Armor class

[Archmage Silver]

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.

 

You do if you're a lizard man or an insectoid.

[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.

 

You do if you're a lizard man or an insectoid.

Further derailing of the thread:

 

Damn, man, you just reminded me of one of the stranger sights I've ever seen. It was... four years ago? Not sure exactly. One of the coldest days of the year. I was still living with my parents out in the country at the time and a bunch of wasps had made their home in an old shed that summer. So on that ball-shrinking day we trudged through the snow with hammers and goose-necks in hand to dismantle the north wall of the building. Every panel we removed would expose a little bit more of their colony. Some of them would just sit there and huddle together but tons of them flew out and tried to fight and just... died. Like, every once-in-a-while one might actually reach you and try to do something and maybe get stuck in your jacket, but for the most part, they'd just fly up and out and then drop.

 

**** was weird.

 

Armour should reduce damage.

[Taletotell]

Armor really does slow you down as a matter of physics. You have to overcome a lot more inertia, even with we'll fitted plate.

I would like to see full plate restricted to horseback for the most part. It really wasn't designed for long walks.

Also, a plain chain shirt hurts the shoulders, but it can be supported by attaching it to stiff leather. Think about a cheap backpack putting the weight of your books on your shoulders compared to a good pack with best and waist straps and also hiking packs with frames. Any armor can be supported.

Make the ability to dodge a function of agility, and DR a function of armor. Then make sure armor reduces dodging ability. Full plate and packin steel mod for BG handled this reasonably well. PE could do it better.

I like that shields could reduce the chance of being hit, but they make dodging harder too. Evasion of larger stuff (explosions) would suffer.

[Xinxspuz]

Haha, finally, an environment where wasps get their comeuppance. It never gets even CLOSE to that cold down here, and I swear I find a new nest of yellow jackets or wasps every time I start to trim the lawn.

 

On the subject of how to handle armor...

Old-school D&D used Armor Class, which reduced the probability of being hit, but not the actual damage. (For the purposes of this discussion, I will use "Armor Class" to refer to any system that scales the probability of being hit without modifying the damage received.) At low amounts of HP, this usually resulted in a single unlucky hit reducing your character to meaty chunks (Khalid vs. Ogre with the Girdle of Gender Changing, anyone?). As your AC gets better, you end up with situations where mediocre enemies literally can't even touch you, and you can wade through them with impunity. Even a match against a comparably-skilled opponent would often result in the two foes just flailing ineffectually at each other for many seconds, until someone landed a critical hit. Then it was back to flailing for several seconds until the next crit. A flat Armor Class was adopted because it was easy to calculate, easy to remember, and easy to use in the midst of chaotic tabletop gaming. Additional sets of modifiers (flanking, bonuses/penalties vs. damage types, etc.) make it more realistic and flexible, at the cost of ease of use - which, it should be noted, is almost a non-issue for a computer game, since it will be doing all the calculating and modifying for you.

 

Many newer games make use the "Armor reduces damage" approach - it's more intuitive, and your character gets to say "Owie" more times before dying at low levels, and gets to say "Owie" more consistently at high levels. A pure DR approach, however, feels obtrusive during gameplay. No one likes to get hit EVERY SINGLE TIME, even if it only results in minimal damage. Pure DR systems remind me of very old video games, like Warcraft 2, where combat involved virtually no luck - if your numbers were better, you were almost guaranteed to win. Also, I just made myself feel old.

 

In reality, most RPG-type games released within the last few years blend the two approaches. Some armor reduces your chance to be hit, either by deflecting blows, or providing actual cover (a shield, for instance). Some is more effective at reducing incoming damage, like plate mail - you're a bigger, slower-moving target, but most attacks are literally going to just bounce off, leaving you unscathed. Combining the two systems allows for much greater flexibility, and a much more interesting combat experience - sometimes your character will dodge and somersault around, evading incoming attacks with grace and skill. Sometimes, he'll just stand there and sound like a Honda in a hailstorm. The downside is that programming a dual system, and making sure all the available armors and character abilities (Dodge and Evasion, to name a few d20 standbys as examples) are balanced with each other, takes considerably longer than either a pure AC or pure DR system. There are plenty of established examples to use as starting points, though.

 

I WOULD like to chip in with one new comment on the DR vs. AC debate, though: I thoroughly enjoyed the ranged combat experience in Mass Effect 1. The system used in that game did an excellent job of combining the two different approaches. Armor, on a purely stat-line basis, only offered DR, but the game itself integrated NPC miss chances and player targeting/shooting skill nearly seamlessly. The trick here would be adapting that approach to include melee combat, rather than just ranged weapons. Forced misses become a lot more obvious and glaring at knife-fight ranges.

