D&D 5E helmets?

[plisnithus8]

I'd house rule it. If you're not wearing a helmet, you don't get the full effect of the armor. So if they aren't wearing a helmet, reduce the AC from that armor by 1.

Or maybe in a high fantasy heroic campaign, adding a helmet adds +1 to AC (maybe giving disadvantage to Perception).

 

[thenightgaunt]

The question you have to ask yourself is whether you prefer verisimilitude, or like the option for characters who should be wearing helmets to not wear them for aesthetics.

I personally prefer aesthetics. The players who want their characters in helmets have them wear them, and those who don't, don't.

I don't quite get the aesthetics comment though. Does that one come up in your experience? What I mean is, it's an RPG, not a video game. So it's not like Mass Effect where you might select the "don't show helmets" option so you can see characters' faces during cutscenes.

 

[thenightgaunt]

Or maybe in a high fantasy heroic campaign, adding a helmet adds +1 to AC (maybe giving disadvantage to Perception).

Maybe, but I'd shy away from penalizing folks for wearing helmets. It might encourage player behavior in undesired directions.

 

[Caliban]

Simple House Rule: Wearing a helmet negates the first crit you are subject too - then it's broken and needs to be repaired/replaced. If you want to make it a bit more random, say it has a 1 in 6 chance of negating the crit, but still needs to be replaced afterward.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I don't quite get the aesthetics comment though. Does that one come up in your experience? What I mean is, it's an RPG, not a video game. So it's not like Mass Effect where you might select the "don't show helmets" option so you can see characters' faces during cutscenes.

It absolutely comes up. I like to really visualize what is going on in the world. What colors my character is wearing, his hair style, etc, all impact my play experience.

 

[Kalshane]

I know that there's at least one version of the game where equipping a helmet meant you were immune to critical hits, but that rule hasn't shown up in 5E yet, to the best of my knowledge.

The Baldur's Gate games did that. I don't recall coming across that rule in the PNP game, though. (Not to say it didn't exist.)

 

[plisnithus8]

Maybe, but I'd shy away from penalizing folks for wearing helmets. It might encourage player behavior in undesired directions.

Curious, what might be some undesired directions?

I guess there are different styles of helmets; I was thinking of full visored helmet.
Surely that would inhibit perception: sound muffling, lack of periphial vision, squinting through a slit.
Out of combat one would take the helmet off and have normal Perception.
In combat, it adds AC but reduces Perception (are characters doing many perception checks in combat?).

A conquistor morion helmet leaves the face and even ears free so wouldn't limit Perception but also wouldn't protect as well so I'm not sure how to work that with a +1 AC bonus.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

A conquistor morion helmet leaves the face and even ears free so wouldn't limit Perception but also wouldn't protect as well so I'm not sure how to work that with a +1 AC bonus.

It seems like the easiest way to model this, if you wanted to make helmets way more complicated than shields for whatever reason, is to have them give a variable chance of negating a critical hit with a corresponding penalty. Like, a skull cap has a 2-in-6 chance of negating a critical hit but has no penalty, where an open-face helmet would have a 4-in-6 chance but gives disadvantage on sound-based Perception checks, and a closed-face helmet would have a 100% chance to negate a crit but gives disadvantage on both sound-based and vision-based Perception checks.

If you really wanted to make it work as AC, then you could require a confirmation roll on any attack that hits AC exactly, and scale the difficulty of the confirmation roll to the coverage of the helmet.

 

[Wulffolk]

House Rule:
Any critical hit against a character has a confirmation roll against a DC equal to 10 + Armor AC (if wearing helmet) + CON bonus.

Wearing a helmet gives disadvantage on hearing for medium armor, and for hearing and sight for heavy armor.

 

[plisnithus8]

House Rule:
Any critical hit against a character has a confirmation roll against a DC equal to 10 + Armor AC (if wearing helmet) + CON bonus.

