Protection and Defense

[Agema]

Originally Posted by Agema

Not including shield...

So no, I wasn't including shields.

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Shields simply cannot be "double counted" as per Peter Ebbesen, The example in the book with the black centaur should not be 17 Def including shield. I would rationalise it as follows.

Let imagine a Hastatus/Principe is being attacked by a fairly generic unit (10Def, 10Str, 5 damage weapon). The Hastatus has 12 protec armour and a tower shield, 15prot, +7parry. This gives a total Def (including shield) of 15.

To hit the Hastatus at all, the attacker needs a DRN roll 6 higher (10Att v 15Def). That occurs 11% of the time.

If the shield parry is added to Def including shield, then shield hits occur when the attacker's DRN roll is 6-12 higher, which occurs 10% of the time. Then, the attacker needs to beat the Hastatus's protec by 13 on a DRN roll (10Str+5Weapon v 12armour+15shield). That would mean a shield hit has a 1% of inflicting damage.

To hit armour naturally and bypass the shield entirely, the attacker would need to win the Att v Def DRN roll by a massive 13. That's 1%.

Consequently, you'd expect a Principe or Hastatus in combat with a generic infantryman to take damage well under 2% of the time. It is entirely obvious that this is not the case, and they take far, far more hits in melee.