I'm going to go along with the other posters that differentiate between "accurate" representations and what we consider "fun" or streamlined enough.

In a tabletop game, I prefer armor to modify the chances to hit and that's it. Even extras like Classic Traveller's rules about different armors working differently against specific types of weapons is too rules heavy for me. (In my home game, I used different die sizes for offense and defense, and all weapons do one point of damage.)

If I were writing a computer RPG, armor would do it all--modify damage, modify chances to hit in a way that performs damage, modify wearer's agility, work differently against different weapons, and so forth. But that's too much for me to do at a table. YMMV.

I came up with a system that reasonably combined both concepts.  Not like GURPS old passive defense approach, which doesn't work for me.

The way it works is that every character has a HC (hit class) and AC (armor class).  A strike that rolls equal or higher than HC but less than AC has its damage reduced.  If it's equal or higher than AC, the attack bypasses the armor.  The difference between HC and AC is called Coverage, and depends purely on how much of the wearer is exposed.  Damage reduction is based on armor type, with a typical ceiling of about 5 for standard plate.  Thrusting weapons (like spears) reduce effective Coverage by one, and armor piercing weapons (like maces) reduce damage reduction by one.

It worked pretty well in practice, although it does slow things down a little to refer to two "to hit" values instead of one.  It was slightly simplified by the fact that HC depends purely on the size of the target (plus its speed and range, for missile attacks).  Dexterity doesn't provide a flat HC bonus.  Instead, a character who has a higher initiative roll than another character can either take the first attack for a +1 to hit, or defer its attack to later in return for a +2 to HC.  Melee HC for an adult human is 12.

These sound like big changes, but it actually wasn't hard to keep them balanced.

Thanks for all the responses, everyone!

I'm kinda surprised to see a majority in favor for DR armor. I ran a poll over on G+, and the results were similar (60% want armor as DR/armor as DR with AC being an optional rule). I guess I figured that D&D fans would want to just stick with traditional AC.

Right now we're doing minimum damage of 1. That way if you score a hit something happens. We tried random DR in our Age of Worms playtest campaign last night and none of the players liked it. I think it was just too much math for them (though they rolled really well, to the point where their armor soaked most of the damage). Next week we're gonna try sticking with traditional armor-as-AC and see what happens.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;933770For D&D, I tend to get fed up and just use the traditional armor as damage avoidance, with a smattering of DR for especially tough foes, or as a feature of some magical armors versus specific damage types.

Why do you get fed up with it?

Quote from: estar;933786Both general concepts produces systems with quick combats and both produces systems with long combat. What you need to do is start playing, note the stuff that doesn't fit your vison, revise, and playtest again. Do this over and over again as often you can with as many people as you can. Goto local conventions, use Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds and recruit on the internet. Goodman Games did this with the DCC RPG and it is a enduring hit for them. Likewise Paizo took a while with Pathfinder in beta before they started publishing final rulebooks.

I want to keep things fast. None of the players have complained about combat speed, though early on in one of the playtest campaigns a cleric player (who had plate armor) said that he felt too safe. This was before the minimum damage tweak, and none of the players have said they felt too safe since.

Mostly I wanted to hear what D&D fans would prefer for whatever reason (including "it's easier/faster"), because at this point I can go either way (and whichever is core, the other system will be included as an optional rule).

Quote from: Larsdangly;933816Anyone who has worked with medieval armors and weapons and done one of the related unrealistic-but-better-than-total-ignorance combat sports can tell you that AC is not at all crazy. Someone wearing plate armor can certainly be hit with an edged weapon, but only in a few spots, along a few specific lines of attack. Most blows from most weapons cannot possibly penetrate plate armor.

I've never worked on/worn medieval armor, but what about feeling the impact of the strike? Like, if you get hit with a sword while wearing plate, is there a chance you can get bruised?

Quote from: JeremyR;933841The problem with armor as DR is that the scale of damage in D&D gets pretty extreme when facing large monsters.  Classic example are Golems - Stone do 3-24, Clay 3-30, and Iron 4-40 and giants aren't much better. Even the best armor would mitigate only 1/3 of the damage, you'd be much better off if you got hit 30% less  

Similarly, it almost works too well against weapons. A dagger will never hurt someone who had armor of DR4 or better. Maybe that's realistic, but I don't think it makes a good game.

We're fiddling with damage, armor piercing/ignoring armor, and even reducing armor with certain attacks/abilities. Right now it's possible for even Small critters with daggers to whittle you down, but it's been very useful against big things.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;933860For me the two systems for Armour I liked best were the Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0's Stopping Power and Fantasy Age's system.

