessarily agree that it will beat every other build. It leaves you pretty thin for other abilities; your Animal Handling is max 3, so mounted combat could screw you. If you don't go mounted, enemies can probably keep out of your reach since you're carrying some Bulk penalties from armor/shield. Also, it talks about hitting first...but you're taking a -6 penalty to your Agility check for initiative. And even with AR 11, some foes with powerful reach weapons (like boar spears or lances) can still kill you (not to mention crossbows).

Yup, was thinking of that too.

180/210 points don't go terribly far, though, especially when...

Can't really say, since I never played those by straight rules. Honestly, the Heir quality seems like a "feat tax".

...you have shenanigans like this. And you have to buy up Status manually, and so on.