making Armor useful [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Showzilla

2011-09-09, 02:07 AM

I have a thought. How does magical enhancement work with this system? What about shields? And natural armor? (I would suggest making natural armor's stats based on the size of the creature)

+1,+2 and so on armor adds that bonus to AC and to Armor roll (soak).
shields work with another home rule of of mine (quick sum up, you have two actions you have per round that you use when you are on the defensive, the block is basically when someone takes a swing at you, you can swing back and block it with your weapon or shield, if you meet or exceed their attack roll, your safe and shields get to add their ac bonus to this), if you fail to successfully block a strike, you roll a dice assigned to that shield, add the strength mod of that hand and subtract that from damage....before you soak with armor (yes, shield carriers with armor are hard as hell to hurt).
natural armor almost always carries light weight protection and nat 20 effectiveness. the dice assigned to the armor varies and increases in size when a monster gets bigger as per the rules of dice increase (one increase per size increase).
my knight remake (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=214740) took a sneak attack from the rogue and SHATTERED the short sword. this is also the fight that saw a knight beat a monk to death in three hits.

Showzilla

2011-09-09, 02:08 AM

I really think this has a lot of potential, honestly. It's not gonna be for everyone...but few house rules are :)

I like it, since I use Defense rolls and Armor as DR this would work PERFECTLY for me, I'm already rolling anyways.

I'm not a great person when it comes to how it balances and all that, but I'd love to use this while playing.

You should still work out (as NeoSeraphi stated) how this interacts with Magical Properties, Natural Armor, Shields, and the like. Personally I don't think it should be too hard to make it fit with everything though.

Great job :smallbiggrin:
thanks, don't worry, this has alot of thought, so a lot of kinks are worked out already

Hanuman

2011-09-09, 02:09 AM

Phosphate

2011-09-09, 02:17 AM

Silly question. Using this system, how will you handle Dodge bonuses?

Showzilla

2011-09-09, 02:18 AM

Showzilla

2011-09-09, 02:22 AM

Silly question. Using this system, how will you handle Dodge bonuses?
who, me? and how do you set up tables?

Phosphate

2011-09-09, 04:10 AM

{table=head]Insert stuff here | And here | And here
Like this | And this | And this
[/table]

Is:

{table=head]Insert stuff here | And here | And here
Like this | And this | And this
[/table]

And yes, you.

Showzilla

2011-09-09, 04:28 AM

Hanuman

2011-09-09, 06:49 AM

how do you set up table, I want to make the knight remake readable.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=15
Sticky.

Ashtagon

2011-09-09, 08:03 AM

I read through the OP, but I can't understand what he is trying to explain.

Dryad

2011-09-09, 08:08 AM

You roll one die too many, really.

A 'save' roll can be a very good system, but DnD has a lot of things going on that influence Armour Class, and a LOT of attacks in any given round. So this is going to be hard to implement, and would probably require a complete overhaul of the system.
The fact that your armour grants some damage reduction is good, don't get me wrong. But you could keep applying your armour's AC bonus to AC (assuming you still work with attack rolls) and make an armour save when receiving damage... Though not making a d20 roll merely to get critical results. That will only serve to slow down everything, and not aid you in any real mechanical way. Critical successes are a fluke; they're fun on attacks, okay on saves, but only because you roll a die for them anyway. To have a die-roll for the sole purpose of getting crits is a design flaw that will cause you more harm than good.

For all the rest: Good idea, keep working on it, but remember: Less dice is better.

Phosphate

2011-09-09, 08:54 AM

Another way of dealing with this, though it can be treated as slightly unfair for classes without armor (I use it in my houserules anyway), is to assign two ACs to armors. The point is, there are two things armor can do: block a hit completely, or reduce the damage it deals. And in all honesty, those are different enough things that neither should be disregarded, nor should they be combined in a single AC. So basically you can use two different AC, one Miss and one Resilient.