And right now, I'm using armour as DR in my D&D 5e, with Proficiency added to certain classes to signify training.  Fighter types (all of them), the Rogue, a Valor Bard, any Cleric that can use Martial and/or Heavy Armour.  Debating the Blade Pact Warlock, but as we don't have one...

The biggest issue we've had with it, is that the Fighting Men with their non-scaling damage fail to do damage, so I've given them the same scaling that Cantrips get.  That's worked out well (Fighter types, and to clarify that means Fighters, Paladins, Rangers and Barbarians) so far.

Also, certain of energy attacks go right through, things like Thunder, Cold, Fire.  Force damage is actually effected, although I'm waffling on Magic Missile, but it's still a work in progress.

What DR values are you using?

We've given fighters static attack and damage bonuses every four levels, and an extra attack every 5 levels. Cold and fire is affected for the most part, but lightning and psychic attacks go right through (though I suppose you could have some sort of item/ability that gives DR versus psionic attacks).

Quote from: AsenRG;933876If you have Armour as DR, you need a way to avoid the armour, too. Daggers have killed more people in armour than almost any other weapon, but not because they're more armour-piercing than swords:D! It's because they stab through the chinks in the armour.
In Mythras, for example, you get that by using the Ignore Armour Special Effect on a critical attack:).

Conversely, trying to avoid the armour is what you do all the time with the default roll in AC systems. So the same attack to unprotected parts would signify an increase in damage, or the damage going straight to Constitution in systems where you have an HP/Con split, but it would not reduce the AC, because the attack isn't any easier;)!

I like the ignore armor special effect idea. Probably make a weapon talent that lets you do that if you roll high enough, or just as a static armor piercing bonus.

Quote from: jhkim;933963The main thing that makes slug fests drag on is that there are an inordinate number of repetitive rounds. To deal with this, I prefer to just up the damage done and frequency of hits.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;933969What factor of damage to total hit points do you prefer? Like are you talking one hit kills? Or two to three good whacks?

Obviously, this varies depending on the hit. If they're swarmed with goblins, then hits are small - but they also might fight a single behir that can take down a PC in one good hit.

I usually try for combat to be resolved in 3 to 5 rounds, though it varies. For some games, long involved combats are more the point - for others, combat is less emphasized and instead I try to resolve in a single (non-turn-based) roll.

In practice, my current D&D combats are taking longer, but I'm trying to adjust so that they don't.

One of the keys for this is to make sure the PCs usually have good information going into a fight. A common situation in many D&D games is to kick in the door, where you have no idea what is on the other side, and then over a few rounds of fighting them you learn what they do, and then adjust your tactics to fit. I prefer for the PCs to be a little more informed and prepared prior to the fight starting. They might still be ambushed, but if so, they will usually know who their opponents are, and can be on the lookout for likely ambush points.

Quote from: antiochcow;934036I’m kinda surprised to see a majority in favor for DR armor. I ran a poll over on G+, and the results were similar (60% want armor as DR/armor as DR with AC being an optional rule). I guess I figured that D&D fans would want to just stick with traditional AC.

Right now we’re doing minimum damage of 1. That way if you score a hit something happens. We tried random DR in our Age of Worms playtest campaign last night and none of the players liked it. I think it was just too much math for them (though they rolled really well, to the point where their armor soaked most of the damage). Next week we’re gonna try sticking with traditional armor-as-AC and see what happens.

I think there can be problems taking a traditionally armor-as-DR game like RuneQuest and suddenly changing it to armor-as-AC; and conversely, there can be problems taking a traditionally armor-as-AC game like D&D and switching it to armor-as-DR. The switch is liable to throw off a lot of built-in assumptions in the game design, like thoroughly changing the difficulty of a horde of small-attack creatures versus one big-attack creature.

I think fixed DR is pretty easy for the players. If a player is told "damage 8" and he knows to always reduce damage by 3, that doesn't add much to the handling time. Rolling an extra die with every hit to see how much effect armor has seems like significantly more work.

Quote from: antiochcow;934036Why do you get fed up with it?

Once I accept that "missing" means the armor turned the blow, then I can deal with damage mitigation being emulated by the AC of the armor.

Quote from: jhkim;933963However, I think it's nonsense to say that this doesn't make a good game. It works great in tons of games from RuneQuest to GURPS to Hero System. Why wouldn't it do so?

The way armor works is the primary reason I stopped playing Runequest. And Hero System has stunning damage which, due to it's higher number, isn't as effected by the DR.

