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Message: <blockquote data-quote="5ekyu" data-source="post: 7359801" data-attributes="member: 6919838">[MENTION=6880599]ClaytonCross[/MENTION] Sub-systems need to be analyzed as part of a whole especially when they impact a small subset of the players' options in a direct way. So, asking for feedback with a sort of handwave "dont worry the rest of the game will be balanced to fit it" kind of attitude is just a basic design process fail. What happens if the wizard debuff is worse than this and so you need a better fix for this or if the barbarian debuff that works the way you want is just less and so this needs toning down later etc etc etc?creating a bunch of isolated changes with the hopes that they balance out in the end... often fails. this is especially true if you take "how often it happens" and throw it into "playtest" as opposed to design. You mention that *maybe* it wont happen more than once a "game" (do you mean campaign?) Is that the design goal? is that an accident? Are you really wanting to add an entire sub-system of swing-by swing economics to add all that paperwork in the roleplaying and dial-it so that tracking really only matters once in an entire campaign? A design goal would be "this should add abc paperwork and the actual risk of fail should be an in-gameplay limiting factor one session out of ???" that is a stark contrast to maybe once in a game" and such.Assuming we are still to the version where it is based on how often the AC is "hit" (a miss within the range of the armor bonus) then you have a case where characters who go for studded leather have a 10% change of armor damage on most any attack, breastplate 20%, and plate 40%. unless armor damage is not an issue, this really shifts things towards dex-based options where the cheaper armor gives you less likely  chance of damage and so on. its an 8-to-1 difference in chances of taking armor damage on top of a 45g to 1500 gold price tag for armor between studded and plate to begin with plus the various "class features" given up for the proficiencies. So, even within the basic "fighter" the light armor dex-based option gets a big plus... but then we can *imagine* an overhaul of dexterity in combat that magically fixes this new shift. or we can *imagine* that in your games the "dex fighters are pretty strong as compared to strength fighters" is already not a thing at all.Or one can start with design goals including specific goals for how often it should be a factor, specific goals about the amount of extra tracking vs impact and so forth. Design then build works a lot better for most things than build then make everything else fit it.---As for the scaling levels thing here is the rub, the armor "frequencies" d not change as you level up. The number of attacks and amount of damage you take *does?* and it goes up!!! So the durability is fixed but the threat is escalating. Well maybe maybe not. maybe your 15th level fighter has only one attack just like first. maybe your 15th level spellcaster does no more damage than your 2nd? We don't know anymore because there is this nebulous set of "other changes to make this fit" that we cannot expect or anticipate or use at all as assumptions since we now have you with a generic universal caveat of "other changes will balance it out".But assuming that at 15th level character get more attacks or more damage or more Hp and so on, then you have scalating threat and hurt to the armor but static armor durability. That means at some level you have "armor durability is an X% problem." and at lower levels it is less of a problem and at higher levels it is more of a problem. *That is what is called a scaling problem.* Same work required but at some spans of the campaign its not really worth bothering with and at others its very tough to keep up.But then again, as you stated earlier, your "gritty" campaign assumes that everybody will be into magic armor after a bit so it wont even be in play after a time - cuz you know, everybody is in magic armor is an essential quality of "gritty" gameplay.---i highlight this because this feels a lot more like an off-the-cuff "i have an idea so lets run with it" thing that is getting very defensive response rather than the "one part of an overall whole" planned thing with a defined goal and purpose. ---basically, something as significant as this needs a lot more of a set of starting goals and design decisions made within a larger set of campaign goals and design constraints than it seems to actually be being given. otherwise you get a lot of unforseen breakdowns. trying to sell *iots part of a big plan with other changes putting it in context* when acid and force damage was not considered... tough sell.But as a final point, there are settings and worlds and game systems built from the ground up and majorly playtested to achieve a more gritty play experience. i would strongly suggest you look at a number of those for possible just use them or for better ideas of how the whole system works together to achieve that overall goal - because at least as far as what we can see from this thread - the more likely result/outcome seems to be to seriously favor a sub-set of build types if this is applied to DND5e bigger system. its not creating a gritty armor game if the result is folks just stop wearing armor and maxdex becomes the rule of the land. it creates a swashbuckler style game instead.**oh no it wont because...**sure, have fun with that.</blockquote>

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