What's your favourite armor system so far? >AC + flat damage resistance

so basically anything that tries to strike the same tier or above it is damage/2 ?

Why would't all players simply go for blunt weapons?

Always saw it as an abstraction that represented the armour absorbing all of the blow. You get hit the same damage if you get chopped in the arm wearing a cloth shirt or wearing CL20 Greater Magic Vestmented, +1 Riverine Full Plate with +9 Armour Special Abilities. It's just that the full plate takes the blow a lot more easily and is harder to deal damage against the wearer.

It's an abstract I can take onboard, or else you end up with 5e Heavy Armour Master degrees of shit where the DR becomes irrelevant unless you're wading theough boring asf mooks who shoild be fireballed.

The force needed to mangle limbs through blunt damage is a lot higher than the force needed to sever limbs or arteries through piercing/slashing damage.

Which means piercing/slashing weapons are typically just better against unarmored monsters.

this is why I like the damage soak.

the AP values can be calculated in easy as pie.
>each "tier" of armor/material/type has a higher value
>better made or specialty weapons get higher AP
>AP negates value of armor
>damage is different from AP
>a confirmed hit, at the least, does low-value stunning/subduing/non-lethal damage
>armor can be stacked/layered, at a dexterity cost.

as an added bonus you can do a rolled hit location and factor shit like "not wearing a damn helmet in battle"

personally I like the dark heresy way of doing it

I never had a good grasp on that synopsis?

>Dodge
>Block
>Soak

>systems where you have to roll for attack, doge, block and soak, maybe even with different dice(pools).

No fucking thanks.
I have better things to do than watching people picking dice for 10 minutes and doing math.

Roll to evade+damage reduction

There is a feeling that the duty of not getting your teeth kicked lies entirely on the player and that creates a nice feeling od dread during combat and keeps things quick.

AC can work as an abstraction for hits that are either stopped completely, or not stopped at all by armor. But it doesn't work for hits that are partially stopped. For example, someone swings a sword at you. Your armor stops the sharp edge of the sword from hitting you, but the force behind the swing still gets through. So your armor turned a blow that would have killed you into one that leaves a big bruise and maybe cracks a few ribs.

Or maybe the blade gets through the armor and breaks your skin, but the armor means that it doesn't cut as deeply as it would have if you didn't have the armor.

Short answer: Damage reduction.

Long answer: Roll weapon damage. Treat the targets armor as being 1 point lower for every point of penetration on your weapon. Reduce the rolled damage by the remaining armor value. Then reduce it further by their toughness bonus.

When an attack is coming your way:
> You get to choose between attempting to dodge, parry or counter attack. Succeeding at this means you avoid all damage.
> If the attack gets past your dodge/parry, you then get damage reduction that might reduce the damage to 0.

These should have three separate rolls at most. For example:
- In Dark Heresy the rolls are the attack, the dodge/parry and the damage. The damage reduction is a fixed value.
- In other systems, the attack roll also determines damage (more successes>more damage). But the defender rolls both their dodge/parry/counter and their damage reduction.

Fixed vs rolled damage reduction depends on what tone you want for the campaign. If you want characters to be able to ignore certain attacks once they are tough enough, go for fixed damage reduction. If you want every attack to be a threat go for rolled damage reduction (and low HP numbers).

As a GURPSfag I lean towards damage reduction and actively rolled defenses.

Over time though, I find that I'm more inclined toward defenses being all passive as well as having attack rolls impact damage. Maybe even set damage + or - roll results. This means on your turn you make your one attack roll that combines everything with gives you a damage amount which is then reduced, no more multiple rolls to resolve an attack.

I think this is how Genesys works.

Each piece of armor offers a % chance of being in the way of the blow.
If the armor is in the way of the blow, it offers a % damage reduction, which is further modified by how much of that damage reduction goes from slashing to stunning type, and the toughness of the character involved.
Any damage that gets through a piece of armor rolls again on the armor beneath it, on and on until all armor is resolved.

