D&D armour is boring

I've never seen a version of D&D where choice of armour is actually meaningful. You always go for the heaviest your class can wear unless you have some specific ability to get a bonus for wearing lighter armour.

There's no real choice there, there's basically always an optimal choice and as time goes on a few armour types remain relevant while the rest go unused.

The question is, how could you fix that?

I've heard some suggestions of just removing Armour choice altogether, making it a function of class since you always end up with the same stuff anyway, so why pretend otherwise?

On the other hand, I think it could be interesting to try and make armour a more meaningful choice, to actually make choosing your mundane armour matter in its own right.

A basic idea would be trying to make everything on each Armour tier (Light/Heavy, or Light/Medium/Heavy) roughly equivalent. Even if some have higher AC than others, the other armour available has alternate benefits and bonuses to even up the difference.

What do you think Veeky Forums? How would you do it? How'd you tier armour and what benefits would you assign to the various types?

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Two types:
Rigid armors helps to deflect blows, increasing AC.
Flexible armors absorb blows, by giving you extra HP.

The "include AC to class" is a lazy way, because you're removing options. A game should always be about choices.

Remove Armor from AC calculation and have it do something else. There is no other option. As long as armor is going to be the ultimate say on what your AC is, the highest boost will often win over save for certain cases in which a class has better options available to them through design or limitations. The second Armor becomes less about AC and more about something else, it can become interesting again.

AC still trumps here, because more HP does jack and shit when large numbers of damage come at you. Not being hit at all is still the optimal path, so the choice is really a pointless one unless a class is only tied to flexible armor by some reason or another.

If an option isn't a real choice, removing it is a good idea, reducing bloat.

>You always go for the heaviest your class can wear unless you have some specific ability to get a bonus for wearing lighter armour.

Or unless you have a set of magic armor that is of a lower grade, but its enhancement bonus makes it as good as the heaviest armor you can wear; i.e., half-plate +1 is just as good as full plate for a fraction of the weight.

Or unless you have a set of magic armor that provides a worse AC bonus, but its magical effect is good enough/cool enough that you don't mind the lower hit; i.e., I don't care how much better off I'd be in full plate, if I get my hands on a set of dragon scale, I'm wearing it.

Side note, how in God's name have you people not remembered that fucking magic exists in D&D? You're going on about class benefits and stuff while completely forgetting boss stuff like Efreeti chain, armor of the deep, the aforementioned dragon scale armor, and so on.

The whole point was making mundane armor choice matter without magic.

Related question:

In the context of D&D and its offspring, how would you "fix" armor without also having to rewrite every NPC stat block?

That's only a problem in shitfinder.

> AC deflecting blows
> more HP
don't perpetuate the cancer

The two most obvious options would be either different resistances for different damage types, or more exact and significant impediments from wearing heavier armors.The fact of the matter is that irl plate did ultimately take over until guns rolled around, and actually in OG D&D it was stated that most adventurers didn't bother with heavy armors because magic effectively had the same impact on the development of armors as guns did; which is why it's armors sort of piddle around with minimal differences between the two, and then suddenly jump up to the "Platemail," which was not just a misnamed suit of plates, as many people erroneously assume, but indeed more of an iron-man situation where the plates were all fitted and fastened together.

A summarized version of my house-rules would go something like this:
Padded
> DR 2/Blunt, Piercing, Energy. -0 AP
Leather
> DR 4/Blunt, Energy. -1 AP
Mail
> DR 8/Blunt, Piercing, Energy. -2 AP
Plate
> DR 12/Blunt, Energy. -4 AP

With DR being halved against any listed damage types, and AP being subtracted from any check rolled for actions related to mobility, subtly, or spell-casting; climbing, running, sneaking, and of course casting spells.

Yeah but Pathfinder removed all the unique armors and magic marts were a requirement in 3.pf games. Armor means more now because it takes a while to afford it and magical armor isn't just applying any benefit to any armor. I have had the same experience with other games that do armor right.

That said, I think D&D should wildly change their HP calculation. HP should be a combination of Constitution, Class, Armor, and Enhancements. That way armor is *both* an abstraction for how hard it is to land a blow and damage reduction (by increasing HP). It also removes some of the HP abstraction complaints - X HP threshold is your armor, Y HP is your class, and Z HP is your toughness. It also allows shocking grasp to be "ignore metal armor HP" and damage could be split between pools where only your Constitution pool being at 0 means death.

