Armor class

[Shevek]

Guys, put up some charts and numbers. All this high level design is useless without numbers.

[rjshae]

Guys, put up some charts and numbers. All this high level design is useless without numbers.

Au contraire. Charts and data without a proper design is just wasted effort.

[Enfermero Torero]

In my humble opinion (always the wisest, btw, so take note) there are 5 things to take into consideration:

-Encumbrance: The heavier, less flexible armor pieces should confer a penalty to agility-related activities, including attacking and defending. This is compensated by the wearer´s Strength.

-Protection offered: This should vary, depending on the attacking weapon. Chainmail can be great against blades, but against warhammers it´s not very effective, Damage reduction should be by a fixed amount, once this threshold is surpassed, the excess of damage goes to the wearer

-Area it covers: I might be too much of a fan of micromanagement, but I like the option of mixing different types of armor. Of couse, this only works with a damage location system (Head, Torso, L/R arms, L/R legs). Thus, an agile fighter might want to use a chainmail vest and hard leather leggins: This would take very little off his agility, while offering decent protection against a stray arrow. This system would allow to direct one´s attacks against the weakest areas of the enemy, depending on the weapon I´m using. People who played Fallout I or II should know about this.

-Shields: They encumber, based on their size/weight, but allow to completely block an attack. It should be an all in/all out step when determining if one is hit, the shield either blocks the blow (all the damage is applied to the shield and checks are made to see if it´s pierced or broken) or it doesn´t (it offers no aditional bonus to the rest of the armor).

-Quality: Armor should degrade when subjected to hits, and at some point a new hard leather armor should offer better average protection than a halfway broken plate. When deteriorating, encumbrance remains the same but the damage it prevents is less and less. Shields offer the same protection but their chance of breaking up and becoming useless goes up as they degrade.

 

 

Well, this was my first post in this forum. Nice to meet you all.

[rjshae]

Gear repair in Fallout 3 and Oblivion was an interesting element of those FPS games. But I'm not sure that armor and weapon degradation wouldn't be just too much detail in a game of this scope. It's kind of like food and drink: you can more or less assume the party is taking care of it during their spare time. But perhaps it is something that can be added to the Expert mode?

[Nihatek]

My opinion is that it does not make sense that wearing plate armor almost half of your weight would decrease chance to be hit. I also dont like idea that shield decrease your chance to be hit (someone told this here - question for you - have you ever blocked 10 kilogram hammer attack with your shield? ****ing hurts)

 

I think it could work like this.

 

Your opponent will still have chance to miss, if he does not

you will have chance to dodge his attack influenced by your agility/dexterity/swiftness - whatever - if you dont

you might have parried his attack (on/off option) influenced by your agility and weapon - if you do - your next turn you will do less in combat (its also very exhausting) - but with higher strength the lower the penalty, if you dont

- check if you have shield - if yes, chance to block part of the damage, if you dont

- you get damage - reduced by your armor.

 

This is what i like - nice and quiet logical.

[rjshae]

^^^^

It's GURPS...

[Shevek]

Guys, put up some charts and numbers. All this high level design is useless without numbers.

Au contraire. Charts and data without a proper design is just wasted effort.

 

Maybe, so put up charts and data that you design properly. Give people the numbers and the rationale and then have them debate. This thread is too filled with conjecture and people talking about stuff in ways that are not wholly tangible.

 

I say, put a system, explain how item enchantment, armor types, damage reduction, damage deflection, damage types and/or damage avoidance works in said system and why you think it should work that way. Then, ask others to critique that design and offer superior alternatives and so on.

[Churchwarden]

While I prefer a single physical damage defense score as I said earlier in the thread (due to its simplicity and me not having an issue imagining why someone didn't cause damage on any particular attack), I agree this discussion could benefit from fewer anecdotal examples and more clear suggestions. Here are my thoughts on a (martial) defense system in terms of game mechanics. This only pertains to armor, not shields/weapons that could be used for block/parry. I'll leave that to others.

 

I support these 3 variables for a given piece of armor:

 

+X damage reduction

-Y stamina/round of combat

-Z realized agility score (altered from "naked" agility), which modifies hit/miss

 

It's a simple system, that is moderately reflective of "real life." It decouples dmg reduction from hit/miss chance, which people seem to prefer, while also accounting for the added encumbrance of wearing armor and the required stamina to do so.

