I'm not experienced enough with 5e to know better...

But could a rapier even penetrate full plate in real life?

No one with rapiers, dagger or other "finesse weapons" gives a shit about penetrating armor. It's all about hitting unprotected spots or joints.

>CON modifier + armor AC is DR
>10 CON wearing chainmail is 15 DR
>20 CON wearing chainmail is 20 DR
>getting hit with a longsword at 20 STR is a maximum of 13 damage; even the blunt force trauma is completely negated by little more than metal links and rock-hard pecs

What is 20 STR in real terms?

What about adding in weapon specializations, or critical hits, etc?

Don't. Please don't. You have no idea what you're doing.

To my understanding, 20 STR is the peak of human ability, on the cusp of superhuman. Think Conan the Barbarian or Captain America, I guess.

Also, weapon specialisations don't add enough damage to make much of a difference. And if you're relying on (the inherently rare) critical hits, you're a moron.

As said, this will absolutely wreck the balance of the game. One simple example, a starting character can easily have 14-15 CON and start with Chain Mail (16 AC, effectively +6 in your metric) thus they'd have 8 DR, or 9 if they have a 16-17 starting CON. That means that the vast majority of attacks against them will deal no damage at all, and the few that do penetrate their DR will deal piddling amounts in an edition where HP bloat is one of the CORE PROBLEMS.

A second example, iterative attacks mean far, FAR less since they individually rarely penetrate DR, but cantrips become goddamn godly because they're a single attack so an Evoker Wizard or Warlock suddenly becomes the best at-will damage in the bloody game.

A third example, a character in plate mail with 20 Constitution has 13 DR, meaning that a STR 20 opponent with a longsword literally can't hurt them unless they roll a critical hit.

Your idea would easily unbalance the whole game in ways you never even intended but that your players will almost certainly realize and exploit. So don't do it.

I'm pretty sure he means the AC modifier for armor.
So, more like
>10 CON wearing chainmail is 5 DR
>20 CON wearing chainmail is 10 DR.
>Getting hit with a longsword at 20 STR is a maximum of 13 damage, so at most your dealing 3 damage.

Ahhh, that makes considerably more sense.
Still a problem though.

Let me put it to you this way mate. Let's say we're talking about a dude with 16 CON and he's wearing leather armor. This dude would have a DR of 14.

A STR 20 enemy, wielding a greatsword, would deal 2d6+5 damage, or roughly 12 damage per swing on average. Against this character, this person would deal 0 damage to them on average. If we assume he rolls high, he'd only deal about 3 damage.

Combat will take longer, creatures with a shitload of HP will also be harder to kill, and mages will be able to offset their shitty health while also bolstering their DR through spells that resistance on top of it.

If you don't know what you're doing, don't do it.

he's right

sadly[spoiler/]

he's right

sadly

>Never try to make the system your own
Either never leave this board, or drink all the bleach.

Oh come on, that's just plain silly thing to say. No game is shipped complete and all of them need fine tuning to suit your and your group's tastes better. The entire hobby started from a collection of houserules for a wargame fer chrissakes!

Not OP, but this seems like a nice and angry thread to put my potential houserule in. Like OP, it deals with hit points. It also makes combat more lethal.
Hit points are now equal to your con score + proficiency. Full stop. Hit Dice are now Soak Dice - your ability to reduce incoming damage. Not sure yet how many a PC will end up getting, but it'll be probably less than level. When struck, you roll your soak against the damage, total up the dice, and that's how much of the incoming damage you ignore. You can do this a number of times equal to your con mod before needing a five minute rest. Or 15 minute. Maybe 30.
Fighters and Barbarians obviously get a bonus to the number of times they can do this before they need a break. Not sure yet, but probably equal to proficiency.
Thoughts, complaints, poorly written insults?

You also shouldn't be houseruling until you're actually familiar with the source material.

So how is this that different to regular HP?

First, it makes your ability to take damage just as swingy as the damage.
Second, I, Dumbass, did forget to mention that Crits bypass soak. I was looking at a possible scale of penalties from HP damage, ranging from a general -2 to all actions to Disadvantage to losing an action per turn.
Third, I should probably make it so that your con mod is not added to soak rolls.
fourth: it's not very different at all. It's simply a modified vitality/wounds system.