 

Once a system, or a blend of the two, is decided on, we can all start arguing about metal armor being electrically conductive, and whether chainmail undergarments cause morale penalties due to chafing during long marches.

[Gatt9]

Armor class meets it's intended purpose very well, which was to model a Character's ability to mitigate or avoid damage when something tried to hit them.

 

But unfortunately, it's been my experience over the years that this is one of the two hardest concepts for people new to RPG's to get, especially if their RPG experience is limited to CRPG's which don't explain what's happening.

 

So honestly, I think Damage Reduction is a clearer system to new players and achieves the same end effect. So my vote is for Damage Reduction due to it requiring less understanding of the intracicies(sic) of the rules.

[AGX-17]

It's nonsense from the beginning to say that more armor = more speed/agility/evasiveness. The only justifications for that scenario are enchantments that buff stats related to evasion. Armor Class is just a silly system that makes no sense. Like I'll say in the following sentences, a if a man wearing full steel plate loses a saving throw and gets hit by a man brandishing an iron saber, there's no believability to the idea that that saber will cut through the man and his armor like he was made of heated butter.

 

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.

 

Yeah, special circumstances like that are implicit in any critical hit. If someone brandishing a saber just scored a critical on an enemy wearing full steel plate, it stands to reason that his physical strength didn't just increase by several orders of magnitude, allowing his slashing weapon (something which will never penetrate a suit of plate mail unless it's made of some vastly superior material,) to shear through a solid steel breastplate.

 

After all, if you're hacking away at an opponent's carotid artery the entire time, what's the difference between that normal neck slashing and a critical hit?

 

 

Armor really does slow you down as a matter of physics. You have to overcome a lot more inertia, even with we'll fitted plate.

I would like to see full plate restricted to horseback for the most part. It really wasn't designed for long walks.

Also, a plain chain shirt hurts the shoulders, but it can be supported by attaching it to stiff leather. Think about a cheap backpack putting the weight of your books on your shoulders compared to a good pack with best and waist straps and also hiking packs with frames. Any armor can be supported.

Make the ability to dodge a function of agility, and DR a function of armor. Then make sure armor reduces dodging ability. Full plate and packin steel mod for BG handled this reasonably well. PE could do it better.

I like that shields could reduce the chance of being hit, but they make dodging harder too. Evasion of larger stuff (explosions) would suffer.

 

Adding gameplay inconveniences for the sake of realism isn't a direction this game is likely to take when its inspiration comes in large part from universes where you can carry a pocket-universe on your belt to store unlimited matter in.

Edited October 25, 2012 by AGX-17

[Nerei]

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.

 

It is actually surprising how much mobility you do have with it. I have seen people do backflips while wearing plate armour. Certainly the idea that if you fall in plate you cannot get up is stupid (only exception maybe being a mounted knight in really heavy plate dropping in deep mud).

My main argument is that the circus acrobat will be restricted if wearing a suit of armour compared to wearing nothing, he will have a harder time dodging blows. With plate in particular it should probably not matter much if you're not very agile in the first place. The maximum dexterity bonus that d&d has would be a fairly decent way to simulate such armour restrictions. Horribly restrictive armour like mail could even give a dex penalty.

 

Armor really does slow you down as a matter of physics. You have to overcome a lot more inertia, even with we'll fitted plate.

I would like to see full plate restricted to horseback for the most part. It really wasn't designed for long walks.

Also, a plain chain shirt hurts the shoulders, but it can be supported by attaching it to stiff leather. Think about a cheap backpack putting the weight of your books on your shoulders compared to a good pack with best and waist straps and also hiking packs with frames. Any armor can be supported.

Make the ability to dodge a function of agility, and DR a function of armor. Then make sure armor reduces dodging ability. Full plate and packin steel mod for BG handled this reasonably well. PE could do it better.

I like that shields could reduce the chance of being hit, but they make dodging harder too. Evasion of larger stuff (explosions) would suffer.

 

Never heard about alleviating the weight of mail armour using a stiff leather backing. I would say the weight of the cuirass would still mainly be supported by the shoulders. You also still need the soft padding so to me it really just feels like you're adding more weight.

 

According to some sources the japanese engineer and MG troops involved in the Kokoda campaign carried upwards of 50 kg of equipment with common soldiers reaching towards of 30kg (which is roughly what you can expect modern soldiers to wear also). Most suggestions I have seen for the weight of a Roman legionnaires gear is in the 30-45kg range, some going even higher if they carry rations for many days.

