So, I've decided to play around with making up my own game from a hodgepodge of rules from other games and my own ideas. One of the first issues I'm thinking about is how armor works.
I've seen armor work lots of different ways in rpgs. Here are just a few examples.
Armor makes it harder to get hit. In D&D armor makes it harder for your opponent to land a blow against you, but when he does hit, the damage is the same whether you're wearing magic plate mail +5 or running around naked. Yes, I know, a pc gets hit a lot more than they get "hit" meaning a miss doesn't always mean a wiff, the blow might have glanced off the armor. Yet mechanically, the fact remains that armor makes you harder to hit and does not reduce damage.
Armor reduces damage taken. There are lots of games that use this type of rule. The one I've played the most is Earthdawn. Let's say I have a physical armor rating of 10. An ogre whacks me with is battle axe for 16 damage. 16-10=6. So I take 6 points of damage. Thematically, this does a better job then D&D style armor of representing armor protecting from damage vs. making you harder to hit I think. A downside is that normal armor can be pretty impressive early on, but if the damage dealt out increases in higher level games, then it can become pretty useless. Of course that all depends on the power curve of the game.
Armor takes the damage instead of the character. The palladium system is kind of a mish-mash of the first two I've described. Normally, you need to roll a 5 or better on a D20 to hit someone. Lets say I have on a flak jacket with Armor Rating 10 and 40 SDC. If you roll under a 5 you miss. If you roll over a 10 you hit me and I take the damage. If you roll somewhere 5-10 then the flak jacket takes the damage. If the jacket accumulates more than 40 points of damage then it becomes useless. Natural armor in palladium works more like D&D. It simply adds to your personal damage capacity and if the attacker rolls under your armor rating they do no damage at all.
Along with how armor affects an opponent's chance to hit and the damage they cause, there are a number of other considerations:
-Is armor restricted by strength?
-by class?
-does it reduce the wearer's speed or agility?
-Does it cover the whole body or only certain parts?
So, with that preamble. What other type of armor mechanics have you seen in games? Which ones seem to work the best? What is your favorite and why?
I believe the most logical method of utilizing armor in roleplaying games is for armor to reduce the amount of damage taken, but to degrade in doing so. This is realistic, which I personally find preferable.
Armor should certainly be limited by strength, and should reduce the wearer's speed and agility where appropriate. I don't favor armor limitations by class, but I don't favor classes, either, so that's probably natural.
I would agree that armour should subtract from damage taken. I think you need to handle armour degredation very carefully though.
Far too many games have armour that is supernaturally ablative. I would say that very few hits reduce the effect of the armour. This ought to reduce bookkeeping (all your armour doesn't have to have a redcord of its own hits).
Something like if armour takes a hit and none of it penetrates then the armour takes no damage. If the amount of damage that penetrates is equal to teh current armour rating it is reduced by 1.
So ... a breastplate (this is illustrative you probabaly wouldn't want to do peicemeal armour unless it was a very cruchy system) has an Armour Rating of 6. In this game a long bow arrow does 1d6 damage with +3 for Point blank range (less than 5 meters) +1 for short range (within 30 meters) then maybe a -1 at long range but doesn't matter. so Sir Dave is shot with an arrow at point blank range it hits his breastplat and does 7 damage Sir Dave takes 1 point and the AR of the breastplate is unaffected. In fact unless an arrow gets a critial hit it isn't really going to reduce the effectivenes of his breastplate.
In a sword fight where a bastard sword does 2d6 damage + strength bonus the breast plate might take a 12 point his and 6 does through this reduced its AR by 1 so next time a 10 point hit will reduce it to 4 etc ...
This is a complex way of saying that armour in good condition will stay in good condition but once it starts to deteriorate the rate of deterioration will be high. It also means that armour like leather that might have say an AR of 3 will be rendered useless much faster than a breastplate. (The numbers need work as I am just making this up as I go but you get the idea). It ought to encourage people to keep their armour well repaired as well.....
http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9823
Quote from: jibbajibbaI would agree that armour should subtract from damage taken. I think you need to handle armour degredation very carefully though.
Agreed. On the other hand, I have never once seen a mechanic for armor degradation which does not involve book-keeping beyond my tolerance. Our solution has been a combination of common sense and a hefty dose of denial.
Engine:
Let me desing one for you... (someone has been probably done this before me, because it so simple and obvious)
So, basicaly, if you want armor degrading, you? ve have to do some book-keeping, but, let's say that all you're willing to book is one number... then, next logival step would be to assume, that damaged armor protects you less than undamaged one, so you can stick armor defensive value with actual state of armor... Therefore I would work like this:
Character wearing armor with for example armor value 6 has been hit, so he substracts 6 from damage he gets, then make separate roll for armor usnig 6 (or whatever) sided dice and if you roll more than or equal than is actuall armor value of said armor then it's value is reduced by 1, so next time he's gonna be hit, he'll not only substract one less from defense that armor provides it would also be harder for said armor to stand anym more hits...
