D&D 3E/3.5 Reworking 3e armour; need help!

[Odysseus]

I mean realistic in the sense that in medieval times people didn't use daggers and rapiers against plate mail. The DR for heavier armour means low damage weapons are ineffective. While heavy crossbows and double handed swords are effective, as they do more damage.
Conan is a low magic setting, and whether the system would translate to a more generic D&D settings, with more magic pluses etc , is debatable. But certainly the system has a more realistic feel to it.

 

[CRGreathouse]

I mean realistic in the sense that in medieval times people didn't use daggers and rapiers against plate mail. The DR for heavier armour means low damage weapons are ineffective. While heavy crossbows and double handed swords are effective, as they do more damage.

Sure, rapiers aren't any good against plate. With Power Attack, though, a greatclub is much better against DR plate than a heavy crossbow (with Rapid Reload and PBS, perhaps), and this isn't even close to realistic.

In general, I don't see how this variant improves realism. It patches a few things, but breaks more realism-wise. (As before, I make no claims either way on game balance.)

 

[Rhun]

Sure, rapiers aren't any good against plate. With Power Attack, though, a greatclub is much better against DR plate than a heavy crossbow (with Rapid Reload and PBS, perhaps), and this isn't even close to realistic.

In general, I don't see how this variant improves realism. It patches a few things, but breaks more realism-wise. (As before, I make no claims either way on game balance.)

I've been planning on testing a system with damage reduction for armor, myself. I can remember the Palladium Compendium of Arms and Armor listing the different resistances each armor had to types of weapons...I want to try for something like that. A certain armor may be more resistant to blunt damage then it is to piercing damage, for example.

If I ever get it worked out, I'll have to post it.

 

[CRGreathouse]

If I ever get it worked out, I'll have to post it.

I'd be curious to see it, if/when you end up posting it.

I think in such a setup that many armors should still provide AC bonuses (breastplate, full plate, banded mail), some should provide only DR (padded, hide), and the remainder should provide both.

 

[Spatzimaus]

IMC we finally got sick of a lot of things about the armor rules and changed them all at once. Well, it wasn't all at once, it was more like one change immediately leading to another. Masterwork, currently, is a set price and a set DC, with a benefit that doesn't stack with magic. We didn't like that. So, we tied it all into a materials system, with multiplicative costs, DC modifiers, and stackable benefits; the beauty of this is that you can remove a few oddball entries in the PHB table. After all, Hide is just an attempt to make the mid-range metal armors using cruder materials, so once "Hide" is added as a material you can use to make a Brigandine-type armor, you don't need a separate entry. Likewise, Cloth, Leather, and Studded are all just variations on the same theme, if you want.
One of the important points was that each material has a Hardness (10 for steel, 30 for adamantine), and that armor provides DR in addition to the AC; medium armors and heavy shields (large/tower) give (H/10)/-, heavy armors give (H/5)/-.

I posted this system long ago. It's worked nicely for us, although we've had to redesign non-weapon classes like the Monk to compensate (the alt.Monk thread that was bumped a few days ago) since weapons and armor are now stronger than before.

 

[Terath Ninir]

After all, Hide is just an attempt to make the mid-range metal armors using cruder materials, so once "Hide" is added as a material you can use to make a Brigandine-type armor, you don't need a separate entry. Likewise, Cloth, Leather, and Studded are all just variations on the same theme, if you want.

You just solved a quandry I had! Like Rhun, I've been using the Palladium book for armour, and many of the armour types varied based on the type of backing they used: cloth, soft leather, hard leather, or boiled leather. Way too complicated a system -- I ended up with a preliminary table that stretched for more than a page. But, using a materials system, perhaps with hard leather as the "default" type, I could make it actually work. Thanks for the idea!

 

[Rhun]

You just solved a quandry I had! Like Rhun, I've been using the Palladium book for armour, and many of the armour types varied based on the type of backing they used: cloth, soft leather, hard leather, or boiled leather. Way too complicated a system -- I ended up with a preliminary table that stretched for more than a page. But, using a materials system, perhaps with hard leather as the "default" type, I could make it actually work. Thanks for the idea!

That's part of the problem with trying to add more realism to the game...things begin to get far to complicated. For example, in medieval times, warriors would put on a heavily padded gambeson, then a chainmail shirt, and then follow that with a leather brigadine vest. Layered armor was very common, and provided very good protection; however, it makes for horribly complex rules if you attempt to add it to a gamin system!

 

[Terath Ninir]

Yep, that is for sure. You quickly get to a point where you have very complicated rules that, when you look at them objectively, are only moderately more realistic than what you started with.

However, many of the armours basically break down to a backing material (attached or seperate) and a metal layer. If you have the general types -- scale, chain, plate -- plus rules for material types, it might be a managable system.

 

[Spatzimaus]

However, many of the armours basically break down to a backing material (attached or seperate) and a metal layer. If you have the general types -- scale, chain, plate -- plus rules for material types, it might be a managable system.

That's basically what we have. All materials are classified as "Hard" (plate-like), "Flexible" (chain-like), or "Soft" (leather or cloth). In general, the bonuses of Hard armors are larger than the others, while Soft have fewer limitations on MaxDEX and ACP. Each armor is tied to one or two of these; Plate armor requires a Hard material, Chainmail requires a Flexible. Scale Mail can be made with either Hard or Flexible; realistically it's half-and-half, but to keep things simple you choose one "dominant" material and assume the rest of the armor is meant to support that material. I mean really, when you're willing to pay 200 times the normal cost to get armor made out of True Mitril, it's not like you can't afford to splurge on some nice padding underneath, even if it doesn't really change the total cost of the armor.

While it might SEEM complex, all of the complexity is handled at the moment you assemble the armor. Once you know what armor/shield type you want, you check to see if the material you want can work for that (for instance, you can't make a Breastplate out of the Flexible dragonhide, you need full Hard dragonscale for that), then just add the listed bonuses and you're done. Assuming the Craft check succeeds, of course. If you're buying something from a store, you don't even need to worry about that, you can just write down the final stats and go. The nice part of this is that it makes high-end weapon/armor shops a bit more interesting, and it REALLY pays to have someone in the group with good Craft skills.

We've also come up with resource extraction rules, too. That way, when someone asks how much dragonhide they can get off of a 24-HD red dragon, the DM can quickly answer. I've posted this before, somewhere on this board, although I could probably track it down if need be.

 

[Rhun]

However, many of the armours basically break down to a backing material (attached or seperate) and a metal layer. If you have the general types -- scale, chain, plate -- plus rules for material types, it might be a managable system.

Agreed. It is easy enough to make an assumption that if you are wearing plate that it includes not only the plate portion, but the chainmail portion and the underlying layer of leather and/or padding.

Now, to make it simple...