ARMOUR

...how long does combat take?

>Armour as ablative HP
Not very realistic, armour is more binary than that. It can take a bajillion hits until it takes one that's actually strong enough to punch through.

>Armour as bonus to defense
Depends on how damage and defense works in the first place.

>Armor as damage reduction
Sure, if the reduction is massive.
HUGE armour values and big damage values +low hp values are more realistic than 90% of all rpg systems since it models being more or less immune to puny hits but dying instantly if you get knocked on the head with something that's strong enough to penetrate the armour.

>Something else entirely
Yes. Once armour develops to the point of plate armour, fighting and killing men in armour is more about controlling and subduing your opponent than wailing endlessly on him, he's trying to kill you back, after all.

Archaeological evidence shows that most people who got killed wearing plate armour got knocked over and then stabbed through the visor, or simply had their helmets pulled off and their throats cut and similar.

In an ideal system armour should be very effective as long as you are actively defending yourself, and lose tons of effectiveness if you get incapacitated or immobilized somehow.

Ideally that should be the major point of MOST fighting systems, it's hard to kill someone who's defending themselves if you are being careful, and very easy once they can't.

This would be great if you had a computer running the numbers for you somehow

not that long, 20 seconds to 2 minutes for a 1vs1

because of how most armors are statted, you can see with a quick glance that you either cut through completely or , in case of most metal armor, dont do any cutting at all.

maybe it also has something to do with my insane quick calculation skills.

It's not that hard if you get used to it, and a loss of precision of around +/- 20% damage never bothered anyone in my group

>ablative HP
wut

Basically armor adds extra HP that are eliminated before the character takes damage.

Think like power armor having it's own HP in a lot of games, being destroyed before the pilot.

Alright, thanks user.

FPBP

So, true Fallout?

I use a one roll mechanic, so armor does both: increase HP and DR. Damage is fixed damage (by weapon) plus (rolled attack minus AC, called variable damage). Some armor better improve AC while others grant better extra HP instead.

I think the subtraction adds little time to attack resolution since I removed the damage roll.

Armor is just decoration in any setting with female martials. It exists purely to look cool, simulationism is inherently autistic and flawed.

we use systems without HP bloat, so fights still go quite quickly if both parties use weapons that are made to be used against eachother's defensive power.

Scoring a crit through a gap in the armor can be fucking nasty even in heavily armored combat.
an average PC using a longsword and scoring a single crit causes negative HP on an unarmored average opponent, and you have to take the fact into consideration that said average person would be able to do 2-3 attacks with this setup.

I only use so many different stats and mechanical effects because I have a boner for equipment customization instead of just getting the next best piece of weapons/armor

Practical looking armor is MUCH sexier looking than your shitty boobplate.

If you're gay.

Real patricians are in the Dexgirl rapier + light armor appreciation master race.

waifufags get out

some of us prefer to work with characters that are more than their appearance

>playing male characters
>probably plays female characters as straight

You're a fag, aren'tcha?

I want /a/ to leave.

only if you gonna suck my dick bitchboi

>Having a fetish for competent, properly equipped women

Mah nigga.

I'd rather have the characters looking like something that represents their experience in what they do and their ability to choose the right equipment for the job

So, a man? Because as someone who's actually served in the military I can tell you that a woman tank is a godawful idea.

Don't lie, you haven't been able to see it over your flab for years. Lesbian PC master race or GTFO gaming.

You don't have to try to justify your shit taste f.a.m.

reading comprehension

>right equipment for the job of warrior
>not a penis

I shiggity diggity doo.

>Because as someone who's actually served in the military I can tell you that a woman tank is a godawful idea.

what kind of military did you serve in? no one's a "tank" in a serious combat situation, except maybe the actual tank that drives around and shoots stuff.

besides, we dont have the luxury to go about sexes here. If it has the competence and abilities, I dont give a fuck if it's my grandmother doing the job. No exception.

a penis in combat is just a lump of flesh hanging between your legs that will bleed heavily if it gets hit

To be honest, I have a problem with female martials too. Not so much that they exist, but that there's no such thing as an intimidating one who doesn't look like she either lacks the muscle her armor implies she would have, or is weeb as fuck. I'd love to be proven wrong, maybe I'm just being OCD, seriously if someone has a counterexample please post, but I've just never seen a female warrior who looks SCARY and not like a supernatural being or a prostitute in plate.

