Quote from: Chris24601;1118727I don't think options one and two are mutually exclusive. I have an Armor defense for attacks armor helps with (ex. swords, arrows) and a Dodge defense for things it wouldn't (ex. 500 lb. boulders, dragon fire).

However, if your Dodge defense ends up higher than your Armor defense (hard, but by no means impossible) you can use your Dodge defense in place of your Armor defense (if you can dodge lightning bolts, an arrow is no more difficult).

More accurately though is that, depending on how you calculate it, AC is already a derived stat so it's really just a subset of option two. Base Value + Stat mod + item mod is the definition of a derived trait.

The derived trait could also be used for an opposed roll (roll + stat + item).

That's why you can make more than one choice. Talislanta uses a static roll vs. skill rating penalty. BUT if you want to actually actively parry/evade, it's an opposed check, which on their universal table also includes Levels of Success. It's quite sophisticated for its time. Still a very strong mechanic if you want medium-grit to your combat.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118727* * * *

A better question might be how to resolve the damage after you beat the target numer, because that's where there's more options and can help direct what your defense value will be based on).

D&D uses independent variable damage (other than crits, the quality of the hit has no effect on damage dealt) deducted from a health pool.

Mutants & Masterminds uses a save vs. damage DC of the attack with a margin of failure determining the effect.

The Silhouette system multiplied the margin of success by a multiplier (based on the weapon used) and compared it to a threshold to determine damage.

New World of Darkness added skill and weapon value into a dice pool and each success past the target's defense did a level of damage.

How you want to have damage dealt will probably give a better sense what you want to use for your attack target number (ex. For a margin of success based damage system, adding armor to your maneuverability to create a defense target number has the same effect as armor being damage reduction because the lower the margin of success, the lower the damage taken).

Don't you do it! Don't you derail my To Hit thread, you dirty wanker! Damage is a different monster altogether! LOL. We'll get to that later. Yeah I know they're related, or at least they're plenty of games that marry both rolls. I'm trying to keep things "simple" (we know how that goes!). Your point is well made and being taken into consideration.

Opposed Rolls are fine too.  A d20 Roll Off, if you will.
 Offense vs Defense, etc.

I use alternative #3. The defender's Target Number (T#) is derived from Size and Agility and improvement in T# replaced HP increases as a core idea.
There are options for the defender to parry or use an acrobatic dodge but they have costs associated with them. Most ducking, flinching and weapon blocking is subsumed in T#.

Quote from: tenbones;1118732Sure. But I've run into precisely ZERO people that look at it that way without having to explain it to them.

My experience that is true of most RPG combat systems. None of them are naturally intuitive and depend on reading the text or somebody teaching the group.

Quote from: tenbones;1118732The natural logic is that Armor worn *has* something to do with actually being hit.

I don't think that the case, more common point of view is that Armor mitigates damage as in it subtracts from the damage you receive. Is this a mistype? As it is at odd with the overall sentiment of your post.

What I encountered with most hobbyists is the following.

The to hit roll represent a swing of the weapon and determines whether it impacted the target.
You roll damage to see just how hard you hit.
You armor protects you from damage by reducing it.

D&D looks counter intuitive because it folds the above into a single roll. So let's break it down

You have a certain chance of impacting a target.
You have certain odds of inflicting X damage
The armor will absorb Y damage.


So say I have a 50% chance of hitting the target with my sword.
Let say I roll 1d10 damage
Let say the target is wearing armor that absorb 5 points of damage.

So if I hit there is a 50-50 chance of me doing any damage. If I roll a 1 to 5, the target will take nothing because the armor absorb 5 points. If it roll 6 to 10 then the target will suffer damage in the range of 1 to 5 points. (1d10-5).

So we take the 50% chance of hitting, the 50% chance of actually doing damage and multiply them. So we have a 25% chance of dealing 1d5 damage.  So I can have the player roll a d20 and if they roll a 16 to a 20 they hit for 1d5 damage.

Two different procedures both a reflection of the same reality.

A wrinkle as far as RPGs goes is that they are not compatible. Because if I going to do the latter than the weapon damage has to reflect the damage done IF the armor is penetrated. Which means the weapons will be less than if I use the former 3 step method.