 

Picturing a mirror match between an individual and an exact copy of herself, consider one in leather and the other in plate. Plate wearer will tire sooner, be harder to damage, and be easier to hit, while leather wearer will take more damage when hit, be harder to hit, and not become winded as quickly solely based on her armor's heft.

 

Does it need to be more complicated than this? If so, please explain.

Edited October 28, 2012 by Churchwarden

[AGX-17]

Guys, put up some charts and numbers. All this high level design is useless without numbers.

 

No, this is a discussion of the basic concepts behind armor and how it should function. Whether or not it magically(how else do you justify the concept of AC?) grants increased evasiveness by virtue of increased mass (I think we've already established that as a ludicrous concept.) This is not high-level game design. You don't need numbers, equations and charts to tell the difference between the concepts presented here.

 

While opinions expressed may be taken into consideration by the design team at Obsidian, they are not looking to us to do their jobs for them and we are most likely not equipped to deal with this issue on a serious basis unless Steve Jackson is a regular contributor.

Edited October 28, 2012 by AGX-17

[Churchwarden]

I like the concept of AC, but it's not favored here apparently. Everyone is trying to explain AC in terms of "to hit" chance, but it isn't a measure of making contact, it's a measure of making damaging contact. anybody will gain some protection against a body blow by putting armor on, which is why heavy armor boosts more than light armor. However, someone in light armor can benefit from an unusually high agility, if they are so gifted, which also contributes to AC.

 

AC is more of an abstraction than hit chance/damage reduction, but it is a legitimate, effective game mechanic and has been for a while.

[rjshae]

Yes, AC is a high level probability roll up just like hit points are a high level combat impact roll-up. They're okay as long as everything is kept simple, but they don't produce anything resembling realistic results.

[Halric]

I like the concept of AC, but it's not favored here apparently. Everyone is trying to explain AC in terms of "to hit" chance, but it isn't a measure of making contact, it's a measure of making damaging contact.

 

I don't think you can take AC to that high level and not include HP in the abstraction. If what you said is true, and AC is only responsible for preventing damaging contact to the physical body, then it should be possible for me to do HP damage without hitting the target's Armour Class. Which we know is impossible because AC is the target number for an attack roll.

 

Why should I be able to do HP damage? Hit Points, as we know, are not isoalted to a measure of one's health, they are also a measure of one's combat training and fighting ability. Which is why they increase with level, the character's phsyical body between level 1 and level 15 doesn't change enough to justify the increase, however their combat training and ability to effectively fight does. Thier experience lends them to be a tougher target.

 

In this capacity, HP are also a character's "Battle focus" or ability to continue to apply their training to prevent physical harm. (I illustrated this in a previous post using the level 1 and level 15 fighter getting hit with the same arrow.)

 

With that in mind, if what you suggest would be true "AC is a measure of preventing damaging contact", then it should be possible for me to reduce the character's battle focus without causing phsyical harm, which means I should be able to do "damage" to the HP pool without hitting the AC target. (Which isn't possible) This would represent a barrage of attacks the fighter parries, none of them does physical damage but they do reduce his battle focus, eventually he may slip up and take a grazing slash.

 

I suspect this is why Obsidian is venturing to create a stamina pool in order to represent this battle focus outside of the character's physical health.

 

I agree that AC systems are legitimate and they work, but this muddiness between HP and AC intertwining has led to some of us Game Masters and Dungeon Masters to strive for something clearer. And it usually results in redefining Hit Points.

[Jarmo]

One more. There will be area effect damage in game, or I'm pretty sure there will.

If armor has damage reduction, it helps against splinterbombs or whatever,

if it's base AC only, you'll pretty much have to assume (like in D&D) that armor doesn't help at all.

[Ninjamestari]

I think the properties of armor should mimic reality in some way. It's true that if you swing against a highly armored target with a sword, you'll be doing much less damage than against an unarmored opponent. However, if you strike an unprotected area you'll do just as much damage as if the opponent didn't wear anything but his clothes. A heavily armored opponent on the other hand has much less unprotected areas than lightly armored, so it's harder to hit one.

 

An easy way to make this work would be the "damage reduction except against critical strikes", but with an added property that reduces the opponent's chance of getting those criticals through.