Good luck getting shot in the leg and having a woman carry you out of the line of fire over her back, dumbass.

>if it has the abilities

They don't, that's the problem.

It comes with significantly more muscle mass, denser muscle mass, and literal combat drugs pumping through your bloodstream.

Once it fits the requirement, everything else doesnt matter. Rarity does not factor into it, except when you are actively looking beyond the person of the highest capability withing one group.

As a matter of fact, we know that reality is still weirder than realism, so I'm not going to let myself be limited by that when playing my games of pretend.

>They don't, that's the problem.
you underestimate human variation

He served in the playing in the backyard forces.

> HUGE armour values and big damage values +low hp values are more realistic than 90% of all rpg systems since it models being more or less immune to puny hits but dying instantly if you get knocked on the head with something that's strong enough to penetrate the armour.

Good sir, you might enjoy runequest.

Talking about a "tank" in terms of people makes me think he was a sergeant of his WoW guild.

/k/ommando here. Most realistically, like for modern day body armor, it would be damage reduction with a bit of the other two. Same could somewhat be said for past armor too.

For example, I shoot a .22 LR (and for sake of argument, it'll be 22 dmg). I am wearing AR500 (hardened steel) with a anti-spall coating which reduces damage by, let's say... 500.

That bullet hits me 1 time, no damage. It hit's me 100 times, again no damage, because each time is 10 damage, but my armor does -500 damage, reduced to -490, but since damage can't be negative it'll be converted to 0.

Of course, for heavier rounds I would need a decent trauma pad lest I want to have several fractured ribs. Skip to the ending of this video and you can see that after 50 slugs the rounds there is a sizeable dent. youtube.com/watch?v=ute-FFA4XZQ

As for the other two, bonus to defense would be shields andarmor since x% of your body is being covered by protective material. Armor as ablative HP would make sense for heavier rounds or heavier blows. While something like .22LR could hit an AR500 for a longtime until it reduces the effectiveness of armor, enough slugs or rounds from heavier hitting bullets in the same area would punch through it, like here youtube.com/watch?v=d2TBoP9Aoow

Same applies for stuff like classical and medieval armor. Slashing at chestplate with a sword will do diddly squat, hitting with a hammer will fuck the guy under it a good couple of times lest he's wearing some mail or gambeson.

So in that, think Fallout 1/2/tactics armor system, but with armor system that also has a resistance system/DT for it's own HP.

Personally, I find the more realistic damage systems to more fun, or at the very least interesting, for modern/survival games. For more antecedent eras or fantasy stuff, armor coverage might be more important. These are my personal opinions though, so what someone else might find fun is gonna be different.

>not wanting fully clad redhead gf to take the holy lands alongside you

Heretic scum.

DR isn't really accurate for modern ballistic armor vs bullet interactions. Either the bullet penetrates, effectively dealing its full damage, or it doesn't, effectively dealing no damage(except maybe some bruising).

The fact that a bullet can still break your ribs and cause internal bleeding without penetrating a vest seems like an example of DR.

True, but if the bullet actually penetrates the armor, DR stops being an accurate model. And kinetic energy isn't wholly representative of the damage when a bullet penetrates, whilst being the entire damage if the bullet is stopped by armor.

>Either the bullet penetrates, effectively dealing its full damage, or it doesn't, effectively dealing no damage

I didn't know broken ribs and internal bleeding weren't damage. Blunt force trauma still applies, especially if one isn't wearing a trauma pad or wearing quality armor.

youtube.com/watch?v=MJ910R0SIsw

"Old faithful:" armor adds to a single fixed target number that the attacker has to beat with a single roll + bonuses for the privilege of making a second roll to see how hard a blow was taken.

I favor this for the simple fact that a game is meant to be played and this makes for a very fast, very streamlined play at the table.

I've played around with an even smoother system where there would be only one roll and the damage would simply be the total attack minus the total defense, but it's proved both harder to balance and a step too simplified when it came to equipment. It's hard to differentiate different "types" when its ultimately going to reduce to a single number without having to pull in a lot of conditionals that aren't part of the core combat mechanic.

Oh, I posted a bit late.

Eh, there's some truth to this. Things like yawing and fragmentation have to be accounted for, and reduced velocity of certain rounds (like 5.56) could simply cause a bullet to needle in one side and pop out the other. Also where one in the body gets hit also is important. Getting shot in the liver or stomach isn't as bad as being shot int the heart, lungs, or spleen. There's too many variables to simply put DR as a defacto damage percentage calculator, yet too many to simply ignore DR.

