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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fragsie" data-source="post: 6749581" data-attributes="member: 83065">So, as some of you may have seen from my other recent threads; I'm developing a sci-fantasy space opera setting for 5e. One of the more 'meta' issues I have rattling around my head is 'why would intergalactic, tech-advanced cultures, with access to all manner of guns, still produce a great number of combatants that rely on swords and other melee weapons?'. I love the way that Frank Herbert's Dune deals with this; personal shielding exists that is effective against ranged attacks, but not melee attacks. This would create a believable in setting reason as to why melee fighting is still common. So, in Spirit (the name of the setting) there is a new armour type called 'Fields', that can be worn at the same time as armour and a shield and doesn't require a free hand. To gain the benefit of a field a character must be proficient, though I'm unsure how to handle their use by characters that are not proficient. I toyed with the idea of using the DR/type mechanic of 3.5, but I want the fields to be effective against all ranged and no melee damage rather than against certain damage types. I also felt that just giving a flat resistance to ranged damage would be too powerful and potentially unbalancing. I don't like the idea of fields being totally a reliable technology either.At the moment I'm most fond of the idea of fields providing the character with a number of 'soak dice' dependant on the cost of the field, that can be rolled whenever hit by a ranged attack, if a certain number is rolled then the character gains resistance against that attack (on a 6 if I were to use d6's), this makes fields effective but unreliable. Though I'm unsure what die to use for soak (d4, d6 etc).It may be the case that I'm being too complex and fields instead should just offer a flat damage reduction, let me know what you think, I'm open to any discussion/suggestion.</blockquote>

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