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1 year ago ::
Apr 13, 2012 - 3:27PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Sep 30, 2009
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Current armor essentially makes you harder to hit. actually, with the exeption of magic armor, that all it does. if you thing about it, armor doesn't make it harder to hit you. if anything it slows you down and makes youu more likely to be hit. I thing that rather than having AC bonuses tied to armor it should act as damage reduction.
this could be just strait damage reduction (reduses all damage by x amount) or it could be like temporary hit points (you have a pool of extra HP that is reduces instead of your HP until it runs out.) If the latter is utilized, rules for armor repair would be most likely included as well.
what does everyone else think?
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1 year ago ::
Apr 13, 2012 - 3:48PM
#2
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I don't personally care for tracking armor HP and dealing with repairs. I've had to do that in other systems, and I found it boring. Out of the options you provided, I'd much rather go with armor as DR. I think it's definitely worth exploring in a rules module. The only hitch is how to handle shields (and there is a thread on this where I and others have expressed our thoughts).
Why Mechanics-Alignment Integration is Bad
Show
so why even play a fighter if you can play the paladin the exact same way behaviorally and get added power to boot. "Paladin" is about accepting better game-enhancing mechanics at the price of more rigid in game behavior.
Really? So it goes something like this?
Fighter: "I want to be a paladin."
NPC: "Really?"
Fighter: "Yes."
NPC: "Very well." Starts reading from a holy book while still in-character "Do you accept having to choose and stick to the lawful good alignment, eventhough neither of us actually knows that it exists or what it is?"
Fighter: "I do."
NPC: "Do you reject good game balance because you accidentally rolled a high Charisma?"
Fighter: "What?"
NPC: "I don't know what it means either."
Fighter: "Oh. Umm, ok I do."
NPC: "In the name of all that is metagamey and broken, accept these better game enhancing mechanics."
Fighter: "These what?"
NPC: "Just get out there and try to fulfill a million different people's notion of good while not violating and part of any of them."
So the system is designed such that every single hit needs to be described to avoid confusion? Here's a scenario. The players are nudists, everybody in the world are nudists, it's not weird, it's totally normal in this land. They are naked and they fight drakes taking damage throughout, but healing up with surges. Later they meet the guy who raised the drakes.
Part 1: I didn't describe any of the hits. What does he see?
Part 2: Lets say I described the drakes as biting the players, yet they healed up. What does he see?
D20 Modern Toon PC Race.
Mecha Pilot's Skill Challenge Emporium.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 13, 2012 - 4:58PM
#3
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Flat damage reduction is tricky. Taking X damage off the top means that multiple attacks for low damage can be very weak, while single attacks for higher damage can be very strong. It's also tough to implement for a wide range of armor types. If the weakest armor (leather? padded?) has DR 1, does the best have DR 10? That sounds too high, but there needs to be a range of values to make different armor types fit in the game. Even DR 5 is extremely powerful at low levels. Balancing flat DR is really tough.
Percentage DR is a great model for computer games, since the math is never trouble for the user. % DR is cool when you're getting hit for 100 damage and knocking it down by even 1 or 2 more points can help over time. Maybe the wizard takes 8% off the damage, the rogue reduces it by 15%, the cleric by 25%, and the fighter by 40%. These are significant differences, but not as dramatic as the flat DR can be. Finding slightly better armor that shaves off a tiny bit more damage is useful but not game breaking.
I'd expect any flat DR to be pretty unbalanced unless D&D started using BIG numbers for hit points, and % DR would be unfun for most groups trying to run a combat.
Ed_Warlord, on what it takes to make a thread work: I think for it to be really constructive, everyone would have to be honest with each other, and with themselves. Quotation of the moment
Show
Areleth: How does this help the problems we have with Fighters? Do you think that every time I thought I was playing D&D what I was actually doing was slamming my head in a car door and that if you just explain how to play without doing that then I'll finally enjoy the game?
Quotation of ALL moments
Show
TD: That's why they put me on the front of every book. This is the dungeon, and I am the dragon.
A word of warning though: I'm totally not a level appropriate encounter.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 13, 2012 - 5:13PM
#4
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I've always liked armor as DR, but it is tricky to do right. EarthDawn did a very good job of implementing it, and I wouldn't mind seeing something along those lines as an optional rule in a modular 5e game system. It would take some effort for the designers to do it right and make sure it worked in the DnD system, though. I'd rather they spend their time on other, higher priority (at least to me) issues than this.
In the end, by having armor make you harder to hit, it means you are reducing damage by not taking it (damage) in the first place. So, really, it is still doing its purpose.