Compare that to wearing a suit of plate that usually weight around 20kg and are fitted across your body and suddenly it does not appear to be that much of a restriction (yes some suits weigh upwards of 50kg, but those are for hoseback only). Now add the fact that you can run, jump etc in a suit of plate armour and I really do not see why it should be impossible to march in it. Naturally it would be harder than wearing no armour, but plate should by no means be restricted to mounted warriors.

Consider the historic perspective.

Most likely the guy that could afford a suit of plate could also afford a horse, so why should he walk if he could ride? Also in most cases he would have time to don his armour before the battle.

Our situation in a 6 man crpg part is different from the real world in many cases thus we have to look at what is possible and not what happened in some cases.

[general_azure]

I'd prefer parrying/blocking/dodging (as trainable skills) to avoid being hit, while armor absorbs damage if you fail with those. Flat out absorption that is, no % reduction. No special treatment needed for crits, with their increased damage the flat reduction from armor becomes less effective anyways.

 

If you've come into contact with the DSA ruleset, this probably sounds familiar =P

[Sensuki]

Josh has already said that he's leaning towards armor reducing damage.

[Jarmo]

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.

 

Yeah, special circumstances like that are implicit in any critical hit. If someone brandishing a saber just scored a critical on an enemy wearing full steel plate, it stands to reason that his physical strength didn't just increase by several orders of magnitude, allowing his slashing weapon (something which will never penetrate a suit of plate mail unless it's made of some vastly superior material,) to shear through a solid steel breastplate.

 

Yea to this.

I don't see the reason to do criticals as extra damage and go through armor, one or the other would suffice.

Or it's fallout all over again where a machine gun against power armor either doesn't do damage at all, or it's a

ALL 12 BULLETS WENT THROUGH YOUR EYESLITS DIRECTLY TO YOUR BRAIN!! TAKE 1203 points of damage and DIE!!!!

 

 

Armor really does slow you down as a matter of physics. ...... Then make sure armor reduces dodging ability.

 

Also this yeah. I'd like to see some benefit from going about in light armor. Not just for realism but to better validate going agile duelist.

More than D&D's less dex bonus, but if you're clumsy to begin with, then wearing heavy plate is no hinderance at all.

Edited October 25, 2012 by Jarmo

[general_azure]

Josh has already said that he's leaning towards armor reducing damage.

 

Excellent... he may proceed

[Taletotell]

The romans wore more weight that a mounted knight and yet fought in leather with some metal added? I wonder why. . . Perhaps since, any adventurer is going to be carrying their 90k of crap and then add 20k of armor that requires constant care and help to put on. it isn't realistic. Unless of course you have concord following your character around to help you. I know it isn't real, it is fantasy, but lets try to keep it credible enough that you can't just do what ever is cool.

Also the weight of leather straps supporting chainmail is negligible since it allows weight to be distributed across the torso instead of on the shoulders.

Finally, I sure hope money is realistic enough that this armor should be rare simply because of demand. not enough people can afford it to justify making it common. If it is not common it is not innovating quickly either.

Edited October 25, 2012 by Taletotell

[ReyVagabond]

I like other.

 

First because armor should have damage reduction and not effect dodge chance or how often you are hit. (The AC D&D system is Awful for a pc game where all the math is done in seconds, in PnP is clean and works but not for a pc game). At least not like D&D.

 

Now is my take how I would love the system to be:

All actions in the game should consume stamina/endurance. Attacking and defending should consume it. And a defense rating vs a Hit rating should check if you manage to hit the opponent and dodge his attacks.

 

Considering that each dodge consumes stamina, a high numbers of attackers can consume all your stamina somewhat quick and with no stamina you can’t attack or dodge, like it should be.

If you are tired in combat and can’t lift your sword and can’t move because you are exhausted you should be a sand bag.

 

And the Armor, giving Damage reduction to different types, and some the heaviest armor giving a penalty to defense or higher stamina consumption for some actions.

Giving a natural balance with Character aptitude and what kind of Gear you want to use.

 

 

Now with a system like this there is tons of room to play with, like a critical hit can bypass armor damage reduction or, destroy the armor, or cracking it making other hits does more damage. A warrior with second wind ability can outlast other fighters and keep fighting longer. Let’s say two rogues with grate defensive skills fight each other like a 60s Hollywood movie as soon as out of stamina then the fight is decided, not the armor but their natural skills and attributes, of course a magic gear can tip the balance and a good armor can save your skin but should it should be a system where in the world is contemplated that a high level Duelist with no armor can easily beat a low level soldier with the best armor money can buy. The high level duelist should have more natural defense and hit ratings more stamina so even if he cant penetrate the armor damage reduction once he outlast the soldier he cant defend to de onslaught and be killed.