Miss AC is 10 + armor bonus/2 + shield bonus + dexterity modifier + size modifier + ONLY Dodge bonus.
Resilient AC is armor bonus + any other bonus to AC that is not a Dodge bonus

If an attack is below Miss, it doesn't hit. If an attack is above Miss, subtract Resilient AC from it, but it deals 1 damage minimum. Criticals ignore Resilient AC.

Yitzi

2011-09-09, 12:10 PM

I'd say that making armor useful really has two parts:
1. Make AC useful, by making miss chances hard to get (and getting rid of stacking cheese goes without saying), and by providing enough ways to boost AC (and maybe even penalize attacks) that a level-appropriate enemy has a decent chance of missing on the attack roll against someone who puts a reasonable amount of resources into AC.
2. Make armor potentially more useful than the DEX bonus it replaces (although note that even with moderate DEX bonus, at least some armor is generally worth it). One idea I came up with is a feat that lets you turn dodge bonuses (e.g. from Combat Expertise) and dexterity bonuses (including those that would be lost due to armor) into DR/- at a rate determined by armor type (not counting the reduction for mithral): Light armor (and spell-based armor) gives no benefit, medium armor gives 1 DR per AC traded (to a maximum of the armor's total bonus to AC), and heavy armor gives 2 DR per AC traded (to a maximum of the armor's total bonus to AC.) Of course, this is of limited effectiveness against enemies doing 50 damage a hit, but against enemies that rely on a larger number of weaker attacks it can translate into immunity against anything but a crit.

Showzilla

2011-09-09, 01:40 PM

wow, I didn't think that this would get that many hits.
answers to some questions:
armor crits: it slows down combat only in the first few encounters, but right now everyone is roll the d20 when I say someone is sending a blade their way, so you just gotta work it for a few battles.
impact on level adjustments: DR in monsters no longer means instant lvl adjustment. It doesn't get rid of the lvl adjustment granted because of the DR, but it does reduce it, example, natural lycanthropes become +2 under this system.
stacking bonuses: DR stacks with armor rolls (not on the shield though), sorta like how power attack stacks with damage. it still gets negated by it's overcoming damage, a werewolf wearing chainmail loses it's DR against silver, but keeps the dice from it's natural armor and the chainmail.

SlashRunner

2011-09-09, 10:24 PM

Hanuman

2011-09-10, 01:25 AM

May I ask which page of the Draconomicon? My search-fu seems to be failing me...

Hmmm, I was sure it was in there...
Here's one I found to make ammends:
http://www.angelfire.com/dragon3/vinifera/critical_hit_table_2e.pdf
And the site its from http://www.dndadventure.com/dnda_dm_resources.html

SlashRunner

2011-09-10, 10:27 AM

Hmmm, I was sure it was in there...
Here's one I found to make ammends:
http://www.angelfire.com/dragon3/vinifera/critical_hit_table_2e.pdf
And the site its from http://www.dndadventure.com/dnda_dm_resources.html

I think that's made for 2e, there was a thread about it in the 3.5 or Roleplaying sections. But then again, it could probably be adapted pretty easily.

Hanuman

2011-09-10, 11:20 AM

I think that's made for 2e, there was a thread about it in the 3.5 or Roleplaying sections. But then again, it could probably be adapted pretty easily.
Personally what I'd do is use that table and then deal the crit damage to both the armor and the hp in that section, and if the armor is sundered the crit takes effect, if there's no armor to sunder then auto-effect.

I donno about you, but I would like to run a game where a hammer could crush a 15HD human's skull in one well placed hit.

Also, Kurz AoHM?

The link in my sig is a huge project ive been working on for a while, and just re-did the format, now trying to decode everything into the new format and I'm putting all rit and mes skills in, thinking about derv skills too.

SlashRunner

2011-09-10, 12:27 PM

Personally what I'd do is use that table and then deal the crit damage to both the armor and the hp in that section, and if the armor is sundered the crit takes effect, if there's no armor to sunder then auto-effect.

I donno about you, but I would like to run a game where a hammer could crush a 15HD human's skull in one well placed hit.

Also, Kurz AoHM?

The link in my sig is a huge project ive been working on for a while, and just re-did the format, now trying to decode everything into the new format and I'm putting all rit and mes skills in, thinking about derv skills too.

