Armor, weapon, and item(?) damage...

[Phoenix8008]

For my next campaign, I was trying to come up with a way to simulate more damage to equipment of PC's- armor, weapons, etc. I know that they can be damaged by area effect spells and such (gotta look that up a little more to familiarize myself again), but I'm thinking of making a house rule to have armor damaged when a PC gets critted. Thanks to frankthedm, I have the list of hardness and HP's for all weapons and armor.

So I'm trying to devise some rules that will be realistic and fair, yet simulate some damage from critical hits going to armor. Not that it would stop any of the damage going to the character, but the armor itself would take half of the damage itself then compare it to the hardness and HP's to apply the damage. Of course, then I'm unsure what to do as far as weapons go. Should they take exceptional damage in any circumstances? Maybe when being used against stone walls/iron doors/something else that's big, solid, and hard?? Let me know what you think here, folks.

With armor for instance, a fighter in nonmagical steel chainmail armor (hardness 10, HP 25) gets hit with a critical for 33 points of damage. He takes his 33 points of damage, then his armor gets hit for half that much, or 16 (half equals 16.5 rounded down per normal). After the 10 hardness, the chainmail would suffer 6 points of damage leaving it at 19 out of 25 HP. This could then be repaired by a competent armor-smith next time the PC's find one. However, it should also impose some sort of AC penalty while the armor is damaged. Not sure what that would be yet though. Maybe -1 AC per 5 points of damage? I think that fits the scale of armor HP's versus AC bonus pretty well.

Tell me what all of you think of this idea. I understand it would be a little more paperwork, but by limiting it to only critical hits, I think it'll be manageable. Any ideas, improvements, or criticisms? You know what to do then...

 

[Phoenix8008]

Jeez! No comments after 24 hours? I'd like to think that means nobody can think of anything good to add or change to make it better. With the brains in this place though I doubt that. So nobody's got anything to say then? Is it a bad sign when you're talkin' to yourself on the message board?

 

[the Jester]

IMHO, this is waaay too much bookkeeping to expect people to track, especially if they keep old armor around as a reserve set.

What I do is periodically put a "wear point" on various items that the pcs have. When they accumulate so many wear points, the item loses some of its oomph or falls apart. This system has worked pretty well for my group, although it's pretty arbitrary.

 

[Nyeshet]

I'm not sure this can work to well in the core combat system as is. Using armor as DR, however, could make it a lot easier (just keep track of the points the armor absorbs due to DR, perhaps with a 'discount' for non-crit hits). For example, suppose an attack deals 6 dmg, and the armor absorbs 4 of those pts. After about 20 to 100 pts the armor's hp drops by 1 pt - as a way to show wear over time and extended use. Critical hits, however, drop the armor's hp by the actual number of points loss - 2 in the above example, rather than simply applying those points towards a pool that would eventually reduce the hp of the armor by 1 pt.

Another consideration is that regular maintenance by the wearer - nightly polishing, etc - can 'repair' the armor. Perhaps every night the fighter can make a Craft (armor) check (DC 5) to reduce the hp loss of the armor by 1 pt. Most of the time, so long as maintenance is semi-daily, it is more than enough to keep the armor in shape. As low as the DC is, the fighter does not even have to spend precious skill ranks in the skill to make it work. However, if the damage builds up (either due to negligence on the fighter's part, or due to extreme damage from one or more criticals that day), then it will need to be seen by a blacksmith, who can repair it (DC 5 + hp dmg perhaps?).


Do either of these ideas work for you? They *do* require using armor as DR to work, but they could be interesting in practice - so long as your players don't mind a bit of extra detail / realism. Some players prefer to gloss over those types of things.