 

One easy way to do this would be to have a percentile armor DR, like the system in WoW. Just make criticals ignore armor completely and reduce the critical strike chance by the same percentage damage is reduced. For example, a thug that has a sword that with all modifiers does 100 damage per swing and has a 10% chance to get a critical hit swings at a knight that has 40% armor damage reduction. The normal swing would do only 60 damage, a critical would do 200 damage, but his chance of getting that critical against the knight would be only 6%.

 

Other defensive layers should also exist, such as maybe passive damage reduction that reduces all damage, including that from criticals, your chance to dodge which could also give you a chance to avoid a critical strike, turning it into a normal strike instead, and then ofc. your chance to parry and block with your weapon and shield.

[TrashMan]

I modeed D&D once and replaced all AC bonuses of armor for damage reduction.

 

The fighter in full plate and the nimble dextrous ranger finally felt realy different in how they approached combat.

 

 

 

But for PE?

A mix...kind of.

 

Armor doesn't reduce your chance of being hit. But it does protect you from hits. It increases the chance the blow will be glancing (as the weapon will slide off the curved armor). Those who know how to fight properly in armor can expect a bigger bonus here.

It also protects.

Contrary to many movies, plate armor isn't made from aluminium and doesn't crumple as easily.

 

 

I'm not a fan or artificially boosting light armor or gimping heavy ones for the sake of "balance". Frankly I think that approach is crap.

If I spend a fortune for full plate by an armor smith, I expect it to be truly a lot better than a light armor (as it was in real life).

After all it costs more than an entire village makes in a year (at least).

 

Heavy armor has two negatives:

- increased fatigue

- reduced vision (depending on helm..the more protective the helmet, the more restrictive it is)

 

That's it.

[Churchwarden]

I like the concept of AC, but it's not favored here apparently. Everyone is trying to explain AC in terms of "to hit" chance, but it isn't a measure of making contact, it's a measure of making damaging contact.

 

I don't think you can take AC to that high level and not include HP in the abstraction. If what you said is true, and AC is only responsible for preventing damaging contact to the physical body, then it should be possible for me to do HP damage without hitting the target's Armour Class. Which we know is impossible because AC is the target number for an attack roll.

 

Why should I be able to do HP damage? Hit Points, as we know, are not isoalted to a measure of one's health, they are also a measure of one's combat training and fighting ability. Which is why they increase with level, the character's phsyical body between level 1 and level 15 doesn't change enough to justify the increase, however their combat training and ability to effectively fight does. Thier experience lends them to be a tougher target.

 

In this capacity, HP are also a character's "Battle focus" or ability to continue to apply their training to prevent physical harm. (I illustrated this in a previous post using the level 1 and level 15 fighter getting hit with the same arrow.)

 

With that in mind, if what you suggest would be true "AC is a measure of preventing damaging contact", then it should be possible for me to reduce the character's battle focus without causing phsyical harm, which means I should be able to do "damage" to the HP pool without hitting the AC target. (Which isn't possible) This would represent a barrage of attacks the fighter parries, none of them does physical damage but they do reduce his battle focus, eventually he may slip up and take a grazing slash.

 

I suspect this is why Obsidian is venturing to create a stamina pool in order to represent this battle focus outside of the character's physical health.

 

I agree that AC systems are legitimate and they work, but this muddiness between HP and AC intertwining has led to some of us Game Masters and Dungeon Masters to strive for something clearer. And it usually results in redefining Hit Points.

 

I'm not sure I understand what point you are contending in my post. I acknowledge that HP are not representative only of one's health, but what does this change in my comment? If the phrase "damaging contact" were switched to "harrowing contact" or "draining contact" would it change your interpretation?

 

Just to be clear, I'm not opposed to decoupling health and stamina, as PE plans to do, but I think a 2-resource vitality system does not preclude the use of a single defense score such as AC. What if, for example, rolling a "hit" guaranteed stamina damage, while beating AC by say 5 or more would deal stamina and health damage? Once a person is drained of stamina, she takes a major hit to her AC, making it significantly easier if not entirely guaranteed, to damage her health with attacks.

 

Decoupling defenses to dodge/parry/damage reduction is not necessary to decouple fighting resources (i.e. HP) into health and stamina, and my point was only that AC is viable, not that HP shouldn't be decoupled.

