Armor class

[qstoffe]

Personally I dislike systems were you either get hit for maximum damage or not at all. If you face a tough enemy (with a high chance to hit) with such a system you'd do just as good playing without armor than with average armor. Such systems feels really pointless as your choice of armor is ignored.

 

I was thinking of this when I recently played the new XCOM game. As I ramped up the difficulty the enemies got much greater chance to hit. The effect of this was that cover (sort of like armor) got pretty pointless and you did just as good without it. Much too random imo.

 

I don't like game mechanics that "lumps choices together" by i.e. ignoring armor. A sliding scale is much less random and frustrating imo.

[Gromnir]

am not sure if a poll works for us. armour class is not a d&d favorite of ours. that being said, you can't just change ac to dr (damage resistance) and keep all other combat mechanics from d&d the same. obsidian has an opportunity to do whatever they want with combat mechanics. as such, am doubting they go with a d&d-esque ac model. 'course that doesn't exactly shed light on obsidian's chosen alternative.

 

we would like to hear obsidian's thoughts. is a square-one issue.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[rjshae]

D&D 'Armor Class' is an archaic approach that deserves to go into the dustbin of history.

[Kane_Severance]

I think armor should mitigate damage, while shields should mitigate chance to be hit. Heavier armor can have higher DR, but at the cost of decreasing your ability to dodge blows.

[Tamerlane]

Why should armour not reduce damage on critical hits?

 

That seems like an awfully arbitrary inclusion in the poll option...

 

EDIT: Also, from Josh Sawyer's formspring:

 

"For P:E are you thinking that armour will make a person harder to hit, or harder to damage? Or a combination of the two?"

 

"Probably harder to damage, but I haven't discussed it in detail with Tim."

Edited October 24, 2012 by Tamerlane

[Karranthain]

Why should armour not reduce damage on critical hits?

 

That seems like an awfully arbitrary inclusion in the poll option...

 

A critical hit could, for an instance, mean that the attacker struck the weak point in the armour.

[skelleton]

I would like to see a System, where heavy armor makes it more likely to get hit, but mitigates most types of damage. The way i see it, somebody in full plate is not going to be able to jump around and evade hits.

I generally like the system of D&D, with the different damage types, especially since they could be used to determine a weapons effectiveness vs armor. However i feel, that armor penetration as a stat on weapons is probably the better and easier to balance approach.

 

Shields should mostly change the chance to be hit, but some weapons such as crossbows and maybe axes should be able to do damage on a successful block. Possibly something like when a crossbow bolt gets blocked, the armor value of the shield and the worn armor is applied to the damage calculation. And when it is not blocked only the worn armor is considered in the damage calculation.

Penetration for melee weapons should look different. Axes and Hammers should have a small chance to penetrate the shield and cause an injury to the shield arm. That injury should lower the chance to block.

 

Armor should also effect Magic, for example lightning should be more effective on metal armor, while short duration fire or ice should be less effective. Physical projectiles summoned weapons created by magic should behave like their normal counterparts.

 

Lighter armor should allow for more avoidance, some evasion feats or skills should not work with the heavier armors.

The balance between those should shift the heavier the armor gets. (Ideally i would like to see a system that checks what kind of armor you are wearing on which body part and calculates damage based on the body part hit and the armor worn there. But that would be too hard to implement and balance.)

 

Armor should also have an influence on certain combat related abilities like sneaking, knock down/stun chance, time to stand up after stun and such.

If a rouge in leather bull charges a warrior in plate armor he should have a much smaller of knocking him down compared to the reversed roles(The rouge could also evade the knockdown entirely though, so that balances it out again). The rouge should be able to get up again much faster however. The knockdown would strip away the rouges defense since he can't evade anymore, while the warrior keeps his defense. If they spent equal time on the ground it would either mean a death sentence to the rouge or rather meaningless to the warrior. If different times on the ground don"t work then maybe it could be something like having a higher chance to be critically hit the heavier the armor.

[Nerei]

Personally I would go with making armour reduce the damage a person takes. Wearing a suit of plate does not really make you harder to hit, I would actually say it makes you easier to hit as it does restrict your movement. However a nice sheet of steel plate with a decent amount of padding will reduce the damage you take from a sword by dissipating the energy over a larger area.

Add a dodge mechanic of some sort and have armour affect it negatively with the more restrictive (not heavier) armour giving a larger penalty and it is a matter of weighing the chance of dodging the attack vs absorbing part of it.

