Misses: Order of Operations

[glass]

Well, the relevence is in regards to a shield quality I'm working on that damages weapons that hit the shield.

In that case, the attacker should hit the shield on a roll off 1-whatever. Higher is better in d20.



glass.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I do not have my books on me, but I KNOW there is a chart in one of them that lists the order of equipment that can be damaged by spells/items. That could be the closes OFFICIAL source that you could add to.

Doesn't help in assessing the relative point at which various components of AC contribute towards the defence though. Where would dodge go, for instance

 

[reel_big_gish]

Amendment to my "system" since I realize now that it doesn't work in the least:

a = AC
t = touch AC
s = Shield bonus to AC
x= chance (out of 20) of hitting the shield

x=[s/(a-t)]*20

If the result of a 1d20 roll is less than or equal to x, the attack hits the shield.

So, a human with Dex 12, wearing full plate and a heavy steel shield would have an AC 21, a Touch AC 11, and a shield bonus 2.

a=21
t=11
s=2

x=[2/(21-11)]*20

x=4

If the 1d20 result is 4 or less, the attack hits the shield.

It's a headache to calculate, but it works.

 

[IndyPendant]

It is a failure of the system more things do not work off this. no official order of operations.

I'd say the more reactive bonuses matter first, I'd do them...

I disagree strongly, Frank. Keeping track of the source of AC modifiers increases the complexity of combat dramatically, and also needlessly--which is almost certainly why that was left out in the first place.

The only purpose for such a table in DND would be the descriptions the DM/players use for how an attack misses ("you dodge it" "it bounces off your shield")--in other words, flavour. Adding such incredible complexity for pure flavour would frankly be absurd.

In addition, your table does not cover what happens when one of those numbers is a penalty. For example, a fighter in full plate armour, with no shield, natural armour, or deflection bonus, a dexterity of 8, and a +1 insight bonus to AC. His overall AC is 18. Someone rolls to attack, and hits AC 10. They miss him--but did the armour absorb/deflect the blow, or did his Insight bonus keep him from 'being there', despite his dexterity penalty? If it was his armour, then his +1 insight bonus can *never* be a cause of his avoiding the blow, since his dexterity penalty will *always* offset it.

Major. Headache.

a = AC
t = touch AC
s = Shield bonus to AC
x= chance (out of 20) of hitting the shield

x=[s/(a-t)]*20

If the result of a 1d20 roll is less than or equal to x, the attack hits the shield.

Heh. If this formula works for you, then great! Use it. --But in a RPG where the developers made Power Attack 0 - 1 - 2 simply because they felt that 0.5 - 1.0 - 1.5 would be too complex to calculate... ; )

 

[reel_big_gish]

It's overly-complicated and requires extra dice to be rolled. What's not to love?

Then again, I was weened on 1e

 

[Stalker0]

Jester, even if your able to get a list, is it really worth the added complexity to include this weapon ability? That means everytime you strike a guy, you have to figure out the AC range to use the ability, seems like too much work to me.

 

[DanMcS]

Jester, even if your able to get a list, is it really worth the added complexity to include this weapon ability? That means everytime you strike a guy, you have to figure out the AC range to use the ability, seems like too much work to me.

It's a shield ability, so you can precalculate it for anybody that has that shield. If it was a weapon ability, yeah, it would be much more of a pain in the butt to calculate every time you attacked someone with a shield.

I think the correct order would be
Everything that applies to your touch attack
Shield Bonus
Armor Bonus
Natural Armor Bonus

Suppose someone has a touch AC of 15, a +1 large shield of moogley-boogley like you are creating (3 point shield bonus), and 6 points of armor bonus from something else, for an AC of 24.

So the easy way to figure this out would be as follows: If the attacker hits, the shield isn't involved.
If the attacker misses the shield-bearer, check the attack roll versus his touch AC (conveniently mostly precalculated, but don't forget to include stuff that varies constantly like cover, buff spells, etc).

If the attack was less than the touch AC, it missed entirely and didn't touch the shield.
If it was >= the touch AC and less than the "shield AC" (which is touch + shield bonus), you hit the shield.
If it was greater than the shield AC, armor or natural armor stopped the hit.

Our hypothetical shield-bearer has a touch AC of 15, shield AC of 18, and full AC of 24.

So if you hit AC -100 through 14, you miss this guy flat out (missed his touch AC).
hit 15 through 17 (touch through shield AC), hit the shield.
>= shield AC, missed the shield, stopped by something else.

The alternative easiest way to do this is to say that if the attacker missed by the shield bonus or less, he hit the shield. Basically say the shield applies last.

 

[melon-neko]

The way i see it, is that the ambiguity with what exactly a hit and miss are, in relation to hp's, makes making something like this not able to always make sense and the methods approached are really overly complicated. I mean, If you take 28 points of damage from a greatsword (such a hit would kill a normal person) and it only knocked off a 5th of your hp. The character obviously didn't get cut in half. Maybe they blocked it with their shield (yes i know they were hit) and were staggered backward, bruised their forearm and are having second thoughts about fight someone with that big a sword.
I realize the above is an argument for a different thread and has probably been done to death, but i mostly used it to explain where i'm coming from in my thoughts.

If i were to make a shield that damage items when it was struck i would do something like, the shield has a 15% chance of inflicting X amount of damage against melee weapons used in attacks against this character. This gains +85% if the shield itself is being targeted and has -15% if the attack roll was a critical success or a critical failure. This damage is inflicted against the weapon before the attackers damage roll(if any), and if the weapon is destroyed, the attack deals half damage (if any)

 

[pawsplay]

I think basically the shield ability should make the attacker make a Reflex save any time they miss for any reason. That's relatively consistent with the rules of getting set on fire and such.

 

[Pinotage]

1st Insight: You knew where not to be.
2nd Luck: You just happened to be out of the path of the blow
3rd Sacred / Profane: outside[r] interference makes it look like you were lucky.
4th Dodge & Dex: You got out of the way on your own merit, more or less.
5th Deflection: Deflector shields are up even if you are down.
6th Shield: You block the blow and your armor is never tested, granted the 3e rules make the shield seem 'stapled' onto you.
7th Armor: If the blow gets past this you are in trouble...
8th Natural Armor: Saved by the thick skin.

This is very cool! Thanks. Extremely helpful in describing combat as well, and indicating where blows land from that perspective. A close blow might be 'through sheer luck he avoid the blow' while another might be 'clangs heavily into his armor, but fails to penetrate the steel plates'. Neat!

Pinotage