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In historical battle, swords were great against flesh, but you wanted concentrated swinging force to get through armor. Picks, flails, and maces were better against plate armor than swords.
I'm trying to come up with a way to model this, with minimal rules complication.
My first thought was to change picks a bit:
Light War Pick, loses high-crit, gains armor piercing 1.
Heavy War Pick, loses high-crit, gains armor piercing 2.
Armor piercing says that if the attack targets AC and misses, but hits Reflex, the weapon deals its armor piercing value.
As for mace and morningstar and flails, maybe reduce their damage die by 1 and give them AP 1. Heavy versions thereof gets AP 2.
But that seems weak and fiddly to me. Any ideas?
__________________ Ryan "RangerWickett" Nock
Author of the War of the Burning Sky serialized novel, free at EN World. Part Two, The Irons Have Tolled, now available.
Reducing damage die by 1, in exchange for AP 1, is a bit of a losing proposition.
It's an interesting idea, but I'd suggest throwing it on some monsters and seeing how well it works on the players, whether it slows play down, etc. I've played with monsters that targeted 'AC or Reflex, whichever was better' before and it did slow play some, and this would slow it quite a bit more.
Well, then the issue is going to be "which types of armor does this really help against?". 1e and 2e had these kinds of rules and they were essentially totally ignored by AFAIK 100% of players. It just doesn't add that much to the game vs the work involved.
Mechanically it seems to me your proposal on average would give "Armor Piercing" weapons a +2 to-hit, but since the AP damage is so small that will add insignificantly to damage. Assuming you can hit AC on 10 and REF on 8 an Armor Piercing 1 weapon would do on average 0.1 DPR more damage than an otherwise identical weapon. High crit is worth more than that, so is brutal 1. Each reduction of one damage die is worth about 0.5 DPR, so really there isn't anything you can remove from the weapon that is trivial enough to balance against Armor Piercing.
Personally I think its too trivial to bother with, and D&D combat is unrealistic enough now that any minor "realism patch" IMHO isn't going to change that noticeably.
Maybe "If it hits Ref, but misses AC, it does half damage. Three-fourths damage if the attack normally deals 1/2 on a miss."
__________________ Ryan "RangerWickett" Nock
Author of the War of the Burning Sky serialized novel, free at EN World. Part Two, The Irons Have Tolled, now available.
What about this? If you roll 10+ and miss, you add the armor piercing damage. This would not take that much time to track. It would also have the effect of becoming more beneficial as enemy AC goes up. I think it would cool to add the armor piercing to any miss damage. As far as making the weapons lose something to gain Armor Piercing, you could probably just add it to liven up the maces and picks.
__________________ "If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms" Burning Empires:Boldaq Keep on the Shadowfell
Arguably, the pick is already a High Crit weapon, which might be how they are representing its armor piercing power already.
Maces weren't really all that "armor piercing", so much as "armor denting" and capable of driving the armor into the wearer with bone breaking force.
But if you're really devoted to the idea, just add your armor piercing power to a magical version, and make it something special - in the hands of a boss or leader type. Trying to add the mechanic to what may amount to a dozen NPCs, all wielding picks and maces, will just bog the combat down too much.
__________________ Life is the game that must be played. ~Edwin Arlington Robinson
Just checking, but armor piercing weapons are what we're talking about, right?
Well, armor reduces the chance to hit, so it should not effect damage at all. It should effect chance to hit? And in fact, the only thing that these type of weapons really effected was heavy armors, (I know, it's an over-generalization), so a +1 weapon bonus to attacks vs. heavy armor?
Or am I wandering off course?
__________________ The Fool
Mr. Oberon
John Bowden
My thought is, I've got full plate. If you attack me with a sword, you've got to aim in some very precise spots to hurt me, so that's why my AC is high. If you attack with a pick, if you can hit one of those precise spots, I'll be really hurt, but even if you miss, your pick might go through a plate and still hurt me. It just won't be as much, because the metal absorbed some of the damage.
The logic works the same way with other armors. You can stab a guy in chainmail in his armpit or throat, or you can wallop him with a mace in his chest, and still hurt him a bit.
Bear in mind, my group liked Conan d20's combat rules, where you could either try to bash through armor, or hit a weak spot, so a little fiddly-ness is not big problem if it gives us more combat options.
__________________ Ryan "RangerWickett" Nock
Author of the War of the Burning Sky serialized novel, free at EN World. Part Two, The Irons Have Tolled, now available.
I'd say if its fun for a given group, go for it. It certainly isn't going to unbalance the game to add a point or two of damage now and then on a near miss.
For those weapons, whenever making an attack against AC, you may choose to instead make the attack against the target's Reflex but deal half damage.
Course, that'd be damn popular with daze/stun/etc type attacks so maybe not. But making the conscious decision to give up trying to hit a weak point and let it do its work anywhere is something.
There is a fiddly bit in D&D, though: HP don't reflect actual damage.
A hit vs. AC could be a slice into the armpit of a guy wearing full plate, a thrust down into the space between the neck and the bone, or just a heavy smash against the breastplace that winds your opponent.
That means that it's hard to reflect what AP weapons actually do.
Hmm...
Here is a simple idea: +1 atk vs. AC.
__________________ "If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms" Burning Empires:Boldaq Keep on the Shadowfell
I feel this is what the4 High Crit property is all about; regardless of the target's AC, you got a 1-in-20 chance of landing a really big wallop. The larger a percentage of your total damage comes on a crit, the less you lose because of AC.
This is why it annoys me that Scimitars are high crit - these are surface slashing weapons meant not to stick as you make ride-by attacks and not intended for armored targets at all.
__________________ Carl Cramér
Member of the Netbook of Feats review board.
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