How do you want armour to work?

[Corpselocker]

Oooh, while the stat monger inside me wants all three potential paths... it may be in our hobbies best interest to keep it down to one or two variables. I want more of these games and I'd hope we'd not drive of new blood by drowning them in stats.

 

Aww hell, it's our game... give me all three armor stats!

[Director]

With the Stamina / Health system there is also the option for armour to turn Health damage into Stamina damage, or a percentage of it.

 

This actually makes a lot of sense, as while your just as likely to be hit, armour can turn a fatal blow into a non-fatal one.

[Elerond]

In my opinion subtraction is probably best method to use. Because this make it possible that there difference between dodging/blocking the blow and armour stopping it and I don't like pure percentage reduction as it means that armour can't stop even weaker blows fully (except when armour gives character immunity against certain kind of damge).

 

Damage threshold and percentage reduction could also work, but in my opinion pure threshold system is better, because it tells outright how much damage armour can endure before it gives up and in my experience it make balancing damage dealers and protection easier. And if there is need for different damage types you can give an armour different thresholds for each damage type, for example chain mail could have damage threshold 4 against slashing damage and 2 against piercing damage (this with presumption that most weapons do damage with in range 1-10).

[Tsuga C]

Deflection plus damage reduction, if magically appropriate. People get too hung up on hitting as being able to strike an opponent when it's more properly thought of as being able to strike and inflict damage. I'm entirely comfortable with the D&D abstraction of armor class.