May I Take Your Coat, Sir? - The Fun a GM Can Have With Highly Armored Characters

One problem that crops up again and again is how great armor is in Victoriana. Some Gamemasters wonder how to keep combat exciting if they can’t even damage a PC.

Here are some suggestions for fun you can have as a Gamemaster dealing with Highly Armored Player Characters. This is not a list of ways to make your player’s lives a living hell because they chose to buy armor. If a player chose to sink his character’s money into armor he deserves to be able to use it. Players need to have their character’s moments of cool and absorbing lots of damage counts as cool. Rather, this is a list of ideas to add excitement to a fight without taking anything away from the player characters.

Called Shots
In the Victoriana 3rd Edition Rulebook there are rules for called shots on page 167. This combined with the fact only the most impressive and unwieldy armor comes with a helmet should add some spice to combat. A skilled attacker will of course attack a PC in a vulnerable place. The black dice to their called shot attack means the armor is still affecting play, and the fight is much more interesting for both sides.

Armor Piercing Weapons
The Victorian world is full of tools made to tear through hard materials. Something pointy like a Pickaxe, should be able to poke though leather and metal to do some damage. These weapons could possess an Armor Piercing (AP) stat to cancel some of the targets Armor Value (AV). Armor piercing ordinarily shouldn’t negate more than two points of Armor Value.

In a fight, player characters should be quick to make anyone with an armor piercing weapon a priority.

Armor in Society
If a player character enters anywhere civilized, have a servant offer to take their coat. This is one of my favorite things to do to my players, because it always unnerves them. Refusal is awkward and could make them stick out. Worse still, other servants may offer to take their coat which could make more witnesses later. At high society occasions refusing to take off armor could be a faux pas leading to a point of Notoriety.
I have yet to throw a fight at the players in this situation, but the unease of being defenseless certainly makes the game more interesting. Of course this only really applies in civilized populated places. The social rules of London won’t matter in the middle of a jungle.

Armor Ignoring Situations
In some situations armor just doesn’t help. These occasions should be rare and obvious. In one session a boiling water elemental enveloped a player, causing scalding burns all over his body through his lined cloak. In another case, a witch conjured a lightning bolt at a player in full plate armor. The metal armor only made it worse.

In both cases the players knew it was exceptionally rare circumstances not likely to ever happen again. Both cases also happened at the climax of a campaign. Ignore a player character’s armor very rarely and the situation has to justify it.

Concerning Steely Skin
All this is well and good, but what about Steely Skin, the spell that makes all armor impossibly good. This spell was the bane of my first Victoriana campaign before it became its blessing. Two things changed this.

Any player character that can cast Steely Skin will be hounded by the other players to have the spell cast on them whenever combat may happen. If the player is not using this power as leverage, encourage them to do so. This may not apply well to every table, but the second the magician character started doing this all fights had extra drama with no effort from the GM.

The second thing Steely Skin changed was the limit of what I could throw at the party. In the second session, before the players used this spell effectively, a PC almost died from a dog bite due to amazingly bad die rolling. After that I carefully set up each combat to be exciting but not overwhelming to low level characters. The realization of what Steely Skin offers shoved any of my foolish attempts at game balance out the window. After the shock waves settles I realized I could put any monster, challenge, adversary, and threat in the game I wanted with impunity. Steely Skin made Victoriana more fun for me as a GM and more fun for the players.

Three Very Specific Types of Thieves- Star-Glazers

Here is the third and final specialist thief from Henry Mayhew’s ““London Labour and the London Poor”, followed by some interesting details on their methods and their use in a Victoriana adventure.

“Star-glazers or those who cut the panes out of shop-windows” 
Thick walls and locked doors stymie many thieves, but a star-glazer can always find a way in through a glass window.

Some thieves simply smash the glass out of a windows display and grab whatever they can before running away. Gangs of thieving children often practice this technique at candy and cigar stores, but it’s just as effective for a watchmaker, or a jewelry store.

