Szatany
First Post
No weirder than giving living creatures some artifical HP value.
D&D 5E Is it finally time..
No weirder than giving living creatures some artifical HP value.
...great thread
Clearly elaborating the pros + cons.
What we know in DDN :
-AC is the only stat, DR is probably out, unless in an optional module.
-It appears as though heavy armor is broken, compared to Dex builds. +1 AC in no way compensates for all the other shortcomings of plate in an adventuring scenario.
That said, here are the house rules I would implement in order to fix this, in order of simplicity and preference:
1) Heavy armor gets +1 AC across the board, and/or the Max Dex bonus is increased in each category. This is necessary to offset the opportunity costs to split ability points into Str / Dex, heavy armor penalties of various kinds. Monsters getting +2 to hit from their current values would also highlight this new difference, making you very likely to want to not only get into heavy armor, but get into it early, and often.
2) All armor gives extra HP, as the OP suggested. I think it's a simple way to add DR without slowing the table down. It seems wierd at first, until you realize it can elegantly get rid of the Armor repair issue. Why model repairing your armor in between battles or adventuring days? Just sew it up. If you want to prevent magic healing from healing your armor, just bring yourself up to your max unmodified HP and repair the rest during your next break. Maybe heavy armor takes more time to repair, if you have the tools. You can handwave that away or just RP it if you want. Perhaps masterwork versions give slightly more HP but the same AC. And magic could give both. Yay...finally another stat that can be used to balance the armors amongst the same AC values even. (even in Light armor variants too, for those that have the same AC but different costs or max dex bonuses)
3) Add a well-balanced DR system as an optional module. This I hope is done, but I'm not holding my breath that it will be there or any good. And by good, I mean fast at the game table, adding a real benefit to wearing plate overall, and killing the Dex-Is-God-stat trope in D&D.
I think that spells attacking AC provides a good rationale for armor increasing HP as a workable DR solution.
And it incorporates built-in armor damage modelling (your armor is always the first thing to take the HP damage, so if you take off armor that has 0 hp you have the same HP as before, likewise for donning armor).
If it's fully "broken", it just doesn't provide any HP bonus until it's repaired, which as I've said, can be done either with tools, magic armor mending spells or traits or feats or whatever you want. The way to "finish it off" would be to use the sunder maneuver to bring it below 0hp. Once that happens, the AC benefit is now also gone, and the armor is completely useless.
I never liked the extra time it took to model Temp HP pools in 4e, but one HP pool is rather simpler, this is like "persistent temp hp". You can always calculate how many HP belongs to you or your armor's current level, by a mere subtraction. And in practice you would never have to do this, unless you remove armor. Granted, I'm not sure what you would do normally if you don armor while not at full "base HP", and then the armor takes damage and you remove it, do you die? This is a corner case that shouldn't happen that much. You could always avoid exploitation of this rule by stating you only get the HP bonus of armor tacked on if you don it while at full HP. Simple enough.
Clearly elaborating the pros + cons.
What we know in DDN :
-AC is the only stat, DR is probably out, unless in an optional module.
-It appears as though heavy armor is broken, compared to Dex builds. +1 AC in no way compensates for all the other shortcomings of plate in an adventuring scenario.
That said, here are the house rules I would implement in order to fix this, in order of simplicity and preference:
1) Heavy armor gets +1 AC across the board, and/or the Max Dex bonus is increased in each category. This is necessary to offset the opportunity costs to split ability points into Str / Dex, heavy armor penalties of various kinds. Monsters getting +2 to hit from their current values would also highlight this new difference, making you very likely to want to not only get into heavy armor, but get into it early, and often.
2) All armor gives extra HP, as the OP suggested. I think it's a simple way to add DR without slowing the table down. It seems wierd at first, until you realize it can elegantly get rid of the Armor repair issue. Why model repairing your armor in between battles or adventuring days? Just sew it up. If you want to prevent magic healing from healing your armor, just bring yourself up to your max unmodified HP and repair the rest during your next break. Maybe heavy armor takes more time to repair, if you have the tools. You can handwave that away or just RP it if you want. Perhaps masterwork versions give slightly more HP but the same AC. And magic could give both. Yay...finally another stat that can be used to balance the armors amongst the same AC values even. (even in Light armor variants too, for those that have the same AC but different costs or max dex bonuses)
3) Add a well-balanced DR system as an optional module. This I hope is done, but I'm not holding my breath that it will be there or any good. And by good, I mean fast at the game table, adding a real benefit to wearing plate overall, and killing the Dex-Is-God-stat trope in D&D.
