Quote from: Vic99 on July 13, 2021, 03:21:43 PM
Godsmonkey,  I'm trying to come up with something elegant that is good on the realism scale, not perfect. Thus, I like the evasion class suggestion- still developing something similars, but not going to include the second part "if above this but below that". The holy grail for me is reducing calculation.  Roll to hit, roll damage, subtract armor damage reduction and have very few exceptions. Although your idea of roll a die for damage reduction based on armor type is interesting, it's another step and calculation. I appreciate the suggestion - some of the suggestions I this very thread are getting me to think about mechanics or exceptions in a way I had not before and that is helping me build my d20 variant. 

Charon's LH, this is a good idea. However I'm going to try and start with base AC of 10 and build bonuses from there instead of boosting ACs by 5. I like the suggestion of using medium armor as a standard/base and tweaking light and heavy from there.

Wntrind, I am going to have AC increase a bit with player level to reflect experience and dodging/parrying skill during level progression. Caping levels at somewhere between 5-10. I've never played in a campaign at at made it above level 8 anyway (not counting when I was 13 years old). Not doing two hit point scales. Although a good idea, doesn't work with my streamlining attempt here.

Batman, I'm leaning toward an E6 type approach, but won't be doing feats or 3.5. Aiming for less crunch even though at first glance damage reduction might seem to add crunch.  And I like game design. This overhaul for simplicity is a fun, challenging project for me. When I finish, I want to play test it with my buddies. Who knows, might even try to publish it. If so, this forum would certainly get a credit acknowledgement.

Maybe look at RuneQuest/BRP for inspiration? on a hit, roll damage, and subtract the Armor Point value from the attack? So for example, leather armor has 1 AP, and plate has (IIRC) 6. Use the Evasion Class (10+DEX mod) as the target, and roll damage. Or simply use the Armor reduction value mentioned in the video (AC-10. However, I would remove the DEX from that as its already in the calculation for Evasion Class) So a character with a 15 AC (RAW) has 5HP Damage Reduction.

As for the die roll to lower the damage, use the max damage from the weapon, For example, in my current SWN game, a large primitive weapon does 1D8+1 (+STR) so lets say in this case 10HP damage (+1STR mod) a character in chain for example would roll 1D8+DEX mod to lower the damage.

Another option I've been working on uses only one die roll. In short:

Roll against the Evasion.

If a hit, how many points over the Evasion is the total? Take that, and add it to the base weapon value. So if you need a 12 to hit, and roll a 17, that is 5HP plus

2HP for small weapons
4HP for medium
8HP for large

If this total is higher than the Armor Value, the remainder is taken as damage. However, it really doesnt reduce the math very much

I think the problem with any damage reduction system is you sacrifice simplicity for realism. It's all about how real you want to get. I'm interested in seeing what you come up with.

What about using advantage/disadvantage on the damage roll? Assume listed for anything with medium armor (your d8 + Str for a sword). Roll the d8 with advantage if light/no armor, and disadvantage if heavily armored.

Having watched a lot of HEMA matches I'd say armor should give some type of bonus to deflect or parry attacks. It's not just a flat wall of steel that's taking the full force of strikes and passing the rest off to the wearer.

Most metal armor is slanted and sloped to redirect the energy of an attack as much as it is to directly absorb it and part of training in armor is how to position yourself so your armor can better deflect an attack. One of the reasons shields eventually fell out of favor was that plate armor became good enough at deflection that having a separate shield became redundant.

Honestly, the best way I've seen to really capture how armor works is one where damage dealt is based on the margin of success with agility, strength/stamina and armor affecting the defense target number against which the check is made. This allows armor to reduce damage by reducing the margin, just as using agility to roll with the impact can also lessen an impact without necessarily avoiding it entirely.

Basically, Armor doesn't just absorb, it also makes it easier to deflect and Dodge isn't a binary pass/fail in the damage equation either (if an attack that was going into your heart instead goes into your shoulder most people would consider that a "success" even though they still took damage).

You'd probably want something less swingy than a single d20 for such a "damage = margin" system, but opposed d20's (i.e. 1d20-1d20+net mods vs. DC 1 or 0 depending on whether you want the attacker or defender to win ties) WILL get a rough bell curve (more of a triangle with only two dice, but at least not flat). Going from 1d20 to 3d6+mods vs. DC will also make the damage results more bell curved.

