Regarding Mork Borg armor dice and alternatives
I was reading the Fomoria quickstart by Tania Herrero last week and it's a vibe, looks lovely. If you like heavily-armored animal people and shades of red and orange you should go check it out. However, like some other games based off of Mork Borg, it still uses the silly little armor dice. Everytime I play a borg-like with someone, I think the armor dice shouldn't be there, so I thought I'd try to offer some alternatives.
In case you didn't go check out the cool pdf I linked above - maybe you aren't into shades of orange, I get it - the armor rules (p18) read as follows:
When you receive damage, roll your armor die and subtract the result from the total damage.
- Light Armor (Tier 1): -d2
- Medium Armor (Tier 2): -d4, +2 DR on Agility tests including defence
- Heavy Armor (Tier 3): -d6, +4 DR on Agility tests, defence is +2 DR
If armor is damaged into a lower tier, its penalties on Agility tests are not modified. When armor is reduced below tier 1 it is rendered unusable and cannot be repaired.
Fomoria is a little bit clearer than Mork Borg, but it's basically the same rules.
My problem with it1 is back and forth between fiction and mechanics for a lack of payoff...? Not exactly a rules funnel, but I think it's tangential. Like, you roll your die to determine if you hit, big ol' D20 against target number. But then can you or the GM do anything about that? No, go roll damage. Now can anyone say anything about it? Nope, go roll armor. Now we can finally decide what happens, but it's generally just "you hit the thing" or "you didn't hit the thing".
I think several dice rolls that feed into eachother can be excused if they lead somewhere interesting, such as the Heart resistance roll (which is still a bit cumbersome for me), and also that Borgs in general flow fast enough for it not to be a major issue. I love rolling dice to divine stuff as much as the next person but like, it's kinda clunky, I don't know. So, little brainstorms:
- Tier could just be the number that you subtract from the damage, in Bastionland/Cairn fashion. Has less dice rolling, but it's less swingy and Borgs tend to be about swingyness. Might also make armor weaker in general?
- You could roll your armor die along with your ritual/spell die at the beginning of the day, the result being how much damage is subtracted from attacks for that day2. Doesn't make a lot of sense from a simulation/realism point of view, but if you cared about that I don't think you'd be playing Mork Borg.
- Tier could be the number you reduce the DR by when being attacked3. A bit weird since it's an Agility test per the rules, but it's also called "defence" separately, so...
- Tier reduces the attacker's damage die by that many steps. Might also make armor stronger in general?
- Any of the flat damage reduction rules with the Armor dice being rolled as usage dice at the end of the combat. I guess you could roll it when hit, since it runs parallel and technically doesn't halt the flow.
- Create a table to cross-reference armor and test values, call it the Tier Handling and Armor Cross-referencing table, with an additional Tier 0 for no armor. We could probably shorten that name though.
Honestly, if I ran any morkies again, I'd probably go with the daily roll. It seems funny and this way everyone can roll their daily dice together, whether you're spellful or not.
anb
My real problem with it is that you have to roll half a die. Nobody likes rolling half a die.↩
Maybe some sickos could meld this together with usage dice. Rolled a 1? Your leather vest rips in half, you realize the insides of your armor are a pile of rust, etc. The famous hole in your shirt that the washing machine insidiously left there, but you didn't notice it until you put it on next morning.↩
5e AC-shaped. Might have to mention this in the safety tools.↩