I think that spells attacking AC provides a good rationale for armor increasing HP as a workable DR solution.
And it incorporates built-in armor damage modelling (your armor is always the first thing to take the HP damage, so if you take off armor that has 0 hp you have the same HP as before, likewise for donning armor).
If it's fully "broken", it just doesn't provide any HP bonus until it's repaired, which as I've said, can be done either with tools, magic armor mending spells or traits or feats or whatever you want. The way to "finish it off" would be to use the sunder maneuver to bring it below 0hp. Once that happens, the AC benefit is now also gone, and the armor is completely useless.
I never liked the extra time it took to model Temp HP pools in 4e, but one HP pool is rather simpler, this is like "persistent temp hp". You can always calculate how many HP belongs to you or your armor's current level, by a mere subtraction. And in practice you would never have to do this, unless you remove armor. Granted, I'm not sure what you would do normally if you don armor while not at full "base HP", and then the armor takes damage and you remove it, do you die? This is a corner case that shouldn't happen that much. You could always avoid exploitation of this rule by stating you only get the HP bonus of armor tacked on if you don it while at full HP. Simple enough.
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Jeff Carlsen
Adventurer
I prefer armor to provide damage reduction instead of hit points, but some interesting arguments have been made. It should be noted that the HP gained by armor would have to scale with level due to the way hit points and damage are being used to represent skill.
Perhaps heavy armor could add a die to the parry maneuver instead of providing persistent damage reduction.
Perhaps heavy armor could add a die to the parry maneuver instead of providing persistent damage reduction.
Warbringer
Explorer
Not really, no more than AC gets getter because of level ... In dnd equipment gets better due to magic, extra hps for magic work fine in this case.
My players keep track of armor hps separately from standard hps ... Not a big deal at all. They tend to use these either when a blow would take them to bloodied or below 0, and try not to let armor hps fall to zero.
As you would imagine its lead to some pretty dramatic scenes
Szatany
First Post
There's already system in place for that. You pay more to buy better armor as you gain levels. With armor HP, you wouldn't stop buying better armor after plate, because you can have armor better than plate while still providing same AC as plate. The hit-vs-AC portion of the equation isn't screwed at higher levels.ś because your AC is not raising after certain level. But your ability to survive still grows thanks to better and better armor suits which provide more and more HP.
It really plays nicely with the model of bounded accuracy if you think about it. Damage and damage prevention (in whatever form) are supposed to escalate with levels, while hit and DC are not.
.
Kinda see his point about the HP benefit not scaling so your plate armor's benefit can't keep up with monster damage as you get higher and higher level. Still, every bit of defense counts, no?
for 5k gp I'd expect a good 30hp boost or so. That's six average blows of a greatsword per battle absorbed. Not bad!
The best thing about this rule is you could, just tack it on to the existing AC system, toggle it on or off, or tweak the HP values
[MENTION=6669384]Greenfield[/MENTION] : Could be a good candidate for an "attuned" property, I concur.
I just don't like seeing a wood elf with potentially the same AC as a human in chain at level 1, with +5 speed, same DPR. Why do such speedy/skilled dex-based ranged combatants users need such high ac?
Kinda see his point about the HP benefit not scaling so your plate armor's benefit can't keep up with monster damage as you get higher and higher level. Still, every bit of defense counts, no?
for 5k gp I'd expect a good 30hp boost or so. That's six average blows of a greatsword per battle absorbed. Not bad!
The best thing about this rule is you could, just tack it on to the existing AC system, toggle it on or off, or tweak the HP values
[MENTION=6669384]Greenfield[/MENTION] : Could be a good candidate for an "attuned" property, I concur.