The whole point is that no one is going to wear mundane armor if there is a magic armor choice that is around as good.

>Yeah but Pathfinder removed all the unique armors

I gots me an SRD says different.

paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/coreRulebook/magicItems/armor.html

Banded mail of luck, demon armor, dragonhide plate, mithral full plate of speed, all of them are listed there, and I presume that there's more beyond just the core rulebook.

However, you should be playing 5e, not Pathfinder.

> It also allows shocking grasp to be "ignore metal armor HP"

You do know that even in a suit of full plate, the actual metal isn't touching you, right? Except possibly in the helmet. Otherwise you generally wear several layers of cloth underneath the armor that is perfectly justified in negating any additional damage from shocking grasp.

Though on that note, metal only conducts electricity, it doesn't enhance it in any way. And it's actually not nearly as good as conducting electricity as the human body is regardless.

You're getting a bit too granular, is my point.

Heavier armour was always better irl, at least for battle itself. There's literally nothing wrong with that, if anything what D&D and a lot of other games do wrong is making you wear an inferior armor fo reasons not related to price or availability.

Since level zero every character should always be able to wear the heavier armour he can afford to pay and find. Only in situations unrelated to combat should lesser armor be considered.

Not to mention that armour makes no sense to begin with. Ring mail and studded leather???
And the illustrations make little sense as well. Research is not the strong suit of their artists.

I'm using a classic D&D example. In reality full plate armor would be safer than light leather armor with magical lightning, but here we are.

I'm just saying making HP more granular fixes the AC and HP abstraction complaint and opens more mecanical interactions. For example:

Your "toughness" HP = 10 + your constitution modifier.

Your class gives HD (or average) each level. When this pool is at 0 you have some debuff condition like exhaustion.

Your armor gives some HP, let's say 20 for plate. At 0HP there is damage to the armor requiring time and effort (or magic) to fix.

The heavy armor could also replenish itself for 4HP/round even at 0 armor HP, while light armor could replenish at 1HP/round. Class abilities/spells could ignore armor or deal double damage to armor. Magic enhancement could fiddle with armor HP, special materials could increase regen. Stuff like that.

The key is in making sure HP as a whole is lowered to make room for armor HP and not just add it on top.

>Your armor gives some HP, let's say 20 for plate

So it's only good for about two hits?

>The heavy armor could also replenish itself for 4HP/round even at 0 armor HP, while light armor could replenish at 1HP/round

...the armor regenerates?

I think you're better off making the armor add DR rather than HP.

I've considered cutting armor out all together save for magic armor. There seems little point to it really, since nothing seems to work well for my tables needs.

>you're removing options. A game should always be about choices.
And 3.pf's biggest problem is that it has "choices", but some of those choices are objectively wrong and do not actually work.
The entire AC system in 3.PF is shit.

Fucking this.

Trying to force choices and subsystems everywhere begets more complex mechanics. Unless you want to try making the game more simulationist (and although I dislike that, you're free to have that preference), there's really no point in adding more mechanics for the sake of a mechanic that already does its job well. There's a reason armor and weapon rules have been becoming more and more simple, as the editions went.

That said, if I wanted to do it...

Since I'm a gamist shit, my idea would be for the player to set the "weight" of the character (either by selecting how heavy armor he wears, or leaving that up to the narrative); heavy characters move slower, but resist forced movement effects better (including shit like traps that try to slide/push you down into spikes), and possibly move others better (including busting doors open).

This'd make their actual fighting/adventuring style different, instead of it just being a shitty blunt/piercing/slashing RPS.

HEMA D&D reporting.

My best answer is that if you want to just balance, impose a strength requirement. If you want armor as a better function of what it is, you have the overhaul the whole thing because DC is a fast mechanic but it's retarded.

Better option is the make your armor a modifier of evasion (which it is now) and also a modifier on damage taken/ ease of attacking.