[Larkaloke]

It makes more sense for armour to have an effect on how much damage the character takes rather than on whether or not they get hit. I'd like even more if how much of an effect depended partly on the type of armour, and partly on the type of weapon that was being used.

 

I think armour shouldn't have an effect on being hit or not, as opposed to heavier armour having a negative effect. Unless your armour is poorly fitted and/or you've been fighting for a good long time already, you'll still be able to dodge blows in it. Since there is stamina, I think it would make sense if the heaviness of the armour instead effected stamina regeneration -- the less of it the heavier armour you wear.

[Karkarov]

Simple approach works best, honestly it should probably be a combination of the two. Either way there isn't any reason to discuss the D&D implication which it sort of feels like that is where this is heading. The reason being is that PE won't use D&D rules, they don't have the license. So they will need to come up with their own mechanics on this.

[Hellfell]

Armor class in D&D mitigated the chance of being damaged, not the chance of being hit. A character in full plate who successfully did a defense check might still have been hit but he didn't suffer any damage because he 1) blocked the attack, 2) dodged the attack, 3) got hit but the armor prevented the damage. The game didn't tell about this because it didn't really matter how exactly a character defended.

 

 

[Nerei]

Simple approach works best, honestly it should probably be a combination of the two. Either way there isn't any reason to discuss the D&D implication which it sort of feels like that is where this is heading. The reason being is that PE won't use D&D rules, they don't have the license. So they will need to come up with their own mechanics on this.

 

They might just be able to use D20 should they want to, that is pretty much what Paizo Publishing does with Pathfinder.

 

I think armour shouldn't have an effect on being hit or not, as opposed to heavier armour having a negative effect. Unless your armour is poorly fitted and/or you've been fighting for a good long time already, you'll still be able to dodge blows in it. Since there is stamina, I think it would make sense if the heaviness of the armour instead effected stamina regeneration -- the less of it the heavier armour you wear.

 

Mail armour is pretty much fully supported by the shoulders (except maybe a belt for additional support) and fairly restrictive in terms of movement. It is badly fitted by most definitions. Plate could be said to be easier to wear simply due to it having the weight distributed over the body and not just hanging on the shoulders.

I would very much say that your movement is restricted while wearing mail compared to a t-shirt

[Tamerlane]

Why should armour not reduce damage on critical hits?

 

That seems like an awfully arbitrary inclusion in the poll option...

 

A critical hit could, for an instance, mean that the attacker struck the weak point in the armour.

So... couldn't it just do more damage? Or apply a status effect? And wouldn't that make critical hits worthless against characters that don't rely on armour?

 

The point is that the poll picks one random "thing that critical hits could do" and applies it to a topic that has **** all to do with critical hits.

 

EDIT: And for the record, I support damage reduction from armour, block chance (especially against ranged attacks) from shield.

Edited October 24, 2012 by Tamerlane

[The Guilty Party]

Damage reduction from armor, damage avoidance from shield, dodge, etc.

 

Edit: AC made sense in a pen and paper game so that you cut down on calculations. Now with these new fangled computer things, we can dispose of such crude abstractions.

Edited October 24, 2012 by The Guilty Party

[Karranthain]

Why should armour not reduce damage on critical hits?

 

That seems like an awfully arbitrary inclusion in the poll option...

 

A critical hit could, for an instance, mean that the attacker struck the weak point in the armour.

So... couldn't it just do more damage? Or apply a status effect? And wouldn't that make critical hits worthless against characters that don't rely on armour?

 

The point is that the poll picks one random "thing that critical hits could do" and applies it to a topic that has **** all to do with critical hits.

 

EDIT: And for the record, I support damage reduction from armour, block chance (especially against ranged attacks) from shield.

 

Could be both, actually. E.g.

 

Critical hit deals twice the normal damage. It goes all through, despite armour's high damage resistance.

 

But as you've said, that's not the topic of this discussion - I was merely commenting on that portion of your post I have quoted.

[morrow1nd]

As for me, armor class effecting both chance to get hit and mitigating some damage could improve combat mechanics...Seems fair for me!

 

And for the critical hits

 

How about combat feats effecting how much of your damage will ignore your opponents damage resistance ? (:

Edited October 24, 2012 by morrow1nd

[Tsuga C]

Bring on a mix of the two so as to reflect the reality of armor--deflection and absorbtion of kinetic energy. Some armors, obviously, are better than others at one or both and the armor class system needs to reflect that well enough within the game world so as to justify the added cost of superior armor.

[rjshae]

Damage reduction from armor, damage avoidance from shield, dodge, etc.