Similarly, there is a hit point pool for each limb, the stomach, the chest, and the head. Each have their own chance of getting hit, and each have their own wound penalties for damage.

I really like this system, though I wish it also dealt in flat damage reductions. A pure % system is a bit wonky to me.

oh, also, there are dodging and blocking, which negate all damage from a blow. They're generally good, but take time, and can render you unable to attack if you are dodging and blocking like 40 people at once.

That helmet has a bullet hole, the guy who wore it probably died.

>the guy who wore it probably died
Look at the picture more closely.
He's fine, but a bit slow.

Breaking/mulching bodyparts takes more force, i.e. occurs in a smaller percent of all strikes than a cut causing disabling bleed or nerve severing which occurs nearly always

Don't forget, with GURPS hit location matters, too. It doesn't matter if you're wearing the heaviest plate chestpiece if an enemy hits your hand when you're wearing thin leather gloves.

I like the idea of a slightly weighted but still randomized hit locator.

and of course, called shots.

its a little more flavour for the gaming...

Flat DR that is checked against every individual damage die. This way you can describe armor-piercing attacks with big dice and attacks that the armor will easily defeat with multiple small dice.

I liked systems that have a mix of them, like special had resist and threshold iirc.

accuracy, evasion, block/parry.
Damage reduction as a % and damage reduction as an integer. Maybe absorption of both.

Butbthat's what the damage roll is for. A longword chops in and deals d8 damage. At low levels, this means that a Soldier can drop an opponent on a 4+, assuming +1 Con Mod, and then CDG.

When you get to high levels, and can rock around with your 34 Str and GMW'd +1 Weapon packing a dozen WSA's adding flat/rng damage, etc, the difference between a d4 and a d8 is minor.

So, Full Plate gives you a decent AC, allowing you resistance to being hit, but when you do take a hit the damage of the hit is determined by the flat damage boost. Anything random, such as Weapon Damage, Flaming/Freezing etc, means that you could roll like ass; rolling a 1 on the weapon damage could be a glancing blow, while a 12 on a Greatsword is enough to instantly kill an Orc NPC Warrior if you are strong enough.

I like what Rolemaster does, but you have to play Rolemaster or bolt Arms Law to your system.

Damage reduction, obviously. Funny thing, TRoS rolls AC into damage reduction as well. Plate armor has such high armor value partly because of its great coverage and difficulty in attacking vulnerable spots. For the same reason half-sword and some weapons have armor penetration bonus on thrusts. They don't punch through the metal as much as they are good at getting sharp point through the gaps.

Attached: CkqEkizUoAUUzuM.jpg (869x1200, 153K)

>Butbthat's what the damage roll is for.

How much damage would an unarmored target take if hit ?

How much damage would an armored target take if hit ?

If your answers to both those questions are identical, which they are with what you are describing, then the armor isn't reducing damage.

That d8 for the damage roll is a d8 against both a naked man and a man in full plate.

I love how Feng Shui 2 does it. It's unrealistic as hell but fits how bullet vests are seen in action movies.

Basically, armor works against gun attacks and have two values: damage soak and "pop back"

The damage absorption is quite hefty, but is not active all the time. You can apply it to one attack per sequence (let's say one attack per combat) which is equivalent to that one time in movie shootouts the vest becomes relevant. You got shot, you look at the bullet hole in your suit, check your vest has stopped it and continue fighting.

But the cool thing is the "pop back," each vest has a pop back value around 35, which is the amount of damage (damage in Feng Shui is additive) at which your PC has to start rolling for death. Once per session, if a gun attack would put your damage above your vest "pop back" value, the attack is nullified and you spend your next turn prone. You got shot, you fell, everyone thought you were dead but then you stand up and reveal the vest took the hit. Marty McFly in Back to the Future III, basically.