A quieter, but more delicate technique involves sticking a knife into the windowpane’s side and prying just enough to crack a fist sized hole in the glass. If a hole is not quickly made, prying again a few inches away should be enough to pop out a section of weakened glass discreetly. Some sticky material, like tar or plaster helps noiselessly remove the loose glass. If the hole is too small for fists, or the goods too far away, the thieves insert a stick with a fishing hook tied to the end to pick up the goods.

Older more practiced thieves use equally ingenious methods to break into houses. The best time for the burglary of a home is during dinner, when the occupants are eating on the first floor, away from their valuables, and the servants are occupied. Thieves reach the home’s second floor using a ladder or roofs of nearby buildings and enter the attic window which is rarely locked. Confronted by a locked window, a thin knife is wedged in the gap of a window frame to work the latch open. The window is opened quietly and the house burgled.

Only the most successful thieves can afford to use an actual diamond (a glazier’s star) to cut glass, but a smart star-glazer with a sharp knife, a jimmy (crowbar) and pocket full of wax tapers (small candles ) for light can get in almost anywhere.

Marjorie Pennrose (Human second story girl)
Initiative: 4
Physical: 4
Mental: 6
Social: 6
Health: 8
Traits: “Respectable” young lady +2, Unexpected agility +3
Combat: Gut Punch (3), Jemmy (5)
Marjorie’s plain dress and innocent expression hide the occupational tools secreted on her person. Only the glint from a speck of glass in her hair and a few trinkets a shop girl couldn’t afford suggest any wrongdoing.

Fitzroy Burrows (Sticky-fingered human waif)
Initiative: 4
Physical: 4
Mental: 2
Social: 3
Health: 6
Traits: Gang leader +3,
Combat: Cry for help, Kick shins (3)
His dirty clothes, and small frame may inspire sympathy, but Fitzroy carries a blob of plaster wrapped in paper, and fishing hook for when his gang spots a good window.

Adventure Ideas
It may be possible for the magically inclined to take a pane of glass from a buildings and use their arts to see all that happened in the room the window looked into, like a sort of short ranged scrying glass

A window at the scene of a horrific murder shows the techniques of a star-glazer
Was this the murder’s entry or was another criminal witness to the crime?

Further Reading
If you enjoyed this series, I wrote an earlier post based on information from Henry Mayhew’s work:
How to Counterfeit a Shilling in the 1850’s

Three Very Specific Types of Thieves- Bluey-Hunters

Here is another examination of a specialized thief from Henry Mayhew’s “London Labour and the London Poor”, and a few thoughts on their use in game.  

“Bluey-Hunters, or those who purloin lead from the tops of houses”
The cramped proximity of large buildings in the Victorian city provided criminal classes with new targets: lead flashing and lead pipes. Flashing is the thin weatherproof material covering the places in a roof where elements join together, such as a chimney apron. Lead’s durability and sealing abilities adapted well to the job. Brightly shining lead flashing stands out among the dull slate tiles of Victorian roofs.
Scrap lead melted down into new shapes was untraceable and very lucrative. Dishonest or unemployed plumbers sometimes returned to the site of a job claiming some small final errand. If the owners of the house let them in and left them alone, the thieves stole every bit of lead pipe and flashing or copper boilers they could get their hands on. Similarly it was not uncommon to see a newly patched roof surrounded by roofs picked clean of their lead by opportunistic workmen. Respectable looking bluey-hunters inquired about abandoned houses. If the owner gave the thief a key so he could examine its premises, the thief had easy access to all the scrap inside and out. Simplest of all, some thieves quietly climbed up walls and spouts to reach the roof and gathered the flashing by night, while an accomplice in the street (called a crow) kept watch.

Isaac Collins (Agile dwarven workman) 
Initiative: 5
Physical: 6
Mental: 3
Social: 5
Health: 8
Traits: Dishonest Handyman +2, Climber +2,
Combat: Punch (3), Crowbar (6)
Bits of tar stuck to his clothes, and his suntanned face show evidence of Isaac’s profession, while chips of a bluish silvery lead under his fingernails evidence his crimes.