Wearing a helmet gives disadvantage on hearing for medium armor, and for hearing and sight for heavy armor.

I like the sense linked to weight of armor idea.

The confirm bit (I'm thinking that concrpt comes from befire 5e?), doesn't sense to what I would think it would be.
If my opponent critted, they roll a d20 again if I had on a helmet and have to get 10 + 18 (my AC) + 3 (my Con mod) or 31?

I still like the idea of helmet adds +1 because of simplicity; assuming somebody in a breastplate or chain shirt is wearing a helmet seems odd.

 

[ClearlyTough69]

I'd house rule it. If you're not wearing a helmet, you don't get the full effect of the armor. So if they aren't wearing a helmet, reduce the AC from that armor by 1.

You could go further and impose disadvantage on Perception checks that rely on hearing.


[EDIT] I've just discovered that several people have said this already - my apologies for not reading the full thread and for any trodden-on toes.

 

[akr71]

You could go further and impose disadvantage on Perception checks that rely on hearing.

Hmm, that is an interesting idea. I might go so far to say anyone one (proficient or not) in heavy armor has disadvantage on hearing and site based Perception checks unless they specifically state that they are standing still or taking of the helmet to mitigate the clanking and/or blinders.

If I were to implement this, I would probably add [MENTION=284]Caliban[/MENTION] crit negating house rule too.

 

[Wulffolk]

If my opponent critted, they roll a d20 again if I had on a helmet and have to get 10 + 18 (my AC) + 3 (my Con mod) or 31?

How it works is 10 + armor bonus (for example +2 for leather) + CON bonus (for example +2) = DC 14 for the opponent to confirm it's crit

If the same person was not wearing head protection then the DC would be 10 + CON bonus, which would be 12 in the example above.

 

[Hriston]

Is there some sort of precedent for the idea that a crit represents a blow to the head? As a DM and player, I think I would find that sort of thing very confining.

 

[Caliban]

Is there some sort of precedent for the idea that a crit represents a blow to the head? As a DM and player, I think I would find that sort of thing very confining.

Crits represent a hit on a vulnerable spot - they hit a chink in your armor, or hit an internal organ that you care about rather than skin or muscle, opened a vein, etc. Armor is specifically designed to cover your vulnerable bits. If you aren't wearing a helm then your head is the most exposed and vulnerable portion of your anatomy.

But if a crit always being a head seems unlikely, that is why I also suggested an option for a 1 in 6 chance of the helmet to block the crit. It's still very abstract and oversimplified, but if you divide a human into 4 limbs, a torso, and head - then a crit can theoretically hit any of them, and a D6 roll is a simple way of checking to see if they hit the head, which the helmet specifically protects.

 

[Barolo]

Just beware that negating crits is the only benefit of adamantine armor, so adding crit negation to helmet use would make adamantine armor obsolete.

 

[Caliban]

Just beware that negating crits is the only benefit of adamantine armor, so adding crit negation to helmet use would make adamantine armor obsolete.

That's why I suggested the helmet only have a one-shot crit negation, then it's broken. If you think that's still too good, say it can't negate crits from magic weapons or spells.

 

[BookBarbarian]

Helmets have never come up in my games. After reading this thread I hope it stays that way.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

I think this leads to a mess of rules.

Do you change the unarmed attack rule to account for a character wearing, or not wearing, heavy gauntlets? Tool proficiencies? If a character takes off their gauntlets to disarm a trap, what effect does that have on their AC when attacked? Does a shoulder pauldron give you some bonus when shoving someone? Do heavy boots affect climbing speed?

These are not necessarily bad rules, mind you. Just not rules that suit the relatively simple combat engine inside D&D.

 

[Reynard]

5E in particular is especially lite, more in line with 2E than 3E or Pathfinder. It doesn't seem like helmet rules offer much when looking at the game as a whole. I do think a "crunchier" 5E would be interesting, as a curiosity if nothing else (but I would not want to see the core rules go that way, to be clear).