I'm not a fan of AC desu I don't like combining penetration, dodging, blocking, parrying and accuracy into one.

Hit points are the best armor abstraction.

I like damage reduction, with the extra that crits ignore a portion of it that varies based on the weapon (a knife being small and precise ignores all armor on a crit while a mace being blunt will ignore only a little).

I got halfway through buildings a system that kinda worked that for a wargame once, the rouge type characters had high crit and where good against the armored characters, armored characters could wade though ranged attacks and take very little damage making them good against ranged, ranged could pincushion a rouge before they got close enough to shank em. Magic was its own 4th thing, it took several turns (and got stronger the more turns spent) for big effects, but the caster was very vulnerable in the meantime, there was "combat magic" which did not take multiple turns, but it was generally weaker than weapon attacks.

Each body part of each race has:
Penetration Multiplier, Damage Multiplier, Max Penetration

Each weapon has
Damage, Penetration, Blunt Damage

Each armor has
Protection Factor, Blunt Protection Factor

Damage is:

If Penetration - ProtectionFactor 0 and ((Penetration - ProtectionFactor) * (PenetrationMultiplier of area hit)) < max penetration of area hit:
Damage = (Penetration - ProtectionFactor) * (PenetrationMultiplier of area hit) * Damage * (Damage Multiplier of area hit)

If Penetration - ProtectionFactor > 0 and ((Penetration - ProtectionFactor) * (PenetrationMultiplier of area hit)) >= max penetration of area hit:
Damage = MaxPenetration * Damage * (Damage Multiplier of area hit)

If you want simplify the rules you can pick one or more of those rules
1- PentrationMultiplier, DamageMultiplier and MaxMultiplier is the same for entire race body.
2-MaxMultiplier dont exist you can do as much penetration as your weapon allow
3-If the weapon dont penetrate it does 0 damage, unless its blunt weapon

Attack minus defence equals damage.

>Anonymous 03/25/18(Sun)20:13:37 No.58727818▶
>ITT; not understanding abstraction

Using 3.5; Man in +5 Full Plate, Dex 12+, with +5 Heavy Shield = AC31

Got to roll over a 31 to damage him. This represents the armour being supremely resilient and taking the blow.

As a DM, I like my players to tell me how they got their AC bonus, and where it comes from, which I used to describe. Base 10; this is the body shrugging off the attack. The next bit is the armour. Then the shield, then the Dex.

So, Say I roll an 18 to hit that dude. His armour profile has an AC of 23, which means that he can take the hit on the Armour without worry.

Next attack roll a 25. This one is more dangerous, so describe it as missing as the dude raises his shield.

Final one rolls 30, and despite the limited maneuverability in the armour, this requires everything in the arsenal, as the full plate armour wearer has to deflect the shield, and dodge the blade indiana jones style.

If the final attack rolls a 35, then the attack hits. If the attack is a glancing blow that the armour can't protect from an 80ft long Colossal++ Dragon, IDGAF how good your damage resistance is, or your armour, you are still taking 30 odd points of damage, because most of it comes from the static strength bonus of the Dragon. They are just that strong, that they can cut through the armour like paper.

You having full plate armour doesn't turn you into Darksouls.gif, and full plate armour doesn't protect you against a strike, glancing or otherwise.

It's a decent enough abstract that's far more appropriate than some cunt saying "Full Plate = 75% Reduction, Med = 50%, Light = 25% DR).

Friday Night Firefight's armor system hasn't failed me yet.

Armor as damage reduction.

Attached: AC to DR.png (1000x934, 85K)

Sure, you say all that. But the fact is that if the attacker rolls high enough to hit the armored target, then he will do the same damage to an armored target as he would to a naked target.

There is no such thing is as a hit that does *almost* nothing when using AC. Just hits that do full damage and misses that do nothing.