Lead Poisoning
Exposure to lead, through skin contact, inhaling or ingestion, leads to lead poisoning (or plumbism or saturnism as it was called in the 1800s). Large amounts of lead absorbed by the human body impedes natural functions leading to a variety of symptoms, such as loss of memory, yellow skin coloration, pricking sensations in the skin, anemia, headaches, insomnia, tremors, vomiting, and kidney failure.
Despite growing knowledge of the poisonings, lead was very hard to avoid in Victorian England. Lead paint covered the walls, lead was added to wine as a sweetener, and drinking water flowed through lead pipes.
A medically perceptive investigator might recognize a bluey-hunter by his symptoms.

Lead in Alchemy
In classical alchemy, lead is “ruled” by the planet Saturn (hence the name saturnism for lead poisoning), and often symbolizes death, decay, purification and transformation. Any of these associations makes the theft of lead much more sinister.

Adventure Ideas
A group of subversive revolutionaries steal lead so they can make bullets for their cause. Stolen gatling guns need a lot of bullets.

Buildings used by the Guild often have excessive amounts of lead flashing on their roofs. Is something sealed in or out? What happens to a bluey-hunter reckless enough to steal some?

Three Very Specific Types of Thieves- Cat Stealers

One of the greatest source books for the Victorian world is Henry Mayhew’s four volume report “London Labour and the London Poor”. Having interviewed workman, police and criminals all over London in the 1840’s, his work is detailed and descriptive.
In the fourth volume “Those That Will Not Work” Mayhew (with a stereotypical Victorian need to categorize) gives a fascinating list thieves followed by quick definitions of their methods and targets. All of the descriptions are flavorful, and could be used for set dressing, plot hooks, or NPCs for your Victoriana games. For the next three weeks, I’m focusing on three thieves from the list.

(This week’s post is somewhat gruesome for cat fanciers. If you are a cat lover, you can mentally insert the word “dog” whenever you want. That happened in Victorian times too.)

“Cat Stealers, or those who make away with cats for the sake of their skins and bones”
A cat carcass has a number of uses. Although discouraged in polite society, cat fur was used widely in clothing or as a cheap substitute (or filler) for rabbit or beaver fur by less scrupulous furriers; Entire coats of cat fur labeled and priced as a more enticing animal, were sold with and without the seller’s knowledge. Cat pelts of one color (especially white) sold easily.
Cat bones could also be ground up for fertilizer. A man with a sack full of cats earned a respectable amount for a day’s work. A really good cat pelt (no stains or holes, all one color) could be worth a whole shilling, a lesser pelt a few pence.
However, cats are quick and agile, and a big city has many hiding places for a panicked feline. Anyone collecting cat carcasses had a hard time of it, unless the animal was already dead or used to people and staying in one place. Cat stealers desperate for another carcass knew a house pet, though missed, would be an easy shilling.
A cat stealer, when caught, could be fined 20d for his crime, (plus restitution of the animal’s value to the owner) or imprisoned for a few months.

Jasper Avery (Scruffy weaslefolk cat stealer)
Initiative: 7
Physical: 7
Mental: 2
Social: 3
Health: 8 AV: 2 (thick coat)
Traits: Cruel and crafty +2,
Combat: Punch (4), knife (7)
Avery’s trade is recognizable by the scratches and bites up and down his arms, and the stray fur on his clothes. He carries a suspiciously stained sack and a wickedly sharp knife.

Witch bones 
In folklore, someone wanting to become a witch boils a cat (in some stories the cat is alive) until the flesh falls off the bones. Using various rituals (whichever bone floats to the top, which ever bone makes them invisible when they stick it in their mouth) the witch discovers the one bone imbued with magic. That bone is the witch bone and will give them power.

If each cat carcass yields one magic bone, any witch bone seller needs a regular supply. Or is this an outlawed necromantic ritual? Accusing a cat stealer of making witch bones could be enough to make them talk in an interrogation.

Adventure ideas
If the chance arises, an opportunistic cat stealer may try and ransom a family pet back to its family, or they may take the ransom money and keep the animal to make another shilling.

A cat stealer steals twelve cats from homes all over the city. The cats all have very distinct pelts with strikingly similar markings. No furs matching the markings have been found. If the cats aren’t being skinned, why is the thief targeting similar looking cats?