Quote from: Chris24601 on July 13, 2021, 05:51:02 PM
Having watched a lot of HEMA matches I'd say armor should give some type of bonus to deflect or parry attacks. It's not just a flat wall of steel that's taking the full force of strikes and passing the rest off to the wearer.

Armor in GURPS 3rd edition had passive defense, which added to your dodge roll. They decided it was too complex in 4th edition, and ditched it.

If GURPS thinks something is too fiddle to bother worth, it's probably not worth it.

Quote from: Pat on July 13, 2021, 06:47:49 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on July 13, 2021, 05:51:02 PM
Having watched a lot of HEMA matches I'd say armor should give some type of bonus to deflect or parry attacks. It's not just a flat wall of steel that's taking the full force of strikes and passing the rest off to the wearer.

Armor in GURPS 3rd edition had passive defense, which added to your dodge roll. They decided it was too complex in 4th edition, and ditched it.

If GURPS thinks something is too fiddle to bother worth, it's probably not worth it.

Different systems have different levels of complexity and so different points where additions/changes become the straw that breaks the camel's back.

A system built from the ground up with say 3d6+mods vs. 10 + Dex + Armor where damage is margin of success x weapon type (dagger x1, short sword x2, long sword x3, greatsword x4) would be less complex than many versions of GURPS but still incorporate the effect I was discussing.

Ex. Guy with a longsword rolls 20 vs. an Armor of 18 (10 + 4 Dex + 4 chain armor) and so deals 6 damage (2 margin x 3 for longsword). If the target was only in leather (+2 armor) then he'd have taken 12 damage (4 margin x 3), while he'd take no damage in plate (+6 armor).

Heck, its basically the default for D&D which is markedly less complex than GURPS; though its binary in that armor either deflects the hit entirely or doesn't stop it at all.

Basically, in a Damage by Margin of Success system armor can act as both deflection (harder to deal any damage) and absorption (lower margin equals less damage taken) as part of a single roll.

The only way that Armour as DR can work in 5e where you have some monsters with multi-attacks and some with big damage is by leveraging the existing rules for resistance.

This is also significant if you're going the other way to.  DR hurts Fighters a lot more than it hurts Rogues.

Something like this could work.
Light Armour: AC only.
Medium Armour: Resistance against one handed slashing and piercing weapons.
Heavy Armour: Resistance against all slashing and piercing weapons.

Piercing weapons: Ignore resistance on critical hits or when an attack is made with advantage.
Slashing weapons: Increase their damage by at least one die step possibly two.

But a lot of this causes problems with use of existing monsters.  You basically need to decide what armour type a dragon's skin is, or a giant's thick skin.

Godsmonkey,  the rue quest numbers that you have are very similar to what I have come up with. Will keep you posted.

FingerRod, advantage/disadvantage is an interesting idea. That might work if it were 3 categories, but there are 4 (unarmored, light, medium, heavy armored). Would need something to distinguish between light and no armor and adding a plus or minus starts wonkiness creep. Maybe
No armor - advantage dmg roll
Light armor - normal dmg roll
Medium armor - disadvantage dmg roll
Heavy armor - double disadvantage dmg roll

Or scale it the other way with double advantage against unarmored down to disadvantage against heavy armor. Will think about that.

Chris 24601, I think I'm still working on damage reduction for armor and what is called AC in D&D (let's call it evasion for now) will be 10+Dex modifier+ level related bonus.  I figure more experienced characters are better at parrying and dodging and that's reflected at higher levels. Not looking for a game that goes to high level,so don't have to scale for that.

Evasion Level bonus 1-6
Fighter +1, +2, to +6
Rogue +1, +1, +2, +3, +3, +4
Etc.

Chris et al, dmg by margin of success could work too. Will have to think about how much I reveal and don't reveal to players in-terms of evasion target numbers etc.

TJS, although slash pierce bludgeon is more realistic, I'm not doing that to lessen crunch. I want fast, rules light, and moderate realism.

Quote from: Vic99 on July 14, 2021, 12:34:42 PM
Godsmonkey,  the rue quest numbers that you have are very similar to what I have come up with. Will keep you posted.

