Obviously I'm not saying that, least of all literally, so why claim I am?
You are saying using the rules as written is "fighting the system".
I'm saying that particular approach is mechanically completely unsound and the game is specifically not designed around you randomly deciding the PCs have to be unarmoured at times.
And by claiming I'm "randomly deciding" rather than crafting a scenario that deliberately plays to the event in question you are making it pretty obvious that any claims of not engaging in good faith coming from you are pure projection.
Also you're flatly wrong - if there "wasn't supposed to be a normal fight",
There isn't. It's supposed to be a Sword of Damocles situation where if the PCs mess up badly enough to start a fight they feel glad to have escaped with their lives. A fight where the PCs are not armoured is 100% using the RAW - and it is also 100% not a normal situation. However
by having the rules there in the rulebook it is something that the rulebook is explicitly enabling happening.
If it was meant to be a never event there wouldn't be an explicit rule for it. Daggerheart isn't some GURPSeque system which tries to have rules for everything. It isn't even some 3.Xesque system with massive piles of modifiers. It is a pretty lean system. And it is a pretty lean system which made the deliberate choice of having unarmoured characters being extremely vulnerable rather than e.g. starting them with thresholds of 4/10 and +2 to evasion (possibly even with 2 armour points).
So tell me in your own words
why do you think Daggerheart made unarmoured characters so vulnerable? I see only three options:
- Because they didn't care.
- Because they thought it would be realistic
- Because it could lead to interesting and dramatic situations
Me, I think the only answer consistent with Daggerheart is the third option.
the NPCs would not have damage thresholds identical to those of NPCs who are explicitly combat NPCs, but in fact they do
It might have escaped your attention but
NPCs do not use the same rules in Daggerheart as PCs. If the values were the same then armoured NPCs would have armour points.
- and in some cases they're even higher than the combat NPCs! If they're for "non-combat" situations where everyone is unarmoured,
And now you are creating a complete strawman. They aren't intended exclusively for non-combat situations. And why do you think a petty noble who literally has a rapier on their person in the statblock is unprotected given they made the deliberate choice to walk around carrying the rapier? Or the merchant, prepared for trouble with a club isn't wearing a gambeson?
You can't have it both ways. You're effectively giving NPC's Schrodinger's armour (i.e. they're not wearing any unless the fact is tested, in which case they are), which is dumb and anti-fiction in a fiction-first game.
Nope. You're effectively assuming I do things the daftest way possible. And don't e.g. have
all the nobles disarmed in the presence of the paranoid emperor, with his guards still wearing full body armour.
Now, if we're being real, we know they just have those numbers for if a fight breaks out - but it's ridiculous to break the game in this way and attempt to force PCs into using unintended numbers, especially if you do it repeatedly.
Do you really think that there are
any unintended numbers in the Daggerheart rulebook?