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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 782326" data-attributes="member: 4937">Darklone & Vanguard have the right of it.I would like to add though that changes to the game design wouldn't stop there.  There would be questions of how to bypass armor that would have to be addressed, otherwise you have say chain mail unrealistically providing full protection from a stilleto.  This would potentially open yourself up to the question of called shots and all the problems that represents (see Skip William's comments).  Realistically speaking, certain armor gives better protection against different kinds of mechanical damage than others.   Chain is hard to cut, but realively easy to punch through, and provides no protection at all versus blunt trauma.  In fact, a person wearing only chain struck by a sword will still be severely lacerated even if the sword doesn't cut through the chain.   You might have to start naming the armor and penetration bonuses to achieve the kind of realistic results you want.   As armor increased, it would open up questions of whether average damage from weapons needed to increase to maintain balance.  Imagine for instance that the armor bonus provided by armor was replaced by DR of the same level.  A breastplate would provide the equivalent DR 6/-!   Full plate would provide the equivalent of DR 8/-!  This is sufficient for near invunerability from most weapons sans a crit, increasing the length of combats and badly throwing off the games internal balance.   But increasing average weapon damage would further relegate strength to a dump stat.  And in all of this you are moving D&D away from its internal balance.  D&D tries to balance everything in the game versus every similar thing in the game - strength, dexterity, and charisma are supposed to be equally useful (at least in theory).   Clerics, rogues, and fighters are supposed to be equally useful (at least in theory).  Games like GURPS don't bother to be balanced and instead try to be fair - everyone is offered the same choices.  GURPS has two stats of primary importance - IQ and DX; and two stats of lesser importance - ST and HT.  This sort of thing famously encourages min/maxing.  And with armor increasing in importance, certain classes start suffering by comparison to thier armored companions.   And after all these changes, there is a real question of whether you have really gained anything at all and whether or not the abstractions would not have served thier purpose just as well.  After all, the primary purpose isn't to model reality.   The primary purpose is to decide the outcome of contests between two entities with differing abilities so that the game can go on.On the rapier/plate mail issue, what you have is armor gradually developing more and more of an armor bonus in order to protect the wearer.  However, towards the end of the middle ages we start seeing weapons - crossbow, longbow, musket - which can penetrate any armor which is light enough (light being a relative term here) to wear.  That is to say that they have extremely high 'penetration' modifiers.  That is actually _more_ realistic than saying that they do enough damage to overcome the armor, since the mechanical damage an object does to punch through steel is somewhat different than the kind of mechanical damage that disrupts human life.   To say otherwise is to claim that a strike from an arrow does more damage (to the body) than being struck by a sword - a rather spurious claim that requires imagining swords usually 'grazing' the target regardless of how well 'to hit' was rolled.  Since the armorer wearers found that there armor could not protect them any longer, they began adopting lighter and lighter armor.  This encouraged the adoption of lighter, wielder melee weapons with in game terms lower 'penetration' modifiers, but higher 'accuracy' modifiers.   So, as has been said by others, the decline of plate led to the rapier and the small sword - not the other way around.</blockquote>

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