FingerRod, advantage/disadvantage is an interesting idea. That might work if it were 3 categories, but there are 4 (unarmored, light, medium, heavy armored). Would need something to distinguish between light and no armor and adding a plus or minus starts wonkiness creep. Maybe
No armor - advantage dmg roll
Light armor - normal dmg roll
Medium armor - disadvantage dmg roll
Heavy armor - double disadvantage dmg roll

Or scale it the other way with double advantage against unarmored down to disadvantage against heavy armor. Will think about that.

Chris 24601, I think I'm still working on damage reduction for armor and what is called AC in D&D (let's call it evasion for now) will be 10+Dex modifier+ level related bonus.  I figure more experienced characters are better at parrying and dodging and that's reflected at higher levels. Not looking for a game that goes to high level,so don't have to scale for that.

Evasion Level bonus 1-6
Fighter +1, +2, to +6
Rogue +1, +1, +2, +3, +3, +4
Etc.

Chris et al, dmg by margin of success could work too. Will have to think about how much I reveal and don't reveal to players in-terms of evasion target numbers etc.

TJS, although slash pierce bludgeon is more realistic, I'm not doing that to lessen crunch. I want fast, rules light, and moderate realism.

I recently started a Stars Without Number game. They have a mechanic called "Shock" Applying a small amount of damage on a miss, if below a certain AC. Personally, I don't like the mechanic, so I wasnt going to use it. However, This conversation has me thinking of an alternative.

If the roll is between the Evasion (10+DEX) and the RAW AC, a small amount of damage occurs as follows:

Small weapon: 0HP, Medium weapon 1HP, Large weapon 2HP. A characters damage adjustment is added to the total.

Further, I'm thinking that a weapon can only effect an equal or lower armor type. For example, a dagger, being a small weapon is only effective against light armor. A short sword, light and medium armor, while a broadsword will damage any armor type.

Any attack that meets or exceeds the target number does normal damage, regardless of armor type worn.

This will make combat deadlier, and will give PCs the feeling they are progressing in combat.

Im planning on using this for my next game session.

Godsmonkey,  I have not played Star Without Numbers.  My sci fi of choice these days is Mongoose Traveller 2e.

However, for your description it seems like that could work to bump up realism.  Remember, any time you add more rules to an existing system you make the game more complex and slow down play.  I think that is really noticeable if a GM has 4+ players.  When I was in my 20s, my buddy and I made a system that started similar to first edition Shadowrun, but used d12s instead of d6s, added hit location, partial armor, all sorts of circumstance modifiers.  It was very crunchy and at that time in my life, I loved it.  It was our go to system and we played it for maybe 5 years.  Now I want fast, narrative, but still some realism to combat and more deadly combat, but some measure of the player is a bit tougher than the average guy and can get more powerful with experience, but only a little more powerful with each level.

I would suggest making a cheat sheet that has combat steps and common modifiers and exceptions like you had talked about.  It may help you and your players if you organize it into steps and use different colors and font types to make it easy to read.  I have found this really helpful in the past.  Maybe you already do this, but we are both just some guy on the internet to each other.  Good luck with implementing your mods.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on July 12, 2021, 02:59:13 PMWe had a ranger chucking out a ton of arrows which bounced off anything with decent armor.

Since the OP stated that realism was a goal, that seems to be a feature, not a bug.

Quote from: Mishihari on July 15, 2021, 01:58:20 AM

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on July 12, 2021, 02:59:13 PMWe had a ranger chucking out a ton of arrows which bounced off anything with decent armor.

Since the OP stated that realism was a goal, that seems to be a feature, not a bug.

Simplicity was the other goal. Now if someone can come up with an EASY armor system for D&D, that reflects the fact that chainmail for example is great against arrows, but does almost nothing against a mace, PLEASE share.

Quote from: Godsmonkey on July 15, 2021, 08:02:09 AM

Simplicity was the other goal. Now if someone can come up with an EASY armor system for D&D, that reflects the fact that chainmail for example is great against arrows, but does almost nothing against a mace, PLEASE share.

Easy is probably out of reach, and not so sure about that specific example.  In general, I think the easiest possible will require rebuilding from the ground up, which might take it into "not really D&D anymore" territory.  And of course even that will have a lot of compromises.  Some ideas of the direction:

1. Probably need to stick to the pierce, bash, slash distinctions (however you slant or flavor them).  The differences between, say, slashing and cutting will be too much for easy system. For things like a war hammer or great sword, you'll have to live with the limitations of the system, with greater mass of the delivered blows being rolled up into base damage or something similar.