Well, said example assume that for exampleč armor with value 6 is pretty good and that armor gets destroyed really quickly under said system but you can easily modify it for your need, like for example use 20 sided dice and to damage armor you have to roll under it's armor value and so on... you can also have some fun with modifiers, for example armor piercing guns, that cause armor to degrade more than by 1 each hit and so many others. or have different weapons use different dice for armor damage tests.
It's not like this is without problems, the biggest one is taht you have to do one more dice roll and thats really bad also I am not sure how well anmd realiticaly would it work with armors with very low defensive value, but well, pllastic helmet you wear in quarrys also break after it's been hit by falling rock, while it reduces damage caused by sain rock enought to possibly save your live, or at least this is what I was told...
...and this is so simple that it just have to be usede somewhere in some form...
Interesting comments.
I think I'll definitely go with armor reducing damage instead of reducing the chance of being hit. I'll also be using the shield shattering rule here
http://trollsmyth.blogspot.com/2008/05/shields-shall-be-splintered.html
Beyond that, I don't think I'll degrade armor. It makes perfect sense, but I want a minimum of bookkeeping in my game.
When I first encountered L5R and looked at the armor system, I thought it was weird for it not to reduce damage but to reduce the chances of being hit. The maker of the system simply explained that the armor was not penetrable with standard weapons and counts as a way to make it more difficult for a character to hit areas that are not covered by armor.
According to them, that is a realistic approach to armor.
Personally, I like to see an armor reduce the chances to be hit, but damage-reducing armor lends a more fantastic result and can be really cool too. I think you need to look at what lends itself to the system and is easy to keep track of.
The idea of having a damage reduction rating equal to the general state of the armor is really cool and sounds workable, (nice job Fritzs!). Maybe you don't need an extra roll after each hit to see if the armor is damaged or not. You could just look at the damage done after the damage reduction effects: if damage done is twice as much as the armor rating, the armor rating goes down a level.
I think it depends on the level of abstraction in your combat system.
For the older versions of D&D and AD&D, with 1-minute rounds and such, I think the harder to hit model makes sense within the system's level of abstraction (a "hit" can represent one blow or the cumulative effect of many on the target's body, morale, fatigue level, etc.). My homebrew systems tend to use this as combat detail is very low level (I usually use my homebrews for chat/online play, so the abstraction works very well there).
If you're getting into shorter combat rounds, tracking each blow, using a more detailed wound system, etc., then damage reduction seems like a better fit.
Quote from: KenHRI think it depends on the level of abstraction in your combat system.
For the older versions of D&D and AD&D, with 1-minute rounds and such, I think the harder to hit model makes sense within the system's level of abstraction (a "hit" can represent one blow or the cumulative effect of many on the target's body, morale, fatigue level, etc.). My homebrew systems tend to use this as combat detail is very low level (I usually use my homebrews for chat/online play, so the abstraction works very well there).
If you're getting into shorter combat rounds, tracking each blow, using a more detailed wound system, etc., then damage reduction seems like a better fit.
The same reason I used "Harder to hit" with my StarCluster System games. On that rather high level of abstraction it works better.
-clash
In the CORPS rpg, armor has two effects. First, it stops a certain amount of damage entirely. Secondly, it converts a certain amount of lethal damage to non-lethal damage. So, if have armor rated as 4/2, then it will stop 4 points of any kind of damage, and convert 2 more points from lethal damage to non-lethal damage. If you're shot for 7 points of damage, you will end up with 2 points of non-lethal damage and 1 point of lethal.
This seems to accurately reflect that even if armor stops a sword (or bullet) from penetrating, it's still likely to hurt. I believe there are rules for armor degradation as well, but I don't recall them offhand.
Pretty much any way you go about it, you're going to have some odd behaviors. Damage reducting armor rules tend to be unrealistically good vs. small amount of damage in order to have much effect on larger weapons. Armor that seriously blunts a sword strike is immune to a dagger strike; realistically a dagger strike is more likely to hit a weak spot than a sword so it should do very little most of the time but occasionally do decent damage.
BESM had a decent way around this (it's been a while I might be off). You could take an attack penalty to aim for weak spots in the armor (-4 for partial armor, -8 for full). So the attacker could decide whether armor acted as damage reduction or harder to hit depending on the details of the armor and the attack.
If I were implementing armor in a crpg, I'd use variable damage reduction to simulate a possibility of hitting a weak spot and to give weak attacks/small weapons some chance of causing damage. But I think that's too much extra rolling for paper and pencil play.
Stormbringer uses a variable damage reduction model, and it works well. Each armor type has a dice code rating for protection (e.g. 1d8 + 2 or similar). When you're hit, you roll your armor's damage reduction dice to see how effective it was at stopping the blow. It was a very workable system that didn't bog down play.
Armor does two main things
1) It deflects impacts by it shape redirecting the force of the blow.
2) It spreads (not reduces) the force of a blow. For example the narrow edge of the sword has a lot of force concentrated along the edge. When it impacts armor, the armor spread the force out. So you still experience the same total force but over a greater area.
If the armor is flexible as opposed rigid changes how force is spread out and transferred to the body.
