D&D 5E Is it finally time..

[Warbringer]

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?

Ah, thanks for clarifying.

So to be clear, armor still ahs AC (just not as much .. platce say AC15 vs AC17). But to you point, our simple rule is that if you take no damage from the attack, such as allocating it all to the armor, you take no effect driven damage. The armor hps are a duffer, for want of a better explanation.

Now, because we are 3.x based, there are still attacks like touch attack that ignore the AC bonus, and hence the hp pool that armor has.

So either, at leat 1 hp to your true hps, or its a touch attack then effects take, well, effect.

Like I said, weve been playing these quite a while, so i make have forgotten the initial adjustment pain, but i really dont recall any issues

 

[Mattachine]

Welp, it didn't stick in late AD&D for a reason, folks.
It's too fiddly for D&D.

 

[Nellisir]

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

I guess not.

AD&D was a while ago. What rules were those, and where were they published?

 

[pemerton]

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

Which ones? The only ones I recall were in UA, and applied only to Field and Full Plate. Yes, we used them, but in retrospect they were needlessly fiddly!

 

[Mattachine]

The rules were for field and full plate (and magic versions thereof), and they were in the AD&D UA, as noted above.

I tried using them when they came out, but gave up: we forgot the DR sometimes, forgot the armor hp sometimes, and so on. A lot of bucks, but not a lot of bang.

 

[pemerton]

we forgot the DR sometimes, forgot the armor hp sometimes, and so on.

That sounds about right.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Really, the answer to all questions in the form is 'no.' 5e is not a 'boldly go where no edition has gone before' kind of D&D. It's a kumbaya comfortable armchair version of D&D that anyone whose been comfortable with some version of D&D can snuggle up in. Genuinely new ideas, tackling long-standing problems, these are not on the 5e agenda.

 

[StarFyre]

Been doing it in 2 of my campaigns.

1 was new...starting @ level 1, the other, i took over the game @ lvl 12 and wanted to keep the few house rules consistent between games. Basically, we used a modified version of the "Armour as DR" from Pathfinder Advanced Player Guide.

It works fine. The modification was it took into account materials and i modified the formula as needed.

My players are very detail oriented. So they like knowing if their armour is steel, or abyssal blood iron, or magical fused rubies, etc.

So, to keep it simple, it's just DR.

For example: the lvl 18 fighter in the group has adamantine dwarven plate armour; it has a DR of 22 (IIRC), 800 HP total. He has 220 HP or something like that.

The way we do it is any damage that would be physical or area damage (ie. explosion), has 22 of it reduced. So a fireball that does 15 due to a low roll would do nothing to him. But a physical attack that does 100 would do 78 still to him.

Also, the armour no longer factors into AC. Basically wearing armour makes you bulkier and slower as it should. So we did a slight modification to AC there.

It's a trade off; you get hit more often, but the armour absorbs some of the damage (including stuff that before, would not be affected by armour --ie. spells). OR you can be quick/fast, but everything will hit your body like in older styles.

Players like it; so that's what matters.

Sanjay

 

[Mattachine]

Been doing it in 2 of my campaigns.

1 was new...starting @ level 1, the other, i took over the game @ lvl 12 and wanted to keep the few house rules consistent between games. Basically, we used a modified version of the "Armour as DR" from Pathfinder Advanced Player Guide.

It works fine. The modification was it took into account materials and i modified the formula as needed.

My players are very detail oriented. So they like knowing if their armour is steel, or abyssal blood iron, or magical fused rubies, etc.

So, to keep it simple, it's just DR.

For example: the lvl 18 fighter in the group has adamantine dwarven plate armour; it has a DR of 22 (IIRC), 800 HP total. He has 220 HP or something like that.

The way we do it is any damage that would be physical or area damage (ie. explosion), has 22 of it reduced. So a fireball that does 15 due to a low roll would do nothing to him. But a physical attack that does 100 would do 78 still to him.

Also, the armour no longer factors into AC. Basically wearing armour makes you bulkier and slower as it should. So we did a slight modification to AC there.

It's a trade off; you get hit more often, but the armour absorbs some of the damage (including stuff that before, would not be affected by armour --ie. spells). OR you can be quick/fast, but everything will hit your body like in older styles.

Players like it; so that's what matters.

Sanjay

That sounds nice, Starfyre. There are several game systems that dealt with armor this way--I think Palladium did, back in the 80s.

I could see this being an optional module. I think 3.5's UA had rules for this, no? Only the DR part?

 

[timASW]

Been doing it in 2 of my campaigns.

1 was new...starting @ level 1, the other, i took over the game @ lvl 12 and wanted to keep the few house rules consistent between games. Basically, we used a modified version of the "Armour as DR" from Pathfinder Advanced Player Guide.

It works fine. The modification was it took into account materials and i modified the formula as needed.

My players are very detail oriented. So they like knowing if their armour is steel, or abyssal blood iron, or magical fused rubies, etc.

So, to keep it simple, it's just DR.

For example: the lvl 18 fighter in the group has adamantine dwarven plate armour; it has a DR of 22 (IIRC), 800 HP total. He has 220 HP or something like that.

The way we do it is any damage that would be physical or area damage (ie. explosion), has 22 of it reduced. So a fireball that does 15 due to a low roll would do nothing to him. But a physical attack that does 100 would do 78 still to him.

Also, the armour no longer factors into AC. Basically wearing armour makes you bulkier and slower as it should. So we did a slight modification to AC there.

It's a trade off; you get hit more often, but the armour absorbs some of the damage (including stuff that before, would not be affected by armour --ie. spells). OR you can be quick/fast, but everything will hit your body like in older styles.

Players like it; so that's what matters.

Sanjay

Pretty much how I do it. Except that we use opposed attack rolls rather then a static AC, so having heavy armor doesnt mean you neccesarily get tagged every time someone swings at you.