Homebrew Whacky Half-Formed Idea for Armor as DR...

[John Dallman]

This kind of system has been used in many non-D&D games, starting with the first editions of RuneQuest and Chivalry & Sorcery, back in the 1970s. It usually works like this:

• Odds to hit are determined by skills, and if "Character Levels" exist, they are far less important than in D&D family systems. Characters increase their combat ability by improving their combat skills.
• Damage is based on weapon type, strength, and maybe some special abilities. The actual dice numbers and sizes are fairly similar to D&D. There isn't anything that scales damage up the way D&D Sneak Attack damage does. The way to harm someone badly with a surprise attack is to hit them in a location which does that, such as the head, or vital organs.
• There is some kind of defence mechanic: a reduction in an opponent's chance to hit you, or a parrying mechanism, which provides significant odds of a successful attack being negated. Because competent opponents will make their attack rolls most of the time.
• Armour reduces damage, usually by a fixed amount for a given type of armour. This allows for armour that isn't in uniform suits, which were historically pretty rare.
• Character hit points don't intrinsically rise as characters advance. Some systems let you buy your hit points up, but that competes for your advancement point budget with increasing your skills.

This combination of mechanisms means that characters typically have 10-20 hit points, even if they're very powerful, and if surprised and not in armour, can be killed quite easily. If they're in armour and have decent tactics, they can slaughter weak foes like D&D characters. However, they typically don't take any hit point damage during a fight; defence and armour ward that off.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The advantage of basically adjusting the weapon die step by step is that it solves the issue that low damage attacks can be negated by other forms of DR. But since it's not a fixed value, you still roll some damage, this problem is avoided. (for that; I'd definitely set some lower bound, it could be a 1d1, if you want.)

However, changing the die type of your attacks depending on the opponent's armor can be fiddly.
You might find however that it becomes very hard to make different armor types distinctive. Maybe you're fine with their being effectively just 3 armor types, and the rest being left to flavor, or you will want to add additional complexity.

 

[GMMichael]

This kind of system has been used in many non-D&D games, starting with the first editions of RuneQuest and Chivalry & Sorcery, back in the 1970s. It usually works like this:

• Odds to hit are determined by skills, and if "Character Levels" exist, they are far less important than in D&D family systems. Characters increase their combat ability by improving their combat skills.
• Damage is based on weapon type, strength, and maybe some special abilities. The actual dice numbers and sizes are fairly similar to D&D. There isn't anything that scales damage up the way D&D Sneak Attack damage does. The way to harm someone badly with a surprise attack is to hit them in a location which does that, such as the head, or vital organs.
• There is some kind of defence mechanic: a reduction in an opponent's chance to hit you, or a parrying mechanism, which provides significant odds of a successful attack being negated. Because competent opponents will make their attack rolls most of the time.
• Armour reduces damage, usually by a fixed amount for a given type of armour. This allows for armour that isn't in uniform suits, which were historically pretty rare.
• Character hit points don't intrinsically rise as characters advance. Some systems let you buy your hit points up, but that competes for your advancement point budget with increasing your skills.

This combination of mechanisms means that characters typically have 10-20 hit points, even if they're very powerful, and if surprised and not in armour, can be killed quite easily. If they're in armour and have decent tactics, they can slaughter weak foes like D&D characters. However, they typically don't take any hit point damage during a fight; defence and armour ward that off.

I think you just described Modos RPG combat to a T. Well, except for the part about strength affecting damage. It's not easy to make a case that agility or intelligence have less to do with damage than strength does. Good to know that the concepts are 50 years old

The advantage of basically adjusting the weapon die step by step is that it solves the issue that low damage attacks can be negated by other forms of DR. But since it's not a fixed value, you still roll some damage, this problem is avoided.

I use a minimum-damage rule to avoid the problem. The diminishing-die system seems to elegantly avoid that - until the armor outshines the weapon (like you mentioned). So I wonder: is there a point when armor should negate skill? Or can skill negate armor? What should be smaller than a d4?