Yet another take on AC

[Stalker0]

Whenever a see an Armor as DR thread, my immediate question is....why?

What is fundamentally lacking in the AC system that we need to move to a DR system instead?


One thing I hear commonly mentioned is to better model that armor is better is against light weapons than big ones...but that is exactly what Dnd DOES NOT want to do.

Dnd is a game where wolf claws, giant clubs, rogue daggers, and bastard swords all have to live in the same world and they all have to have good effectiveness in order to promote many different archetypes.

AC provides a great way to do this, because all weapons get the same treatment (meaning different weapons are useful), while at the same time AC never loses benefit against different weapons so armor is always useful.

The AC system imo, works. Its clean, simple, still models that better armor means you can take more punishment.

 

[Dedekind]

You would think that would actually help the understanding, since if an attack hit your Touch AC but not your regular AC, presumably contact was made but the armour stopped the harm.

I think the various defences in 4E make a good deal of sense, not sure if we'll see them in 5E or not.

It may help understanding, but it was one more thing to track. I admit to preferring how 4e wrapped up most of the defensive measures from prior editions in the 4 defenses.

 

[Stormonu]

You would think that would actually help the understanding, since if an attack hit your Touch AC but not your regular AC, presumably contact was made but the armour stopped the harm.

I think the various defences in 4E make a good deal of sense, not sure if we'll see them in 5E or not.

But that's the thing. Since HP are abstract, even if someone did hit your AC and did hit point damage, you might not have actually made contact; certainly if you had 50 hit points and someone "hit" your AC with a bow attack, dealing 8 hp damage, it doesn't necessarily mean there's an arrow sticking in you - or that you even were grazed by the arrow.

 

[Fifth Element]

But that's the thing. Since HP are abstract, even if someone did hit your AC and did hit point damage, you might not have actually made contact; certainly if you had 50 hit points and someone "hit" your AC with a bow attack, dealing 8 hp damage, it doesn't necessarily mean there's an arrow sticking in you - or that you even were grazed by the arrow.

Oh yeah. The system is too abstract to really be that specific about it, which of course is further pain for someone arguing that armour shouldn't make you "harder to hit", because harder to hit has a very vague meaning in D&D's abstract combat system.

 

[calprinicus]

I personally like the armor grants HP idea. It is assumed in this abstract health and damage system that if you have better armor you can take more hits than those that do not have armor.

The arguement is really how does on take more hits when wearing armor? and this thread has boiled it down to 3 main ways:

1.) Reduce damage dealt to the wearer: (DR) it takes more powerful attacks to kill the wearer.
2.) Make the wearer harder to hit: (AC) It takes better aimed attacks to kill the wearer.
3.) Make the wearer more resilient: (HP) it takes more hits to kill the wearer.

Since dnd is an abstraction all of these make since when written out on paper, however some are easier and more practical mechanically.

as Damage reduction:
This normally sounds the best on paper, but fails when implemented. As a player, nothing is worse that landing a hit, taking time to roll for damage, then finding out you deal no damage at all. Since damage reduction can negate the rolling damage step it's anything but streamlined since it's dead time on the table. not to mention the addition book keeping and space on an already large character sheet.

as Armor Class:
Here is DnD's default way of doing armor and it works very well. it's a simple binary system, you hit or you don't. very streamlined with no dead time. the issue is the abstaction of the system, when someone misses your AC people assume they don't hit you and "whiff" as mentioned above. It's instead suppose to be an abstraction to mean your foe hit you but just don't get through your armor to land a serious blow. This gets lost in translation.

as Hit Points:
NOTE: I prefer this method the most simply for the flavor it presents. It's a personal preference. for streamline and book keeping sake I think AC is better. that being said here is why it adds flavor to armor:

With Armor as hit points it makes the player feel like they can litterally take more hits than their comrades, which makes them feel special. Each time the player reduces their HP without dying it reinforces of 'badass factor' as well as reinforcing the sense of danger and risk of the situation in the head of the players.

it's also easier for the players to determine how long the tank/defender/fighter can stand in dangers way. If you know the average foe attack hits for about 7 damage and the tank has 50 hit points, the tank can take roughly 9 hits before falling unconscious. with AC, If both players have 20 hit points but one just has more AC it feels more up to chance that the DM won't roll high against the tank.

There are of course CONS to a HP based as armor system mentioned earlier.

• Track two separate hit point pools.
• Repair my armor constantly.
• Drag around eight suits of platemail because adventuring causes them to break constantly.
• Have healing spells repair armor.
• Be invulnerable with the right set of armor.
• Have fights that turn into slapfights as characters nickel-and-dime each other to death.
• Have armor suck at high levels.

but this is all about how look at them in the abstraction.

• With HP as an abstraction, there would be no reason to keep track of two seperate hp pools, you just add the armor HP to your max hit point value.

• Most of the others refer to what "healing" actually does and that depends on how you define healing. if healing is just a spell or other ability that returns something back to its pristine state then why not have healing also heal other non-living things like armor.
Now this does come in a weird spot with DnD's separation between mundane and magically healing. However I've been house ruling armor as HP and if you don't think to hard about the abstraction of what HP really are then it works really well as armor.

• The other issue is scaling with Level and that just depends on how DnD decides to handle this issue. I'm not a fan of large scaling, especially in hit points and damage as you progress levels. I'm a fan of scaling in terms of abilities and options your character has available. The E6 home-brew (Epic level 6) with e3.5/PF proved you it possible, simpler, easier to DM, and more fun without large scaling of levels.

• The last issue not mentioned is the type of damage your dealt. if your being attacked with psychic damage why does it remove HP that might be from your armor?

----------

The brialliant thing about this DnD is that it is an abstraction. This allows you as a player or DM and shape the story with narrative as you wish.

certainly if you had 50 hit points and someone "hit" your AC with a bow attack, dealing 8 hp damage, it doesn't necessarily mean there's an arrow sticking in you - or that you even were grazed by the arrow.

it can mean either or none or something totally different. The abstraction allows storytelling and roleplaying.

thanks