[AdmThrawn]

I support these 3 variables for a given piece of armor:

 

+X damage reduction

-Y stamina/round of combat

-Z realized agility score (altered from "naked" agility), which modifies hit/miss

 

It's a simple system, that is moderately reflective of "real life." It decouples dmg reduction from hit/miss chance, which people seem to prefer, while also accounting for the added encumbrance of wearing armor and the required stamina to do so.

 

My system is similar, so I'll piggy-back on this. I think it does need to be slightly more complicated, because you are skipping the dynamic of forcing glancing blows and that different weapons do damage differently (assuming we have a system that allows for bludgeoning/piecing/whatever). Let me preface this by saying I understand that complexity is not always preferable, but I think armor systems are generally overly simple as a holdover from pen and paper gaming where simple is more necessary. Basically, rather than using critical hits, you should use a variable DR. That is to say, depending on the armor type, the defender's and attacker's relative skills, and the attack type, DR gets weighted on a statistical curve which the computer rolls against to determine actual damage from 0 to "unarmored."

 

If I were to design it, I'd give armor four categories: encumbrance or stamina drain, body coverage (corresponding to hit chance, could incorporate defense skill for things like shields), dissipation (bludgeoning defense), and yield strength (pierce defense). Ideally, better armor would have a higher chance of making a strike be:

A) A miss - Pretty obvious. The attacker’s skill (roll) doesn't even connect, resulting in no damage.

B) A glancing blow - the attacker's skill connects but severely fails to beat armor coverage, resulting in very high DR,

C) Bludgeoning - attacker's skill fails to beat coverage by a small margin, resulting in a strength and weapon type combined check against dissipation to determine DR.

D) Penetrating - The attack either beats the yield strength and goes through, are beats the coverage completely resulting in very low DR.

 

Note this isn't really dissimilar from D&D 3e rules; in 3e option 1 fails at the touch AC, 2 fails to beat AC, 3 hits normally, and 4 is a crit. What I am doing is refiguring 2 and 3 into B and C, saying some damage may be conferred on a hit to armor (like with a mace or magic) but will be mitigated depending on factors. Then critical are refigured into D, where bypassing or penetrating armor is similar to a critical hit, but depends as more on strength and coverage than attack rolls.

 

Then armor becomes more a rock-paper-scissors game. Lighter armor can afford high-coverage with less encumbrance or a higher dodge, but low yield strength and dissipation, allowing more attacks to be in categories A and D; thus it defends well weapons that have low hit chance but do high damage like war hammers or pikes. Medium armor affords movement and is strong, but does yields under a palpable hit, shifting attacks into B and D; thus it defends well against bludgeoning weapons like maces. Heavier armor would rarely fail, but have high encumbrance if the coverage is good, and could still be bludgeoned pushing most attacks into B or C and thus defends well against attacks that seek to pierce like rapiers or arrows. Active defense (such as parrying or shields) could help shift attacks into category B at the expense of attacking ability. Of course, I would do armor by pieces rather than as a suit, so you can mix and match. As for balance, damage types can be normalized with the expected hit values; that would be mathematically trivial with a computer just matching hit value with price/availability.

 

Of course this would be too time-consuming in paper-and pen RPGs, but I'd love to see it tried in a video game.

 

Edited for spelling. "I" before "E"?

Edited October 31, 2012 by AdmThrawn

[paasi]

I think each armor type should be unique, not just categorized into light, medium or heavy armor, but each should offer different ways of protection and penalties.

and of course magical and improved armor has special qualities that outweigh normal armor.

 

Leather tunic/jacket/doublet etc. is lightweight and encumbers its wearer very little, but offers very little in way of protection against bladed weapons that pierce or slash, but may serve to soften blows of blunt weapons like hammers or clubs.

I.e no movement penalties, small DR/ DT against blunt, no dodging restriction

 

Brigandine/coat of plates/scale armor is leather armor combined with small metal plates sewn in the jacket, thus offering more protection against bladed and, to a lesser degree, piercing and bludgeon weapons. It is also much heavier and bulkier and with addition of shoulder guards may hinder wearers arm movements.

I.e medium movement penalty, medium DR/DT to slash and blunt small to pierce, large dodging penalty

 

Chain doublet weighs more than brigandine or leather, but is more flexible in joints, not limiting the wearers movement as much. It offers superior protection against bladed weapons, but does very little to cushion blows of hammers or repel arrows and spears.