Close. Luxon. And if you can find a way to make the derv in D&D, I shall be eternally grateful. Also, if I have understood your project correctly and that IS what you're trying to do, I'd be willing to help.

Hanuman

2011-09-10, 10:46 PM

Close. Luxon. And if you can find a way to make the derv in D&D, I shall be eternally grateful. Also, if I have understood your project correctly and that IS what you're trying to do, I'd be willing to help.
Damnit I was totally thinking luxon too, I was waking up when I wrote that.

Yeah my project is essentially jamming a bunch of classes into one (Rit/Mes/Derv/CWderv/Bard/Battledancer/Swordsage/Rogue/Ninja/Monk/Ranger/Warrior/Sorcerer/FavoredSoul/and a dozen other base and countless PrC's), it's gotten ridiculously huge and I'm having a lot of trouble translating it back while trying to work out the best system to do so.

If you want to help the best way is to generate feedback on the page :smallsmile:

Lord.Sorasen

2011-09-10, 11:16 PM

I read through the OP, but I can't understand what he is trying to explain.

I really like the idea of the homebrew, but I agree that it was hard to read what you were trying to get across. If you don't mind OP, I'm going to reformat a little.

Alright, no one who has ever played is going to try and BS that armor is effective. I'm currently DMing a game with what I call "armor rolls" and so far everybody likes them and agrees with them. This is how it works:

1. You roll a d20 to see how well your armor saves your sorry skin (effectively see if your armor crits)
2. After that you roll the armor's die and add your con mod. You then subtract that from the damage dealt to you (and yes you can reduce the damage down to zero).

Dice: every armor has a specific die assigned to it (breast plate is a d8 and full plate is a d12 for example)

coverage: works like crit range (breast plate is 19-20, full plate 18-20) protection

weight: the armors crit multiplier. light armor is x2. medium armor is x3. heavy armor is x4.

Now to place my concerns: I'd say I'm not too fond of the armor getting its own critical chance, because as has been said, it seems to add to the clutter of dice. What I would suggest is combining this houserule with the "players roll all the dice" variant. Essentially, when an enemy attacks, their attack roll is their attack bonus + 10, and you roll (armor class - 10)+d20 in order to determine if the attack hits. In such a rules system, players could roll 20 or whatever on their "defend" roll, which would mean the same number of rolls but an opportunity to allow armor criticals.

If that were the case, though, I'd remove the critical miss for rolling a 1. It'd be replaced with the armor critical. A little less extreme but it still makes sense.

I think one thing should be gotten out of the way, though: how does this scale at higher levels? The way I see it, usually people with higher armor tend to have greater HD. I could be wrong, but I'm seeing this as meaning that heavy armored units last a lot longer, making it even more likely for them to be countered by mages.

Showzilla

2011-09-11, 04:22 AM

I really like the idea of the homebrew, but I agree that it was hard to read what you were trying to get across. If you don't mind OP, I'm going to reformat a little.

Now to place my concerns: I'd say I'm not too fond of the armor getting its own critical chance, because as has been said, it seems to add to the clutter of dice. What I would suggest is combining this houserule with the "players roll all the dice" variant. Essentially, when an enemy attacks, their attack roll is their attack bonus + 10, and you roll (armor class - 10)+d20 in order to determine if the attack hits. In such a rules system, players could roll 20 or whatever on their "defend" roll, which would mean the same number of rolls but an opportunity to allow armor criticals.

If that were the case, though, I'd remove the critical miss for rolling a 1. It'd be replaced with the armor critical. A little less extreme but it still makes sense.

