Sundering Armor Mechanic

[Felnar]

Hmm. Yes I thought that was how you were working it. In that case where is the problem with magic armour? More AC, whether from magic or otherwise would mean more hit points.

the enhancement bonus to from magic armor gives +10 hitpoints per point of AC bonus
this creates a problem where, using the same logic i used to create the initial system, those enhancement bonus points of armorclass should take 10 dmg to lose, not 5 like the rest of the armor, and i'm trying to make the system as non-complex as possible

Sir Brennen: armor/inanimate objects are immune to critical hits.

Rhun: probably the same thing that happens when you sunder any other worn item (ie quiver, amulet, cloak, etc), which is nothing if i recall. Do you think there should be a mechanic to also damage the armors wearer?

Jester: at 15-20 dmg a hit, metal armor is still at full capacity until its taken at least 3 sunders
leather armor however can be sundered very easily (hardness 2) so maybe that should be addressed. Maybe the Armor Class to hit armor should be changed?

Off Topic - i dont imagine sundering armor would be a overly common tactic, just as sundering weapons isnt, since neither PCs nor monsters want to destroy their future loot

what do you all see as wrong in my mechanic, and how would you fix it?

 

[irdeggman]

Perhaps the person weraing the armor takes 1/5 of the damge as collateral - bruises, cuts and possibley deep wounds based on the amount of damage taken.

Seems pretty hard to avoid hurting the person inside the armor when sundering. Armor is designed to be worn in a way that the weight is distributed evenly over the body and damage it deflects (or absorbs) is spread over a wide area thus avoiding damaging the wearer.

This is completely different than the way clothes are designed. In D&D most if not all clothing is non skin tight and has a lot of built in fluff and spread. They didn't have nylon or leotards/body suits back then.

 

[the Jester]

I recommend letting the armor keep its armor bonus vs. sunder attempts.

 

[The Edge]

1/5 damage could be a fiddly number at times, 1/4 or 1/2 might be a bit quicker.
Also you could think about it being non lethal damage.

I could imagine it as a fairly normal attack at norm AC and taking -4 on the attack that is just intended to get at the armour more than usual, sacrificing the full normal damage (cutting to half) in order to rough them up a little.

hmm...

 

[Sir Brennen]

Warning: I like to italicize for emphasis.

Sir Brennen: armor/inanimate objects are immune to critical hits.
[. . .]
what do you all see as wrong in my mechanic, and how would you fix it?

Yes, I'm aware of the limits on things that are affected by criticals. I was just trying to find a mechanic to tie damaging armor into other than Sunder. And as an axe would be more effective at hacking up armor than a sword, basing the damage to the crit multiplier seemed to make sense, too (*but see below.) However, It's not really a "critical" on the armor, just an extra effect tied to a crit result which would let you damage the armor at all. In a sense, this would allow someone who has specialized in feats/weapons to maximize crits to not be totally nerfed when fighting a blackguard vampire (for example.) They may not be able to do normal crit damage, but they still have a chance to damage his armor.

However, there are precidents in the game for doing critical/precision-based damage to targets normally immune in the form of feats and PrC abilities.

(The following is drifting into the "should/should not use the mechanic" discussion, and I apologize up front for that, but bear with me...)

The issue I have is that while I think the mechanic sounds OK, there are problems with the concept, as others have mentioned as well. Really, ANY attack roll is an attempt to either cut through (sunder) the target's armor or bypass it to do damage to the flesh underneath. In a life and death fight where you've taken damage, your armor should having some denting and puncturing, possibly with some broken straps/clasps/ties, and perhaps even a missing piece or two.

Even cinematically, think of all the movies where a hero has to chuck some part of his armor away because damage has caused it to be more of a hinderance than protection.

None of these scenarios, however, involve someone specifically targetting just the armor and not the person underneath. In game, I can think of no logical, realistic reason why (or how) someone would do this, or even a reason to have the mechanic at all, other than for the sense of parallelism with sundering weapons. Even that breaks down, because sundering weapons usually involves striking at a narrow, single target like a blade or haft, where armor is spread out all over the target's body, and tightly up against it (as someone else mentioned.) It's even worse for natural armor, tho I would think you wouldn't allow a Sunder attempt against that.