Example. Full plate is best for deflecting arrows, swords, and spears, which can do almost nothing unless you call shot or have a feat for grappling with your weapon. Full plate has a damage reduction against hammers better than being bareskinned, but its not a lot better than leather against blunt, and it has a hitpoint pool. When the pool runs out, armor is broken and now doesn't block well and slows you more. Nothing has armor against normal or heavy crossbows. Full plate gives you a slight disadvantage when you attack, maybe a -2 without trait and a -1 with trait, representing limited range of motion. Leather doesn't have that, but doesn't deflect normal arrows and takes damage from swords and spears the same as plate takes damage from hammers.

In short, lots of specific beardy rules, or a hard and fast one that encourages minmax.

You don't.
You just don't
If you want to fix a thing, you get to rebalance for it. Don't be lazy.

>A basic idea would be trying to make everything on each Armour tier (Light/Heavy, or Light/Medium/Heavy) roughly equivalent. Even if some have higher AC than others, the other armour available has alternate benefits and bonuses to even up the difference.
In other words weaken the warrior class even further.

Would the rest of this be of interest?

You could jack the system from Star Wars Saga where you have some inherent AC bonuses from your class and character level, and when wearing armor you either use the armor's bonus or your own AC. Armor in general is also expensive, but provides some cool shit like DR to energy or environmental protection.

Fuck realism. All armour is Light, Medium or Heavy and provides the same AC bonus.

Each armour subtype is given traits. Maybe full plate gives you DR, whatever.

There you go. Balanced, creates choices, each armour type has its own identity. It'll make the people whining about realism furious, but fuck realism if it creates interesting choices for characters.

I just threw a number out there, and considering all HP should be greatly reduced 20 isn't a bad number for nonmagical armor.

The armor regenerates as a function of damaged armor still being useful. In real life damaged armor results in a bunch of problems and likely means you are injured too, however the armor isn't useless because one spot is damaged. This represents that.

No, I think he's talking about all Heavy (or Medium, or Light) armor being more or less similarly. (So, like, Leather armor has roughly the same AC as Padded armor, but maybe padded has +1 AC but it sucks when trying to climb?)

*All armour of the same tier provides the same AC bonus

To clarify

Half the suggestions in this thread just seem vastly overcomplicated and pointless. I'd prefer removing the mechanic entirely than that layers of HP shit.

It works fine as a simple abstraction, just leave it as that.

>I've never seen a version of D&D where choice of armour is actually meaningful. You always go for the heaviest your class can wear unless you have some specific ability to get a bonus for wearing lighter armour.
>There's no real choice there, there's basically always an optimal choice and as time goes on a few armour types remain relevant while the rest go unused.
Isn't that the fabled "realism"? There's plenty of people here who say if you're not covering every square inch of body in french heavy cavalry full plate, you'll certainly die at a sharp glance.

I think resistance/vulnerability to certain damage types coupled with imposing advantage/disadvantage on certain things are probably the easiest way to meaningfully differentiate armours in 5e.

D&D is a glorified wargame, the HP and damage mechanics make any meaningful realism when it comes to armour completely out of place.

Keep them abstract or play something else, otherwise you're like one of those autists who think that kids cartoons would be better with more gore, without remembering that there are plenty of options already available for grownups.

>The question is, how could you fix that?

By deleting Kike Mearls, Monte Cuck, Sage LaTorra and Adam Kuckbels from the universe.,they have fucked up role-playing games with their reckless faggotry. Gygax is already dead and I hope there is a hell and he is in it, same with Dave Arseson and the other fuckcocks who made Ad&d. The 3.5 devs all hopefully will get brain cancer in the next few years in return doe the cancer,they have caused on the RPG community. Same with SKR and the nu male cunt who based weapon cord rules on his faggy inability to flip a mouse cord around. I hope they all get multiple,sclerosis. Fucking pieces of shit.

An insightful and meaningful post, user.

You want to make a minigame out of picking armor. You want the various kinds of light/medium/heavy armor to be different without any being better or worse than the others. The problem is that that's impossible. The minigame of which armor to pick will be quickly solved, and the end result will be more complexity for no benefit to enjoyment of the game.