I.e small movement penalty, medium DR/DT to slash, small to blunt, minute to pierce, minute dodge penalties

 

Breast plate/cuirass only covers torso and thus does not limit arm and leg movement and weighs roughly less than a suit of chain, but offers protection only for the torso, but the protection is excellet, blades and arrows can't scratch the warriors torso, though maces and hammers still send concussive blows to the area. This leaves the character more open to critical hits.

I.e small movement penalty, medium DR/DT to all, minute dodge penalties, greater chance to be hit critically

 

Field plate/almain rivet is adds to breast plate shoulder and arm guards and lamellar plate to guard thighs, adding a whole bunch of weight to slow the character down, but also removes arms and legs from immediate danger of being chopped off.

I.e medium movement penalty, medium DR/DT to all, medium dodge penalty

 

muniton armor/ plate and mail is effectively the heaviest armor a warrior on foot can wear effectively. Similiar to field plate it covers roughly three quarters of the whole body completely in plate and vulnerable joints in chain.

It is very heavy, exhausting to fight in and limits arm movement because of the plates covering arms and joints. It offers superior protection against blades and spears.

I.e medium movement penalty, large DR/DT to all, large dodge penalty,

 

Full gothic plate is the pinnacle of armour, with warrior fully covered in plate with padded undercoating. Only effective ways of killing a man in full plate is hammering his helmet to oblivion or inserting a tiny stiletto through the eye slits... or being boiled alive by a dragons breath.

I.e medium movement penalty, great DR/DT to slash/pierce, large to blunt, large dodge penalty, exhausting, lesser chance to be hit critically

[Soranor]

I see there are a lot of ideas that try to be pretty close to the real world. I like that and my approach is similar. I have been working on a roleplaying system and thinking about problems like simulating the effects of armor for many years.

 

The statistics of each piece of armor should be balanced and diverse, so you start thinking about what type of armor you'd like to wear. These are the main categories I would use:

 

Type. Pretty simple, fur, leather, studded leather, chain mail, and so on. You know them all.

 

Weight, for full body coverage this would range from about 3 kg for leather armor to 30kg for reinforced full plate mail. The more the armor has, the more strength you need to wear it and to counter the sideeffects of slowing you down and hampering your agility/ability to dodge attacks. I don't know if you're working with combat rounds, but if you don't, then give armor a speed penalty to all moves which can be partly offset by very high strength. Ideally all light armors should have almost no encumbrance for characters with average strength. Both penalties can also be offset with armor proficiency, either as feats or skill ranks.

 

Material. Deerskin and iron are typical low end materials, dragon leather and magical metals/crystals can be high end materials. A lot of statistics depend on the material, like price, availability, robustness and again, weight. This leads us to the next statistic and to two possible choices:

1. Assume a great material makes great armors, and set the quality of a piece of armor equal to the material used. You can now skip the +1/+2+/+3 of D&D and have a material based armor system, much like Dragon Age. I don't like this, because it's somewhat simplified. So we have the other choice:

2. Assume a great material (dragon leather) doesn't always make a great armor (bad craftsman) and give all armors another stat, namely...

 

Quality, depends on how skilled the creator of the armor was. This is the +1 of D&D. Since I like to use a D100 (2*D10) system instead of D20, because percentages are often much more useful and accurate, I gave them a higher value (*5). Now you can go and multiply (or add) the protective values of your material, quality and the next stat, which is...

 

Protection, against different damage types (i.e. slash, blunt, pierce, fire, cold, electricity, acid, explosion/shockwave etc.) The way I see it thin, flexible armor out of leather is weak against slashing attacks, while plate armor is strong against it. Now blunt damage is a different thing. Of course you still get hurt badly if hit in your leather armor, but plate doesn't give maximum protection either, because of the concussion. Weapons with metal spikes might be able to pierce even platemails. Ever tried to "tank" a lighting bolt in full plate mail? I'd rather wear a leather or even fur armor. Especially if it's fur of a rare lightning beast that gives me additional protection. What I'm trying to say is the base type of armor already sets different protection values for different damage types that is not necessarily equivalent to it's weight.

 

To all this add magic. So we now have:

 

Magical Material, so in addition to the statistics for non-magical materials these add special traits to your armor. They can be either sturdier as a whole, giving overall better protection values, boost specific protections (fire dragon leather and fire protection comes to mind), be lighter, or add special abilities (blinkbat leather always has this blurry effect, giving additional dodge chance to the bearer of armors made out of it).

