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Message: <blockquote data-quote="El Mahdi" data-source="post: 5969313" data-attributes="member: 59506">Yes and No. Your correct in that armor doesn't help characters "dodge", but it does make characters harder to hit. Remember, an opponent isn't just swinging their weapon at your character willy nilly. They are trying to hit vital areas, and directing their attacks accordingly. Real armor makes it harder for an opponent to bring a weapon to bear on those vital areas. That increased difficulty is modeled by the AC bonus. No opponent goes right at the strong parts of armor because of one simple fact: Armor Works. Having to limit your attacks to smaller areas of vulnerability makes attacking successfully more difficult. But even when someone wearing armor is struck, in many cases the armor is able to absorb a portion of the strikes energy, which minimizes the amount of damage one takes. That's modelled by DR. So: Real armor provides both an AC bonus and DR. However, I've found complications with using a DR mechanic that leaves it as an unelegant solution IME. I prefer a system of armor increasing one's hit points like Stormonu's idea, but by a certain percentage when worn instead (based on the efficiency of the armor); and conversely, reduces current hit points by the same percentage when removed. Remember that Hit Points are an abstraction. They aren't just "wounds", but bruises, scratches, strained muscles, loss of energy (fatigue), your luck running out, expending divine intervention, etc., etc. Increasing Hit Points by a percentage due to armor works in concert quite well with this concept of abstraction. For example: I'd give light armor a 25% increase in Hit Points, Medium armor a 50% increase in Hit Points, and Heavy armor a 100% increase in Hit Points. Easy math: multiply current Hit Points by 1.25 for donning light armor, divide by 1.25 when removing. Medium, multiply or divide by 1.5. Heavy, multiply or divide by 2.0. (...or adjust the percentages up for more impact, or down for less impact) Easy Peasy. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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