Armor vs Weapon

I've got a simple solution - stop playing D&D. It has literally THE worst armour of all tabletops.

I'll admit that it would add a new level of realism, but it would add another level to the meta game. It depends on how much time you're willing to devote.

Personally, I'd use damage reduction and call it good.

Worry about balance first. Properly doing weapons and armor, and having everything still be viable, would be incredibly intricate. Just come up with something where nothing screams out "that's fucking wrong!"

We're going for a bit of a survival aspect with the game, so little nuances like this would boost the feel of things. We're not looking to go balls to the wall percentile in depth, but we want it to make sense enough.

Closer to 4e, but there's lots of bits we've added to it from other games to the point where it's practically a house system. We're using the 13 Age resistance and vulnerability rules.

>Chopping
Is this a different enough concern to separate it into it's own damage type? I sort of just made Axes do blunt damage with slash damage tagged on for a bit extra.

if a strike from a 3kg sword does 20 impact and +10 slashing , a normal suit of plate should give 15 impact resistance and 40 slashing resistance.

>have you tried not playing D&D
Check that meme off the list

usually i make impact contribute to surpassing cutting damage thresholds on armor, if the raw impact is higher that cut resistance, all of the additional slash damage gets through.

if you deal 30 impact +15 cut with a regular strike and the armor has 20 impact and 40 cut resistance, you deal 10impact + 5cutting damage

thats the reason why in our systems an axe (high impact , lower cutting) may chop through chain while a sword (low impact , mediocre cutting) does only impact damage against armored foes.

Super-duper broad strokes summarys for some archetypal armor types:

Full plate with underlayer: ++++Slashing, +++Stabbing, ++Blunt, -Cold, --Heat, -Repairs, Weight 4
Plate alone: ++++Slashing, +++Stabbing, +Blunt, -Heat, ---Cold, --Repairs, Weight 3, chafes like hell
Chain: +++Slashing, ++Blunt, +Stabbing, -Cold, Weight 5
Coat-of-plates et al: +++Slashing, ++Stabbing, ++Blunt, +Repairs, -Heat, Weight 4
Leather: +Blunt, +Stabbing, +Slashing, +Cold, -Heat, ---Repairs, Weight 2, expensive
"Studded leather": same as above, but more expensive.
Quilted cloth: ++Blunt, ++Cold, +Slashing, +Repairs, -Heat, Weight 1, can be worn under other armor
Furs: +++Cold, +Blunt, +Slashing, --Heat, ---Repairs, Weight 2
Silk robes: +Heat, +Cold, Weight Nil
Jack chains: ++Slashing, ++Repairs, Weight 1, can be combined with other armor

>Meme
user, even the most hardcore 3.x players will tell you DnD armor is shit.

A better version of that table.

So you're basically having the weapons do mixtures of the different types of damage? That seems awfully clunky as far as play goes. I mean, something like that works great when you're playing a video game and the computer does all the math for you, but it can really slow down a tabletop game, killing your momentum. "Unrealistically simple but fun" beats "realistically complex but unfun" every time.

>Axes do blunt damage with slash damage tagged on for a bit extra
Axes do primarily blunt damage? But... they aren't actually blunt. How does that make sense?

>This entire table
Jesus fucking Christ...

What's your complaint there, bro?

>Axes do primarily blunt damage? But... they aren't actually blunt. How does that make sense?
The damage is more impact than blunt, so I suppose I simply used the wrong terms. The idea I had was their weight made them closer to hammers, but their blade added the extra slashing damage. I like the idea of adding Chopping to the list though. It makes Axes and a few other weapon types stand out in a different way, and I can see how the weight and blade combo will make a difference for some armors.

Why would Unarmored give more protection from it than mail would though?

Armor isn't balanced, though. Some armors are just *better* than others. Realism and balance are fundamentally opposed.