Shit meant

Semi experienced 5e DM here.. havent gotten further than lvl 7 with my party and their hp seems fine .. what is this HP bloat problem about ?

In my experience swingy damage is pretty unpleasant to play with, if you can't mitigate it reliably.

Its not the PC's who will bloat. Its the monsters

>not experienced with 5e
>making houserules
are you retarded or something

What does the natural 10 AC do? Or alternate calculations like Barbarian's and Monk's Unarmored Defense? Or Mage Armor?

Does it just mean that all DEX builds are 10% easier to hit but now get 2 DR because of studded leather armor?

Health Bloat happens in 5e with PCs in the higher levels, but it's only really remarkable if they're fighting shittier enemies. If they're fighting what's appropriate for their level they'll be taking so much damage that having 200+ HP won't be noticed too much
It also feels like an issue when the DM decides to only have one battle per day, in which the PCs can ditch all of their resources without any fear of being caught with their pants down
Don't be like my DM and have fucking 1-2 fights per day, it's just pathetic

It would make damage reduction extremely significant at low levels.
A studded leater /w 12 AC, even if you have a neutral CON-score, would mean that trying to avoid getting hit by Goblins & Bandits would be nearly pointless, since they can only damage you on a nat 20.
Even an orc with 1d12 Greataxe + 3 str could only damage you on a dam roll of 10, 11 or 12, if it wasn't critting.

In my experience adding complexity to an existing game just detracts from it. This sounds like one more thing you have to remember and track in combat, which will slow combat down and make it feel less like action and more like math.

Wait - Hitpoints gained pr. lvl are Con+prof ?
Or does you hp only increase when you get more CON or a higher prof?

What if they reduce everything's AC? It might make the game feel much deadlier and make armor much more important. Honestly,I think what OP proposes is a much more believable system than what's in the game.

Your problem is that you treat AC like a binary hit/miss thing. Not every "miss" needs to be the character wildly swinging and not connecting, and not every "hit" needs to pierce the plate mail and spill their guts out.

You know you could talk to your DM about the combat not being engaging enough for you right?

>opponent with a longsword literally can't hurt them unless they roll a critical hit
That's realistic, though. But yeah, honestly, while I think OP'd ideas are interesting, I don't think 5e is the placeto try them out. They'd be better off just creating a new system at that point.

>level 1 player can have at most 18 hp
>level 20 player can have at most 26 hp (30 if barbarian)
>at most 5-7 hit dice can be used to resist damage
>damage scales so high it'll result in everything dying instantly due to high level spells/GWM fighter/barbarian/paladins

I tried, he responded with raising the enemy CR higher and shoving in lots of enemies that fuck with player stats

This. Can be the start of a new system, not a fix to 5e because of all interactions between its subsystems.

>1st rule of the houserules: Don't do it until you understand the system.
fixed
i recall hearing an important tip about art a while back, and i feel like it's very helpful in a lot of other creative cases: you can't successfully break the rules without first knowing the rules
in art, that means not trying to come up with some wacky and unique 'style' until you know why that wacky style will work, and how to make it work.
in gaming, it means you should be more intimately familiar with how your game's mechanics work before you start fucking with them - maybe when you know them well enough, you'll be able to understand why the rules are the way they are, and uncover any actual issues behind them, which you can then fix.
blindly applying 'fixes' without understanding the rules you're fixing is how you just break things instead.

i see a lot of that in ss13 coding, funnily enough. people doing things without understanding the game mechanics or why those game mechanics are in place, or without looking at the code and what it does.
for instance, our server once had a mapper who barely understood either the game or code, and in trying to fix a transport shuttle not working properly, set both of its designated areas on the map to be the exact same subtype and therefore broke it even further while proclaiming that he'd found the solution. he didn't even test it, he was so sure.
as a result, the shuttle was trying to move to itself.

it really isn't. you still take bruises and injury from a sword hitting your chain, even if you aren't cut.
furthermore OP's change would affect all weapons equally - a wooden club or a metal mace or a long spear is going to bounce off of all armour like styrofoam, just as a sword apparently would.

HP only increases when con score increases or when proficiency bonus increases. You still get hit dice (at a lower rate than 1/level), and when you take damage, you roll them to see how much of that damage you just ignore or turn into less-lethal damage.
I mostly came up with this potential houserule to solve the meatpoints argument.