In addition specific to D&D, damage is not a representation of an impact but rather a hit to kill. And hit to kill was expanded out to 1d6 damage and what a person could take was expanded to 1d6 hit points.

Why? Let's look at Runequest vs D&D.

D&D first draft was written by Gary Gygax and incorporated his experience with chainmail at set of mass combat rules. The basic combatant in chainmail had the same skill level as any other basic combatant. So when it was reduced to the man to man level the only fact Gygax and Perren considered was the odds of killing the opponent with a given weapon versus a specific type of armor. Giving us Chainmail's man to man chart.

When writing D&D Gygax did away with weapon and substituted experience in the form of level. Presumably to avoid the issue of the Fantasy Combat Matrix. The matrix was fine for a fantasy miniature wargame but D&D had a different focus. So instead of weapons being the primary factor in determine whether a target was killed, it was the amount of experience or level one had. One hit to kill became 1d6 hit points and 1 hit became 1d6 damage and we have our initial version of D&D.

In contrast Runequest reflect Perrens experience with medieval reenactment. Perrin's approach it from a bottom up perspective. Breaking down what he did while fighting in the SCA into discrete actions like a to hit roll, a parry in some case, then dealing damage. Then defining armor the way most people naturally view it as damage reduction. Being in the SCA undoubtedly taught him the importance of proper straps and how that helps to spread the impact of a blow around along with other details that found their way into Runequest.

Quote from: tenbones;1118732We don't have to like it, that's just how it feeeeeeels.

I am not asking you like AC. I don't contend that it is a superior abstraction (or inferior). It works if explained which it wasn't.

Quote from: tenbones;1118732I'm not even sure how long your version of the development of AC as a system was maintained in the minds of TSR? Any idea?

It was never maintained, Gygax and crew were to busy having fun and they accepted the abstraction because the community of the time was familiar with chainmail. Slightly the business of TSR reared it head, D&D was spreading, and they just got overwhelmed by the huge response to consider writing about the finer points. From all my reading, they were happy to get just the basics across like with the Holmes boxed set.

And there was arrogance as the counterpoint from people from St. Andre, the Runequest crew in California as far as system design wasn't exactly polite.

Quote from: tenbones;1118732Because the moment Unearthed Arcana dropped

The moment was well passed by then. Nobody dug into it rigourously until Peterson, the collectors, and other RPG historians started in on it in the mid 2000s. With their work, we can see what they actually said in the form of manuscripts, zines, newsletters as well collected anecdotes.

Quote from: tenbones;1118732I completely agree. I rather like the Fantasy AGE method. It's clean. But of course all the downstream stuff has to work with it too. I'm not Fantasy AGE-proficient, but this description is nice.

One thing to consider with Fantasy AGE that the hit points scale is similar to that of later edition D&D. It also uses a level system. There is no reason you can't start defining Defense as 10+Dex mod+Defense Mod (usually shield). Keep the same to hit roll. Give armor a reduction and keep the damage roll the same.

You can also go to sites like this
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm

And read up what been done with the d20 system.

The main issue with classic D&D is that monsters don't have attributes. You will have go through every monster and decide what their defense is. With later addition monsters have a dex stat and make this much easier and convertible on the fly.

Mongoose Traveller 1st Edition made the TN be 8+ no matter what, with some maths for modifiers.

Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition made the TN be the difficulty, with less maths for modifiers.

Anything that speeds up dice rolls is a plus in my book.

Quote from: tenbones;1118734Don't you do it! Don't you derail my To Hit thread, you dirty wanker! Damage is a different monster altogether! LOL. We'll get to that later. Yeah I know they're related, or at least they're plenty of games that marry both rolls. I'm trying to keep things "simple" (we know how that goes!). Your point is well made and being taken into consideration.

Silhouette - Roll to hit vs their defense roll. The difference is then multiplied by the weapons damage. Say 8 for a sword and you beat the defense roll by 2 = 16 damage. Foe has three thresholds (Flesh wound, Sever wound, Dead) Which ever you exceed is what is applied. Flesh -1 to all actions per flesh wound, Sever -2 to all per sever, Dead is dead. You die when you get a total of -5.

