D&D 5E Is it finally time..

[Szatany]

No, the fact that living creatures have a health value based on various factors actually makes a lot of sense.

No it doesn't. It's an useful construct for games, but from realism standpoint it's quite idiotic.
However, even if it made sense, items having durability value also makes a lot of sense then. And the idea of "spending" that durability to prevent losing one's own health isn't that far fetched.

 

[Nellisir]

No, no, a thousand times no. Speed and simplicity, that's my goal.

If you want armor to have hit points, that's fine as a house rule or an official modular add-on, whatever that would mean, but I'll never play with it and I don't want to see it in the core game.

 

[Warbringer]

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.

Really not getting your point here

 

[Mattachine]

No one else here used the armor DR and hp rules from AD&D?

 

[Sunseeker]

No it doesn't. It's an useful construct for games, but from realism standpoint it's quite idiotic.
However, even if it made sense, items having durability value also makes a lot of sense then. And the idea of "spending" that durability to prevent losing one's own health isn't that far fetched.

As far as I'm aware, at least in 3.X/Pathfinder, most items do have durability scores that require a certain attack level or some sort of check to overcome.

To be fair, to accurately represent armor I think we'd need the following:
DR: certain armor is tougher than others, and it absorbs a fixed amount of any damage dealt to the wearer.
Toughness: different armors are differently durable. Different effects damage different types of armor, and more powerful ones are needed on more powerful sets.
HP: all armor has a certain "life" to it, in that if it sustains too many knicks, chips, cuts or scratches, it eventually wears thin and provides lessened protection to the player
Vulnerabilities: all armors are especially susceptible to specific types of damage which can bypass or reduce their protective effects.
AC value: all armor of course, provides a certain level of protection to the wearer in making it harder to hit the wearer instead of the armor.

But that's getting a little too in-depth...though it would create a fairly realistic representation of armor.

But then, I'm not really interested in representing realism.

 

[Nellisir]

Really not getting your point here

I think he's saying that if armor has hit points rather than AC, then effects that happen on a successful attack (ie pushing an opponent, poison, etc, etc - I think 4e has a lot of these) happen much more often to heavily armored opponents. Which is a valid point. Suddenly you've got to differentiate between doing damage to a suit of armor, and doing damage to the person in the armor, and when exactly does the person in the suit of armor become vulnerable to a poison effect?

 

[dragonfriend7738]

I think he's saying that if armor has hit points rather than AC, then effects that happen on a successful attack (ie pushing an opponent, poison, etc, etc - I think 4e has a lot of these) happen much more often to heavily armored opponents. Which is a valid point. Suddenly you've got to differentiate between doing damage to a suit of armor, and doing damage to the person in the armor, and when exactly does the person in the suit of armor become vulnerable to a poison effect?

That's why I like the idea of a minimum threshold- i.e, the DR can prevent all but 1 point of damage, so if an attack hits, it will always hurt a little- so that riders like that will always trigger on the character, not on the armor. It also answers the issue of if you take off the armor, how much hp do you really have, if you are taking the 'hp pool' route.

I'd say that the armor has a set pool of HP, and the damage it absorbs for the user through it's DR ability is subtracted from the HP pool, and when the pool hits 0, the armor is broken and must be repaired- the player looses the AC bonus and, if worn, the dex penalty is multiplied. The HP pool wouldn't actually be added to the player's HP, and exotic materials would have different abilities, either expanded hp pools or true DR. (Adamantine armor would probably ignore the first 2-5 points of damage before kicking in on the normal DR ability of regular armor.)

I personally like this idea, as it resolves the issue of armor inconsistancies that I've noticed in the games that I've played. If I were to implement something like this in my games, I'd go with something along the lines of what shidaku proposed, minus toughness, since most armors are just too thin to warrant a personal (for the item) defense.

 

[Mattachine]

I guess not.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Yeah, it's an extra step in combat and some players just dislike the idea of upkeep for equipment. Not something you'd want to introduce in D&D, which *never* had upkeep beyond arrows, perhaps.

If you're really keen on having armour that might break, steal and adapt Dark Sun 4E's breakage rules along these lines:

"If an attack with a weapon scores a critical hit against you, you may absorb the hit with your armour. By doing so, the hit is turned into a miss and the AC bonus of your armour is lowered by 1 until repaired."

This gives armour the chance to break, but leaves the decision with the player. It also creates an interesting decision: Take lots of damage now or trade against less protection for the rest of the adventure?

 

[Ainamacar]

What about some variation on the following simple rule?
AC - "Armor Class", what an attack must roll to damagingly (to the wearer) hit armor.
RC - "Resist Class", what an attack must roll to ignore armor resistance.
Hits below RC do half damage.

Example: Joe the Fighter has AC 15 and RC 18. Attacks 14 and below miss completely, as usual. Attacks from 15-17 do half damage. Attacks 18 and above do full damage.

In general, armor could modify both AC and RC, although not necessarily in the same way. I'm not sure how the interaction with dexterity should work, but I think the desirable result (in terms of gameplay that supports fantasy archetypes) would be such that characters in light armor will have good AC and mediocre RC, while characters in heavy armor have mediocre AC but fantastic RC. (Note that I'm rating AC and RC on different scales, RC is always no less than AC.)

With this rule armor can obviate relatively weaker attacks (this and dodge are joined in a single abstraction as is traditional) but also support the idea of armor that takes the blunt of a blow. Unlike DR it does not make low-damage attacks pointless, and in terms of final damage done scales, on average, the same for a few strong attacks as for many weaker ones. Moreover, DR requires extra calculation for every hit, and this does not. Abstracting the absorbing ability of armor to half also keeps the damage calculation simple for any given attack and, importantly, identical for every character. Modifiers to RC can carry the burden of letting some armor absorb damage better or worse in an average sense.

Another possible benefit is that it introduces just a little more mechanical room for other game elements. Hits against AC but not RC represent armor getting in the way of an otherwise solid hit. This might be important for various maneuvers, handling whether someone is actually poisoned by the arrow, item sundering, or interaction with spells. Likewise, effects that are best represented by cushioning blows but not necessarily avoiding them might be handled well by modifiers to RC. Certain crushing weapons might partially ignore RC because the force to the armor is transferred efficiently to the wearer, and this could be done without causing the more significant balance changes associated with changing the attack roll or partially ignoring AC. It might also be a good jumping-off point for more detailed armor modules.

I also like that the impact of armor is spikier than DR. If I have DR 5 armor, then I know that no matter what happens I take 5 less damage. Not knowing if armor will be effective on any given hit heightens the tension in a way I enjoy (although, of course, others may not). Against high-damage attacks it could also be very memorable in a way 5 DR is not.

Anyway, that's a lot of potential benefits for adding a single number that is largely static and works in play in a familiar way. The obvious downside is that every hit >= AC requires a second comparison to resolve. Comparison is faster than calculation, but it is still a slow down. Worth it? Maybe.

(I'd also like to add that this avoids one property I dislike about CrazyJerome's idea of DR that activates when a damage threshold is reached. Namely, that sometimes rolling 10 damage is paradoxically worse than rolling 9 damage. With the AC/RC rule, a larger damage roll is always better for the attacker, all other things being equal.)