My tastes in game rules are different than most of the popular games.  D&D rules are actually one of my least favorites.  I don't like increasing hit points for levels.  I think raising your skills should be how it's done as an example.

Armor is another bit I want to talk about.  I am looking for OSR games to steal rules from that don't use armor as a means to make you harder to hit.  Or to just treat armor as more hit points.  What games treat armor as a savings throw?  Or a dice roll, or fixed number that deletes damage?

The two that come to mind are the D6 series of games like West End Games Star Wars.  Or maybe Palladium Fantasy, but neither are a traditional D20 OSR game. 

Any ideas?

Honestly, the only one that comes to mind is Machinations of the Space Princess. 

Mongoose Traveller (both editions), T4, T5, and the entire Mekton and Cyberpunk lines of games from RTG.

The Conan mongoose RPG does armor as damage reduction.

You have parry and dodge values that take the place of and function like AC. Then if you get hit, your armor reduces damage rolled.

Unfortunately the game does do escalating HP per level. But as it was based off of 3.x D&D - it should be easy enough to do a E6 mod for it.

Hackmaster armor does straight damage reduction. It's a pretty different system from OSR, though, so I don't know how much you can smuggle in.

A lot of this goes back to my RPG system I grew up with.  Palladium Books.  In Palladium the main three things were Strike vs Parry or Dodge.  There was armor class too, but that was just a bunch of extra hit points if hit, but a good roll over it would bypass it and hurt you directly.  You mostly relied on your parry and dodge to just not be hit at all.  Those three stats were what mattered. 

I saw a video on YouTube today where the topic was about more realism for armor in the D&D D20 system.  Armor should make you easier to hit, but usually make you take little or no damage.  Usually.  You could take full damage as well.  I have a few OSR games I want to try someday, but I'm looking to modify them to be more my own play style.  I need games to steal ideas from. 

I like to be critical of D&D, but I'll grant them some credit for D&D 5E.  The armor traits that limit your Dexterity bonus when wearing heavy armor is a step in the right direction.  Most OSR games don't do have anything for armor other than it's AC and price.

Quote from: jeff37923 on October 07, 2022, 07:38:53 PM
Mongoose Traveller (both editions), T4, T5, and the entire Mekton and Cyberpunk lines of games from RTG.

I'll have to read my Mekton Zeta PDF.  I never played it.  I have only a vague idea of how that works.

Quote from: Zaph on October 07, 2022, 09:04:51 PM
Hackmaster armor does straight damage reduction. It's a pretty different system from OSR, though, so I don't know how much you can smuggle in.

Based on his follow up comment... I do think he should check out Hackmaster. There is a free "Hackmaster Basic" PDF you can get to read the mechanics.
HP progression is slower (you re-roll your prior die, then gain a new one at alternating levels.) attacks are opposed rolls and combat uses a per second "count up" that I really like.
A little more info here and a link to that free PDF here it is

I'll give explaining Mekton armor a try.

The fragile bits protected by armor have HP. Armor has HP, and a hardness. When receiving damage, the damage incurred by the bits covered in armor is reduced by the HP of the armor, and if damage is greater than the hardness of the armor, the armor's HP is reduced as well.

Combat is an opposed skill roll, with multiple defensive options, and degree of success can bypass armor protection or trigger rolls on progressively nastier critical hit tables.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 07, 2022, 06:56:52 PM
Armor is another bit I want to talk about.  I am looking for OSR games to steal rules from that don't use armor as a means to make you harder to hit.  Or to just treat armor as more hit points.  What games treat armor as a savings throw?  Or a dice roll, or fixed number that deletes damage?

Chainmail and one of its derivatives, Spellcraft & Swordplay, treat armor as a "roll to damage", with modifiers for weapon vs. armor type. If you consider Classic Traveller OSR then it also provides weapon vs. armor type as a modifier to damage, but works best when you separate the to-hit roll from the to-damage roll (the "Double-Tap" house rule from the Citizens of the Imperium board).

Palladium (for all its faults) does it somewhat with it's AR.

When I stole the idea for my own experiments some years ago, I added CR too.  CR is the "coverage rating", while AR is the "damage absorption".  The CR acts as a modifier to the to-hit roll.  If you roll above the CR, you bypass the armor and all the damage goes straight to the character's HP.  Otherwise, the armor reduces the damage by an amount equal to its AR.  If the damage exceeds the armor's AR, then it has to make a saving throw or have its CR reduced by a point until it's repaired.  This is cumulative until the armor is destroyed.  Wasn't perfect by any means, but it worked alright I guess.