I think one thing should be gotten out of the way, though: how does this scale at higher levels? The way I see it, usually people with higher armor tend to have greater HD. I could be wrong, but I'm seeing this as meaning that heavy armored units last a lot longer, making it even more likely for them to be countered by mages.
that's pretty much what I said, but I think I should go over the process and throw out some example numbers:
Knight (my remake (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=214740)) of level...lets say 18, by that point this guy has set up his reputation as a tank who gets hit by ogres, Meteor spells and Gazebos without taking damage.
I tell the player he is a bout to get hit, he rolls a D20...if I don't beat his AC, nothing new happens, but if I do....
Knight's equipment and his stats
+4 adamantine full plate: 1d12+4/14-20/x4(it normally "crits" on 17 through 20 and quadruples the soak values when it does critical, but because of his knight powers he can increase the range to 15)
DR:4(from knight levels)+3(from Adamantine)
constitution score: 30(10)
so lets have him critical and max out his die rolls
he gets a soak value of :12(from armor)+18(from his knight ability "greater armor)+4(knightly damage reduction)+4(armor enchantment)+10(constitution modifier)=48
48 is his base soak score, but his foe's attack apparently hit the knights pauldron and bevor before contacting his chest plate (me trying to be all descriptive and DMingy)
so his 48 crits and multiplies by 4 because it's heavy armor, so his final soak value 192.
with a roll that great, a foe needs to deal over 192 points of damage just to hurt this juggernaut.
if you get concerned because that number seems high, remember that this build has a somewhat high con score to back it up but it can get much higher.
this effectively makes a rogue doing damage to a knight with anything but a sneak attack an almost impossibility. I hope this clears up any confusion.

Ashtagon

2011-09-11, 07:52 AM

And to rephrase...

AC is calculated as per SRD, including AC bonus from armour and shield.

Attacker makes attack roll as per SRD.

On a hit, defender makes an "armour roll". The armour either crits or provides normal armour-based damage mitigation.

Defender rolls for the armour's damage mitigation. The armour's enhancement bonus (if any) is added to this roll.

The actual damage is damage rolled minus armour mitigation rolled.

Amirite?

My first thought is that this entails an extra two die rolls each attack sequence. This may or may not be fun, depending on whether your group enjoys rolling lots of dice. It'll certainly slow down combats. Is there a reason you want armour to provide random protection instead of a fixed amount?

Showzilla

2011-09-11, 06:04 PM

Djinn_in_Tonic

2011-09-11, 06:07 PM

because each specific part of armor and the many different angels from which it can be hit from makes for varying degrees of protections (say to the armpit of the full plate suit)....plus, it makes it fairer against weapons.

How does it make it fairer? Lower damage weapons suddenly become worse across the board, as damage is what matters. Additionally, unless you increase damage across the board, any class that relies on weapons to deal its damage (and those classes are ALREADY behind the casters) is unnecessarily nerfed by this change.

I think armor could use a revision as much as the next man, but I think adding additional rules, increasing the reliance on weapons damage, and decreasing the effectiveness of physical attacks isn't the way to go about it without some other adjustments to compensate.

Hm. Here's a thought. A really quick one, so it might not work.

Armor

Armor has a variety of values based on its type. These values reduce (or in some cases add) to damage (metal armor, for example, exacerbates slow fire damage). For example:

Leather Armor
+3 AC
Piercing: -0
Slashing: -1d4
Bludgeoning: -1d6
Fire: -2d4 if damage is over 5.

Plate Armor
+8 AC
Piercing: -1d10
Slashing: -1d12
Bludgeoning: -1d10
Fire: -2d6 if damage is over 5 / +1d8 from any consistent damage source (such as magma or being lit on fire).

There is no armor crit roll...the amount is simply reduced if the victim is hit.

Now weapon selection is actually important based on the armor your opponent has. Armor proficiency and/or class abilities could increase the reduction or decrease the enemy's reduction, or maybe cut out the low end of the scale (so a Fighter in Plate armor might re-roll results of 1 & 2).

Maybe increase weapon damage by a die size or two, or let some weapons have the ability to cut through some resistances.

Conclusion (and why I don't like either of these systems): The problem, of course, is that scaling armor values gets you into bad territory. Either the armor dice have to get WAY to big (making physical attacks MORE worthless) or the amount reduced is basically meaningless for the amount of time it adds. Personally, although my proposed system would work, I wouldn't incorporate it into a game. It's just to much extra work for to little a benefit.