I just don't like seeing a wood elf with potentially the same AC as a human in chain at level 1, with +5 speed, same DPR. Why do such speedy/skilled dex-based ranged combatants users need such high ac?
Summer-Knight925
First Post
Assume we use the 3 armor categories.
Light
Medium
Heavy
each has advantages and disadvantages, right?
Light armor offers a higher dex, but overall less protection.
DR 3.
Medium armor offers an average dex and average protection
DR 5.
Heavy armor offers low dex, but overall higher protection
DR 7.
The problem you get with this set up would be remembering to subtract armor first, the flip side of this would be a way to easily gauge how effective armor is based on its category, not on suit by suit, because that gets confusing.
Furthermore, magic armor would act as a multiplyer, perhaps nota +2=x2,but some sort of way to increase the DR, after all a +5 chainshirt offers more protection numerically than a standard suit of fullplate.
With this method, armor need not be repaired all the time, it allows for a certain type of realism, and also keeps the same flavor of earlier editions(you wear light armor because you have a high dex, medium because you're average, and heavy because you might be in negatives for that dex bonus)
Oh, and one more thing, if wanted that is...
Certain types of armor block against certain types of attacks, for instance, a suit of chainmail (and thus chainshirt) suck at stopping arrows and spears (unless history channel has lied to me, you never know) and thus Piercing attacks would blow past that damage reduction.
Honestly...this sounds way more complex here than when played, and in the fantasy rpg Im writing, which has 2 more categories (ultra-light and super-heavy) it is a bit more. But not much.
Also, this takes into consideration material types, such as mithril and adamantine
after all, mithril would give you more DR than standard iron, yaknow?
Light
Medium
Heavy
each has advantages and disadvantages, right?
Light armor offers a higher dex, but overall less protection.
DR 3.
Medium armor offers an average dex and average protection
DR 5.
Heavy armor offers low dex, but overall higher protection
DR 7.
The problem you get with this set up would be remembering to subtract armor first, the flip side of this would be a way to easily gauge how effective armor is based on its category, not on suit by suit, because that gets confusing.
Furthermore, magic armor would act as a multiplyer, perhaps nota +2=x2,but some sort of way to increase the DR, after all a +5 chainshirt offers more protection numerically than a standard suit of fullplate.
With this method, armor need not be repaired all the time, it allows for a certain type of realism, and also keeps the same flavor of earlier editions(you wear light armor because you have a high dex, medium because you're average, and heavy because you might be in negatives for that dex bonus)
Oh, and one more thing, if wanted that is...
Certain types of armor block against certain types of attacks, for instance, a suit of chainmail (and thus chainshirt) suck at stopping arrows and spears (unless history channel has lied to me, you never know) and thus Piercing attacks would blow past that damage reduction.
Honestly...this sounds way more complex here than when played, and in the fantasy rpg Im writing, which has 2 more categories (ultra-light and super-heavy) it is a bit more. But not much.
Also, this takes into consideration material types, such as mithril and adamantine
after all, mithril would give you more DR than standard iron, yaknow?
S
Sunseeker
Guest
No, the fact that living creatures have a health value based on various factors actually makes a lot of sense.
Leatherhead
Possibly a Idiot.
The main reason that armor as DR/HP isn't favored is due to all of the riders that attacks have. Things like poison, life/level drain, push me pull you, and spell effects.
Because metagamingly speaking: As a DM, if something hits, you want it to do damage, even if it is just one damage. And if something does damage, it's riders must then logically trigger. Often times these riders are more dangerous to a PC than raw damage, which undermines the combat system because suddenly the guy in full plate is considerably more vulnerable in combat than the guy in leather.
And that's not even considering the effects that would logically trigger regardless of damage.
Because metagamingly speaking: As a DM, if something hits, you want it to do damage, even if it is just one damage. And if something does damage, it's riders must then logically trigger. Often times these riders are more dangerous to a PC than raw damage, which undermines the combat system because suddenly the guy in full plate is considerably more vulnerable in combat than the guy in leather.
And that's not even considering the effects that would logically trigger regardless of damage.
Ed_Laprade
Adventurer
Absolutely! (Can't XP you, need to spread more around.)
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