Estar, that explanation of why they DO make sense was spot on. Should be mandatory reading for anyone new to the game.

Quote from: amacris;1118771Estar, that explanation of why they DO make sense was spot on. Should be mandatory reading for anyone new to the game.

TBH, I disagree. I've often come up with this type of explanation throughout the years every time that this sort of topic comes up, with people trying to defend overly abstract D&D mechanics like HP, Initiative or AC as written by appealing to "what the rules actually mean" in theoretical framework and attempt to rationalize them as "making sense" if only people would consider what the designers were attempting to do, under the apparent assumption that it's just that people don't know and they just have to be educated on this stuff so they understand. But the problem is that people do know, they simply disagree that the rules truly accomplish what the designers theoretically were trying to do and would prefer to handle it another way.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118792But the problem is that people do know, they simply disagree that the rules truly accomplish what the designers theoretically were trying to do and would prefer to handle it another way.

You are talking about two different things, preference versus what a system mechanics is capable of.

I have no illusion that my explanation will change people's preference. However it does illustrate more clearer what AC is capable of then the default explanation most edition have.

As for what Gygax and Arneson were trying to do, they both felt that as you leveled and gained experience you ought to be able to do damage easier and more often. That the better armor you wear the less often you will take damage. The system they developed does this.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118792in theoretical framework and attempt to rationalize them as "making sense" if only people would consider what the designers were attempting to do, under the apparent assumption that it's just that people don't know and they just have to be educated on this stuff so they understand.

Did you or did you not understand my explanation? Note I am not asking whether you liked it, I am asking whether you understood it.

Do I need to walk through the various source material that supports my thesis?

Do you find a flaw in the math I presenting showing how a AC system can reflect the same odds of suffering damage and the same amount of damage suffered as a armor reduces damage system?

It not like other system don't have a history to their genesis. For example people learning about the role of D&D and the SCA in the development of Runequest. Or in the 90s the early use of the internet by SJ Games led to their authors and staff talking more about the underpinnings of GURPS than it was usual case.

Actually I think it does make sense in how you present it. I, personally, don't like how it "feels" as a mechanic designed to to express what is being abstracted. Rather - I don't hate it or anything, I just think my sensibilities about the degrees of abstraction-to-narrative assumptions have shifted.

Much like the ballyhooed negativity about FFG's "Narrative" die mechanics - which are only as narrative as you want them to be, since they have tables that give you static values for just about any/every roll you can make - as a parallel example.

I think there is a very good reason why people don't look at AC in the manner you're explaining - though after consideration I kinda get it. I just think it's an odd view of how to express it in Task resolution. But in fairness, i've always thought that about AC - especially, ironically, once I started playing Stormbringer and Palladium Fantasy and Talislanta back in the day. AC felt weird to me for decades as a concept. EVEN though I was perfectly fine with the math behind it.

Quote from: lordmalachdrim;1118753Silhouette - Roll to hit vs their defense roll. The difference is then multiplied by the weapons damage. Say 8 for a sword and you beat the defense roll by 2 = 16 damage. Foe has three thresholds (Flesh wound, Sever wound, Dead) Which ever you exceed is what is applied. Flesh -1 to all actions per flesh wound, Sever -2 to all per sever, Dead is dead. You die when you get a total of -5.

HMM! Interesting. I'll look into it.

Quote from: estar;1118793You are talking about two different things, preference versus what a system mechanics is capable of.

I have no illusion that my explanation will change people's preference. However it does illustrate more clearer what AC is capable of then the default explanation most edition have.

As for what Gygax and Arneson were trying to do, they both felt that as you leveled and gained experience you ought to be able to do damage easier and more often. That the better armor you wear the less often you will take damage. The system they developed does this.



Did you or did you not understand my explanation? Note I am not asking whether you liked it, I am asking whether you understood it.

Do I need to walk through the various source material that supports my thesis?

Do you find a flaw in the math I presenting showing how a AC system can reflect the same odds of suffering damage and the same amount of damage suffered as a armor reduces damage system?

It not like other system don't have a history to their genesis. For example people learning about the role of D&D and the SCA in the development of Runequest. Or in the 90s the early use of the internet by SJ Games led to their authors and staff talking more about the underpinnings of GURPS than it was usual case.

