Armor in D&D (Part of Xev's "Project d20 Realism")

[Xeviat]

In weight of the penalties, medium and heavy offer enough protection. The only problem arises when you note that heavy chain is technically only offering +3 AC (since it has a -2 Dodge penalty) and plate is only offering +6 (since it has a -2 Dodge penalty as well). The standard AC/DR rules from UA has full plate offering 4 AC and 4 DR, but my full plate offers +8 AC and 5 DR, and that adds up to 11 when you take the dodge penalty into consideration.

I've only gotten to playtest this for one encounter, and one of the players is wearing heavy chain at 2nd level. I'm not sure how balanced the 8 DR is at this level, but I think it should be fine later (and threats can penetrate it, but I've only hit him once with an arrow from a scout's comp (+2) shortbow for 12 damage).

[Hibou]

It makes sense. Someone wearing decent armor should be much harder to kill just by running up and swinging a weapon at them, unless you're very good at hitting vital areas.

[Hibou]

Also, I don't think you need to worry about certain types of armor bonuses, but what about natural armor? Have you worked that out, yet? Maybe have DR be equal to twice the square root of the natural armor except for numbers lower than 4, in which case the number just becomes DR (so a natural armor of +4 is still +4, +9 is +6, +25 is +10), with some AC (if the total DR doesn't already a number close to original number of natural armor?). Maybe something with HD?

[Xeviat]

I didn't intend on giving DR for NA, but I could ... it just seemed like something I could easily ignore (especially since armor DR is DR/threat, not DR/-).

[Pellanor]

I must say, I really like the idea you've got going here. I'm not entirely sure on the numbers, I think you would need to do a fair amount of playtesting to get them tweaked better, but overall it looks very good.



I've been working on a very similar armour model, in fact it was inspired by this one.

I've eliminated medium armour, but have one of each type (leather, mail, plate) for each of the two remaining weight categories, so that there's still six types of armour to choose from.

Here's what I've gotten so far. Speed Penalty and Armour Check Penalty haven't been decided on yet. Also these armours are designed for my custom d20 system, rather than standard dnd, so there's a few changes that would be unbalanced in a normal game.

Code Select Expand

Leather       AC -2   Crit AC +4(+2)    DR 2
Chain Shirt   AC -2   Crit AC +2(+0)    DR 3 (-2 AC, +3 DR compared to unarmed)
Breastplate   AC -2   Crit AC +6(+4)    DR 1
Hide          AC -6   Crit AC +10(+4)   DR 4 (-4 AC, +3 DR compated to breastplate)
Chain Mail    AC -6   Crit AC +8(+2)    DR 6 (-4 AC, +4 DR compared to leather)
Full Plate    AC -6   Crit AC +12(+6)   DR 2


Each type of armour applies an AC penalty, due to limiting mobility, but increases ac on rolls to confirm critical hits, as well as providing DR. Armour doesn't provide an AC bonus since I'm giving everybody an AC bonus equal to their Base Attack Bonus.

Also in my system, standard action attacks are going to be much more potent (think Tome of Battle), as well there's going to be an emphasise on mobility, so the mobility penalties from Armour need to be offset by slightly better bonuses than we see in DnD.

In addition, I'm going to have a number of armour enchantments and feats that help to reduce penalties associated with armour, as well as boost their bonuses, and perhaps build some new ones.

Overall I know mine needs a lot more work and tweaking. But I gotta run now. I'll likely have more at some point once I get back from vacation.

[LordVreeg]

See, it is so much fun running into these threads...I read through this and really enjoyed all of it.  One of the first things I had to do in my system, mayebe one of the first changes, was to separate avoidance and protection.  And I can honetly say that before my current campaing, we were using avoidance and protection (or AC and DR) as a primary basis for our system, as it always seems more realsitic an versatile.  Pleased to see this topic, and I should have expected it with the level of vcerbal discourse I see on this site.

Speed in celtricia is totally tied to weight carried compared to weight possible.  So the heavy armor weight them tremendously without speed based skills.

I also have to say based on Ish's earlier comment about more math that my game is much more math heavy than most, and admit that now.

So I do better in regards to the thread name (involving that realism word) than any designs to increase simplicty, though I struggle the same as anf GM with the 'realism vs playability' thing.

However, one of the problems of d20 is the lack of incrementalization you gain with percentiles.  And one of the ways we dealt with the 'threat level' of criticals instead was the use of dividing dice in weapons and in armor.

So armors all have variable protection with a dividing die, as do weapons.  Armors have variable protection, the same as weapon damage.

I'll add some for food for thought.

[spoiler=from my diffuse and disjointed thread]
Spells and missle weapons, and their proper use, definitely do help. But the way weapons (and everything) does damage, and the way protection is done, makes for an interesting game.

