Helmets

At one point I played with the idea of having helmets force an aditional check for critical hits, but giving a -2 to all spot and listen checks. we playtested it, and my group seemed to like it, but after a month or so no one used it. Any thoughts?

Along the same lines would a helmet be included with every suit of armor, or only breastplate, brigadine, full plate and the like?

You could have helmets bestow a -2 to -5 penalty to any threat to crit roll. It would seem an easier game mechanic rather than having the player roll a third time.

I agree. -2 then for a normal helm (skull caps), and -5 for a great helm (great helms). Now wjat about magical bonus from the various Helms of ... Should they have an additional benefit, or would you agree that unless designed to be magically protective they have no additional bonus?

In my opinion, every character would wear a helm. Spot and Listen, in general, aren't as important to me as avoiding that nasty x3 critical. If you used this rule, I would reccomend adding more Spot and Listen checks and reminding the players they have a helmet on -- more than one house rule has been lost because of forgetful players.

Actually, the genesis of this was that I was using lots of spot and listen checks and they kept making them. So I came up with a reason to hinder them.

They did not know this of course.

Skade said:

Actually, the genesis of this was that I was using lots of spot and listen checks and they kept making them. So I came up with a reason to hinder them.

They did not know this of course.

Click to expand...

Rule of thumb: if you're going to post on a public forum, assume people will find out.

That said, if your basic problem is that Spot and Listen checks are too easy, then bump up the DCs, eg by giving your monsters ranks in Hide and Move Silently, or being freer with circumstance bonuses/penalties. Anyway, what's wrong with your players with succeeding at these checks?

I came up with this a few years ago, and have posted it a few times since when this topic has come up again...

HELMETS

(The underlying assumption being, that wearing a helmet doesn't make you any harder to
hit; but when a threat is scored a disproportionate number of these will target the head,
and therefore a helmet should provide a disproportionate amount of protection at these
times--and not having one on at such times is a VERY bad idea indeed!)

Type_____ThreatAP's_____Penalty_____SpellFail

None________-4____________0____________+0%
Light_______-2___________-1____________+10%
Medium_______0___________-3____________+25%
Heavy_______+2___________-6____________+50%

notes-

ThreatAP's: added to armor class before threat roll is made to test for a critical.

Penalty(proficient): applies to all checks related to vision or hearing(and perhaps smell, in
the case of the heavy helm). One-half of the modifier(0/0/-1/-3) applies to archery(bows,
not crossbows).

Penalty(non-proficient): applies to all checks related to vision or hearing(and sometimes
smell). The greater of the helmet or armor penalty applies to all attack rolls.

SpellFail: applies to spells with verbal components.

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If you don't want to penalize a character for not wearing a helmet, you can change the threat APs around and give a +0 modifier for "none"--the light , medium, and heavy categories could then be given modifiers of +1, +2, and +3 respectively (or something like that). It really depends on the flavor of your campaign.
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Something I do in my Basic D&D campaign that's a bit simpler...

Wearing a Helm/et gives a character a chance to convert a critical hit to a normal one...

Helmet: 1 on a d6

Helmet: 1-2 on a d6

If you prefer them to provide more protection, you can extend the range of each by 1 (i.e. 1-2 and 1-3).