First I'm going to say that the best weapon vs armour rules I know are those used in Rolemaster (although I prefer MERP which is basically Rolemaster Lite). A separate table for each weapon category vs each armour category.
Yes, having Defense and Armor as DR would be good things, IMO. Not only is it more realistic (armor does not make one harder to hit, its entire purpose is to absorb damage)
Good armour absorbs so much damage that most blows directly impacting it are rendered ineffective. The answer to this was going round the armour and aiming at the weak points. Making someone harder to hit is therefore a better model.
There's no need for armor piercing. More damage is more likely to pierce armor.
Your argument flies in the face of history. The Katana was a superb weapon as was the scimitar, their long edges and slashing strokes destroying lightly armoured foes. But both would be
terrible against plate armour because they need to actually cut through more steel to get the edge in. If you want to penetrate armour use as narrow a cross section as possible.
I disagree. A sword has a much longer reach and is far more effective by that fact. If daggers were so effective, you could just equip an army with daggers and win against an enemy army that is fully armored.
Daggers weren't effective against plate. They were just more effective than swords. Wrestle the plate armoured guy into position and then put the dagger through the eyeslits. This isn't
good tactics.
A sword going through an inch of steel is going to do a lot less damage coming out the other side than one going through a piece of cloth.
A sword isn't going to go through an inch of steel suitable for armour unless something
weird is going on.
First off, armor is not always all or nothing. Warhammers were designed to damage through full plate via blunt force trauma, not by poking through a gap. If we wanted "realism", piercing weapons would have a significant miss chance vs Plate, bludgeon would have a high DR, and slashing would be neigh ineffective. And arrows were capable of punching through plate, but given the loss of kinetic energy from doing so, DR would be a reasonable way to model that.
But DnD is not realistic to that level.
This.
or just fix monsters so that they follow the same system as players and let really bad ass monsters be. Because they are REALLY BAD ASS MONSTERS and you shouldnt mess with them.
Theres a reason in mythology it took really epic heroes to handle things like Grendel, the Medusa and the Minotaur.
And there's a reason that gothic plate is so renowned. The best way for the Minotaur to fight someone in decent quality plate armour would probably picking him up and shaking him until his brains rattled around in his head. Or passing the shock through the armour with a big club.
I agree, except that explorers, sailors, and many others wore little armor because of armor's significant drawbacks. In my games, better armor means a more significant tradeoff in terms of skills, movement, and (especially) endurance.
Yeah. I hope 5E armor hurts you speed and skill rolls severely but gives a great Armor class boost. Especially since the math is flatter.
You could
swim in full plate armour. You can cartwheel. Good rennaisance-era plate armour weighs only about 20kg or a bit under 50lb - and is as well distributed as it is physically possible to be. Sure you're not going to be lockpicking with gauntlets. By comparison, British Infantry in the Falklands were carrying up to 120lb and some idiot gave the Rangers at Granada an average pack weight of 167lb. (Both those were far too heavy of course).
One of the factors armour was designed with was weight. Lighter armour helped. But most people didn't wear plate armour for two reasons. 1: It was hideously expensive. 2: They had no need to.
And skill rolls. Sure, you don't pick locks wearing gauntlets. But 50lbs, well distributed, is getting to the limits of what a fit person can continually wear without it impeding them. That's why plate armour was the weight it was.
Are you saying that these are weapons that can be expected to do as much (or even more) damage to a plate wearing defender, as to an unarmored defender, suffering the same attack? Because that's the only way it makes sense to say that DR couldn't apply here.
I'm thinking of something like a
HESH round as the only possibility. Using the whole of the armour to rattle the occupant. But that's an edge case and I doubt applicable.
What they wore and what they fought against aren't one and the same. As I said, the claymore evolved during the Scottish battles against the English.
In fact, the two-hander in general evolved to cleave plate armor.
The Two-Handed Great Sword
You seem to think that the English went in for lots of plate armour. Most people wearing full plate were cavalry - plate was expensive and if you could afford it you could afford a hrose. And if we look at
Bannockburn, there were only 700 English cavalry. Sure there were more knights at
Falkirk - but the Scots had an answer to that. Pikemen. The Claymore simply doesn't resemble other anti- plate armour weapons - but does weapons that were great against light to medium armour and could be turned against plate at a pinch. An actual anti-plate weapon would be a
Bec_de_corbin - note the hammer head and the narrow spikes for piercing armour. Completely the opposite take to the long edges that mangle lightly protected flesh.