To maintain a potential of great lethality, yet not overly so, was a challenge. First of all, I did what many games had done, and I broke armor into avoidance and protection, and decided that anything that dealt with a character dealing with a blow that was going to hit something (armor, shield, a defensive weapon) dealt with protection, and slipping by all that was avoidance. But it still didn't quite give me the variability I needed. Daggers just could not ever touch anyone even in chainmail. The breakthrough came one day when I really got down to brass tacks and looked at the probablity curves I was trying to create. I wanted armor to have a range of protections, but more of a bell curve, while I wanted weapons to have a potential of lethality, but not every time, and the smaller the weapon, the lower the chance of a really lethal strike.

So what came out of it was to give both protection and damage a range, with a dividing die. Which allows you to really mess with the probablity curves.
I wanted almost all armor to have some protection, but to have a pretty good range. And I wanted the frequency distribution to group somewhat towards a bell-curve, but still with a bulge towards the low end and a big single tail. So the dividing die in armor is actaully the average of 2d6, which gives me my slightly taller bell in my curve. An example of a character with very light armor would be some guy in Hardened leather and padded silk, who would have a base protection of 14-23, divided by those 2d6. A guy in chain mail and padded silk would have a base protection of 22-31, with a divider, and a guy in Lammellar and padded silk would have 42-51 base protection, still with a divider.
Note : Note that none of these include the avoidance or any skills, for the sake of simplicity.
So our dude in the leather can protect up to 23 hits, he averages 6 protection, and his minimum is 3. Our guy in chain mail can protect up to 31, his average is 8 protection, and his minimum is 4 hits. Our tank can protect up to 51 hits, which is a ton. He averages 14 protection, but can protect as little as 7 on a couple of bad rolls. This gives even the medium armors the hopes of rolling a pair of ones or a one and a two, and protecting on a big damage hit. But it means that even the tank can get nailed if he rolls badly. And heavily armored tanks never get missed.

Now weapons I wanted something slightly different. I wanted a range of damage, but I wanted to curve to be a little less belled. I also came up with a neat mitigastion that allows me to not have the amount of damage being the only factor, but the bigger a weapon is, the smaller it's dividing dice. Note : Smaller weapons also are much faster. Sometime, a guy with a short sabre will get in 2-3 attacks for every attack of a guy with a bec-di-corbin, or something. This is great when you are fighting a lightly armored opponent with a low protection. However, it has been proved a zillion times that attacking 10 times and not getting through someones protection is not as good as one hit that does. It's all a ratio, both have their place.
so a Bank dagger might have 11-18 damage, with a d10 divider, a gladius might have 15-26 damage with a d8 divider, a broadsword might have 17-28 damage with a d6 divider, and double bladed broadaxe might do 22-37 dmage with a d4 divider. Behind the curtain a little bit, this means that with the dagger, you can do up 18 hits (before modifiers), and our guy in Lammellar averages 14 and can protect as little as 7. So if the guy with the dagger rolls a 1 or a 2 divider die, he has a hope of doing some damage to the tank. But it also means that there is only a 10% chance of doing decent damage, the gladius has a 12.5%, the broadsword 16.6%, and the axe 25%. Only huge, slow weapons have d5 or d4 dividers, they are rare. Giants generally have all d4 dividers, dragons have d3. Don't get hit by a dragon. A medium dragon bite is (55-70/d3)
The way the game has fallen out, and this is a gross generalization, is that a 1 or a 2 divider has a decent chance of doing some damage, anything else means you have to hope your opponent rolls a crappy protection. So the odds of getting 'decent' hit become 20% with a really small, d10 divider weapon, 25% with the d8 medium weapon, 33% with the good sized weapon, and 50% with those super slow, punishing weapons. [/spoiler]


Below .pdf was quickly done.  Some of the armors listed below are specific magic versions.  ANd Chickes skin armor is part of an old, old joke.  This should still give a little idea.  



File: 1184034737_392_FT15000_armor_basic.pdf

[Xeviat]

Wow, the thread was resurrected.

Lately, I've just simplified things to Light, Medium, and Heavy. Materials change the cost and weight a bit, like the difference between steel shields and wooden shields.

[LordVreeg]

I have to admit, part of the reason I have so many armor types is not becasue I really belive that there is a huge difference between them, so much as it is for my players, who love the little differences and idiosyncrasies.

[Xeviat]

And that's perfectly fine. I just don't have so many because there's only really so many different aspects for armor. Weapons have handedness, proficiency, damage type, damage die, crit range, crit multiplier, trip/disarm bonuses ... many things to make many weapons. Armor has proficiency, AC, and Max Dex; the other aspects of it aren't really balance issues (because a fighter would wear an armor that caused a -20 penalty if it gave tons of extra armor).