All this is why I switched armor in my D&D to a all-or-nothing damage save. A single roll is about as quick as doing the math, you don't end up keeping track of tons of dinky 1 hp hits, and it affects all weapons equally so you don't have the issue with it encouraging two-handed weapons for everyone. It's superior on all accounts.

Quote from: jhkim;934039I think there can be problems taking a traditionally armor-as-DR game like RuneQuest and suddenly changing it to armor-as-AC; and conversely, there can be problems taking a traditionally armor-as-AC game like D&D and switching it to armor-as-DR. The switch is liable to throw off a lot of built-in assumptions in the game design, like thoroughly changing the difficulty of a horde of small-attack creatures versus one big-attack creature.

I agree. Converting to a different armour system will skew everything else. Damage, HP, how spells function, and so on.

Though I believe in one of the older Dragon issues there was an article on adding a damage ablation system to armour. Its been a long time but I think it simply gave each type of armour some HP and when that was depleted the suit was ruined.

Quote from: antiochcow;933768So I'm working on this D&D-ish game (link here in case you wanna check it out but it's not necessary), and we've been playtesting it for awhile now using armor as damage resistance, but seeing as it's a D&Dish game I want to see what D&D fans prefer for whatever reason: armor as damage reduction/resistance or traditional Armor Class (or a kind of hybrid, like in 3E's Unearthed Arcana which had armor give small amounts of DR and AC bonuses).

If you prefer armor-as-DR, what systems do it right for you? How complicated is too complicated? We've only tried using static values with armor piercing, but someone brought up Stormbringer which I guess uses random rolls for DR.

There are two other approaches.  (1) Damage conversion when you have two types of damage such as lethal to stun; and (2) Armor as something that can block and needs to be bypassed, such as in Dragon Warriors.

I prefer damage type conversion or reduction with armor piercing, have for decades.

Quote from: Skarg;934007Gameplay can be not about just picking targets and rolling until you win or lose, but how people move so as to get into situations where they have good chances to hit and concentrate attacks, where the enemy has a hard time doing anything effective.

Agreed. But I assumed this was an "all other things being equal" kind of question. Assuming everyone uses tactics... or assuming they don't. Given one of those two assumptions - it doesn't change the answer. I like to try to discuss the actual topic of the original post, I am kind of old-fashioned that way.

Quote from: Larsdangly;933816Anyone who has worked with medieval armors and weapons and done one of the related unrealistic-but-better-than-total-ignorance combat sports can tell you that AC is not at all crazy. Someone wearing plate armor can certainly be hit with an edged weapon, but only in a few spots, along a few specific lines of attack. Most blows from most weapons cannot possibly penetrate plate armor.

But penetration isn't the only way damage happens.  Impact through the material also applies, a mace for example, will rarely break skin, but the impact will bruise or crush bone under it.  Same idea applies to place armour, hit it hard enough (and two handed weapons were designed for this, yes, even the swords were) and you can send literal shockwaves through the plate and into the target, breaking bones and rupturing organs, now with the padding and spacing between the armour plates, that's a lot HARDER to do, than with chain or leather, but it's still possible.

Quote from: antiochcow;934036Thanks for all the responses, everyone!

What DR values are you using?

We’ve given fighters static attack and damage bonuses every four levels, and an extra attack every 5 levels. Cold and fire is affected for the most part, but lightning and psychic attacks go right through (though I suppose you could have some sort of item/ability that gives DR versus psionic attacks).

For now, we're sticking with what the core books gives -10.  So plate gives a whopping 8 DR, while leather is a decent -1.  Also, a Barbarian's Armoured Defense (Con-based) feature is DR, whereas a Monk's (Wis-based) version is AC/to be hit.  Bear in mind, though that because I've given all character classes a scaling damage bonus (Casters get it for free, via their spells, the Rogues get Sneak Attack, and I gave other classes that don't have one built in the Cantrip style scaling) having plate or magic bonuses are all that restrictive.

Like I said, it's working, so far.  Also, monsters some of them keep the same AC, to show innate cunning and combat experience, rather than toughness of skin.  Others, like the Bulette, lose their AC above their Dex Bonus, but gets turned into DR, also have to adjust the HP in return, but when you have a beast that can be hit easily, but cuts your damage down by a full 9 points, it's something to be feared.  Dragons also fall into category.  After all, a Large Dragon, which ISN'T an adult, is going to fill most of a ROOM in a house, which means it's not that hard to hit. but the scales provide natural armour.  They've been the most work, so far.  But I like it, and that's what matters, ne?

Also, Crits ALWAYS do a minimum of 1 damage per die.  Also, crits double the current damage code, so if you're fifth level, wielding battle axes or long swords, and you do 4d8+str on a crit.