 

Enchantments are added later and may enhance all possible statistics, add additional abilities and so on. I think everybody can imagine the possibilities.

 

If you want to use hit locations, then consider using more pieces of armor, ideally one for every location. That way a player can wear a full plate on his torso but leave arms and legs in leather. This makes area of effect spells/grenade-like weapons a bit complicated though. I think it's not worth the effort, since it's for a game like PE easier to just increase the chance to circumvent armor all together as fewer pieces of armor are worn.

 

Let's see how what we have now could work in practice:

A fighter is attacking your nimble swashbuckler with his longsword. Your swashbuckler wears a nice piece of leather armor. The first step would be to calculate if the attack hits. The swashbucklers dodge is pretty high, but let's assume rolls weren't in his favor, so the hit connects. The margin of success is used to calculate how hard the hit is. Had he worn a full plate, then the incoming hit would be better (worse chance to dodge), but the protection by the armor would be better as well. Leather armor isn't all that great against slashing, but it is well crafted, so let's say it absorbs 50% of the damage or a fixed amount. What's left goes straight to your hit points and stamina.

Upgrading the leather to magical material would increase the protection and enchantments could further increase it.

 

Spellcasting encumbrance is not needed with this kind of system. If you want to create a battlemage, you may do so. As a downside you have to add more points to strength to make sure he's not slow and clumsy, making him a good tank but also get hit pretty often. His Intelligence score will be lower though. He also has to invest in armor skills/feats in order to wear it efficiently. Good thing is the speed penalty won't hamper his spellcasting. In the end you will want him out of melee anyway, because his spellcasting might still be interrupted when hit.

 

I could go on, but I think I'll take a break here hoping OE will read this and it doesn't go to waste. But if you do, I'm open to negotiations if you want to hire me.

[BetrayTheWorld]

Let me preface my opinion by saying I haven't read this entire thread, but I have an opinion on the system I'd like to share nonetheless.

 

I think armors should have several values. Among them should be damage reduction vs. each weapon type (Cutting, Piercing, Blunt), and a penalty to avoid being hit based on the weight and construction of the armor.

 

So heavy armor wearers are more likely to get hit, while taking less damage from each blow. You have the greatest chances to avoid being hit while being completely unarmored, and all armor types in between should be trading off one way or the other looking for the ideal spot for your particular skill set.

 

Just my opinion.

Edited October 31, 2012 by BetrayTheWorld

[cuteLittleRabbit]

After reading the Kickstarter update this morning, I have been thinking about a system that might work in an "everyone can wear anything, but everything should be balanced" kind of game, which PE will be (AFAIK).

 

Just dropping my notes here quickly (I'm @work atm). I'll probably be back later today to comment/read criticisms/...

 

If the PE system is based on this, great , if not, I'll probably be using sth like it for my PnP games .

 

Here goes:

 

 

CP = Combat proficiency:

How well a character can react (attack/defend) in combat.

 

ECP = Effective combat proficiency:

How much of the proficiency a character can use effectively in combat, after modifiers are applied

 

Dodge:

How easily a character can avoid an attack

 

DR = Damage resistance:

How easily a character can mitigate damage; split this up in different damage types (slash/pierce/blunt/fire/cold/...)

 

The armor system:

-----------------

ECP determines the speed at which a character can attack/defend in combat.

Dodge chance is directly influenced by this, as is the number of times a character can attack per round.

 

Armor increases DR. Some suggestions:

* Leather: DR 15% Blunt/15% Slash/15% Pierce/10% Cold

* Full Plate: DR 20% Blunt/50% Slash/50% Pierce/15% Fire

* Chain shirt (with light leather undershirt): DR 15% Blunt/40% Slash/15% Pierce

...

 

Armor also *decreases* ECP. Some suggestions:

* Leather: -10 ECP

* Full Plate: -80 ECP

* Chain Shirt: -30 ECP

...

 

The weapon type used also influences ECP (some weapons are more difficult to handle than others):

* Dagger: -5 ECP (0 overlap with armor)

* Two-handed axe: -50 ECP (30 overlap with armor)

* Rapier: -20 ECP (15 overlap with armor)

...