Easy way to handle it would be something like:

>plate armor makes you immune to 1-handed weapon damage except on a critical hit. 2-handed slashing damage becomes subdual, except on a crit. 2-handed piercing damage is halved, except on a crit. Bows within 50' and crossbows within 100' do not reduce their damage at all. Attacks with small 1-handed piercing weapons during a grapple are considered to always crit.
>chain armor with appropriate padding turns all 1-handed weapon damage into subdual damage, except on a critical hit. Attacks with small 1-handed piercing weapons during a grapple are considered to always crit.
>cloth armor halves 1-handed slashing and blunt damage, except on a crit. Attacks with small 1-handed piercing weapons during a grapple are considered to always crit.
>hardened leather armor halves 1-handed slashing damage, except on a crit. Attacks with small 1-handed piercing weapons during a grapple are considered to always crit.
>soft leather armor doesn't do shit

Yes, that's the "easy" way. Link this to a hit-location system where individual locations can be covered in an armor type (similar to WFRP 1 an 2e) and you have something realistic enough to matter. Armor is hugely protective, to a degree that's almost unfair when the other guy has more/better armor than you.

You're not the first to do this, you won't be the last, but you all shall suffer the same fate of suckitude.

>protection
Good.
>vulnerabilities
No.
Any and all armor bar none will protect you and cover the vulnerabilities of the human form, never adding vulnerabilities of their own.

>Armor isn't balanced, though. Some armors are just *better* than others.
Well, yeah. But D&D solves this by restricting your armor choices by class. But if you have free access to all armor and weapons, and some are distinctly better than others, those others won't end up getting used, which effectively removes them as options.

Not playing D&D, for starters.
The sole way how AC works in practice means it's utter shit beyond any salvage. And there is no reason trying to fix completely broken game when there are others on the market.

>those others won't end up getting used, which effectively removes them as options.
This is what DDfags actually believe.
Also, price, just for starters, is a thing.

>which effectively removes them as options.

That is a problem why, exactly?

IRL, the limiting factors are money and production time. Do neither of those exist in your games?

Also, it's entirely moot because we're talking about D&D, and it doesn't matter WHAT the fighters are wearing; they're pointlessly obsolete by 6th level anyway.

I love scaly, leathery and overdesigned armor. Monster Hunter makes my dick diamonds.

>Also, it's entirely moot because we're talking about D&D, and it doesn't matter WHAT the fighters are wearing; they're pointlessly obsolete by 6th level anyway.
We're not playing 3.pf. The fighter will stay competent well into the end of the campaign.

The campaign will be heavily inspired by this sort of thing. It's part of the reason we want armor to mean something more than a higher to hit value.

...

>It's part of the reason we want armor to mean something more than a higher to hit value.

Then use . As a still-playable abstraction doesn't differentiate between literally every weapon, it's as realistic as you're going to get. Cap-a-pie plate armor basically obviates 1-handed weapons, which is why knights started using a lot more 2-handed stuff and ditched the shield so they could use that weapon. Riveted mail is way more durable against piercing attacks than people think, and quilted armor is actually ludicrously protective. There's going to be edge cases that break every one of user's proposed rules, but BY AND LARGE they're accurate enough to function. The only thing I'd add to it is a point about lances ignoring armor completely if you're on a charging horse.

Oh, and he's right about leather. Soft leather armor is absolutely shit. John Clements of ARMA (predecessor to the modern HEMA movement) used to have a great video on their website where they took sharps from Albion Swords (ie, good swords, not some Cold Steel bullshit) and did cutting practice against various materials. Cutting through soft leather armor on a pig carcass was indistinguishable from just cutting the bare pig.

There are other editions than 3.x, you know?

Holy fuck op
Just learn a new system that already DOES this. Like GURPS.

Not that matter.

>This is what DDfags actually believe.
Insofar as stats are important at all. And if they aren't, why bother with them?

>Also, price, just for starters, is a thing.
If we're talking D&D, not for long. Especially when it comes to weapons. One thing costs 3 gp and another 15. If the 15 gp thing is at all superior, then unless you're a starting character with very little money, there's no reason to ever prefer the 3 gp one.

>That is a problem why, exactly?
It makes them trap options for folks who don't know what they're doing, and disappointments for folks who like the idea of a particular item, but don't want to fuck themselves in the ass, statistically speaking. And it mostly means that instead of having a concise list of things to choose from, you have a longer, junkier list of shit to choose from mixed with shit to avoid.

>Not playing D&D, for starters.
So you don't actually have a legitimate complaint then?

