D&D 5E Armour as Damage Threshold

[ElPsyCongroo]

Damage rolls that do not beat Threshold value are negated , those that beat said value do full unmitigated damage.
Not sure what values would be best as of yet but this adds some difference between being unarmoured or armoured in fullplate.
As a test example:
Damage Threshold = Armour AC ÷ 2
Full Plate = 18÷2 = 9DT
Ancient Red Dragon (Natural Armour) = 22÷2= 11DT
Mage Armor =13÷2 = 6DT

Would you make it less more, calculate it differently?

 

[John R Davis]

Isn't this in Dragon Warriors RPG?

 

[ElPsyCongroo]

Isn't this in Dragon Warriors RPG?

I will have to check it out

 

[John R Davis]

I think maybe a sword was d8/ 5 damage. So if the d8 overcame the DT it did 5 damage.
It's an interesting take on how armour can work in an RPG

 

[Zio_the_dark]

Isn't this in Dragon Warriors RPG?

I think so weapon have a die to beat armor and do a fixed amount of damage
Armor range from 0 to 5 if I remember and weapon go from 1d3 bare hands (you can't damage heavy armored characters) and 2d6 for heaviest weapons. The roll must be strictly superior to armor rating.

 

[Larnievc]

Isn't this in Dragon Warriors RPG?

Yeah. It’s the armour bypass role. And if you have a shield you negate all damage on a roll of a on 1d6.

Good times.

 

[Oofta]

I wouldn't want this, or it's permutations, because it's too arbitrary and doesn't match the math monsters are built on. A monster that has 1 big attack is unaffected, monsters that have many small attacks are potentially nerfed. Also frequently eliminates the threat of lower level mobs.

If you had something like this you also have to have some way of overcoming AC without resulting to big damage attack that we don't have.

 

[ElPsyCongroo]

Another idea would be to significantly increase the damage threshold but instead of completely mitigating damage it would act as Resistance tying it in more with 5e's system, beating this threshold would again negate this Resistance.

 

[ElPsyCongroo]

I wouldn't want this, or it's permutations, because it's too arbitrary and doesn't match the math monsters are built on. A monster that has 1 big attack is unaffected, monsters that have many small attacks are potentially nerfed. Also frequently eliminates the threat of lower level mobs.

If you had something like this you also have to have some way of overcoming AC without resulting to big damage attack that we don't have.

Would Exploding Dice level this a bit in the favour of smaller damage die?

 

[Oofta]

Would Exploding Dice level this a bit in the favour of smaller damage die?

It depends on how complex you want to get with rules. Really good armor is pretty much impenetrable by normal weapons. You could do damage through concussive force, but a lot of times it simply came down to wrestling the target to the ground (or your opponent collapsing from exhaustion) and finding a gap in the armor.

So that horde of [insert relatively low level enemy] could wrestle the target to the ground and pull off the target's helmet in order to kill them. Is that something you want to model? Fighters in full plate were like tanks of their day. Virtually unstoppable if they had supporting troops but can be overwhelmed by numbers. Not sure how to model that.

Take two CR 8 monsters as an example, a hydra and a frost giant. The hydra does 10 damage per hit but has 5+ attacks. A frost giant has 2 attacks doing 25 points of damage each. Assuming exploding dice only applies on a crit, it helps a little but probably not enough.

It's an interesting idea and I'm sure other systems work well enough, I'm just not sure how to make it work for D&D's assumptions.