D&D (2024) Crazy armor idea

[Flobby]

Another way to do this, not that I'm going to, would be to to damage absorption for armor. So lightweight armor might absorb 25% of the damage of a hit, medium 50%, heavy 75%. Or whatever percentages make sense.

To ease calculations have a chart with damage ranges and the HP damage that would result. Along with this, reduce a PCs target AC significantly (by, sa -5) so more (but not all) hits do damage.

But the disadvantage of this of course is the monster side of things, as well as monks, barbarians and so on. What happens when the wizard with no armor gets attacked, and how is it affected by mage armor and shield?

That makes sense, but it seems like too much math to calculate each time.

 

[Flobby]

Something like this would probably work better for a modern/sci-fi version of 5e where armor isn't as prevalent. Maybe have a base AC that improves by level like in Everyday Heroes and then have armor give some minor bonus HP...

 

[jmartkdr2]

It's a very workable idea, but would be very hard to implement into 5e without either carefully balancing it or changing a bunch of other stuff.

 

[Yaarel]

Generally, AC works well and DR works well. But if the game combines them, the game can become unbalanced quickly.

 

[aco175]

Oh, I like tracking the number of hits, but your right, that wouldn't take into account huge variations in damage... I'd probably have to add a DR then.

You could add a threshold like objects have. So, light armor can negate 2 attacks per short rest but they have to be less than 10 damage or it does not matter. Medium armor could be 15 damage and 3 attacks and maybe heavy armor 20 damage and 4 attacks per short rest. This would put the onus on the player to decide. There could be little cards like 4e where you flip one over to negate the damage.

It seems still more simple that not and the player now decides if they want to stop the goblins doing 4-8 damage or wait until the ogre hits them. Or wait until the next encounter- which might not come before resting.

I guess you can even add more by allowing the medium armor to block a 10 damage attack once in addition to what is above and heavy armor to block two 10 damage and a 15 damage attack per rest as well. This might let players use the power and not just keep them for big things. I would just get color-coded cards in that case.

 

[Oofta]

That makes sense, but it seems like too much math to calculate each time.

Which is why I would use a chart, and round it off. It would be similar to DR (damage resistance), just adjusted based on how much damage normally would have been taken. The problem with DR is that if you have DR 5, it frequently only reduces damage from a monster that does one massive hit while basically negating monsters that rely on multiple hits per round. Maybe that's not a bad thing to model, but it's not how monsters in D&D have been designed.

But the real issue to me is that people never seem to take into consideration the PCs that don't rely on armor.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

You know, an idea that came to me reading this is some sort of conditional damage resistance.

So maybe double the bonus that armor provides, and say anything that rolls between the target's unarmed "touch AC" and that newly increased AC does half damage, and anything that hits or exceeds that value does normal damage.

You'd need to play with the numbers, and it's not exactly the same thing as tracking hp, but since we were brainstorming anyway...

 

[Flobby]

Thanks for the advice everyone! Lot of stuff to think about...

 

[AnotherGuy]

You know, an idea that came to me reading this is some sort of conditional damage resistance.

So maybe double the bonus that armor provides, and say anything that rolls between the target's unarmed "touch AC" and that newly increased AC does half damage, and anything that hits or exceeds that value does normal damage.

You'd need to play with the numbers, and it's not exactly the same thing as tracking hp, but since we were brainstorming anyway...

Degrees of Success is where it is at for attack rolls. D&D is taking an awful long time to move fully in that direction.

That system could allow for authoritative control to the player to decide how their character's hit. (i.e Stamina Loss, Gain Wound, Armour Damage or combination of the lot).

Then you can have armour with DR, fewer Stamina (Hit Points), a Health/Wound bar and a Defense Rating as opposed to AC.

Sigh. That's why one has to do it themselves.

 

[Horwath]

Degrees of Success is where it is at for attack rolls. D&D is taking an awful long time to move fully in that direction.

That system could allow for authoritative control to the player to decide how their character's hit. (i.e Stamina Loss, Gain Wound, Armour Damage or combination of the lot).

Then you can have armour with DR, fewer Stamina (Hit Points), a Health/Wound bar and a Defense Rating as opposed to AC.

Sigh. That's why one has to do it themselves.

yes, degree of success would be excellent for D&D

beat AC by 5 or more; +50% damage
beat AC by 10 or more; +100% damage
beat AC by 15 or more; +150% damage
beat AC by 20 or more; +200% damage

then you can for simplicity have fixed damage as an option and write all degrees on your character so you do not need to calculate every time

option 2:
glancing blow;
if you miss AC by 5 or less; deal only 50% of normal damage
then graze mastery can be if you miss by 10 or less; deal 50% of normal damage.

option 3:
if you really like feel of rolling natural 20, add that that roll adds additional +50% damage