Coming up for my second event as a magician and am confused about helmets for magic users.
It looks as if the wiki says that helmets don’t interact with spellcasting but also says in other places that magicians can’t wear armour except mage armour but also says anyone can wear a helmet.
If I were to wear a metal helmet, and then Mage Armour (e.g. belt, greaves, vambraces) is this rules legal, and would I get +3 hits (MA + helmet) or +2 (MA only, ignore helmet)?
I’ve asked a few people now and had every possible answer!
on a similar note, would it work to wear a helmet and MA circlet, or helmet and MA mask? or would this likely be confusing?
The confusion is, I believe, from a combination of motives.
”Mages can’t wear armour but could have some shiny mostly ornamental stuff for bonus hits”
(IE, mage armour)
is from the basic, perhaps D&D derived, fantasy concepts of the squishy mage vs the armoured warrior. It’s a class thing. Or would be if Empire characters had any class (joke).
”Helmets for everyone, for +1 hit!”
on the other hand, is more of a safety issue. LARP combat is not a fantasy movie, where you need to be able to see the actors faces, and so they can’t possibly wear face-concealing helmets.
Nor is it an actual medieval brawl, where anyone without a helmet is frankly begging to be concussed or worse, exposing a critical and fragile body part.
But given that LARPers can, will and have (a) aimed for the head on occassion, (b) misjudged their blows in terms of wieght and precision, and (c) run into trees, walls, the ground, and each other….
wearing helmets from an OOC protective standpoint is a good idea. And how do you make gamers do something extra? You put a mechanical advantage on it….
Hence, helmets for all.
And if the concept of a wizard with a helmet sounds off, bear in mind that it can look as “is that really armour” as your mage armour…. or not. Here are some piccies of wizard helmets I found online.
(okay, there are surprisingly few of these. It looks like it might be up to Empire to get some good styles going!)
Tho’, one thing about the glorious examples of magically helmets here is, I’d fear for eyes/throats/other squishy sensitive body bits because of many pointy bits and experiences of people doing the classic “gonna do a really cool dramatic fall back, there’s obviously no one behind me” thing (when, dear readers, there’s someone just a tiny bit shorter than them behind)
I know there’s a few folks playing battlemages in Urizen who’ve gone more towards leather with painted/stitched on metallic bits
There’s also a few Marcher battlemages who go with a padded coif done up with poppets and similar, which looks really effective as mage armour, thematic to the Nation’s vibe, and gives protection all in one
I will poke about for photos as I know just text descriptions are pants