What do I mean with overlap: the penalties are not always cumulative. Some examples:

* Leather (-10 ECP) and a Dagger (-5 ECP;0 overlap) = MINIMUM(-10+0;0) + (-5) = -15 ECP

=> No overlap means full penalty applied

* Full Plate (-80 ECP) and Two-handed axe (-50;30 overlap) = MINIMUM(-80+30;0) + (-50) = -100

=>30 of the -80 penalty is not applied, because you're using a two-handed axe

* Full Plate (-80 ECP) and Rapier (-20;15 overlap) = MINIMUM(-80+15;0) + (-20) = -95

=>15 of the -80 penalty is not applied, because you're using a rapier

* Chain Shirt (-30 ECP) and Two-handed axe (-50;30 overlap) = MINIMUM(-30+30;0) + (-50) = -50

=>30 of the -30 penalty is not applied, because you're using a two-handed axe

* Chain Shirt (-30 ECP) and Rapier (-20;15 overlap) = MINIMUM(-30+15;0) + (-20) = -35

=>15 of the -30 penalty is not applied, because you're using a rapier

 

==> It makes sense to go as lightly armored as possible to maximize your damage potential.

==> It also makes sense to go as heavily armored as possible to minimize incoming damage.

 

 

Some additional remarks:

------------------------

 

1. The magic system should also be influenced by ECP. Possible modifiers:

* The speed at which magic is cast could be influenced: slower casting means less casts per combat round, or longer castng time.

* The effectiveness of the magic is another option: duration/damage/... could be made x% less effective

I prefer the first option though: easier to balance.

 

2. Choice of character class should have a big effect on Combat Proficiency. Some examples:

* Warriors start at CP 150 and get +10 CP per level up

* Mages start at CP 100 and get +5 per level up

* Rogues start at CP 130 and get +5 CP per level up

* Rangers start at CP 130 and get +10 CP per level up

...

 

3. At certain tresholds, the character receives an additional attack/round. In my examples, I'd suggest per 100 ECP.

 

This means more attacks for lightly armored characters using light weapons.

It also means more attacks for warriors than for mages, eventually, after some levels.

 

4. Ranged combat is also a valid alternative in this case:

* Heavy armor+ranged attacks, is quite possible/efficient for a "first shoot then switch to melee" action (tank pulling)

* Heavy armor+ranged is less efficient than light armor+ranged, damage wise, and defense wise (kiting)

* While each shot might do less damage

 

5. Some suggestions for "perks" related to this system:

* A perk that reduces armor penalties to CP, which requires a certain amount of Strength

* A perk that increases CP for a certain type of weapon, which could be class-related

* A perk that adds a bonus to CP based on the character's Agility or Strength, class-related

* A perk for mages wanting to use armor, that reduces the effects of CP penalties, but only when applied to spellcasting

...

 

6. Armor enhancement (higher quality & enchanting):

This can be done in many different ways, not necessarily limited to "dry" +1, +2, ... bonuses:

* More DR for some damage types

* Less CP penalty

* Less CP penalty for a specific set of actions (magic, ranged combat, ...)

* Increased Dodge value, but without the CP penalty reduction (footwork enhancement)

* Increased stats

* Critical hit chance reduction

...

[Electricall]

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.

I like this for enemies, since it introduces a tactical element of 'using the most effective weapon', or, 'streak the weak spot for massive damage' if you will. It's not so good for player characters though, since you might not expect an ambush to have a mage with spells that fry your tank line in no time.

[FlintlockJazz]

^^^^

It's GURPS...

 

Similar but not quite: GURPS only lets you use one active defense (block, parry or dodge) per attack, and shield adds to active defense not reduce damage, but other than that he is suggesting a similar system and its one I would quite like, but then I like GURPS so I'm biased. :D

[rjshae]

^^^^

It's GURPS...

 

Similar but not quite: GURPS only lets you use one active defense (block, parry or dodge) per attack, and shield adds to active defense not reduce damage, but other than that he is suggesting a similar system and its one I would quite like, but then I like GURPS so I'm biased. :D

Yes, I'm aware of the details. But it depends critically on how long a game round lasts. If PE uses the 6 second rounds of D&D 3X, then those limitations will most likely need to be glossed over.

[TrashMan]

==> It makes sense to go as lightly armored as possible to maximize your damage potential.

==> It also makes sense to go as heavily armored as possible to minimize incoming damage.

 

How the hell does that make sense????