thats a lot of replys
i think i will respond in order and hopefully ill get my responses out before to many new replies pop up
I'd say that if someone was interested in expanding the armor system in 5e to feel more historical or realistic it should include hit locations and different armors covering different parts of the body.
The fact that helmets are just magic-item-slots in DnD should surely be addressed as well.
your right, this is still a pretty abstracted system and something utilizing called shots, multiple layers of armor, partial armors, ect would probably work well to, but i wanted something that relatively easily slots right into 5e that can fit into just as much space as i have it right now. i was actually surprised how little i had to change and how little space it fits into. i thought about mentioning helms as something that adds like +1 to your full ac if you have on, though armors tend to have helms default in game, i think that abstraction is fine though because why wouldn't you be aiming for the face all the time when fighting an armored helm-less opponent? so the rest of the armor's ac shouldn't apply much for that, sure there should be an attack penalty to only target a head, but i think its going to be considerably less than the full armor class is.
what you might do is penalize perception while wearing armor, that would help balance against non-armored characters a bit, but not significantly, it also might lead to situations where pcs don't wear armor in situations they don't expect a fight but want to see and hear well.
I honestly think that this is less realistic than the regular 5e AC. If you look at the effect of historical armor it doesn't "reduce damage". It either blocks a disabling blow, or it doesn't. "Half damage" isn't a thing in real combat.
i wouldn't call the blows in D&D's hp system disabling, especially in 5e. as for ac, my system actually has very high ac's you can barely hit a character wearing armor at low levels without hitting the armor instead so it requires high skill to eventually get around armor. any material you can cut through or cut around is going to reduce damage. a perfect strike against someone wearing any armor is going to fall into a nitch, but an imperfect but still relatively good strike will either puncture the armor (20 strength, buffing spells, and magic weapons will do that to you) or glance off of the armor but still have enough energy to fall into a niche and do reduced damage. quality of the armor and type of armor has an effect on this. also flexible armor like chain and leather are simply going to give to the blow and not absorb kinetic energy, it might be more realistic to reduce damage to bludgeoning from all attacks while wearing chain mail, but i think this is good because SOME attacks will still penetrate chain mail, especially something like a lance or bodkin arrow.
bodkin arrows, that's something i men't to add at the bottom and forgot to.
Some interesting choices regarding what went on the historical armors table and what went on the fantasy armors table. Is scale supposed to be Lorica plumata? I kind of understand putting half-plate in fantasy armors since a knight wearing only parts of a plate harness would be an oddity past the 14th century. But wouldn’t breastplates and haubergeons (chain shirts) be among the historical armor?
hauberks tend to be a bit more than a shirt, and it tends to be part of a larger set of armor. i never really thought of chain shirts in D&D as hauberks especially with it weighing 20lb to 5e's 45lb chainmail. 20lb is closer to what most full bodied chainmails would weigh depending on the gauge of the rings and the lacing pattern. breastplates arn't necessarily fantasy as much as what context would you fight with a breastplate alone? now something like a breastplate over chainmail might work, but i didn't want to include complex armors like that, and 5e's breastplate describes unarmored on arms and limbs. scale mail is actually better represented by roman Lorica squamata, also the song dynasty had a form of scale called mountain scale.
I get what you're going for, but I'm not sure that it makes sense, given the way that Strength increases your accuracy. If we're trying to be "realistic" about this, then an ogre swinging a tree trunk shouldn't have any chance of getting between the gaps of your plate armor. Likewise for The Tarrasque.
It reminds me a lot of the Gargantuan Toad, back in 3E days, whose many hit dice afforded it a terrific bonus to Reflex saves. The mechanics just don't work together.
doesn't size penalty exist in 5e? perhaps not, you make a good point that large blunt weapons probably shouldn't be able to get around armor, but maybe they can land in thinner places of the armor, given that plate armor (and even well made chainmail and scale) is thinner both in the back of the armor and at the sides, often thinner on the arms and legs, it can be thought that the strength bonus simply allows the creature to power through areas of weaker armor to do more damage, not to mention that extra strength is also powering through in damage as well, and finally it can be hitting armor joints which provide zero resistant to the damage in ways that smaller weapons with less momentum wouldn't be able to generate (such as directly down onto the spine or directly perpendicular to the shoulders) and that size actually gives them the ability to get a better angle on those less protected points with a bludgeoning attack. as for slashing and piercing i think they would work normally as a thin edge is a thin edge no matter how thick it gets past that edge.
on the medium sized scale scale for how strength increases your accuracy it lets you swing faster and account for that touch ac rather than the full armor class because that full armor class rides on top of that touch ac (for the most part) so you swing fast to take advantage of a dropped guard and sink into an open spot faster, the full armor class is still there, but the reaction of the target is less relative to you, and your taking advantage of it so long as you can still hit around that 85-95% body coverage of armor.
If this is your take on armor and 5E, then I think you totally miss the point of 5E. Realism is not the point, fun and playable are.
And then if you are going to try this take on 5E, then what are HP to you? How are you going to justify HP is not meat with this "realism-based" approach?
Step back, ask yourself why, and if 5E isn't the system for you, then find one that is.
its not my take on armor and 5e, its my take on armor using 5e as a base in order to apply a concept. realism shouldn't be the point of any game, but fun and realism arn't enemies, they are simply different. if you dont think you'd have fun playing the game this way then i didn't come up with this homebrew for you, i did though, come up with it for people who would have fun with it, and i don't think its insurmountably complex compared to the way 5e handles armor, i mean i could fit it all into one single post here.
and it has its advantages, when you apply this system to natural armor, you begin to have monsters which on the higher end of the scale are almost impervious to low level characters, and for the meta of the game this means that technically higher level characters are irreplaceable in order to handle these powerful threats, no standing army of thousands of bowmen can take down the ancient red dragon with its 12 armor protection, even with +4 to damage they can not overcome it with longbows and its magnificent 28 ac means even with +4 ability +2 proficiency and +2 fighter style archer to hit, only a rolling a 20 can actually overcome that armor protection.
Not to pick on the OP, but we as gamers do love to keep trying to make D&D into something it’s not. From trying to make it realistic, to optimization, to super gritty, to a different genre, we always seem to try to make it into a game that another system does better. I wonder why that is? If we have choice X over there that works better, why don’t we play that instead of trying to make D&D into that system?
there's a few reasons one could imagine running a particular edition of D&D or any game with homebrew, we don't all have the money to go out and buy games in order to find the perfect one that satisfies everything we want, and also sometimes we find what we want in a game changes over time. further more it may be fun to us to try and see how an idea we have fits into a system if we have a mind for designing, why did the people who make D&D not just release the same game over again without any changes to it? sure there's economic reason, it is a business after all, but at the same time i think they enjoy what they are doing even if i may disagree with what they do (and surely none have done exactly this with the game). i cant answer why we can not stop trying to change the game from how its presented, but i can answer why we do change the game as it is written.
also like D&D's lore and its the game i've grown up with, that could also be a good reason, for me atleast.
