Old armor conversion: 1 simple rule we're trying out

[Pyrocat]

The main complaint my roommate and I have with pre-2.0 armor is that it stays in your hand and effectively reduces your hand size. 2.0 armor largely addresses this by making them cards you display. So we came up with a house-rule idea for pre-2.0 armor:

Add the following text to the beginning of any armor that does not already have a Display power:

"You may recharge a card to display this armor."

and any "reveal to" effect on those cards changes to:

"While displayed draw this card, or reveal, to"

What this looks like in practice is a pretty huge boost to existing armor. There is a small cost of recharging one card in order to display old armors, but overall a lot more flexibility. It's a small nerf for reveal powers, in that you have to draw it into your hand to use it, and then (optionally) recharge another card to display it again, or you can just leave it in your hand and use the reveal powers.

Yes, it's a big boost, but armors have always been the black sheep of loot in our games. I've never seen anyone take an armor card feat, and people have passed on characters that have a lot of armor with small hand sizes because it just gets stuck in your hand, and doesn't feel fun to draw when you know you're probably just going to recharge it when you reset your hand. I love the 2.0 armors, but I don't want to just throw out all of the cool armors from the past versions. This turns armor into something you look forward to, something you can display for future flexibility.

Any thoughts on this rule? Any game-breaking issues we haven't thought of? Thoughts on how to balance it better?

[Jenceslav]

Hello pyrocat, my own conversion rule when converting pre-Core armors into Core terminology was:
Each armor (apart from shields and helmets), including shield-clothing, gets "Display. While displayed:", while its properties are derived from Core armor of the same type.
It's a breastplate? Unless it is a lightweight Elven Breastplate, it will be "When you suffer Combat damage, you may recharge to reduce it by X." instead of drawing the card. This way, there is some consistency with Core armors - and a small decrease in power for some, when it used to be reveal to reduce by X, is offset by the increase in versatility.
If you are interested, I'll try to compile the "type => function" list from my converted armors.

Recharge a card to display is an interesting approach, but changes the functionality too much, if you e.g. have a pre-Core chainmail and Core chainmail...

[Whipstitch]

For non-Society games, we play that non-Helm, non-Shield armors can be displayed (similar to Jenceslav's "Display. While displayed:" addition), but you lose any display powers. We keep the powers as they are rather than making conversions.

[Pyrocat]

Interesting. How do you deal with reveal powers, do they become recharge powers?

[Jenceslav]

No, reveal powers turned into "draw this card" on displayed armors. Compare e.g. the Magic Full Plate in Core and RotR:
https://pacg.fandom.com/wiki/Magic_Full_Plate
They made some fundamental changes for many armor types and many of the "display to reduce damage" ones became "draw this (displayed) card" or in some lesser armors, "recharge (this displayed card)".
Note that in many cases the amount of damage protected is not the same in post-Core world (full plate again), and some armors now protect against other damage types as well (i.e. Cold for leather and hide armors).

[Whipstitch]

I meant to say, you lose any reveal powers. Can't reveal a card that's not in your hand, so for those armors, we have to decide whether it's worth taking up a spot in our hands for the reveal power.

[Pyrocat]

Cool so either leave it in your hand or display it and lose the reveal power. We'll try it both ways and see how it feels, thanks for the feedback.

Jenceslav, while I appreciate the effort, I don't think we want to reference a sheet for each armor we get. Hence why I was trying to come up with rule that could be applied mostly unilaterally.

[Jenceslav]

That's completely fine, Pyrocat. You can do whatever you want with your game :)

We solved the "referring to a sheet" by printing the converted powers onto adhesive paper and pasting it over the cards' power box. It took a LOT of manual work, but we have both S&S and MM "converted" into Core terminology.
Honestly, translation into Core terminology helped my friends to understand and parse out the overly complicated wordings of some cards. Neither of us is a native speaker ;)