So:

1. Roll to hit

2. Roll for armor penetration

3. Roll for damage

As opposed to

1. Roll to hit

2. Roll for damage

its possible, it just has to be executed properly

I had a beginning of an idea once regarding representing defense or armor in a game which would take into account partial successes and various degrees of success.

Basically instead of using numbers to represent the Defense/AC or whatever each armor would give a certain "length of protection" to its wearer.

This is not meant to represent thickness of the armor but simply to display the quality of protection in a non-numerical way.
The weapons/attacks would each have a damage length assigned which would be measured against the Defense/armor to see if it hits/penetrates.

For example a full-plate in fantasy game might give 10 cm of protection and you would draw a 10cm line on paper to represent it, somebody attacks you with something that does 7cm of damage and you check to see if it does anything.

The line itself regardless of length would be divided into 4 parts.
>If the hit length stops somewhere in the first half, nothing happens.
>If it stops somewhere in the 3rd quarter you get some damage(concussive damage, more stamina then any any actual harm in this case).
>If it stops in the fourth quarter you actually take some serious concussive damage even though the hit didn't penetrate armor.
>If the hit goes straight through armor you get some kind of serious critical wound .

I guess the same thing could be done with number but I think this visual method is easier to gauge.

This could also represent a layered defense in whicj each element (say dodging, parrying/active defense,armor) contributes to the length of the "defense length" and some attacks may bypass some elements of defense and measure against a a shorter line.

In a modern setting i guess different weapons/ammo may have different armor penetration or effect depending on if they penetrate fully or how far they partially penetrate the "defense length".

I like this concept. Maybe couple it with a Rimworld style health system, give or take to account for what game the system is in.

Not exactly.

Currently: roll atk vs AC. If atk >= AC then roll damage. Hitting is always 2 rolls and missing is always 1.

Playing with. Roll atk, subtract AC. If the result is a positive number than just apply that much damage. (against a 12 DC a 16 would do 4 damage because 16-12 = 4. An 11 would just miss.). Thus all attacks are always only 1 roll with only 1 die.

Second would be great for speeding up play and reducing/batching the actual math, especially for multiple attacks (you are making 4 attacks at +7 against an AC of 15. 15-7 is 8 so just roll 4 dice and do 1 damage for each point that any of them beat an 8. So a 14, a 12, a 5, and a 7 would be 6 dmg from the 14 and 4 from the 12 for 10 dmg, total)

At that point, though. All armors and weapons are basically just ways to "buy" points for and against the die roll, which makes it very hard to distinguish one weapon from another without either shoveling in new, barely related mechanics which ultimately just put it back to where it was to begin with.

I played a bit with different sizes of die, different numbers, out-of-combat tradeoffs, weapons that don't get an attack every turn and eventually I just gave up and went back to the first way since it's streamlined enough to be actually playable but still has enough points of differentiation to make for a usable equipment system, too.

This

I also needed an excuse to post this.

>>Armour as damage reduction
Is pretty tits, senpai.

Armor as defense/deflection works best.

You can easily refluff the attack as either missing, being expertly parried, being dodged, being absorbed or deflected by armor, etc.

Speeds up combat more then armor reduction systems because even though sometimes it requires two rolls (one for hit and one for damage), any missing roll requires no math, if its too low to hit then no damage needs to be rolled.

>What's more realistic?
An realistic one would be something like this.

1-Weapons have at least damage and penetration stat..
2-Each body part of each race (or each race for the sake of simplicity) has an penetration multiplier, damage multiplier stat and max penetration stat.
3-Armors have Penetration multiplier.

So the game works like this, when you try to damage someone:

A = (WeaponPenetration - ArmorPenetrationMultiplier)
B = (A / BodyPenetrationMultiplier) - 1

If B > 0 and 0 and > max body penetration:
Damage = max penetration * damage multiplier * damage reduction of the body part

If B < 0:
Damage = blunt trauma rules you created.

PS: Before you ask why I used multiplication when dealing with body pen multiplier but not with armor one, (WeaponPenetration - ArmorPenetrationMultiplier) is a simplified version of ( ((WeaponPenetration / ArmorPenetrationMultiplier) -1) * ArmorPenetrationMultiplier) that gives the EXACT SAME RESULT