>The sole way how AC works in practice means it's utter shit beyond any salvage.
AC actually works pretty well, if you're okay with the level of abstraction involved. I can understand if you're not, but that doesn't make it "shit beyond any salvage", but rather "not to your taste". Also, I notice how you very carefully avoid giving any specifics, which probably indicates you don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about and just think D&D sucks because your friends told you so.

>there's no reason to ever prefer the 3 gp one.

...except role-playing.

What a crazy idea.

>That seems awfully clunky
That's the whole point of the thread.
OP wants a very granular attack type vs armour type system.
If user didn't want every attack to reference at least one full page chart user would not go down this rabbit hole.

Yeah, but there's a difference between having 3 or 4 different scores for each piece of armor, with a single one of those scores applying to any given weapon and having 3 or 4 different scores for each piece of armor, with fractions of multiple different scores applying to a given weapon.

Leather has DR/Slashing, Peircing
Chitin has DR/Slashing, Blunt
Chain has DR/Peircing
Plate has DR/Lightning
Magic has DR/Anti-magic

Thank you, weird formatting.

Trying that again:
>Leather: DR/Peircing, Chopping
>Chitin: DR/Slashing, Chopping
>Chain: DR/ Peircing, Bludgeoning
>Plate: DR/Fire, Ice, Lightning
>Magic: DR/Anti-Magic

You're not going to get anywhere with Veeky Forums here because they'll all say their subjective views/mechanics that work for them, and then you're gonna have people that never saw armor bicker about armor for 100 posts.

Steal off systems other than D&D, like The Riddle of Steel or WFRP (they seem to have the armor fluff you want). Or use the optional Armor to DR D&D 3.Pathfinder rules.

Personal advice, shitty two-cents, is keep AC where it is because it's an abstraction of a "non-dangerous/vital hit"; the goblin didn't miss you, his spear glanced of your shinguard, the Troll didn't miss you, he slashed at your hide armor and you dodged narrowly escaping those sickass claws from giving your lungs an extra slot to bleed through. Keep AC same for regular game balance; add DR on top of that if you're keen to have armor be worth a bit more (be mindful that DR doesn't scale well and that this is generally okay; a 10 damage goblin will do 1 damage, and a 120 damage dragon will do 110 damage Dragon's still tough as fuck, Goblin's nonlethal now, beware of this if you wanna have lethal goblins. DR's very valuable against foes that can't have big damage numbers.)

All in all, you're threading dangerous and stupid waters here on the gamebalance side, but heck, grab your friends and slap on some homebrew mods on your game if you're all gonna be okay with it.

This is more along the lines of the sort of thing I'm after. What would you suggest for Cloth/Scale armor?

Mostly this. If you aren't going to go with (which is a better system, but more stuff to remember), then just go with straight DR. If you want to make it scale better, change DR from a flat value to an easy to calculate percentage (10%, 25%, 50%). That makes sure it's always useful.

Does it make sense that 3mm of steel can resist a dragons claws? Probably not, but it keeps the martial character useful for longer. 5e isn't as bad as 3e about "caster edition", but you can give martials a fair lot of help and not unbalance things to the point of actually breaking your game in favor of martials.

Right.
Quite simply, pretty much everything you have ever heard, or seen in film, tv, books, is going to have been wrong.

Reality is very different.

Good plate armour is, in effect, impervious. It was insanely good at its job. Lance at 60mph? good chance its going to shatter and go flying off. Sword? slashes or cuts wont even do a thing. Arrow? bounce right off. And a mace, or club? That is also likely to slide right off.

A mace or warhammer spike *might* bite in, and transfer force. but it certainly wasnt assured.

Plate armour was really that good. And that's why everyone wore it if they could - because it was the difference between life and death.

>Plate armour was really that good.

This is an excellent example of why trying to put "realism" in games is a terrible idea. How are you supposed to balance that? It's just objectively better than the other options, and objectively better things make for shit game balance.

If you put realistic armour like that in a game, create a combat system that rewards realistic tactics. Like if the enemy wears a full suit of armour you can't dent with your weapons, knock him on the ground and stab a dagger into his eye, armpit or groin when he's on his back.