2. The second biggest problem with armor as damage reduction systems (behind handling time) is that they take low damage options and make them even less realistic, unless you allow called shots or other armor bypassing options, which creates more complexity and eventually leads you down the sectional armor route for even more. One way around this to somewhat inflate the base numbers a bit.  For example, if a dagger does 1d6+6 and an arming sword does 1d6+12, with hit points and armor reduction built into the system, then the "1d6" part can still get through armor defense 9 on occasion.  (Not necessarily the best numbers to use--merely an example of the point. I'd probably use a d10 or d12 for the damage roll part.)  Essentially having Armor defenses from, say, 1 to 6, and using existing damages causes a lot of edge case issues.  Even so, you'll have to make sure damage escalation doesn't inflate too much.  (This is where multiple attacks become better than increasing damage numbers.)

3. Related to #2, "sectional armor" can be abstracted into a coverage bonus or penalty to armor rating.  Having a higher scale than 1 to 6 leaves room for helms, shields, etc. to have reasonable numbers. 

4. Given all the above, it becomes possible to then give your armor/sectional adjustments multiple ratings, one each against pierce, bash, and slash/cut.  This probably has to be derived from a chart, but you look it up once and put it on your sheet.  It's the best possible handling time I can conceive to achieve it, because there doesn't have to be an exchange of information to resolve the attack.  That is, the attacker doesn't need to know the armor type and mix in order to make the attack.  (If they are smart, they want an idea of it before they decide to attack and what with, but that is part of narration and description, not handling time.)  All the defender needs to know when calculating the damage that got through is one additional piece of information delivered at the same time as the damage.  Instead of "6" damage it is "Cut 6" damage" or whatever.  That directly translates to a number to compare on the armor protection line, and some simple subtraction.

Of course, assuming you do a system like that, plot it out on many of the common scenarios, and then determine the odds, you'll end up with a graph that looks a lot like a list of armor classes and modifiers to hit chances.   So for big fights nothing says you can't have a derived, simpler system that looks a lot like regular D&D.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on July 15, 2021, 09:02:01 AM

Quote from: Godsmonkey on July 15, 2021, 08:02:09 AM

Simplicity was the other goal. Now if someone can come up with an EASY armor system for D&D, that reflects the fact that chainmail for example is great against arrows, but does almost nothing against a mace, PLEASE share.

Easy is probably out of reach, and not so sure about that specific example.  In general, I think the easiest possible will require rebuilding from the ground up, which might take it into "not really D&D anymore" territory.  And of course even that will have a lot of compromises.  Some ideas of the direction:

1. Probably need to stick to the pierce, bash, slash distinctions (however you slant or flavor them).  The differences between, say, slashing and cutting will be too much for easy system. For things like a war hammer or great sword, you'll have to live with the limitations of the system, with greater mass of the delivered blows being rolled up into base damage or something similar.

2. The second biggest problem with armor as damage reduction systems (behind handling time) is that they take low damage options and make them even less realistic, unless you allow called shots or other armor bypassing options, which creates more complexity and eventually leads you down the sectional armor route for even more.

Chopping down the quote just a bit for the sake of avoiding a wall of text.

I'm going to suggest looking at Palladium Fantasy and their Compendium of Weapons, Armor & Castles in this regard. In default Palladium Fantasy armor has an Armor Rating (AR) reflecting coverage and Structural Damage Capacity (SDC) reflecting its ability to absorb damage. Attacks that roll a 5 or better, but less than the AR deal damage to the armor. Attacks that roll above the AR bypass the armor and harm the wearer directly. Characters can also attempt a Parry or Dodge to avoid attacks, if they roll better than the attack roll the attack misses entirely.

Where the Compendium comes in is that it uses a slightly different system where armor types are ranked by resistance to bashing, cutting, chopping and piercing attacks. It's meant to be System agnostic, but thd way I've most seen it used in association with Palladium is to use the Bash, Cut, Chop and Pierce values as the AR.

In the case of adapting this to a 5e like framework I'd suggest that AC be split into 4 types; call it evade, bludgeon, slash, pierce. Attacks that roll less than evade miss entirely. Those that roll higher get compared by damage type (ex. a spear vs. pierce) and, if less than the damage reduction applies, if more it bypasses it.