[Shadenuat]

Both systems are okay as long as they provide fun and intuitive gameplay. DR is not an angel from haven saving people from hellish unrealism of AC, if it can't mimic AD&D experience when you finally clad your warrior in full plate and take a breath, feeling you're now a tank and can take some punishment. Lot of DR systems have too low or too high absorbtion rate rise. If it's too low, armor does't really affect the gameplay. If new armor gives 4% more damage reduction than starting armor, there is no point in trying to get new armor.

The other way DR can fail is basically making character invulnerable to low level damage. If an arrow does 1d6 damage, and crits double, that means you need 12 DR to be immune to regular archer. If so, I'd prefer a statistical probability of old and worn AD&D, where twenty archers shooting at a character in full armor still don't lose chance to score crit and wound him.

Also, AC's being abstract has it's own value. It is possible, statistically, to hit armored person so often that you start wounding him. With DR, with added a more "realistic" approach, new questions also start to rise. Like, if you shoot a hundred arrows at that chestplate, why it retains the same DR level? And some others.

Edited October 25, 2012 by Shadenuat

[rjshae]

The romans wore more weight that a mounted knight and yet fought in leather with some metal added?

Mmm... I'm going to guess 'cost'. The Romans had lorica segmenta, but it was costly and harder to maintain.

[Dorateen]

The Armor Class attribute should be represented by a number that gets lower as the protection improves, even to the point of negative integers.

 

That'll be so reactionary, it will make the collective heads of next-gen gamers explode.

 

Harumph!

[Nerei]

The romans wore more weight that a mounted knight and yet fought in leather with some metal added? I wonder why. . . Perhaps since, any adventurer is going to be carrying their 90k of crap and then add 20k of armor that requires constant care and help to put on. it isn't realistic. Unless of course you have concord following your character around to help you. I know it isn't real, it is fantasy, but lets try to keep it credible enough that you can't just do what ever is cool.

Also the weight of leather straps supporting chainmail is negligible since it allows weight to be distributed across the torso instead of on the shoulders.

Finally, I sure hope money is realistic enough that this armor should be rare simply because of demand. not enough people can afford it to justify making it common. If it is not common it is not innovating quickly either.

 

The roman legionnaire post the marian reforms carried all kinds necessities including rations for upwards of 16 days! They where their own packmules. The weight has nothing to do with what they fought in, it has all to do with logistics.

 

As for the Lorica Segmentata, which is what we commonly picture the legionnaires wearing it is actually debated how many wore that. The legions was more than just the heavy infantry we normally associate with it. The romans actually also used armour fairly identical to mail armour (lorica hamata).

It is also assumed that it was the cost of the Lorica Segmentata that resulted in it disappearing in the late imperial period.

 

Normally mail is supported by the shoulders and a belt that helps distribute the weight. That does by no means make the weight as well distributed as a suit of plate armour, not by a mile. You still carry a lot of the weight on your shoulders. Also mail is surprisingly heavy, a long suit of mail can weigh 15-20kg, nearly as heavy as a suit of plate.

Even if you can tie such a suit to your entire torso you are still carrying all the weight there compared to plate that has it spread over the entire body!

[rjshae]

The Armor Class attribute should be represented by a number that gets lower as the protection improves, even to the point of negative integers.

But only if the game allows 23 different types of polearms...

[rjshae]

Josh has already said that he's leaning towards armor reducing damage.

That would make sense in lieu of the fact that the game encourages mages to wear some form of armor. Bullets that freely penetrate the defenses of an arcane veil (or whatever it was called) would do full damage against an unarmored target. Damage-reducing armor would probably be a nice way of modeling that (as well as being a more realistic approach in general).

[qstoffe]

Armor class meets it's intended purpose very well, which was to model a Character's ability to mitigate or avoid damage when something tried to hit them.

 

But unfortunately, it's been my experience over the years that this is one of the two hardest concepts for people new to RPG's to get, especially if their RPG experience is limited to CRPG's which don't explain what's happening.

 

The biggest flaw with the armor dodge mechanic is that many armors become literally useless against good hiters. i.e. in BG2, wearing no armor or a standard full plate mail against a dragon makes NO difference whatsoever. That is flawed and why I think damage absorption is better. PnP games that used damage absorption worked very well imo. I think that was one of the main reasons that the PnP game "Dragons and Demons" were a lot more popular here in Sweden over "Dungeons and Dragons".