Remember that one UA article they wrote about feats? It had something in it that I agree with a lot: be extremely careful of introducing a new rule that will make every single turn more complicated. A feat that makes every attack require three dice rolls instead of two is a badly designed feat. Similarly, making armor more complicated, with every kind of mindane armor having weird unique properties that can't be expressed as one number, bogs the game down. It's not a matter of new players being dumb, though that is something to consider. It's the fact that this shit takes time for everyone, from the brightest to the dullest, and is a waste of time for everyone.

Needs a fundamental rework of how the whole AC system works. Whether a hit lands or not should come down to agility/parry/blocking from the defender, which heavier armor would moderately impede. If you roll a hit, barely making it would let the defender choose a good place for the hit to land, and making a hit with lots to spare lets the attacker choose where the hit lands. The type of armor covering the place where the hit lands then mitigates damage. You hit someone wearing a breast plate in the chest, it does little to no damage, as if they were wearing full plate. You hit someone wearing a breast plate in the arm, it does damage like they had no armor at all. (Good chance it disables that arm)

TLDR: Armor becomes DR for the body parts it covers, but if anything makes it easier to hit in the first place.

But can't that logic be applied identically to... Basically every choice anyone ever makes in RPGs? All of them are 'solved' sooner or later, but that doesn't mean nobody ever uses the non-optimal choices. If the gap is small enough, you'll get a pretty even distribution.

t. Armchair HEMA nerd

So what's the best armor and damage system out there in terms of meaningful decision making?

Depends on the person making the decision.

>You always go for the heaviest your class can wear unless you have some specific ability to get a bonus for wearing lighter armour.
>There's no real choice there, there's basically always an optimal choice and as time goes on a few armour types remain relevant while the rest go unused.

That's called realism, m8. Wear as much armor as you possibly can up to the point where it becomes too encumbering, then stop.

>Implying there is no objective best system
I'm not asking for opinions, bud.

The metrics for determining which system is 'best' vary from person to person.

You're asking for opinions, you just didn't realize it.

I had a party who believed in this train of thought and 4/5 decked themselves out in the heaviest armor they could find.

They failed to take into account how the armor affects your speed, climbing, swimming and how enemies could take advantage of this inherent weakness.

Not to mention you can't sleep in that shit and it takes two to out on a set. Sure they ran in and took volleys of arrows from brigands like it was nothing to steal some loot but a lot got away due to the players restricted movement.

Then the brigands followed them back to their HQ while hiding in bushes and shit, sneaking around them until nighttime. When lights went out they made their move and were spotted, not that it mattered because the parties ac as a whole was shit because they weren't given 45 minutes to don't on their armorm

Cut out the badly suboptimal armors and provide a big table of historical equivalents for the 6 or 7 you're left with. D&D isn't a detailed enough simulation to go much further -- if you want to introduce more mechanics, they're going to feel awkwardly bolted on.

While we're at it, change the speed reduction shit so that the athlete in a breastplate isn't slower than the 7 str wizard.

In OD&D you cross-referenced your opponents weapon against your armor on a chart to find the AC.

It only takes a couple of house rules to make suits of armor feel differnt than others. Give platemail DR 10 against slashing, DR 5 bludgeoning, and no DR against pericing. That's just the first example that comes to mind, I'm sure you can work that out for every suit across the board.

>While we're at it, change the speed reduction shit so that the athlete in a breastplate isn't slower than the 7 str wizard.
You should play 5e

>There's no real choice there, there's basically always an optimal choice and as time goes on a few armour types remain relevant while the rest go unused.

But that is how it works in real life too.

If everything in D&D worked like in real life, EVERYONE except rogues would be walking around in full plate. There is NO REASON not to use full plate, because full plate is superior to EVERYTHING.

The only meaningful distinction in armours is where full plate limits your range of movement (you can no longer raise your arms above you head completely) but grants you no restrictions in actual moving (you can run marathons in full plate), the thinner but looser armours like mail, brigandine etc. give you a greater range of movement (because they're little bits of metal instead of a full metal exoskeleton) but they hang from your shoulders, thus slowing you down when you run.

I´m working on a homebrew.

Long story short, there´s both wounds (actual damage you can take, PCs will have 2-3 with 1 or 4 being only fringe cases) and Stamina (PCs tend to have 12-19). Stamina is a mix of energy, luck, enthusiasm, etc., and when it reaches 0, then you start losing wounds. The way you take damage is different for both..

