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.