And how are you going to put that into simple, mechanical terms? In a video game you can easily do that because the computer does the complex geographic, biological, and tactical calculations it'd need to determine whether that would succeed. In a tabletop RPG, you'd need to do all of that manually.

A good whack in the head with a mace is still going to incapacitate somebody. And the armor still has weak points you can exploit, though you may have to wrestle them to the ground first. But then D&D started off with just "plate mail" which is transitional armor, and not what you're talking about.

>How are you supposed to balance that?
Magic

Heavy armored Knight is impervious to footman weapons, Knight wins

Wizard's spells blast right through armor DR at range, Wizard wins

Footman can attack at range or dodge wizards spells, Footman wins

Fighter beats rogue beats wizard beats fighter

Most RPG combat systems I'm familiar with already have rules for unarmed combat, whether it's called grappling or what have you. The first point would be to make it so that if you wrestle that well-armoured baddie into the ground and sit on his chest, you can kill him with that dagger through the eyehole right there. No rolling for a to-hit, or doing 1d4 damage which is just a mosquito bite, but an instant kill.

Is that Silchester amphitheatre?

>How are you supposed to balance that?
Why would you want to balance it out in the first place, you moron? What is this DnD-inducted obsession with balancing things out and in the process creating unplayable mess?
Realistic combat is by default unbalanced. So how the fuck you even plan to add realistic elements, but keep the whole thing gamey in nature?

>How are you going to translate it onto simple, mechanical terms
By playing GURPS or Savage

If your game isn't balanced then it's a shit game.

If you are trying to play in the same time realistic and balanced game, you are doing it so wrong no words can describe it.

You just don't want everybody in the game (or at least the PCs) wearing the same armor and bearing the same weapon. That's not interesting.

Quilted gives pretty good protection against draw cuts and still holds up against chops. Against missile weapons though it is phenomenal, and when backing Mail it synergizes to be highly effective against most attacks.

youtube.com/watch?v=CULmGfvYlso

youtube.com/watch?v=tzeLAGuCucg

youtube.com/watch?v=VGu4bpb4eTI

youtube.com/watch?v=VGu4bpb4eTI

Also, it's thick, soft cloth so it's decent against impact weapons.

>Axes do blunt damage
War axes are not wedge-shaped wood-chopping devices but keenly honed cutting weapons.

youtube.com/watch?v=VbDhQYvetr8

Well that's what's necessary. A good RPG needs to be both realistic and internally-balanced, and if you can't do that then you shouldn't be writing RPGs.

Not every in real life is balanced, user.

The 40k RPG games have a solution to this, albeit a breakable one.

> attacker rolls
> defender rolls to dodge / parry if attacker gets a success
> defender takes any remaining damage after reducing it by armor and toughness values

Parrying in that system also might allow for immediate attacks with enough success, making it somewhat essential for a real melee duelist if they plan on taking on multiple foes at once. Useless against ranged attacks though as opposed to the ever-usable dodge, so it works out.

>If you are trying to play in the same time realistic and balanced game, you are doing it so wrong no words can describe it.
If you play a game with no magic (or the type of magic you see in Conan) it's easier than you'd think.

Unrelated, but that armor seems to fit terribly on her. Is that 40k? I can't think of anything else that over the top.

Seconding this, getting rid of a lot of the stupid utility magic makes life a lot more simple.

Cool stuff, thanks for sharing.

>plate mail

Please kill yourself. There is only maille armor, transitional armor (which is variable as fuck), and plate armor. Even then you need to specify the exact decade and region because shit was variable. For example, pic related is later transitional armor.

I've always liked flat damage reductions. For example, a proper plate armour reduces 8 points of damage to the location if the armour isn't ignored by a crit or something. A chain mail would reduce about 4 or 5 points and gambeson could reduce 2 or even 3 points.
Even a sword can break bones through the sheer force of impact on chainmail, but at least it doesn't cut your hand off. Blunt weapons could be easily given armour penetration points, or they could halve the armour value, whichever suits you the best.

Armour shouldn't affect the chance to hit, because it actually makes it easier (albeit a tiny bit only) but should do what armours do in real world - reduce damage.