Quote from: Edgewise;934022I came up with a system that reasonably combined both concepts.  Not like GURPS old passive defense approach, which doesn't work for me.

The way it works is that every character has a HC (hit class) and AC (armor class).  A strike that rolls equal or higher than HC but less than AC has its damage reduced.  If it's equal or higher than AC, the attack bypasses the armor.  The difference between HC and AC is called Coverage, and depends purely on how much of the wearer is exposed.  Damage reduction is based on armor type, with a typical ceiling of about 5 for standard plate.  Thrusting weapons (like spears) reduce effective Coverage by one, and armor piercing weapons (like maces) reduce damage reduction by one.

It worked pretty well in practice, although it does slow things down a little to refer to two "to hit" values instead of one.  It was slightly simplified by the fact that HC depends purely on the size of the target (plus its speed and range, for missile attacks).  Dexterity doesn't provide a flat HC bonus.  Instead, a character who has a higher initiative roll than another character can either take the first attack for a +1 to hit, or defer its attack to later in return for a +2 to HC.  Melee HC for an adult human is 12.

These sound like big changes, but it actually wasn't hard to keep them balanced.

That's more or less the system in ORC RPG (Fates Worse Than Death, Tibet;)).

Quote from: antiochcow;934036I’m kinda surprised to see a majority in favor for DR armor.

Not all of us are die-hard D&D fans, you know:).

QuoteI’ve never worked on/worn medieval armor, but what about feeling the impact of the strike? Like, if you get hit with a sword while wearing plate, is there a chance you can get bruised?

I guess it depends on what you mean by "medieval". Do you mean the late medieval armour that's not even touching your body:p?

QuoteI like the ignore armor special effect idea. Probably make a weapon talent that lets you do that if you roll high enough, or just as a static armor piercing bonus.

If you roll high enough over the AC sounds good to me.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;934048All this is why I switched armor in my D&D to a all-or-nothing damage save. A single roll is about as quick as doing the math, you don't end up keeping track of tons of dinky 1 hp hits, and it affects all weapons equally so you don't have the issue with it encouraging two-handed weapons for everyone. It's superior on all accounts.

Only if different weapons don't give you different bonuses (bonii?) for overcoming the save;).

Quote from: Christopher Brady;934112But penetration isn't the only way damage happens.  Impact through the material also applies, a mace for example, will rarely break skin, but the impact will bruise or crush bone under it.

Who lied to you? A mace on unprotected flesh is going to make steak Tartare out of it.

QuoteSame idea applies to place armour, hit it hard enough (and two handed weapons were designed for this, yes, even the swords were) and you can send literal shockwaves through the plate and into the target, breaking bones and rupturing organs, now with the padding and spacing between the armour plates, that's a lot HARDER to do, than with chain or leather, but it's still possible.

That's BS. Two-handed weapons give you better leverage, more pushing strength, and most importantly, better control of the tip.
Trying to use your sword like an entitled hammer is just dumb, though. (Using a morteschlaug is another matter, but at this point you're no longer using a sword;)).

Yeah, DR seems a bit more realistic to me and all... But AC is just faster and easier... if you have 50 HP you probably shouldn't be receiving blows that deal no damage, or the fight will take forever... For a game like GURPS, OTOH, DR might work.

Here is how I make my peace with it: you either try to find "holes" in the amor (AC) or you bash it with all your strength and no finesse (AC 10, armor = DR). Make the second option sub-optimal, and you have a bit of realism but with a fast and easy foundation.

Here is one treatment of this idea, for example:

http://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com.br/2016/01/combat-maneuvers-made-easier-for.html

So you basically choose between accuracy and damage; high AC forces you to choose accuracy, therefore less damage, therefore high AC protects from damage.

Quote from: JeremyR;933841The problem with armor as DR is that the scale of damage in D&D gets pretty extreme when facing large monsters.  Classic example are Golems - Stone do 3-24, Clay 3-30, and Iron 4-40 and giants aren't much better. Even the best armor would mitigate only 1/3 of the damage, you'd be much better off if you got hit 30% less  

Similarly, it almost works too well against weapons. A dagger will never hurt someone who had armor of DR4 or better. Maybe that's realistic, but I don't think it makes a good game.

I see all of these as really nice features.

If a giant hits someone in armor, they should probably get squished and the armor not help much at all. In fact, what you want to do when a massive attack is coming (like a giant's club, or a flying boulder, or a couched lance from a charging horseman) is get out of the way and avoid being hit altogether, and being encased in heavy metal is not going to help you get out of the way, in fact if anything it might slow you down a bit. Having it reduce the damage but not by enough seems like correct modeling that produces an interesting situation that matches the situation and makes sense, which is exactly what I want my rules to do.

