So, do you prefer armor to soak damage (damage reduction) or deflect (adds to armor class)?

I'm torn, and could go either way. Soak runs the risk of reducing all damage to small amounts, and making combat a slog. Deflect is easier but doesn't allow for armor's effect on specific attack types very well. The pierce, bludgeon, slash mods always seemed too fiddly, and we never used them, like encumbrance rules.

Both.  

I don't use any rules about the advantages of weapon types versus armor types.  Instead, we developed weapons with general principles, which works well enough.

For piercing weapons, they usually have the lowest base damage, a small crit range and the highest critical damage.
For bludgeoning weapons, they usually have the highest base damage, a small crit range, and the critical damage is roughly equal to the base damage.
Slashing weapons generally have moderate damage, a good crit range, and the critical damage is better than the regular damage.

We do use two hit point tracks (wounds and vitality); critical hit damage is applied directly to wounds.  For example, here are three one-handed martial weapons:

Piercing: Trident (2d6/20/4d6)
Bludgeoning: Flail (1d10/20/1d10), has benefits for trip/disarm) or Ball and Chain (2d6/20/2d6)
Slashing: Battleaxe (2d6/20/2d10) or Longsword (2d6/19-20/2d8)

Those all happen to be weapons that could be used one- or two-handed, but the base damage doesn't change.  Against an opponent you hit with an 11 or better, the average damage per round is pretty consistent for all but the flail (between 3.675 and 3.95; flail is 2.8875).

I usually prefer soak as a matter of preference but don't feel strongly enough about it to plant my flag firmly on either one.

It depends upon the rest of the system's mechanics.

I prefer the vibe of Armor=DR, and it can allow for more depth as various foes are either hard to hit or hard to damage. But it slows gameplay a bit & is a bit harder to balance. It's the method I went for in the system I'm building, but there are definite drawbacks.

Armor as deflection is the simpler solution, speeds up gameplay, and is better in zero-to-hero systems where you want the power levels to scale up a lot.

There is no X=Better in a vacuum. It depends upon how it meshes with the rest of the system.

Soak, but I'm torn between the straight damage soaking of Mongoose Traveller/T4/T5 and the ablative soaking of Mekton (where each hit on the armor location causes it to lose 1 point of stopping power on that location until it reaches 0).

I love the concept of Armor as DR or Soak...but in actual play, Deflect just moves the game along faster with less paperwork.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1106475I love the concept of Armor as DR or Soak...but in actual play, Deflect just moves the game along faster with less paperwork.

It can work - but other parts of a system need to be streamlined to compensate. And the DR should be kept in the single digits - which is one reason why it doesn't work well in D&D style systems.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;1106465It depends upon the rest of the system's mechanics.

I prefer the vibe of Armor=DR, and it can allow for more depth as various foes are either hard to hit or hard to damage. But it slows gameplay a bit & is a bit harder to balance. It's the method I went for in the system I'm building, but there are definite drawbacks.

For my Transformers homebrew, I went with armor as damage reduction, with staged penetration. It's a bit fiddly, but I wanted the tactile result of hitting an opponent, and having their armor soak the damage. (Or not) But being able to wear down the armor or penetrate it with armor piercing type attacks.

In Mongoose d20 Conan Str attacks are soaked by armor and Dex attacks are deflected. Seems to work well.

DR tends to run into common problems in systems that contain scaling.

If everything is fairly bounded then it works better and I tend to prefer it.

It's probably worth pointing out that DR is not ultimately more realistic.

Good armour should both deflect and reduce damage.

This makes it difficult to model, for example, Plate armour on a blow by blow method, as your chance of actually scoring a good hit on someone in full plate should really be frustratingly small.

Whichever you use, it has to be worked into the design of mechanics from the beginning; trying to switch from one to the other later is very likely to work out badly.

I think I prefer deflection with occasional small amounts of soak for additional interest in distinguishing armor; if it's all soak then the uncertainty of hitting (all or nothing) gives way to the lesser uncertainty of damage roll versus soak roll.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1106452So, do you prefer armor to soak damage (damage reduction) or deflect (adds to armor class)?

I'm torn, and could go either way. Soak runs the risk of reducing all damage to small amounts, and making combat a slog. Deflect is easier but doesn't allow for armor's effect on specific attack types very well. The pierce, bludgeon, slash mods always seemed too fiddly, and we never used them, like encumbrance rules.

There is a third type. Armour that reduces the severity of the damage. Such as a d8 becomes a d6. Or a severe wound becomes a light wound. And so on.

I like D&D's approach that its doing "something". And what that is is up to the player to decide. Its probably doing both.

I also really like Palladium's older system where armour deflected a little. But it mostly soaked damage and eventually breaks.

In Albedo it reduces damage. What might have been a severe bleeding wound is reduced to possibly a light bleeding wound, or just a knockback and stun. Depending on the situation.

In my own book armour mostly deflects, but also soaks some damage depending on the location hit. And can only soak so much before it breaks. And reduces the damage in some armours cases. Mostly the really heavy or padded stuff.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1106452So, do you prefer armor to soak damage (damage reduction) or deflect (adds to armor class)?

It's non-binary; there's also threshold. You can also have more than one method.
In KotBL, for example, it depends on attack type. Sharp attacks (Edge/Point) get deflected/negated if they don't exceed armor value - but armor does not reduce damage if they penetrate. On the other hand, blunt attacks always have the potential to have some effect, if only stunning or unbalancing the target. Therefore, blunt armor just adds to the target's Soak, thus being damage reduction rather than threshold.
(Plate armor is a special case in that it is so rigid that blunt attacks must exceed its threshold as well or be negated.)

Quote from: TJS;1106486It's probably worth pointing out that DR is not ultimately more realistic. Good armour should both deflect and reduce damage.

You're right but that is taking the second step before the first one. The primary question is: what are we even modeling? Reality, fiction or a mish-mash?

Take my case, modeling cinematic combat. I am pretty sure there have been cases where a sharp attack penetrated an armor in cinematic combat and yet the armor kept it from having full effect; but even if so, it's a fringe case, not worth modeling in basic rules. The norm, instead, is that either armor stops the attack (see Ser Jorah versus that Dothraki) or the attack penetrates the armor and takes full effect (wounds the target).

And, yes, you could model such deflection the way D&D does it. But in D&D the AC bonus due to armor class does not feel mechanically distinct to being harder to hit due to being swift. It's samey, monotonous. I'll gladly sacrifice speed to break up that uniformity and have armor have a distinct impact. (Which armor as DR has, btw.)

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1106452So, do you prefer armor to soak damage (damage reduction) or deflect (adds to armor class)?

I'm torn, and could go either way. Soak runs the risk of reducing all damage to small amounts, and making combat a slog. Deflect is easier but doesn't allow for armor's effect on specific attack types very well. The pierce, bludgeon, slash mods always seemed too fiddly, and we never used them, like encumbrance rules.

I like deflect plus Damage Threshold, a rule I've only ever seen in the 5e D&D DMG, and there only for objects. With DT the armour absorbs all damage up to the DT, but if damage exceeds the DT then full damage applies.

This feels to me a lot more like how (eg) battleship plating works IRL, and I'm surprised it's not more widely used. It could be used for large creatures to model eg arrows & ballistae vs dragons - arrows bounce off as they don't meet the DT, while ballistae penetrate. That's basically why you use an elephant gun vs an elephant, rather than a 9mm SMG - most systems either make the SMG more effective (armour as deflection, no absorption) or make the SMG ineffective and elephant gun only marginally effective (damage as absorption).