Homebrew: Simple Armor durability and degradation rules

[Ancalagon]

Can your pants take damage? What if your pants fail?

If you apply this principle consistently, things will get silly or annoying pretty fast.

 

[jaelis]

Can your pants take damage? What if your pants fail?

https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Stinking Cloud#content

 

[ClaytonCross]

Uh ok so head in sand then? I mean its nowhere at all guaranteed that all armor wearers will have magic armor by fifth (fireballs and PCs with like 40ish or more HP.) 2-3 encounters can easily crash out some 30-40 hp medium armor. You expecting portable holes of spare armor by 5th?

Sure makess the "light armor or mage armor slot" question a no brainer for casters with the choices.

I have not play tested it yet so I can't say how much damage that armor takes during a fight. That makes it hard to see if the disabilities are too low which would be the fix for armor failing too quickly. That said your number on 2-3 encounters are for sure way too low. If the player is hit the rules I used would not damage the armor (conceptually hitting an exposed spot not the armor) and if they miss by more than the AC value of the armor over 10 then the target conceptually dodges the blow and the armor does take damage.

On Medium armor (lets say a breastplate since that one is pretty popular, dex +2) your talking about enemies missing you with an attack of 12-15.

I don't think that's going to happen nearly as much as you say. That said without trying it we are both using arbitrary numbers and guessing. I like the concept but will need to play test it to see if it needs adjusted or not.

 

[ClaytonCross]

Yup plus no guarantee armor wpuld even survive a decent sized adventure once foreballs and such kick in.

Fire balls have not roll to hit so by these rules they are not damaged. I figure getting metal a little hot, cold or running electricity through it doesn't really damage it that much compared to hitting it with a hammer and I also did want every hit to mean damage to the armor. If I did that armor would drop too fast and too frequently.

 

[ClaytonCross]

Can I offer a different take on the idea?

Establish three classes of armor or shield condition:
- Undamaged
- Damaged
- Nonfunctional

The base AC of damaged armor is reduced by 2 (to a minimum of 10). The base AC of nonfunctional armor is 10. Strength requirements and stealth penalties are not impacted in either case. The AC bonus of a damaged shield is +1, and a nonfunctional shield is +0.

A given armor type has a maximum number of hit points equal to its base AC value. (IE 14 for scale armor.) A shield has a maximum of 6 hit points.

Every time you are hit by a critical hit, your armor and/or shield takes one point of damage. If you are using both armor and a shield, you decide which is damaged. The equipment is damaged when its hit points are reduced to 50% of its maximum, and nonfunctional when it has zero hit points.

A character proficient with the appropriate tools (smith's, leatherworker's, or carpenter's) can use them to repair armor or shields. They can repair 2 hit points per hour of work, or one hit point during a short rest (and still benefit from the rest). A character who lacks the required tools or their proficiency can still maintain armor which they are proficient in using, removing damage at a rate of one hit point per hour (and none while taking a short rest). In this case, however, it is not possible to improve the equipment's condition class, so damaged armor cannot have hit points restored above 50% and non-functional armor cannot be repaired. A mending spell repairs 2 hit points of damage with each casting, but cannot repair nonfunctional equipment.

Magic items and shields are not damaged by ordinary critical hits, but may be damaged in other ways as determined by the DM. They may require special means of repair as well.


That provides a little bit of realism and a reason to take tool proficiencies or the mending cantrip, but in most situations you can assume that characters with the time to maintain their equipment will be able to do so.

Not a bad redesign at all. Without playing them I am not sure which is better, on one hand criticals are rare enough that the armor should last a while, on the other hand I wonder if they are so rare that it might not be relevant to track. I think mine in comparable in that missing in the range of the armor should be fairly uncommon (more than criticals for sure though) but adding more durability to higher armors extends there life. This means mine is endanger of the same tracking with no effect if durability is too high.

Really the biggest separation between the 2 approaches is that your is on hit and mine is on miss. So the more effective the armor is at taking damage the faster it wears down where yours is based on the opponent making a deadly strike which could be around the armor. That in mind your maybe a better approach but I still like mine more thematically. But that's just my preference not having played ether of them. So... take that with as you will.

 

[ClaytonCross]

The first question I always ask when introducing house rules several have already asked: does this add enough to play to justify the added complexity.

The second question is "does this change the balance for a subset of PCs?". Sometimes, if someone is underpowered I want it. In this case I haven't experienced anyone saying armor is OP, so that's not the case. In that case, this feels like a nerf to certain character types.