 

Edit: AC made sense in a pen and paper game so that you cut down on calculations. Now with these new fangled computer things, we can dispose of such crude abstractions.

Some damage avoidance can come from armor designed to deflect weapon blows, like angled surfaces on plate armor. But yeah, armor should mainly be about redistributing energy and reducing penetration.

[qstoffe]

Edit: AC made sense in a pen and paper game so that you cut down on calculations. Now with these new fangled computer things, we can dispose of such crude abstractions.

 

Actually the swedish PnP games "Dragons and Demons" and "Mutant" both featured damage reduction from armor. They also allowed you to target specific body parts that had individual armor class and health for each part.

[Pshaw]

I personally think Armor Class should reduce all physical damage regardless of it being critical or not. I think armor with higher AC (plate mail) should also make your character move slower and dodge less. This could be offset with perks and talents and so on. I think light armors (hide and leather) should have higher AC than clothes (including robes) but not have any sort of negative effects on movement speed or dodge. Finally I think that clothing should come with a base resistance to magic (doesn't make logical sense but it helps with balance) but no AC.

 

I'm not a fan of heavy armor being 'strictly better' than lighter ones because they have more AC. I like a balance between the 3. If you want your mage to wear plate mail so he's not getting shot down with arrows and guns I'm all for it. If you have a Kensai or other finesse type fighter that wants to wear hide armor or clothes I'm all for that. I don't like the idea of armor just being restricted by class. I think class power should be balanced totally separately from armor type and armor types should be balanced against each other.

Edited October 24, 2012 by Pshaw

[Greensleeve]

While I did vote for Armour as damage mitigation only, I could see a system where all armours have two stats, one 'DR' stat, which determines how much damage it blocks, and one 'AC' stat, which puts a limit on your agility, or whatever, with regards to being hit, sort of like Max DEX bonus. So unarmoured character would get his full agility bonus to 'AC', whereas someone in leather armour might have 4 DR and 8 AC, or whatever, whereas someone in a full plate would have 14 DR and only 1 AC. The numbers are merely examples, completely without weight.

 

Such a system could work, quite well even, but I'm not sure whether it would be the right way to go.

[Larkaloke]

Mail armour is pretty much fully supported by the shoulders (except maybe a belt for additional support) and fairly restrictive in terms of movement. It is badly fitted by most definitions. Plate could be said to be easier to wear simply due to it having the weight distributed over the body and not just hanging on the shoulders.

I would very much say that your movement is restricted while wearing mail compared to a t-shirt

 

Yes, you're quite right. I was speaking about plate, and I should've specifed that (not sure why I didn't); I agree about mail, since that's obviously true. I would say that in both cases you would be significantly more restricted than wearing a t-shirt, certainly, but not enough moreso than wearing leather that it would make all that much of a difference to dodging -- although whether or not that should be reflected statistically would, to my mind, depend on how large a range of numbers we get for such things. Percentile based? Sure. D20 based? Maybe not. Stiff, tough leather is also noticeably more restricting than a t-shirt, and soft enough leather that it isn't at least a bit restricting isn't much good as armour.

[Trap]

Also how about Plate armours are more vulnerable to Cold / Lightning - and Chance to Be Frozen / Slowed

 

Cloth / Leather armours more vulnerable to Fire / Magic - and chance to catch on Fire ;p

Edited October 25, 2012 by Trap

[Archmage Silver]

I'd like to have armor class as a separate stat from dodge/reflex saves. AC should provide constant passive damage mitigation, but on critical hits it should have reduced efficiency, or simply be ignored. I see problems with it being ignored altogether though, so perhaps reducing its effectiveness against critical hits by, say, 50% would be a better idea.

[Tamerlane]

Also how about Plate armours are more vulnerable to Cold / Lightning - and Chance to Be Frozen / Slowed

 

Cloth / Leather armours more vulnerable to Fire / Magic - and chance to catch on Fire ;p

Totally ****ing unrelated to armour:

 

"Cold = slowed/frozen" has always bugged me. You don't move slower because you're really ****ing cold. And if you're cold enough to freeze in place, you've got way more serious issues than the dude swinging his sword at you. Speaking "realistically", cold would make you more clumsy and make armour more fragile. I get that it's Magic Cold! and that it is the way it is in so many games for gameplay reasons and I'm pretty much the only person ever bugged by this and it's probably because I've spent so much god damn time swinging an axe into a piece of wood in the middle of a Saskatchewan winter, but...

 

Eh. It still bugs me.