Lets give an example from Rogue Trader, since that's the first book I've got to hand:
A lasgun does 1d10+3 damage. An average Imperial worlder would have 3 damage reduction from their toughness, and 1d5+3 wounds. So 6 wounds on average. But, due to how critical damage works, you need to deal damage past 0hp to kill someone. Depending on the location of the fatal blow, you'll need between 14 and 16 to kill someone. Lets say 15.

If he's naked, the lasgun will deal 1d10 damage per hit. An average of 2.7 hits to kill the target. A lasgun fires 3 shots in a burst, so the average burst will kill a naked man if all shots hit.

If he's got guard flax, that adds 4 damage reduction on top of the toughness. Meaning a 4 or less on a 1d10 does nothing to the target. Now you're looking at an average of 7.1 hits to kill.

Storm Trooper carapace is 6 damage reduction. Which means an average of 15 hits to kill the target.

Power Armor* has 8 damage reduction. You need to roll a 9 or 10 on the 1d10 to even scratch the person inside, no matter how good your aim is. We are talking an average of 50 hits to kill someone with a lasgun. They aren't completely immune to it, but you're not going to be killing them quickly. So he's going to kill whoever has a weapon that makes them actually a threat then, maybe, come back for you.

Note that I was talking about hits. Which means either perfect aim, or lots of attempt to hit him.

*Which is a possible starting gear in Rogue Trader.

>far more appropriate than some cunt saying "Full Plate = 75% Reduction, Med = 50%, Light = 25% DR).

Percentage damage reduction is never appropriate as it hits all weapons equally, instead of hitting weaker weapons more than strong ones. %DR might as well be an increase to your total HP.

Never played it, but I weirdly want to try Machinations of the Space Princess's "Armor lowers AC, but gives dX amount of damage absorption" if only because I want to see how it works.

but only if you dont have to deal with poison, healing during fights or weapons that have bonuses on armor penetration

Or ever take your armor off

The armor can either increase the bar to apply a wound or decrease the roll for consequential severity, or both. Specialty armor may have special effects.

Nah bro, then your max health just goes down until you put it back on : ^ )

I felt incomplete my entie life until I put on my armor..

But that's not how armor works. If you wear a breast plate, and someone hits you in the chest with a baseball bat, there's zero chance that it's going to hurt as bad as if you were just wearing a shirt, but it's still probably going to cause some damage in spite of the impact being spread out and partially absorbed.

AC+DR with a separate AC score for dodging a hit.
>dodge AC represents exactly that
>armor AC represents the blow simply glancing off the armor or otherwise being absorbed
>DR represents the ability of the armor to protect the wearer even from solid hits because of damage dispersion

Metal armor isn't all that common. You get people wearing hides, wool, and cotton all the time. Blades are better against those targets than hammers. Hammers are just consistent at killing, armor or no, while blades have the potential to do so spectacularly against most targets.

Does Dwarf Fortress have bone or shell armor?

Choose to dodge or block.

Dodging is high risk high reward. If you succeed you completely negate the attack and can either reposition or counter (high reward) but if you fail you take the full hit (high risk).

Blocking is low risk low reward. Your block is added to your soak and the attempt will always have some effect (low risk), but rolling so high as to completely negate the attack offers no additional benefit (low reward).

What about parry?

Dodging could be called Evasion instead, which would make the reaction cover dodging, parrying or otherwise avoiding a blow.

A defensive reaction involves blocking, rolling with or otherwise mitigating the force of an incoming blow. Your defense roll improves your soak/DR, but offers no additional benefit for rolling high enough to completely negate the attack. A shield grants a bonus to this attempt.

An evasive reaction involves dodging, rolling, parrying or otherwise avoiding an incoming blow entirely. A successful roll completely negates the attack and allows you to reposition or launch a counter attack. A failed attempt results in you taking the full blow.

No satan, but there definatly should be some way to weave bone/shell/chitin into softer armor like cloth or leather to improve its armour class at the cost of increased weight and reduced sneak capabilities.