Now, you can also use Stamina to boost dice rolls. Challenges, attack and defense rolls. I´m not sure about damage rolls yet.

Wearing heavy armor reduces significantly Stamina loss (you shrug off hits much easier) and SIGNIFICANTLY reduces your CHANCE to suffer wounds, and also tends to make the wounds you do take a little lighter (it´s hard to get hurt when wearing armor, but if something does go through it then you´re still getting hurt).

Wearing armor reduces your maximum Stamina, the heavier the armor the more Stamina you lose. This allows light and fast characters to move around like crazy or to dodge a lot, and heavy bulky guys to hold their ground much more easily but at the cost of reduced mobility/flexibility of options.

What do you think?

Holy crackers, this image is wrong

Metal conducts magic, similar to electricity. Therefore, wearing armours with metal in it, starting with studded leather (ew) all the way to plate, gives increasingly large penalties to spellcasting and magic defense.

Make it provide damage reduction and penalize AC.
Different weapons have different armor piercing values, adding an extra layer of diversity when it comes to weapon choice.

That's just needlessly punishing martial and hybrid characters.

Aye, but it WOULD make picking armour a meaningful choice.

Caster imbalance is a problem that needs to be fixed in most DnD clones anyway.

I vaguely remember back in ad&d there were rules regarding weapon type vs armor type

It pretty much ruins any hybrid class. Bards use metal weapons, paladins and rangers would be fucked, magus would be shit in a bucket.

It doesn't make the choice meaningful at all. It just punishes people for trying to use both magic and metal for no mechanical benefit to the game.

The problem is that D&D works better as an exploration game than a combat game in most editions. Bloating combat options doesn't really play to the strengths of the game imo, which why I don't really like 3.PF and 5e. 4e, being designed for combat, doesn't have this issue.

Any decent GM will include scenarios where your players need to disrobe fast, or face certain doom. Normally, lighter armour is easier to don and take off.

t. Forgefaggot

You have to really envision these specific armors as a DM to make them work in interesting ways within the campaign.

I once had a Ranger get stuck on a spike because the spike had pierced through his chainmail and was now "tangled" within it.

Plus plate armor is PLATE ARMOR, it's heavy, bulky, and massive. I usually have penalties to trying to get up after being knocked prone and of course in places like chasms and caves the footsteps echo and create all kinds of noise.

I also add in a basic durability system with heavier/more expensive armors costing more to maintain than simpler ones.

>it's heavy, bulky, and massive
It really isn't but this is d&d so who cares I guess.

Have you ever seen people move in plate armor? It's incredibly awkward.

You might want to visit a museum or something.

>Plus plate armor is PLATE ARMOR, it's heavy, bulky, and massive. I usually have penalties to trying to get up after being knocked prone and of course in places like chasms and caves the footsteps echo and create all kinds of noise.

Yes, plate armour is heavy, bulky and massive. No it doesn't immobilize you when you fall you fucking retard, because plate armour supports itself. It is rigid. It is only heavy when you are carrying it unassembled. When you don it on, it is lighter than any other metal armour because IT FUCKING CARRIES ITSELF. You can run in it. It was a common thing for knights to dick around in plate armour on ladders for shit and giggles.

You're right about it making noise though.

And it was a common tactic that when a knight was knocked from horse back he could be easily silenced because he had a harder time getting up than someone dressed in lighter armor.

I like how Ryuutama lets you take penalties on armor to make it cheaper. Like you can pick up a hauberk for a song, but then everyone makes fun of you because it's rusty and a decade out of fashion.

That has nothing to do with the armour, you retard. Falling off a horse hurts.

In fact, heavier armour would make it easier to get back on your feet because the padding stops you from BREAKING YOUR FUCKING SPINE.

Leather armor? Studded leather? No gambeson? No lamellar armors? A fucking steel shield and no round shield?! I'm fucking triggered, lucky I never touched D&D ever!

please stop talking about things you know nothing about.

I have and it's nowhere near to what you're describing. A penalty to get up might be appropriate if you're fighting in wet sticky mud or something but not under normal conditions, that's for sure.