Edited October 25, 2012 by qstoffe

[teknoman2]

i think a combination would be better. each character should have the ability to evade attacks, based on his agility and/or some skill. some items, like shields, boots of avoidance or bracers of defence should add to the evade chance, while actual armor should have a limit to how much evade they allow, with heavier armors allowing none. obviously the heavier an armor the more damage it can block from each attack. so the padded cloth armor, would give no evade limit, but only 3% defence against damage. the leather armor would cut your evade by 15%, while reducing damage by 8%. the chain mail would reduce your evade by 50%, while reducing damage by 20%. the full plate would reduce your evade by 95% and damage by 50%

[AGX-17]

I'd prefer parrying/blocking/dodging (as trainable skills) to avoid being hit, while armor absorbs damage if you fail with those. Flat out absorption that is, no % reduction. No special treatment needed for crits, with their increased damage the flat reduction from armor becomes less effective anyways.

 

If you've come into contact with the DSA ruleset, this probably sounds familiar =P

 

I liked Fallout 1/2's system that combined both Damage Resistance (percentile reduction, cannot negate all damage taken) and Damage Threshold (subtractive reduction, can negate all damage taken if it is below the DT,) there's a strong argument for that being unbalanced in the wrong circumstances, but if there were an armor degradation system in place, the DR/DT ratings would gradually decay as the armor takes damage. New Vegas came close with its DT system, but I didn't like the fact that a minimum amount of damage always penetrated.

 

If some stableboy with a **** broom smacks me in the head while I'm wearing a good helmet, I don't want to take a single point of damage unless it was a critical hit that bent my neck in an odd way, leading to a minor sprain and a few days of ache (unless tended to.)

 

i think a combination would be better. each character should have the ability to evade attacks, based on his agility and/or some skill. some items, like shields, boots of avoidance or bracers of defence should add to the evade chance, while actual armor should have a limit to how much evade they allow, with heavier armors allowing none. obviously the heavier an armor the more damage it can block from each attack. so the padded cloth armor, would give no evade limit, but only 3% defence against damage. the leather armor would cut your evade by 15%, while reducing damage by 8%. the chain mail would reduce your evade by 50%, while reducing damage by 20%. the full plate would reduce your evade by 95% and damage by 50%

 

That implies that any/all attacks will penetrate that suit of full plate, though. Damage Resistance is not the ideal solution because the idea that every kind of attack will penetrate that armor and wound the wearer is a given in it. Like my broom example from before, a set of full plate armor vs. the stableboy's brush will necessarily have to leave you taking damage. Let's say this broom swipe does 1 HP damage. Your armor reduced that by 50%, but unless there are decimals in PE, it's going to round up to 1 HP, meaning steel plate armor has no effect against wooden broomsticks.

Edited October 25, 2012 by AGX-17

[Utukka]

Base movement speed = 10(Just for an example)

Robes/Clothing = +1 to movement speed, so (11) total. Yes I know it sounds funny to get a bonus from that from a realism standpoint but it's just an idea. Could always just not give a bonus at all here and just have light armor be the same 0 reduction to movement.

light armor = no penalty to BASE(10) movement speed or evasion, low damage reduction (5%), low chance to "deflect" (5%)

medium armor = small penalty to movement speed and evasion, middle damage reduction (10%), middle tier "deflect" (10%)

heavy armor = medium/high penalty to movement speed and evasion depending on "how heavy", high damage reduction (15-20%), deflect (20%)

 

-Chance to "hit" not affected by target armor, solely based on the "creatures" ability to hit

-Then take in dodge/evasion chance OR a combination of calculation hit vs dodge/evasion. Whatever is mathematically best.

-If dodge/evasion fails, roll for armor "deflect" Deflect being the ability to fend off "glancing blows", some weapons might not be deflectable compared to others

-Deflect fails, Damage dealt and Reduction/resist is applied based upon armor.

-You hurt, the end.

 

Problem solved.

 

Sorry if it's hard to understand for some people.

Edited October 25, 2012 by Utukka

[Shevek]

You can always have a mixed system. In other words, damage reduction AND damage deflection AND dex bonus (agility, essentially) on top. When this conversation started, I messed around with the concept and came up with a few versions of this:

 

 

Edited October 26, 2012 by Shevek

[rjshae]

In the general sense though, I wonder how complex this system should be? Computer games can handle a lot of mechanics that would be unpleasantly detailed for a tabletop game. But you can reach a level of diminishing returns. Sometimes simpler can be better, with just enough detail to allow interesting decisions to be made, but not enough that it turns into a grind just to pick the right armor for the right occasion.