However, a method which takes into account that armor usually does receive some damage during combat I think is fine, and there are some game systems which do that (I believe it's an option presented in GURPS, for example, though usually applied to just shields.) These often involve alot more bookkeeping, tho.

Such a system should be tied to some other mechanic which causes the armor damage to happen just often enough to be interesting, and not something open to player abuse. Again, my own house rules tie this damage to a Fumble result; Crits are another possibility, though I always kind of envisioned criticals as bypassing armor. But you could have it so a failed confirmation roll indicates normal weapon damage to target + normal weapon damage to the armor, because the armor blocked the potiential critical. Again, note that it doesn't matter if the target is immune to crit damage - you still have the confirmation roll to see if the armor was damaged (and this mechanic would apply to natural armor.)

* Different types of weapons would also damage armor differently. An arrow would only make a small hole (but small deep holes are bad for living things, hence an arrow's high crit mutiplier.) Again, this isn't as critical on smaller targets like weapons, but for armor you might want to have piercing weapons do x0.5 damage, bludgeoning x1, and slashing x1.5. In addition (or instead of), you could tie weapon type in again to crit threats, with piercing only doing armor damage on a natural 2 (since a 1 is always a miss), bludgeoning on a 2-3, slashing on a 2-4.

Also re: magic bonus HP. I think you have to keep the increased HP for these bonuses; just make the magic AC bonus the last to go. After the armor has taken 5xAC in damage, the magical enhancement bonus is the only thing keeping it together.

Another potential issue I see is creature size. Armor for a Huge creature has 20hp per AC point. A Small creature's armor (like a PC gnome or halfling) only has 2.5 HP per AC point. Every size increment away from Medium changes armor HP by a factor of 2. So much for keeping it simple.

 

[Cabral]

As I said in Rules - why cant you sunder armour?, I don't think you should be able to sunder armor per se. However, if you want to, here's the mechanic I'd suggest:

On a critical hit (so against creatures immune to critical hits, check to confirm threats if they wear armor), damage dealt to the armor's wearer is dealt to the armor, including extra damage from the critical hit. The armor's hardness and immunities, if any, are applied as normal. Damaged Armor has an AC bonus equal to it's normal AC times its current hitpoints divided by its current maximum hitpouts, round up.

Sunder Armor [GENERAL]
Your brutal fighting style takes a great toll on your opponent's armor.
Prerequisite: Power Attack
Benefit: When you deal damage to armor, ignore the first 10 points of hardness. (Option: The benefit does not apply to finesse weapons.)
Special: A fighter may take Sunder Armor as one of his bonus feats.

If you think this feat is too specialized, make it apply to all attacks against objects, not just armor. If so, you should probably reduce the hardness ignored to 5, not 10.

As for the option, I can see arguments for and against it.
For: Attacks against straps and such ...
Against: ... which tend to be well hidden on heavier armors and the flavor of the feat does not fit with finesse weapons.

 

[genshou]

Here's how I would recommend doing it:

Whenever an attack roll exactly equals the target's AC, the weapon's normal (non-critical) damage applies to both the target and any armour they are wearing (hardness applies against the armour damage). The armour bonus of the armour downgrades as some have described above.

You could also roll a d4 on an exact hit, and a result of 1 indicates the weapon has been damaged, a result of 2 indicates the shield has been damaged (and the character takes damage as well), and a result of 3-4 indicates the armour has been damaged (and the character takes damage as well). If a result is rolled which doesn't apply to the target, use the next category which applies.

Deliberately sundering armour works as attacking a weapon or carried object, except that the attack deals damage to both the armour and the character (a critical result cannot be achieved, since the armour is the target of the attack).

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Interesting mechanic.. the main problem with it is is the 'why' of this mechanic... it takes too much effort to directly sunder armor ... effort better focused on beating the user to death
{thats not a 'should it be done', that a 'as a player with this rule, why would I ever use this tactic' question}

As a base mechanic for damaging armor I think it is sound. I was thinking the same direction as Cabral, altho not quite so dramatic.

