Armor as temporary hit points

[aco175]

I was thinking of having armor just being DR and reducing the damage by a set amount or damage die to still do something. There is a thought that thinks having a higher AC from armor means you take less damage by not being hit as much. It still stinks for wizards, but that is the system. I also think if you want to reduce damage using armor you need to think about HP and making characters have less since their armor is absorbing some of that and you would be in essence giving the PCs more HP. Also, how would monsters be included in this? Would a dragon be different than a iron golem, or a air elemental?

 

[Blue]

Like many a hobby tinkerer, I have thought about how you'd go about implementing an armor-as-dr system in 5e....before giving up and realising it was way too much work.

There is a number of interactions that make this difficult, but a large one is that a number of low level enemies hits would simply be negated by dr.

So what if armor instead gave temporary hit points that replenished on a long rest? The depletion of these hit points would represent the armor being damaged and then being repaired on a long rest.

I would imagine that I could use the ac value as temp hit points. So 11 for leather, and 18 for plate for example. This would make armor still desirable, especially for lower levels, but also not mandatory.

It would in my mind enhance survivability greatly at low levels and add to the feeling that armor is protecting you. Because it is!

What interactions would you see as being problematic to thjis implementation? (Besides needing to adjust ac values for which i have an idea for)

11-18 HPs for ANY armor really screws non-armor wearers, especially at low levels.

It makes features like Unarmored Defense from monks and barbarians, Mage Armor from arcane casters, Draconic Resilience from Draconic Sorcerers much less appealing then even light armor.

 

[Oofta]

What problem are you trying to solve? Do you think armor (especially heavy armor) should be made of tinfoil? Historically high quality plate armor could withstand many, many hits before needing significant repair. It's why people fought with heavy bludgeoning weapons or put spiky bits on their weapons to find the tiny gaps in the armor. But from everything I've read the best way to take out someone in heavy armor was to pull them to the ground and take bits of armor off or simply bludgeon them to death.

I understand the desire to have armor absorb some of the damage, but it seems like that would be better served by some level of DR that can never absorb all damage. So plate armor may absorb 80% of the damage, minimum of 1 point of damage. But to be realistic, bludgeoning damage should do slightly more.

Of course as others have pointed out that has all sorts of other impacts on the game, from how many HP should a PC have to effect on builds that don't rely on armor. In addition, what do you do for monsters or characters that have natural armor? Rely on dex or being incorporeal, etc?

AC (and HP) are probably the worst possible option except for all other systems. It works reasonably well with the rest of D&D design, I don't understand the need to "fix" something that isn't that broken. I can think of all sorts of alternatives, that doesn't make them "better".

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

While armor as THP could probably work as a game system, it is less realistic than AC.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

For what it's worth, in one of his many ramblings, Gygax once described the vast HP value of a high-level fighter as in-part due to the heavy enchantment on the armor which he is obviously wearing. The only way it makes sense for a level 15 fighter to have over a hundred hit points is if you attribute a good chunk of those to his +3 (or better) plate armor, apparently.

I guess it never occurred to him that a high-level fighter might ever not be wearing magic armor, or at least it was a corner-case scenario that he saw no point in dwelling on.

 

[dave2008]

For what it's worth, in one of his many ramblings, Gygax once described the vast HP value of a high-level fighter as in-part due to the heavy enchantment on the armor which he is obviously wearing. The only way it makes sense for a level 15 fighter to have over a hundred hit points is if you attribute a good chunk of those to his +3 (or better) plate armor, apparently.

I guess it never occurred to him that a high-level fighter might ever not be wearing magic armor, or at least it was a corner-case scenario that he saw no point in dwelling on.

Yep, if you read his description of HP in the 1e DMG he did not envision HP as purely (or even mostly) meat points. A Hit was not always a hit to him. He even describes an approach to figure out how many HP out of your total are actually your ability to take physical damage (if I remember correctly).

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Yep, if you read his description of HP in the 1e DMG he did not envision HP as purely (or even mostly) meat points. A Hit was not always a hit to him. He even describes an approach to figure out how many HP out of your total are actually your ability to take physical damage (if I remember correctly).

You're thinking of a different one of his many nonsensical rants. I was specifically talking about his views on armor-as-hit-points, and how the ability of armor to absorb a blow (rather than deflect/negate it) was already assumed by the game mechanics, except in that they were already included in the fighter's inherent HP value rather than being a separate pool.

 

[dave2008]

You're thinking of a different one of his many nonsensical rants. I was specifically talking about his views on armor-as-hit-points, and how the ability of armor to absorb a blow (rather than deflect/negate it) was already assumed by the game mechanics, except in that they were already included in the fighter's inherent HP value rather than being a separate pool.

I wasn't implying that it was the same, after all, what I was talking about was RAW. It was some later rant.

Of course, I don't think it was completely nonsensical (the only nonsensical part, to me, was how he derived physical hit points).

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't mind armor as extra hp (or preferably treat it as extra con mod). Hp is ambiguous and part of that ambiguous measurement is your ability to withstand damage. Armor that gave extra hp would fulfill that role. I wouldn't do it as temp hp though. I would do it as total hp. You have more hp because some blows will deflect off your armor.

 

[77IM]

I came up with a very similar system one time. Armor points absorbed damage, except that poison and psychic damage would bypass it (since those types can't affect objects). You got all your points back on a short rest, when you had time to patch up your armor and re-adjust the straps, etc.

The armor points were based on your level and the type of armor you had:

padded: 1 at 1st level, +1/level
leather: 1 at 1st level, +1/level
studded leather: 2 at 1st level, +1/level
hide: 2 at 1st level, +2/level
chain shirt: 3 at 1st level, +2/level
scale: 4 at 1st level, +2/level
breast: 4 at 1st level, +2/level
half plate: 5 at 1st level, +2/level
ring: 4 at 1st level, +3/level
chain: 6 at 1st level, +3/level
splint: 7 at 1st level, +3/level
plate: 8 at 1st level, +3/level

Meanwhile your AC was 10 + Dex for light armor, 10 + Dex (max 12) for medium armor, and just plain 10 for heavy armor.

The armor point values were based on how much more you would get hit with the lower AC numbers. For example, full plate is normally AC 18, so at AC 10 that's about a 40% change in hit rate, so to compensate it gives you roughly +40% hit points per level. Obviously this is back-of-the-envelope math and not super accurate.

EDIT: It comes back on a short rest because healing magic doesn't work on it. I thought about allowing hit dice to work on it, but that throws off the hit dice math, and creating spells to repair armor in the middle of a fight just seems weird to me (well, weirder than ablative armor, anyway).