Armor does actually provide a form of hit reduction in that it lessens the amount of viable attacks a foe can make against you.

Is this table making plate LESS effective against blunt force attacks than being naked?

Please enlighten us, DDfag, why that would happen?
Are you at least semi-aware not everyone is playing min-maxing builds and not everyone is interested in 110% efficiency of their gear?

Then you shouldn't be playing any RPG than has other setting than heroic high fantasy, my friend. And especially you shouldn't play any of those games with lethal combat, where everything can be solved with single, basic strike.

First off in terms of armor mechanics, NO weapons cut through steel armor. You can crush/cleave/smash, but you do not actually ever cut. Even maille cannot be cut, instead when you strike it with a great axe you are in fact rupturing the rings and tearing them apart and embedding the rings under the axehead into the wearer's flesh.

In general though maille armor with padding underneath will stop all cutting damage, and serve as an excellent defense against piercing weapons. However it's important to remember that all strikes in martial combat deal concussive force, even swords. A heavy handed blow that will indeed leave you open is capable of dealing immense amounts of kinetic energy that armor of 12th century design simply isn't capable of stopping. While shattering bones is probably not going to ever happen unless you're using a polearm, breaking bones by causing fractures or hairline fractures is entirely possible. Some targets on the body are more vulnerable than others- the shoulders and arms are VERY susceptible to such heavy blows as it's easy to catch them at a good 90 degree angle of impact, and there's often less flesh between the skin and bone. This can be countered however by the wearer wearing thicker padding in the sleeves of his gambeson/aketon or by adding additional layers of armor over the maille, such as crude splinting, leather, or an additional padded garment if the weather permits.

When it comes to piercing it depends entirely on the quality of the maille and the garments being over/under it. We have accounts of hauberks shrugging off couched lance strikes to the torso, head on, with the wearer taking zero damage. We also have accounts of guys getting turned into kebabs and their hauberks getting double penetrated with the lance rupturing out the back.

Honestly though, this doesn't do the subject any justice at all, (to be cont'd)

...Because it's fucking impossible to take all the variables into account. Maille is probably one of, if not the most single variable piece of human body armor ever made. So many factors have to be taken into account that effect the durability of the armor. Some are the same for later plate armor- hardness, carbon content, thickness (in this case the rings), iron purity, thickness/density of the undergarment padding, whether or not he was wearing padded armor over his maille, etc.

Then there's even MOAR variables that come into account with maille though. Density of the weave, whether the rings are welded, riveted, or butted, varying size of rings on the same hauberk (indian/muslim armor for example often made use of weaker, smaller, lighter rings on the thighs with the thickest rings on the torso/shoulders), and thickness of the weave (possible double-thick hauberks for example).

There's just so much to be taken into account, that can lead to such drastic differences in quality like one guy getting run clean through with a lance, while the guy beside him just laughs off a couched lance hitting him in the heart.

A smoot plate can deflect blows, yes. But that is basically it. Armour points can represent that, too. I recall GURPS having some rules conserning this, but then again, GURPS does seem to take realism a bit too far in mechanics.

>leather armor
Was never really a thing.

Thick unbending rawhide? Some savages did it.

Cuir buille? It happened, but didn't catch on.

The cost and work that goes into making any kind of viable leather armor makes such an attempt impractical in comparison to better and cheaper armor.

Against blunt weapons, a gambeson works better.

Against slashing/piercing weapons, linothorax is better.

So yes. Cloth armor is a thing.

Good summary.

You're missing linothorax type armors (basically carbon fiber armor), as well as scale, and rawhide armors, and cuir bouilli.

And more obscure stuff that migjt show up in a fantasy setting like carapace/chitin armor, like a turtle shell or something like that.

>Was never really a thing.

Do you come here specifically to make a fool out of yourself?

>weak points
You mean where there is a layer of chainmail and gambeson?
Yeah, good fucking luck

Give me some sources of armies using tanned leather (or even cuir bouilli) armor as legitimate armor rather than a backing for real armor or the like and I'll happily change my opinion.