>Have you ever seen fat unfit American nerdy man-pig-people move in cheap LARP plate armor? It's incredibly awkward.

Not nearly as awkward as you make it to be. How would you combat in armor if you couldn't move normally? You think people would have used plate armor, if it had been incredibly hard to move in it?

Don't get me started on the kiteshield being called tower shield...

That's it. I'm making sure I will burn every single D&D book I ever see from now on.

Excuses and dodging reality. You can wear 50lb of equipment in modern times and believe me, you will feel the weight of it.

Great response faggot.

I would like to see you in full plate armor get up at the same speed and grace as someone unarmored.

Europoor.

I'm saying that when it comes down to the basic principle of dexterity, someone who is not wearing armor vs. someone who is wearing 50lbs+ of armor is going to have an advantage when it comes to dexterous based movements.

The only awkward thing about moving in plate armour is that you lack some range of movement in your limbs - which is as much a negative as a positive, because NO ONE can dislocate your arms and legs because the metal plates will not allow your limbs to bend that way.

>A penalty to get up might be appropriate if you're fighting in wet sticky mud
Such a penalty would be appropriate regardless of what you're wearing.

Plate armor is light, comfortable, and allows for almost a full range of motion. Unless it's jousting armor. Which should never be worn in a field environment. note that I said jousting armor, not cavaliers armor, they're different things.

It is, however, loud as shit. You're not sneaking up on anyone unless you're walking on loam and they're occupied by a skald trying to learn how to play bagpipes.

>Excuses and dodging reality. You can wear 50lb of equipment in modern times and believe me, you will feel the weight of it.
You retard. How do you not understand that plate armour is RIGID and CARRIES ITSELF?

It feels like you're wearing nothing at all!

Please stop talking about things you don't understand. Your willful ignorance physically hurts.

To simplify what you're saying, give armor its own HP and have the HP be deducted from it when penetrated like in Dwarf Fortress. That way, you don't run into the issue of potions of healing "healing" your plate.

Then again, 5.0 made it so that constructs (or at least warforged) are effected by healing, so what do I know.

>someone who is not wearing armor vs. someone who is wearing 50lbs+ of armor is going to have an advantage when it comes to dexterous based movements.

That I can accept, but don't go around thinking you couldn't be dexterous in armor. What should be the most critical aspect is endurance, since in the long run that extra mass is going to be insane combined with the fact it's hot as hell to combat in full set.

You're right 50lbs of armor has 0 effect and bearing at how agile you can be.

Fag European

In order to balance out the way the armor classes I work it is necessary to instill some penalties regarding dexterous based actions while donning heavier classes of armor vs. someone in lighter/unarmored classes.

I never thought to include endurance, but that could be next level.

Well out of historical accuracy, it's important to note the TRUE weaknesses of plate armour.
Heat, and (lack of) vision.
Plate armour is okay when you're not wearing a helmet, and it's doable when you're wearing a helmet with your visor up.
But when you put your visor down - oh boy. You won't see shit, and you'll be sweating like a pig in a sauna. All that heat will be trapped inside that metal shell.

If a wizard asks you what kind of enchantments you want on your plate, be smart.

Ask for air conditioning, and for some kind of "true vision" blabla bullshit on your helmet so you can see straight through the thing as if you're wearing nothing at all.

i'm not even particularily fit and i can run 5km with a rifle, plate carrier, ruck, sleeping kit, stretcher and my medical shit without too much of an issue, that stuff usually clocks in at 35kg total, plus ammo.

obstacles courses don't become impossible either, and i've even managed to swim like 50 yards in it. and modern armour is way worse fitted to your body than memeieval shit.

They took it from C.H.A.I.N.M.A.I.L and other wargames. Those games differentiated between lightly armored mobile forces and heavily armored shock troops, such as the French men at arms which advanced at Agincourt. Many men were aggregated into a single battle unit, from which we get Hit Points, Armor Class, morale, and other concepts. They were always aggregate, so they will forever be spotty when applied to individual characters, especially Weirdfinder races. Playing a single character should grant you much more detail than this, except that the DM then has to manage all that detail fairly, and it would be too hard.

Are you some twelve year old from some third world country? Because I get the idea that you don't understand what we're saying at all.