Ex. a target has ACs of E 13, B 15, S 18, P 17 and Damage Reduction 5. They're attacked with a spear (poercing) that deals 1d8+3 damage (average 7-8). If the attack roll is less than 13 it misses entirely. If the roll is less than 17 then the hit is reduced by 5 (about 2-3 points gets through), if the roll is 17+ then it deals full damage.

The advantage above is that it keeps the single attack and single damage roll of the present system; you're just comparing it to two numbers instead of one to get the outcome.

Side-bar: One of the many things I learned from playtesting my own system was that adding additional comparisons adds the least time overall to resolution; particularly if they're progressive (i.e. if the first comparison fails you don't need to make the second). The fastest is actually having separate categories entirely (the time to look up one defense target numer is just a moment faster than having to look up one of three from a list).

So in this case it's both progessive (if it fails the evade number you don't need to check the others) and the follow up is a category match (look up the matching damage type and compare to attack roll) so it's not going to take that much longer than the existing system (most of the time addition will be in subtracting the DR from the damage dealt rather than the check to see if it applies).

Quote from: TJS on July 13, 2021, 09:14:32 PM
The only way that Armour as DR can work in 5e where you have some monsters with multi-attacks and some with big damage is by leveraging the existing rules for resistance.

This is also significant if you're going the other way to.  DR hurts Fighters a lot more than it hurts Rogues.

Something like this could work.
Light Armour: AC only.
Medium Armour: Resistance against one handed slashing and piercing weapons.
Heavy Armour: Resistance against all slashing and piercing weapons.

Piercing weapons: Ignore resistance on critical hits or when an attack is made with advantage.
Slashing weapons: Increase their damage by at least one die step possibly two.

But a lot of this causes problems with use of existing monsters.  You basically need to decide what armour type a dragon's skin is, or a giant's thick skin.

I like it. I might give slashing some extra damage against lightly armored opponents (maybe +2; axes would get +1 damage against everyone instead).

The last part is not that hard to do, TBH; If your Dex is greater than your AC, your armor is light. If a lot smaller, your armor is heavy. Medium armor is rarer, mostly for cases when the Dex (say, 13+) and AC (say, 20 or less) are closer to one another.

Giants have their armor listed, but dragons would probably count as heavy armor, except for a few. Which seems fitting IMO.

(well, not a hard rule, but at least a good start. Here is a longer explanation:
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2020/11/how-thick-is-your-armor-5e-d.html)

Quote from: Eric Diaz on July 15, 2021, 08:25:47 PM

Quote from: TJS on July 13, 2021, 09:14:32 PM
The only way that Armour as DR can work in 5e where you have some monsters with multi-attacks and some with big damage is by leveraging the existing rules for resistance.

This is also significant if you're going the other way to.  DR hurts Fighters a lot more than it hurts Rogues.

Something like this could work.
Light Armour: AC only.
Medium Armour: Resistance against one handed slashing and piercing weapons.
Heavy Armour: Resistance against all slashing and piercing weapons.

Piercing weapons: Ignore resistance on critical hits or when an attack is made with advantage.
Slashing weapons: Increase their damage by at least one die step possibly two.

But a lot of this causes problems with use of existing monsters.  You basically need to decide what armour type a dragon's skin is, or a giant's thick skin.

I like it. I might give slashing some extra damage against lightly armored opponents (maybe +2; axes would get +1 damage against everyone instead).

The last part is not that hard to do, TBH; If your Dex is greater than your AC, your armor is light. If a lot smaller, your armor is heavy. Medium armor is rarer, mostly for cases when the Dex (say, 13+) and AC (say, 20 or less) are closer to one another.

Giants have their armor listed, but dragons would probably count as heavy armor, except for a few. Which seems fitting IMO.

(well, not a hard rule, but at least a good start. Here is a longer explanation:
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2020/11/how-thick-is-your-armor-5e-d.html)

I like it too, but I'd be inclined to break it down into hard and flexible armor rather than light/medium/heavy.  I'd also probably first try the simplest rule I can think of to start with, that being flexible armor provides damage reduction against edged weapons only, and hard armor provides damage reduction against blunt and edged weapons.  (And neither provides damage reduction against piercing weapons)  If that doesn't provide satisfactory results then I'd go with a more detailed approach.