From everything I've read (rawhides and the like aside as i already mentioned they were used by more primitive cultures in the post you're criticizing), it's a thing people tried but it was neither cheap, nor as effective as cheaper options, and therefore didn't see widespread use in any culture with other, real-armor options.

I'd definitely much rather have 30 layers of quilted linen, or a comparable number of players of linen moulded into shape and soaked in glue to make rigid plates, than anything leather.

>Against blunt weapons, a gambeson works better.
Against blunt weapons steel plate is the best...

>A good whack in the head with a mace is still going to incapacitate somebody.
No. I speak from experience that a solid, well made helmet doesn't give a fuck about one handed maces.

What helmet were you rocking, and what kind of mace?

Yes, user. Plate armor is better at basically everything.

But leather armor isn't worth it once you can get decent cloth, and that development happened literally thousands of years ago.

Like, more than 7+ thousand years ago

Not him but here. Used both with and without back and breasts, and before you start bitching about this being after proper armour went out of style, cuirassiers still wore three quarters plate during this time.

'Twas wearing a 12 gauge saxon helm. Got hit in the head by a boffer club putting all his strength into it. While it wouldn't be comparable to a late period flanged mace, it definitely was hitting with more force than a high medieval mace. The only really bad thing about it was the fucking noise.

>"The Europeanbuff coat(the term deriving from the ox or buffalo hide from which it was commonly made and itsyellowish colour) was an item of leatherclothingworn bycavalryand officers during the 17th century, it also saw limited use by some infantry. It was often worn underarmour. It was derived from the simple leatherjerkinsworn by huntsmen and soldiers during theTudor period, these in turn deriving from the arming doublet worn under full plate armour."
Doesn't sound like proper armor so much as padding to go with your armor to soften impacts and the like, and to provide some minimal protection against other injuries.

Also note they call it clothing rather than armor, and say it was often used in conjunction with armor.

>The only really bad thing about it was the fucking noise.
I can believe it. Don't know what boffers are made out of, but presumably a flanged hunk of metal would have bitten a lot more and been more obnoxious?

Neat, at any rate.

Nice, copypasting from the Wiki instead of looking at actual studies made of buff coats. Even Googling could show you that they were good against sword cuts (especially the expensive elk hide ones) and could even protect against a long-range pistol ball.

Royal Armouries:
>These coats could stop a sword cut or even a musket or pistol ball at long range. Because they gave so much protection and were quite comfortable to wear some cavalrymen wore just a buff coat without armour.

Vicky and Al's:
>The buff coat was a feature of military dress during the 17th century, usually worn under a breastplate. ... The thick leather made the coat good protection, not only against musket balls and sword cuts, but also from the friction of the armoured plate worn over it.

And that's not even going into the proper studies of the Thirty Years' War or the English Civil War period armour.

>and to provide some sort of minimal protection against some injuries

Like armor would do. It wasn't just worn under armor, it was also worn alone, as armor.

Huh.

Yeah it's 2am and I'm half asleep and reading from my phone. My research quality right now is pretty low.

What makes it good armor?

Why aren't they just using some 17th century equivalent to the medieval gambeson instead?

(as in padded cloth armor).

Why not a linen "buff coat"?

I think there have been some arguments in favor of Greek leather armor.

>What makes it good armor?

Buff coats were made from thick, tough leather, thoroughly oiled, which made them good at deflecting sword cuts. We're not talking about leather trousers or jackets level - the chest area would be several millimetres thick, the bit around the hem (the part covering the upper leg) even thicker. That one would have been made from several layers of leather. The sleeves were thinner and softer to allow for maximum arm mobility.

The tougher the hide, the better the protective qualities. There are eyewitness reports of elk hide coats stopping bullets, but elk hide was the most expensive - so expensive that ol' Gustavus himself couldn't afford to outfit his army in elk, despite being the king of the country that has a shitload of elks. Most of the coats were made of simple cowhide.

But as to why buff coats instead of leather: buff coats offered more than just protection. They were extraordinarily tough, hard-wearing, weatherproof and (if well made) comfortable. Gambesons would degrade really fast (tearing, getting dirty). For 30 shillings you could get a cheap and cheerful buff coat for Joe Bloggs of the New Model Army, whilst keeping him in gambesons throughout the campaign could go way higher.