Impracticable But Sexy Fantasy Armour - Reference Guide

By Antar Dragon

World Primer & Basic Concepts

The core aspect of Impracticable But Sexy Fantasy Armour (known as IBSFA from here forward) was born from a discussion in the stream chat of one of Noben’s streams.  The core idea was how a stereotypical female adventurer in a chainmail bikini would work according to role play game rules in the vein of Dungeon and Dragons and other similar pen and paper RPGs (fighters have increased armour resistance with the less armour they wear and other seemly silly ideas).

Since then IBSFA has developed into an RPG of it’s own with unique world lore and IBSFA versions of typical fantasy monsters and concepts.  The world has a distinct level of humour, odd ideas and serious mixed in together.  This is a world where it lore tells of a city that was flattened by a Tarrasque that sat on it, where the most horrific curse binds a person to a dead sub realm to live an immortal existence of cannibalism and unending battle, and where a sexy chainmail bikini is a viable form of armour for a front line fighter.

The world of IBSFA is similar to a typical medieval fantasy trope with a dash of steampunk technology and magic.  Lore wise the steampunk technology and magic is quite uncommon among the various civilizations but not unheard of.  The world is also linked to a number of sub realms where the fundamental laws of nature can be quite different than the world.

The Chaos Engine

The world of IBSFA is actually our Earth.  A nerd - a fan of strong warrior women in chainmail bikinis and wielding improbably large swords, discovers the Chaos Engine, a device with power greater than any ultimate god.  The Chaos Engine allows it’s user to completely change the very fundamental laws of the universe, completely rewriting history and creating anything of their desire.

It’s is this Chaos Engine a dungeon master can use as an excuse to take the core ideas of IBSFA and insert it their own worlds and campaigns.  The Chaos Engine can be used as an excuse for an ultimate goal for their adventurers or to insert their own ideas into IBSFA.

Rule Concepts

The rules of IBSFA is a work in progress, but I do have some ideas I can explain here.  For reference to this section: the board is the playing area, typically made up of a grid of squares that I will call units as a measure of distance on the board.

• Line of Fire - physical and magical projectiles follow a trajectory (a set maximum number of units) across the board.  Projectiles can hit anything in front of or behind of a target - be it allies, enemies, neutral mobs or objects and terrain.  Accuracy of the shot is dependant on the shooter/caster’s dice rolls and character statistics, and if the target is able to dodge the shot (in which case the projectile will continue on the trajectory behind the target).  A critical failure on accuracy of the projectile can cause it to fire towards an ally requiring dodge rolls and ricochet off any obstacles or mobs it hits.
• Ricochet - a follow on from Line of Fire, some character skills, unlucky critical failures, and weapons can cause projectiles to bounce off an object, terrain or character that it hits.  The ricochet projectile will continue on at either at a set angle or back along its previous trajectory depending on factors such as the nature of the projectile, whether the ricochet was the result of a skill, dice roll failure and how many units it had already travelled before the ricochet.  The use of a ricochet projectile could be exploited by player characters to out flank tough or covered enemies.  The use of such a tactic could be very dangerous and require unique character skills and equipment.  Failing such a combo would cause damage to allies.
• Magic Control - instead of each class having a specific list of spells that have set statistics, magic spells in IBSFA is more flexible.  Spells have a base which the caster can induce effects into, altering statistics and effects like elemental effect, trajectory, area of effect and other factors.  Altering the spell would work on a point based statistic called Magic Control.  Characters would have a pool of points they can use to alter the effects of the base spell.  The number of points a character can use would theoretically be limitless, however the greater the number of points used, the greater chance for the spell to backfire on the caster or produce a random effect.

An example of Wizard’s base spell would be a Ball of Arcane Force - the Wizard produces a ball of magical force in the palm of their hand that does 6d physical damage on contact with the target.  The Wizard could throw this spell as it is at the target (throwing the spell like a physical ball would require an agility check), but with a couple of points into trajectory, the spell would then launch a set number of units along a Line of Fire from the Wizard’s hand, replacing the agility check with a statistic more in line for a Wizard.  If the Wizard had access to fire magic, the caster could use a set number of points to change the physical aspect of the spell to fire damage.