I used hit locations for a while, so people could put together piecemeal armor.  That bogged the game down too much though (imo).  I also never figured out a good way to implement armor layering without it being too mechanically cumbersome.  The way I figure it, computer games are for extreme simulationism these days, and tabletop games have to be a little more abstract to keep play moving along.  In my opinion, anyway.

I remember there were some pretty good rules for d20 that converted armor into a DR type system without having to rejigger anything else.  Can't remember who published it though.  I recall it was called "Armor as DR".

Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 07, 2022, 10:03:42 PM
A lot of this goes back to my RPG system I grew up with.  Palladium Books.  In Palladium the main three things were Strike vs Parry or Dodge.  There was armor class too, but that was just a bunch of extra hit points if hit, but a good roll over it would bypass it and hurt you directly.  You mostly relied on your parry and dodge to just not be hit at all.  Those three stats were what mattered. 

I saw a video on YouTube today where the topic was about more realism for armor in the D&D D20 system.  Armor should make you easier to hit, but usually make you take little or no damage.  Usually.  You could take full damage as well.  I have a few OSR games I want to try someday, but I'm looking to modify them to be more my own play style.  I need games to steal ideas from. 

I like to be critical of D&D, but I'll grant them some credit for D&D 5E.  The armor traits that limit your Dexterity bonus when wearing heavy armor is a step in the right direction.  Most OSR games don't do have anything for armor other than it's AC and price.

Steep limits to Dex bonus or increased chances of getting hit for wearing armor are actually not realistic, but based on gamist logic, much like the weapon Speed Factors used in AD&D (daggers wouldn't strike before a sword in real life, cuz reach has a far bigger impact on who attacks first than speed). These are things that intuitively seem like they would work that way to people who've never actually worn armor or used weapons, or done any research on them, but in real life actually work completely differently.

Armor in real life was crafted with great care to provide proper articulation and mobility, and actually didn't impede movement nearly as much as gamers believe (maybe by a minor amount, but nowhere near the steep penalties used in many RPGs). There are YouTube videos on this. The real issue was cost, maintenance, encumbrance, exhaustion and heat, as well as social issues (it wasn't socially appropriate for random travelers to strut around in heavy armor inside a city, and guards would probably have stopped them for questioning if they did so).

Wearing armor for extended periods of time can be exhausting and may dehydrate you. Realistic armor rules would impose exhaustion on characters for wearing armor for hours, as well as encumbrance related penalties for carrying extra loads on top of armor, but only impose minimal movement related penalties for wearing heavy armor.

Quote from: VisionStorm on October 08, 2022, 09:11:31 AM
Wearing armor for extended periods of time can be exhausting and may dehydrate you. Realistic armor rules would impose exhaustion on characters for wearing armor for hours, as well as encumbrance related penalties for carrying extra loads on top of armor, but only impose minimal movement related penalties for wearing heavy armor.

The movement related penalties is a simplification, as I see it. Carrying that much weight is a simple hike is tiring (try walking with a 20 lb dumbell on each hand, or a 40 lb backpack, for one hour), so the average speed (of dungeon exploration, overland travel, etc.) is significantly reduced. If one were to wear armor only for a duel, for example I agree that penalties in movement could be reduced.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 07, 2022, 10:03:42 PMArmor should make you easier to hit, but usually make you take little or no damage.

That is pretty much exactly how armour works in RoleMaster - heavy armours make you more likely to be hit for a few HP of damage but make it unlikely that you will take a lot of HP or a higher level of critical (and critical results are typically what kill you in RM).

FWIW I just wrote a small critical hit table that takes margin of success - and thus, armor - into account. Meaning, good armor protects you from critical hits (less damage). It still uses AC, however.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-simplest-critical-hit-table-osr-etc.html

Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 07, 2022, 10:03:42 PM
I saw a video on YouTube today where the topic was about more realism for armor in the D&D D20 system.  Armor should make you easier to hit, but usually make you take little or no damage.

Is that a typo? "Make you easier to hit"? Have you seen the historical guys wearing armor doing all sorts of athletic stuff? Very specific armor might make you "easier" to hit, but most does not. And the other kind of armor is for very specific situations, like formal duels on horseback, where is it not a disadvantage.