Similarly for daggers versus plate armor. You're unlikely to injure someone in plate by trying to go through it. Yes daggers can be effective if you can get in position where you can use them and get to an uncovered spot, but that's why we have rules for doing that, which are different from the rules for attacking someone with an ordinary attack.

When rules abstract hitting and penetration into one number (e.g. AC), it removes from play the difference between avoiding being hit and being hit but being saved by armor. And it removes the possibility of being hit and injured but by less than you would be with armor on, which is also a major real thing that happens with real armor. If you want those things in your gameplay, you may need something like DR. If you don't care about having such things, then AC may be an acceptable abstraction.

Different systems do either poorly/well depending on the conceits of the system and the intent of combat internally within that system. I think a more productive discussion is not which is better, AC or DR, but rather which RPG systems handle AC or DR WELL or POORLY and cite your reasons why. It's also hard to have this discussion without going into that other favorite debate: WTF do HP represent. Or as I put it: HP vs. Wounds

D&D - It abstracts a lot of those details that simulationists rail against because quite simply, it attempts to cook in very general assumptions about armor (not all of which is accurate) into a basic calculation of hit or miss which is not exactly what armor does (insert abstraction defense here). Couple this with the abstraction of HP One of the hallmarks of D&D's combat system (for better or worse) is that they balance the AC system based on small increments of assumed combat progression by level/class. I defer to others more knowledgeable about the historical development of the AC system. My take is that with the proliferation of magic items etc. succeeding editions of D&D leveraged magical items into this bad design flaw of balancing some classes with assumption that magic items would balance those classes from the inevitable bloating of mechanics for other classes. Meanwhile the AC system remained static (mostly) while they tacked on more and more widgets which never really got quite right after 1e imo.

AC implementation grade : 1-2e - 'B+', 3e- 'C', 4e- 'B-', 5e- 'B'



Talislanta - DR all the way. One of the things that really pulled me away from D&D's AC model back in the early 80's was Talislanta's assumption that its archetypes had built-in Defense values that represented their specific skill in avoiding being hit, while armor actually mitigated damage. Talislanta got it right. This allowed the mechanics of character "balance" (they don't really believe in intra-character balance - rather they want physical combat to balance) to depend purely on the skills of the character rather than by general abstraction of a class/level combination. Early Talislanta had levels but all progression from leveling was uniform across all characters. This allowed for Armor to be balanced against Weapon Damage - and nothing else. This had the added benefit of reducing magic-item bloat and kept the mechanics pretty clean. Even today 90% of all editions of Talislanta are fully compatible with one another in terms of the combat system.

Sidenote on Tal - They use HP but in early editions of Tal after your starting template everyone accrued HP at the same rate by levle (+2). Later editions ditched HP accrual entirely and just frontloaded your HP based on your template (which skewed a tad higher than the pre-4th editions) but the damage values didn't change and neither did the DR values.

DR implementation grade - 'B+'

Interlock - CP2020 uses DR and a Wound-Track. Highly kinetic, squarely in the simulationist camp of design. If you played D&D this way - you'd have a whole lotta grimdark going on. For the intents and purposes of slugthrowing and monomolecular chainsaw-gnawing action - Interlock is a very solid system. It has it's quirks - notably being *highly* lethal often unintentionally so, but imo - it handles things very well for trying to model high-impact combat that is going second-by-second with tons of bullets flying. Wound-track mechanics reflect this well too. This is the completely different end of the relatively high-abstraction D&D AC system. If there is a failing for Interlock - it's the scaling. They had to come up with silly numbers to figure out Heavy Weapon values from vehicles etc that essentially rendered you pizza-paste. They lose points for this rather than going to easily abstracted route of Palladium's MD etc.

DR implementation - 'B-'

Savage Worlds - Okay here's the magic unicorn. SW does BOTH. Armor abstracts not the ability to be hit. But rather it abstracts whether you do enough damage to penetrate which determines the severity of the hit in terms of its very tiny wound-track. At first blush it was unintuitive to me until I played it. After I played it - I thought it was brilliant. To me it combines the best of both AC and DR. AC in the sense you have to roll to bypass the protection of the armor *despite* being hit and to what degree. DR because Armor adds directly to the target number (Toughness) one needs to roll in order to damage you. Both AC and DR in one fell swoop that scales to pretty crazy levels.

AC/DR implementation 'B+/B+'



See? I didn't even attack anyone on their views. (it must be these painkillers)