"Critical Hits additional damage is dealt first to the targets Armor (if any). For every 10 points of damage taken, the armor loses 1 point of armor bonus. If the target is immune to Critical hits, the extra damage can still be dealt to the armor."

This rule both creates damaged armor, and explains why its presence on the 'balanced' DnD battlefield is common.

For a tactical option, perhaps:

"You may attempt to damage an opponents armor as a standard action that draws an AoO. You gain a -4 penatly to hit and must succeed at an attack roll against the targets touch AC. If successful, you deal normal damage to the targets armor. Armor is not subject to critical hits and any damage beyond what it takes to destroy the armor does not carry through to the wearer.
Special: The feat Improved Sunder removes the AoO from this action.
The feat Improved Armor Sunder removes the -4 penatly to hit from this action."


For even more fun tactical options, perhaps:

"When struck while weilding a shield, you may sacrifice the shield to reduce the damge taken by {BAB + Shield Bonus * 10}. The shield is completely destroyed by this maneuver and cannot be repaired."

enough mental gymnastics for the morning!

 

[Sir Brennen]

Whenever an attack roll exactly equals the target's AC, the weapon's normal (non-critical) damage applies to both the target and any armour they are wearing (hardness applies against the armour damage). The armour bonus of the armour downgrades as some have described above.

Yah, applying damage to both armor and target seems to be the only reasonable way to go. This at least makes it worth the AoO to try and reduce armor (or worth a feat to negate the AoO.)

Damaged Armor has an AC bonus equal to it's normal AC times its current hitpoints divided by its current maximum hitpouts, round up.

Too much math in the middle of combat. Lose 1 AC+ per 5 hp damage is simpler, and matches the existing rules.

"Critical Hits additional damage is dealt first to the targets Armor (if any). For every 10 points of damage taken, the armor loses 1 point of armor bonus. If the target is immune to Critical hits, the extra damage can still be dealt to the armor."

Only problem with this is, it actually makes crits less effective in terms of taking the opponent down. If I score a critical against an opponent wearing breast plate (AC +5), I would have to do over 50 points of damage (60, if you count hardness) to even wound him. This also means the armor would have to be completely destroyed before the opponent himself takes any damage on a crit. Players will probably hoping not to crit when fighting someone in magical armor they would want to recover for themselves.

I prefer my own suggestion (echo by a couple of others) that the target and armor both take damage on a crit. I think this is what Cabral was going for too, but hard to tell from the wording. Though again, I would lower the crit multiplier by one for the armor, just to keep it from becoming completely destroyed too easily (especially against the PCs.)

Also note that per the RAW, armor has 5 x AC in hit points, not ten, though you may have inflated this number for the same reason I would reduce the crit multiplier.

For even more fun tactical options, perhaps:

"When struck while weilding a shield, you may sacrifice the shield to reduce the damge taken by {BAB + Shield Bonus * 10}. The shield is completely destroyed by this maneuver and cannot be repaired."

Oooo... very cinematic. I like it. Once a character gains a magical shield, however, it probably wouldn't see much use... too expensive to replace. One could instead, perhaps, simply apply the damage to the shield, allowing it to lose AC bonus as hit points go down (1 AC per 5 hp, as above.) This action should probably at least use up an AoO to keep it balanced, and possibly even need to be declared before the attack roll is made (or at least damage.)

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I was thinking about adding a line of 'declare before damage is rolled', but figured this looks more like the dramatic last ditch, stay alove for one more round type of action.

Hadn't thought of magic shields.. the hazards of running a low magic world I guess!

Yes, my version would decrease the insta-kill approach of Crits in combat.. a good reason to wear good armor! You are right, the 10hp loss = -1 AC is a bit heavy, I picked that simply to match the OP. It would make better sense at 5hp = -1 AC.
Of course, this option fits best in the low magic, more gritty variant of the game...
I have always wanted to emulate the character picking through a battlefield looking for replacement armor parts.

And yes, having good repair rules would be important so as to not completely nerf the PC's rewards. A small bump in the GP awards would be enough to make up for having to repair the BBG's armor.
I think once the group gets used to the idea that armor needs repair after combat instead of wearing the same suit for 20+ years....