RPGs has to take all this and decide the best way of simulating armor for playability, and fun.
Hey Tom B.
I've never heard of CORP before. What kind of game is it and who makes it?
I can answer that: it's by BTRC (http://www.btrc.net/) (Blackburg Tactical Research Center). Author: Greg Porter.
Metal, Magic, and Lore does the damage reduction, also, with bruising still getting through. There are 43 hit locations, so armor-by-the-piece is key. And there are seven kinds of damage, with armor rated against each separately. Armor degrades over time. It has to fit correctly. It's pretty cool. Very crunchy, but fairly painless in play.
It's funny; at some point I wanted to turn D&D armor into a more 'realistic' system, and basically tried grafting GURPS' system in.
And what I found was that 'called shot to avoid armor' matched almost perfectly with 'AC,' with some fuzziness for layers of varying armor.
So there's a third option; armor as reduced chance to hit, because the assumption is that you are going to avoid the armored bits.
Quote from: WillIt's funny; at some point I wanted to turn D&D armor into a more 'realistic' system, and basically tried grafting GURPS' system in.
And what I found was that 'called shot to avoid armor' matched almost perfectly with 'AC,' with some fuzziness for layers of varying armor.
So there's a third option; armor as reduced chance to hit, because the assumption is that you are going to avoid the armored bits.
But there are lots of effects that still need to roll to hit that are totally unaffected by the armour's ability to protect from damage. Say hitting with a magic missile, or someone throwing acid, or hurling greek fire, or the attack of a rust monster... Because there are so many of these effects in D&D (and other RPGS needless to say) a system in which armour reduces your chance to hit is definitely at a disadvantage when looking at these type of effects. Combine with this the face that there are called shots (not sure about 3e or 4e to be honest) in D&D that avoid armour on top of the fact that armour reduces the chance to hit and you have a bit of a kludge.
The D&D armour system is a hold over from its wargaming roots and as such would not be the choice for any designer coming at the situation afresh. Its especially true of the fantasy milieu where the hero (Conan, the Grey Mouser, Aragorn, Tarl Cabbot etc) rarely wears full armour instead relyingon skill and swordmanship to avoid getitng hit.
Quote from: WillSo there's a third option; armor as reduced chance to hit, because the assumption is that you are going to avoid the armored bits.
Case in point: Touch AC.
Stu2000,
Metal, Magic, and Lore definitely has my interest. 43 hit locations you say? That's intriguing and frightening all at the same time.
Quote from: wulfgarI've never heard of CORP before. What kind of game is it and who makes it?
Like Elliot said. Here's a direct link to the
CORPS nutshell PDF (http://www.btrc.net/files/nutshellc/nutshell_v15en.pdf) that gives a short summary of the rules. It's excellent for gritty/realistic style rules. It rapidly teaches you to avoid combat if at all possible, as it is possible to die from a single hit, if it's good enough. Although it works for any genre, it does best with modern/SF style games.
Most of Greg's attention is on his newer system,
EABA, which is somewhat more cinematic and not as gritty as
CORPS. I need to refresh my memory on the
EABA combat rules, at the moment I can't seem to remember exactly how they work. I believe they take a more standard damage-reduction approach, though.
Quote from: wulfgarStu2000,
Metal, Magic, and Lore definitely has my interest. 43 hit locations you say? That's intriguing and frightening all at the same time.
I really wish I had a website for reference. 5th Epoch is completely rebuilding their site at the moment. They have a very nice, professionally illustrated and well-designed basic book. It's hard to find it at the moment. My flgs has three copies.
There is very little innovation in the rules. It's a percentile, mostly skill-based system, with much in common with games like RuneQuest or Rolemaster. However--the armor system really stands out as an area of intense interest for the designers.They describe armor in crisp detail, they have rules for layering and customizing armor, rules for sizing and differences in quality and styles among peoples. They have the intimidating hit location chart and different probabilities of hitting locations depending on the attacker's stance.
Weapons do several different types of damage and armor protects differently against them. If your chain protects you from getting cut, you'll likely still take impact bruising.
It's the best game I've played for getting into the head of a character who feels like his life depends on his armor. The detail helped it feel more real to me.
Of course, you have to pay attention in play to work that kind of detail, but I like that kind of game. Combat is definitely slower than other modes of play, but I don't mind. I like tactical play. And for all the detail, combat isn't really that slow. On par with RQ and RM. Faster, with practice. FWIW.
On a related note, I was reading the book Infidels http://www.amazon.com/Infidels-History-Conflict-Between-Christendom/dp/0812972392/ref=pd_bbs_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210599126&sr=8-3 (http://www.amazon.com/Infidels-History-Conflict-Between-Christendom/dp/0812972392/ref=pd_bbs_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210599126&sr=8-3) last night, and the chapter I was on gave a really vivid depiction of the power of armor in combat. Frankish Knights in chain mail hauberks down to their knees were incredibly hard to kill. The line that really sticks in my memory talked about warriors bristling with arrows looking like hedgehogs.