Part of it is a matter of stylistic preference, but there are also mechanical issues as well. Armor as "Defense" (i.e. evasion or reduced hit rate) fails to account for attacks that don't do damage (such as knockdowns, disarms, etc., which armor shouldn't protect you from) or damage from attacks that don't involve "to hit" rolls (such as explosions, which armor should protect you from).

I'm aware of the source material, I just don't think that AC is a good way to represent what it's intended to do and there are mechanical gaps in "Armor as Defense" that "Armor as Mitigation/DR" doesn't have.

Quote from: estar;1118793As for what Gygax and Arneson were trying to do, they both felt that as you leveled and gained experience you ought to be able to do damage easier and more often. That the better armor you wear the less often you will take damage. The system they developed does this.

Or rather, it did (past tense). When damage was constrained to the d4, d6, d8 and d10 +/-1 from a high ability score the mechanic is sensible because the damage range is small enough (ave. of 2.5 to 5.5) that armor as percentage of hits completely stopped seems logical.

But by as early as 1e AD&D an 18/00 (from gauntlets of ogre power) dealt more static damage than the average roll of a d10 and static damage has only scaled up from there to the point that the idea was strained to say the least.

When the the difference between a near miss and a minimum damage hit is 1 point of damage, AC being partly DR makes sense. When the difference between a near miss and minimum damage hit is 7+ points it stops feeling like it's partly DR and feels more like the armor is all or nothing.

It's compounded by the hit points = meat mentality because the hits are invariably described as actual injuries (ones that would often be fight ending because they're scaled to what they'd be on a zero-level soldier; an axe sticking in your gut as one memorable example).

It's less bad where hit points are mostly or entirely non-physical (ex. Stamina) and it's loss represents the effort needed to make a hit non-injuring (in which case AC from armor represents the times you can use the armor to deflect an attack with no appreciable effort), but still notable.

I get that it was the original intent. I think people are just expressing that there's been over four decades of development into something else entirely and that is what the vast majority are familiar with.

ETA: if I weren’t four years deep into design and playtesting and the whole system nearly written save for some fluff text and random encounter-ish tables, I’d probably do a Armor + Attribute + Skill = Defense target number with damage based on margin of success; but that’s for someone else to explore I guess.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118800I'm aware of the source material, I just don't think that AC is a good way to represent what it's intended to do and there are mechanical gaps in "Armor as Defense" that "Armor as Mitigation/DR" doesn't have.

FWIW, the book "From Sumer to Rome" convinced me that armor wasn't primarily about "damage mitigation", it was about limiting the areas where you could be hurt ("armor as defense"). The authors show with very careful calculation and empirical testing that contemporary weapons during the period simply couldn't harm a person if they hit the armor. Hitting your breastplate with my sword doesn't damage you, it damages my sword and hurts my arm. As a result, combat was about hitting the target where he wasn't armored, which could be quite challenging.

Their results help explain why:
1) Heavy infantry beat archers in the ancient world. They find that 99% of all arrows would be deflected by shields and armor, meaning heavy infantry could close long before they were attritted. Waves of arrows wiping out heavy infantry is Hollywood nonsense.
2) Casualties are so lop-sided in battles, with the winning side having so few. The vast majority of attacks by heavy infantry on heavy infantry are deflected by armor and shield and only when one side turns its (less armored unshielded) back does the slaughter occur.
Put another way, if armor *mitigated* damage, the result of battles would be for most people to have numerous holes in their armor with wounds, but if armor *prevents* damage, the result would be for most people to be unwounded, some people to be badly wounded but survive, and some people to be dead. The latter is what we actually see in history.

I agree with you 100% that there are mechanical gaps in D&D but they can all be addressed within an "armor as defense" framework should one want to achieve that outcome. But they can't be achieved if you don't understand what's being simulated, which is why I think estar's essay is valuable. It's not the answer, but it's the beginning of the answer.

Quote from: estar;1118716Harnmaster by far. Brutal, fast, and realistic. Basically opposed rolls followed by damage saves. Accumulated injury result in lower skill and harder damage saves.

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Needing to reference a chart during gameplay is a deal-breaker for me.