So, what bonus to do give to armor wearers to offset this? My first through would be that any damage the armor takes would be less damage that the PC takes. That puts every armor wearer at about 2/3 of the Heavy Armor Proficiency feat. But that doesn't scale particularly well we have giants doing 30+ damage per hit which still in single digit CRs.

Basically, tanks are already attacked the most, this rule also makes them the most likely to lose their armor. Since they are supposed to get in the way, losing their armor also make them least likely to be able to continue to fulfill their role. An ranged character like an archer or caster can still function with lower AC will a much less reduction in their efficiency in what they bring to the party. So we need a massive bonus to tanks to offset this nerf. Else tanks will all become no-armor like barbarians. (Or carry multiple sets of armor and swap them out all the time.)

I don't disagree in any way. Though at the same time, If I were to play this I would I imagine it would be more of a "hardcore" setting mode. I don't imagine it would be my only homebrew rule. I might disallow arcane focus for example and make casters track material components as well. So while I get your point picking at the rule as a debuff, I think most people who don't hate the idea for existing would also tend toward other similar rule for balancing the debuffs all around. I am more interested in refining or improving the idea than discarding it on premise under the understanding this is homebrew intended to be homebrew for a specific type of play which will be reflected by more than this one rule. At that point your agreement (while completely valid in a normal game) becomes entirely void.

 

[5ekyu]

Thanks for the replies.

I definitely could not convince my players that armor is never struck and penetrated even for light and medium nor that acid or force or fire damage does any armor damage at all (if it comes by save types but maybe if it comes by to hit spells, idk) so this would not be a ruleset they could get behind.

 

[ClaytonCross]

While one might rationalize fire not hurting armors even cloth based ones, its harder for that for things like force or even acid or such.

That is a really good point. I had not considered that. I think 1 damage from AoE Force or Acid damage on a failed save would not be too bad. What do you think?

 

[ClaytonCross]

Thanks for the replies.

I definitely could not convince my players that armor is never struck and penetrated even for light and medium nor that acid or force or fire damage does any armor damage at all (if it comes by save types but maybe if it comes by to hit spells, idk) so this would not be a ruleset they could get behind.

I understand that most homebrew is situational... If we are honest I have players who don't want to play some standard games rules so expecting everyone to want to play a homebrew would be silly.

I would like to clarify that "armor is never struck and penetrated even for light and medium nor that acid or force or fire damage does any armor damage at all" is exactly how you play by default never having any wear or tear on your armor and why I am writing these rules and since you call them players ... they already are "convinced"... I am just making a rule that applies that damage when the armor takes a sufficient amount of it. If the player is hit, then the armor could still be hit just not in a way that damages the armor in a way that reduces its integrity or effectiveness. Similar to how player Hit points don't directly represent "Health" meaning that at half HP your half alive but with somehow full operational, they instead mark a physical standing of endurance as well so recovering HP on a short rest could be considered just recovering battle fatigue or getting your breath back after getting the wind knocked out of you as much or more than actually "healing" wounds.

 

[5ekyu]

That is a really good point. I had not considered that. I think 1 damage from AoE Force or Acid damage on a failed save would not be too bad. What do you think?

I think that the basic system has a built in fail that mskes head in sand suffocation inevitable.

At 5th level, characters have (and tend to take) 3-4 times the Hp they have at 1st. At 10th, thats maybe conservatively 6-8 times.

So any armor durability rules that make it a factor at all at 1-3 but leaves armor durability the same at 5th, 10th etc is going to see massive drawbacks to failure soon enough unless the GM decides to, as some suggested, give out magic armor so everybody gets it.

Why,put in system that puts all rhis in if it then requires you to give out items to throw it away by say 10th?

If in your games the armir wearers are beating the spellcasters so badly, then it makes sense.

In your games, if heavy armor builds are outshining light armor plus dex plus spell based builds, then it makes sense.

Those are just not results i see overwhelmingly happening in games i play, run or see discussed.


Big Picture: Some character concepts in the fantasy genre have real world analogs but others dont. That is where the flaw in the general approach of "hey lets add more realism in" runs aground. We dont have "real world" magic to extrapolate these "logical" additions into for spells. We dont have "massive hit dice gains" to extrapolate into.

So, it ends up being a skew to already tenuous balances between the character concepts and game elements that are trying to represent somewhat mundane elements as competitive in the magic world.

This is a great way to get armor wearer PCs out of the game.