Level Up (A5E) Broken armor and maintanance

[LordBP]

Portable Medieval forge, so you can get an idea of the size/bulk of it.

Think the biggest thing will be the supply of coal or charcoal that would be needed to do major repairs.

 

[lichmaster]

Portable Medieval forge, so you can get an idea of the size/bulk of it.

Think the biggest thing will be the supply of coal or charcoal that would be needed to do major repairs.

Ok, not gonna happen, esp in a jungle

 

[lichmaster]

You can, of course, houserule however you'd like. But RAW it’s the same set of tools and just a different DC between the two checks. A5E.tools even links to the Materials page for reference.

I don't agree with this. By collecting the above info, the forge seems to be required to do a repair for heavier metals: the table has a column named "Repairability".
Maintenance thus appears to be for minor things (greasing, fixing small dents, repairing latches etc) and wouldn't require a forge, but a failed check means that the small repair was botched and the item is now damaged

 

[LordBP]

I don't agree with this. By collecting the above info, the forge seems to be required to do a repair for heavier metals: the table has a column named "Repairability".
Maintenance thus appears to be for minor things (greasing, fixing small dents, repairing latches etc) and wouldn't require a forge, but a failed check means that the small repair was botched and the item is now damaged

So, for Splint Mail/Armor, repairs might be fairly easy depending on what was damaged.

If it was the leather backing, then you would probably need a leather sewing kit and some extra leather to patch it with.

If the plates were missing, then you would need to have extra plates and either a sewing kits or a rivet kit to add the plates to the backing.

If the plates were damaged, you would need the above and also a way to remove the damaged plates (cut the rivets or material used to sew to the backing).

Chain mail would also be fairly easy to repair depending on what the damage was. You would need more rings and someway to close them.

Plate armor would be more difficult depending on what the damage was.

 

[Tessarael]

Why not allow the players to set up a sufficiently hot fire with a Survival skill check, or Arcane skill check if using magic, and then have the character making a smithing tool proficiency roll? If the conditions are poor, impose disadvantage on the roll. But I would lead into the "Rule of Cool" and allow the characters a chance of doing it, if that's what the players want to do to have fun in your session. You could still require that they fix it properly when back in town, giving it the Flaw property (i.e., so it breaks again on a critical hit against the person wearing the armor) in the meantime if they don't roll sufficiently high on the skill checks.

 

[lichmaster]

Why not allow the players to set up a sufficiently hot fire with a Survival skill check, or Arcane skill check if using magic, and then have the character making a smithing tool proficiency roll? If the conditions are poor, impose disadvantage on the roll. But I would lead into the "Rule of Cool" and allow the characters a chance of doing it, if that's what the players want to do to have fun in your session. You could still require that they fix it properly when back in town, giving it the Flaw property (i.e., so it breaks again on a critical hit against the person wearing the armor) in the meantime if they don't roll sufficiently high on the skill checks.

It's a good idea. My main point with this post was to figure out RAW and its gaps/flaws.

One of my players (but not the player of the character of this thread) is a metallurgy engineer and researcher. I'll ask him for some suggestions on what could provide some verisimilitude in a fantasy setting, maybe I'll come back to this post with some interesting info. I already know that the main difficulty is reaching high enough temperatures for long enough.

 

[aco175]

I'm guessing it is a DM call on what 'broken' means. There is stuff that needs repair and stuff that needs to be remade. If the RAW says you need a forge, then you need a forge. A sub-system of determining if something is broken to the point of being remade vs something that can be field-repaired might be needed.

I would likely allow some ideas to work in the field and have a few rolls. Maybe it can work for a while or until someone hits the armor with a critical and then it loses 1AC until after 3 crits it is useless until repaired again.