Balance = Equally effective, but different, ways of reaching a goal or overcoming an obstacle.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 13, 2012 - 5:52PM
#5
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Date Joined:
Aug 27, 2007
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Armor as DR has problems with balance against groups of enemies -- unless it's very low relative to typical damage, either tough characters are immune to groups of foes, or lightly armored characters who get attacked are absolutely shredded. If we use DR equal to armor bonus (e.g. 2 for leather, 8 for plate), 1d10 attacks average 0.3 damage against plate, 3.6 damage against leather, 5.5 against someone unarmored, meaning the unarmored target is 18 times as vulnerable as the armored character. In 3e, the maximum vulnerability difference would be x9 (plate only hit on a 20, unarmored hit on a 12+), and it's usually much less (typically you use critters that hit the heavy armor guys on 15 or so, so 7+ on the unarmored guy, which is a ratio of 2.33). To keep that ratio in a DR scheme, you need attacks doing 4d6 or so. And that's for level 1 monsters.
One possibility would be armor dice -- plate is 1d8, a breastplate is 1d6, a chain shirt is 1d4, leather is 1d2 -- as that lets smaller attacks leak through.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 13, 2012 - 6:04PM
#6
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One possibility would be armor dice -- plate is 1d8, a breastplate is 1d6, a chain shirt is 1d4, leather is 1d2 -- as that lets smaller attacks leak through.
Or you could go with a damage cap form of DR. Instead of "DR 15" meaning the first 15 points do nothing it could be changed to mean only the first 15 points of damage are taken.
Why Mechanics-Alignment Integration is Bad
Show
so why even play a fighter if you can play the paladin the exact same way behaviorally and get added power to boot. "Paladin" is about accepting better game-enhancing mechanics at the price of more rigid in game behavior.
Really? So it goes something like this?
Fighter: "I want to be a paladin."
NPC: "Really?"
Fighter: "Yes."
NPC: "Very well." Starts reading from a holy book while still in-character "Do you accept having to choose and stick to the lawful good alignment, eventhough neither of us actually knows that it exists or what it is?"
Fighter: "I do."
NPC: "Do you reject good game balance because you accidentally rolled a high Charisma?"
Fighter: "What?"
NPC: "I don't know what it means either."
Fighter: "Oh. Umm, ok I do."
NPC: "In the name of all that is metagamey and broken, accept these better game enhancing mechanics."
Fighter: "These what?"
NPC: "Just get out there and try to fulfill a million different people's notion of good while not violating and part of any of them."
So the system is designed such that every single hit needs to be described to avoid confusion? Here's a scenario. The players are nudists, everybody in the world are nudists, it's not weird, it's totally normal in this land. They are naked and they fight drakes taking damage throughout, but healing up with surges. Later they meet the guy who raised the drakes.
Part 1: I didn't describe any of the hits. What does he see?
Part 2: Lets say I described the drakes as biting the players, yet they healed up. What does he see?
D20 Modern Toon PC Race.
Mecha Pilot's Skill Challenge Emporium.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 13, 2012 - 6:06PM
#7
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Current armor essentially makes you harder to hit. actually, with the exeption of magic armor, that all it does. if you thing about it, armor doesn't make it harder to hit you. if anything it slows you down and makes youu more likely to be hit. I thing that rather than having AC bonuses tied to armor it should act as damage reduction.
this could be just strait damage reduction (reduses all damage by x amount) or it could be like temporary hit points (you have a pool of extra HP that is reduces instead of your HP until it runs out.) If the latter is utilized, rules for armor repair would be most likely included as well.
what does everyone else think?
If I remember correctly Star Wars did the whole DR for Armor. It was a good idea, but didn't work kind of like Communism...j/k >:D
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1 year ago ::
Apr 13, 2012 - 6:26PM
#8
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The 3.5 Unearthed arcane has this variant rule for armor as DR. My group tried it out and the fighters loved it but everyone else hated it. Basically light armor gave you DR 1 or 2, medium armor DR 2 or 3 and heavy armor DR 4 or 5 and the AC bonus for everything is roughly halved. Part of the adventure involved large groups of goblins ambushing with poisoned weapons. The fighters were immune to the goblins and tactics such as flanking or other bonuses to hit were useless because unless they scored a critical hit they could not injure the fighter. So maybe something like DR with a minimum of one point of damage getting through would have worked but just by it’s self that variant was not a good fit for us.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 13, 2012 - 6:52PM
#9
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Date Joined:
Feb 13, 2012
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It would certainly be more realistic for armor to reduce damage. To be realistic it would have to reduce it differently vs different sort of damage, and have some sort of threshold beyond which it's just been punched through and is no help. That would all be complicated and wouldn't mech well with how simplified and unrealistic hit points are. If you took some sort of wounds instead of having hit points, and armor reduced the severity of wounds, maybe?
Or you could lump the protection of armor in with hit points and just have armor add directly to them.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 13, 2012 - 7:20PM
#10
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Date Joined:
Oct 26, 2004
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What if we counte by having armor make you easier to hit?
Low or non armored characters take fewer hits but those that do hurt more, while an armored character takes a lot of hits, and each one hurts less.
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