Has anyone statted armor with different bonuses for different attacks?

[alsih2o]

The example I am toying with is armor that is meant to stop missile attacks, but sucks against melee attacks.

sort of a "This will get you next to them, then it is up to you" armor. I have a backstory that involves it being made for and by dwarves so that they could manage lightweight defenses. Up close they wanna move, but were worried about ranged attacks.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[Wonko the Sane]

The old 1st Ed. PHB had optional rules for this, IIRC.

I could post the table here, but I'd have to look in a few dusty old boxes first

 

[Enkhidu]

IIRC, the old 1e Oriental Adventures statted something like this: it was basically a series of capes and other cloth that horseman wore in order to mask their true body shape - it was only effective against missle weapons

 

[Tonguez]

Doesn't one of the books have mention of Silk armour. IRl I know silk is effective against arrows, not so sure what its like against melee attacks...

 

[Dreakean]

A friend of mine and I , we had a go at a varient armour system.
Basicly all armour had 3 armour values, one for piercing, one for bludgeoning and one for slashing. For example:

padded armour 1/1/1
studed leather 2/1/2/
chain mail 3/4/5
plate mail 6/7/9

And so forth. I dont know if these were the exact numbers but you get the idea. I have never actuallly tested this sytemso I am not sure if it works.

I hope thats some help

 

[der_kluge]

Alsih2o, wouldn't it be easier to just stat it out as regular armor, but with some spell-like effects?

Armor, archer's bane
+3 cost
This property can be applied to any set of armor. In doing so, the wearer is able to cast protection from arrows once per day and wind wall once per day as a standard action.

 

[Spyritwind]

It really depends on your application. If you just want a trinket or two for players then making them magical is no big deal, but if you want some thing that standard troops could have/afford then thats some thing else. Silk 'armor' could be an option. Perhaps a +1 dodge bonus vs missles only. Although at point blank range I don't think this would work in reality, but ... it's a game. The silk armor and loose fitting also allowed easier romoval of arrows when they penetrated your skin even though they didn't always penetrate the silk. You just slowly and carefully pulled the tucked shirt out and the arrow didn't do any more damage to you. This could be a damage reduction of one, or perhaps just stick with an overall +1 ac vs missles. Either way I wouldn't expect it to make a huge difference.

There were many variations of chain armor and some types actualy protected very well vs arrows even though most/many types could have some difficulties. It mostly depended on the weaving of the ring; on what the pattern was. Even plate armor improved by angeling the plating to deflect shots. You could have masterwork armor vs arrows giving them a +1 to ac vs them. It wouldn't be that cheap, but could represent armor that is taylored to a specific need.

Without magic those are the only things I could think of.

Perhaps a feat where the character would have a tatoo giving them an ac bonus vs missle weapons.

 

[the Jester]

Complete Warrior has some cool armor enhancements in it, but I don't know that you're looking for a magic approach.

Earlier editions had the weapon vs. AC modifiers in them, but it was always too much work to look 'em up in the heat of the moment- and that was when combat took minutes instead of hours and rounds were minutes instead of seconds!

Personally, unless you're designing a game from scratch, I'd recommend against assigning different AC values against different attack types. I do like using minor DR (for instance, DR 1/slashing or piercing) for this sort of thing...