Then let's possibly brain storm it. It's a lot better than OP's shit.
I mean, it's still shit, but a higher grade.

eh if you want to make it more lethal just buff enemy damage and lower enemy HP.
Directly making people's HP shittier can sometimes make them feel worse, my friend once tried to make 5e more balanced by cutting 20% out of our HP after 3 sessions, which lead to a feeling of hostility towards him

If you have no experience in designing tabletop games, most of your houserules are going to be reactionary, ineffective, and cause more problems than solutions at the table.

Nobody is saying you can't, but you're better off just following the rules, or using a game that's better designed if you feel as though the rules are inadequate.

Experimentation is never a bad thing as long as you acknowledge it for what it is. If you try something and it turns out badly, drop it. If it works well, you keep it. If you don't try tweaking things in the first place you'll never get to that "point when you're experienced enough". Houserules only become a problem when you convince yourself that they will make the game unequivocally better and stick to them fervently, ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

Why not go Pillars of Eternity? PC have a good chunk of Stamina (about 3x or more HP) and HP. At the end of each battle St is drained to heal HP. This way each battle you could start at max HP but still can be dangerous since you can be knocked out but not outright killed and if KO doesn't mean end of the day because you can heal from this reserve to keep going.

D&D outside of 4E didn't have balance in the first place, so I fail to see the issue.

If the armor they were wearing was only chainmail, then, according to OP's suggested homebrew, they should still be able to hurt them without rolling a crit.
Like said, 13 DR requires 20 Con and plate mail.

(and your sword isn't going to cut through plate mail)
>inb4 meat points
I know, but honestly I'd prefer something like armor offering near full protection.

If you want to experiment, play more than one system and see how they handle things differently.

You're not wrong, but there's a big difference between "don't be afraid to customize the system to see what fits you best" and "if you don't like it use another system".

No, if you don't like the way that a particular system handles something, you're honestly better off either playing it forward for the sake of flow or trying your luck in another system that handles the issue better.

I'll admit, I'm a tad biased against houseruling since coming from a group that played 3.PF almost exclusively, but the fact of the matter is that even if the game is dogshit, it's generally dogshit that's working as intended and people generally make poor game designers, especially if they're unable to handle criticism or people breaking the system over its knee utilizing their house rules.

The issue is that monsters that are already benefiting from HP bloat would also have DR stacked on top, making them even more difficult to kill while also making combat last for-fucking-ever.

If resistance still works as intended (half damage), then that means your damage output becomes even shittier and you're dealing a max of 1-2 points of damage per swing even if you could theoretically overcome their DR with your base damage.

It's shit.

>D&D outside of 4E didn't have balance in the first place, so I fail to see the issue.
>Doesn't remember separate experience charts
Oh shit, schools out right now, isn't it?

You need to go do your fucking homework, kid.

Yeah, you are biased. 3.PF is a different ball game from 5e (and from many other systems). Its mechanics are tightly interlocking in a way that those of a more modular system like 5e just aren't. 5e is meant to be customized; the DMG actively encourages this. 3.PF is designed to run in a specific way, and all the mechanics contribute to that. It and maybe 4e are pretty much the only non-modular editions of D&D.

3.PF is 5e if 5e actually had options beyond the PHB and a handful of supplements. It's not even modular, it's just that there's so little content that you can basically swap it out with practically anything you want and it won't matter one bit because the game ultimately has nothing to interfere with it.

It's not like OD&D where the rulebook had like 200 pages of optional rules that you could freely slot in and out whenever it comes up during a campaign or even like a classless system like WoD where you can purchase abilities separately whenever you want, so long as you have the points to spend on them.

It's kinda like having a puzzle made of putty, where the picture is all one color. It doesn't really matter what order you slot the pieces in because they're designed to fit in any order.

But if monsters don't get the DR, even with changed AC? This way you would deal a good damage on their HP bloat, and being easier to hit.

Not really, it'd just mean that PC's would have less to fear and combat would lose even more bite than it already has.

It's not like being able to hit them would make that 150HP go away faster.

You'd fuck over the entire balance of the game. If you want to implement DR into your game, do it based off armor flat. Nothing major. Light Armor: DR1, Medium armor: DR2, Heavy armor DR3
With that said you fuck your balance still.
GL with that trash.