D&D 5E Is it finally time..

[Warbringer]

... For armor to have hit points ..

I've been doing his for years in my home brew, hps to armor and overall lower AC bonuses for what is worn.

I'll tell you one thing, no arguments around why table why an AC 17 fighter in partial plate with a light steel shield is different from a high dex dodging rogue in leather .... That extra 27 hit points is reason enough

So .... Is It time for dnd to have hit points on armor ?

 

[Falling Icicle]

No. I played an RPG years ago that had hp on armor and I hated it. It was annoying to keep track of and having to constantly get your armor repaired is an extreme nuisance.

What armor should do is provide damage reduction. Of course, they'll never do that. AC is too much of a sacred cow.

 

[Leatherhead]

Armor already has HP, it's just that nobody sunders it because that would result in less loot.




Oh, wait, you meant that armor should be used as a secondary HP pool, for PCs. I'm not a fan of multiple hp pools. Especially when armor wouldn't be effected by mental attacks or the such, it just gets more complicated than it is worth.

 

[calprinicus]

I've also done armor as HP in two or three sessions and it worked alright, but only since in DnD hit points are abstracted. The main reason I don't like it is because it doesn't hold up as well as the current AC only system. Lets say I have 50 hp and my armor provides 20 of that. If I've been hit a lot and only have 5 hp remaining.... is that my hero's physical body or just 5 points from my armor? Also it brings up issue like do I need to repair my armor to regain those 20 hp from my armor? This can be a hard concept for new players since HP is so abstracted.

Damage reduction has issues too since the range of damage in dnd is so variable. it can do 2-10 at low levels but 25+ at higher. Which would mean that damage reduction would need to scale with level, which is also a weird concept and not as easy as a flat rate like how it currently works with AC.

I like to think that armor is still measured in DnD with an increased AC since that is what works best for this game. If the armor bonus changed to HP or Damage reduction it would change spells, damage amounts, and the feel of the game might change as a result. Which might not be how WotC wants to sell the brand.

I don't think armor as HP or damage reduction couldn't work. I think it is a viable route but not for how DnD has been established.

 

[Raith5]

No it is too complicated. Even small amounts of damage reduction for every melee attack is too fiddly and I tried that. But I like the idea of maybe giving heavy armour an additional advantage rather than just a high AC. Maybe giving heavy armour an additional property, maybe reducing the damage of crits?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I once ran a PC in a HERO game named Pax- an anti-Power Armor/Cyborg/AI Power Armor guy.

One attribute of his armor was that only part of it was typical HERO armor: 1/2 of it was Ablative. That means it reduced damage to its wearer as normal, but damage over its defensive value damaged the armor itself, gradually reducing its efficacy.

For Pax and for me, it was cool. I'm not sure that everyone would have felt likewise. Indeed, not only was Pax the only one in that campaign with non-standard Ablative armor,* he is one of the few PCs I have made with that power limitation.

Sooooo...I can't see that happening in D&D, a game that is not nearly as crunchy as HERO.





* certain kinds of "realistic" armor, like Flak jackets, are made with Ablative as a standard design.

 

[Prickly]

Armour hit points and DR are things that I've found to work well in theory but become bothersome at the table.

 

[Mattachine]

Armor with DR and hp was tried out with the introduction of Field Plate and Full Plate back in AD&D 1.5 (Unearthed Arcana).

It was a very annoying extra step in every combat.

 

[Szatany]

... For armor to have hit points ..

I've been doing his for years in my home brew, hps to armor and overall lower AC bonuses for what is worn.

I'll tell you one thing, no arguments around why table why an AC 17 fighter in partial plate with a light steel shield is different from a high dex dodging rogue in leather .... That extra 27 hit points is reason enough

So .... Is It time for dnd to have hit points on armor ?

I would like that but as an optional rule. By optional I don't mean that DM has to decide whether to use armor hp in his games or not. By optional I mean that a player can choose to use it on round to round basis or not. Armor would have HP, and whenever you take damage from an attack that has to beat the Armor Class, you may spend some of armor's HP instead of your own. Simple, effective, and allows 1st level players to survive swingy fights.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

I'm fine with Armor as DR. It's what they do in in Dragon Age, and I haven't felt like its cumbersome there.