Showzilla

2011-09-12, 07:18 AM

How does it make it fairer? Lower damage weapons suddenly become worse across the board, as damage is what matters. Additionally, unless you increase damage across the board, any class that relies on weapons to deal its damage (and those classes are ALREADY behind the casters) is unnecessarily nerfed by this change.

I think armor could use a revision as much as the next man, but I think adding additional rules, increasing the reliance on weapons damage, and decreasing the effectiveness of physical attacks isn't the way to go about it without some other adjustments to compensate.

Hm. Here's a thought. A really quick one, so it might not work.

Armor

Armor has a variety of values based on its type. These values reduce (or in some cases add) to damage (metal armor, for example, exacerbates slow fire damage). For example:

Leather Armor
+3 AC
Piercing: -0
Slashing: -1d4
Bludgeoning: -1d6
Fire: -2d4 if damage is over 5.

Plate Armor
+8 AC
Piercing: -1d10
Slashing: -1d12
Bludgeoning: -1d10
Fire: -2d6 if damage is over 5 / +1d8 from any consistent damage source (such as magma or being lit on fire).

There is no armor crit roll...the amount is simply reduced if the victim is hit.

Now weapon selection is actually important based on the armor your opponent has. Armor proficiency and/or class abilities could increase the reduction or decrease the enemy's reduction, or maybe cut out the low end of the scale (so a Fighter in Plate armor might re-roll results of 1 & 2).

Maybe increase weapon damage by a die size or two, or let some weapons have the ability to cut through some resistances.

Conclusion (and why I don't like either of these systems): The problem, of course, is that scaling armor values gets you into bad territory. Either the armor dice have to get WAY to big (making physical attacks MORE worthless) or the amount reduced is basically meaningless for the amount of time it adds. Personally, although my proposed system would work, I wouldn't incorporate it into a game. It's just to much extra work for to little a benefit.
hmmm, I might give that system a shot, but this system was built to bridge the gap between melee and spell casters, not to mention I've seen plenty of weapon damage dealers pitching out more than enough damage to keep up with the armor....either way, I've got some armor based feats that increase the ability to soak up damage (effectively things like weapon focus, power attack and the like except that they are built around armor stopping damage)...but back to my original point
5d6 fireballs aint so bad when you can easily negate 48+ points of damage.
feats:
planted foot
preqs: con 15,armor proficiency
benefits: you may subtract points from your ac and add it to your soak, all heavy armor grants you 2 soak points for every 1 point you subtract from you ac.
and one final note, this system is slightly more realistic than the standard armor system but the main point is that it is also much harsher on people who dismiss armor in real life and in game, because as much as a dual wielding knife fighter in all his flashy jumping, acrobatic prowess looks cool, those puny daggers are only going to piss off a knight in his suit of solid plates. This came up a bit when the rogue kept complain about a faceless NPC(Sir Jason) who they could never kill and had consistently killed at least one party member (their first encounter: Barbarian was crushed under a great hammer, monk got beaten to death and the wizard was fish hooked into oblivion. Second encounter: Barbarian tries to grapple Knight and gets his neck broken in the process, the wizard rerolled a necromancy....who got fish hooked into oblivion. Third encounter: he is being paid to help them, so they ditch him when the Tarrasque shows up, he and the Tarrasque throw down and he barely takes any damage after beating the ever loving **** out of the Tarrasque. fourth encounter: he's pretty pissed about his "allies" betraying him, so he taps his valor and martyr power in the first two rounds of combat and kills all but the rogue.Fifth encounter: He sneaks up on the rogue and quietly strangles her. sixth encount: kills two casters before getting teleported to a different plane. Final encounter: the black queen convinces him to be her consort and he kills the entire party.)

Djinn_in_Tonic

2011-09-12, 08:16 AM

hmmm, I might give that system a shot, but this system was built to bridge the gap between melee and spell casters, not to mention I've seen plenty of weapon damage dealers pitching out more than enough damage to keep up with the armor....either way, I've got some armor based feats that increase the ability to soak up damage (effectively things like weapon focus, power attack and the like except that they are built around armor stopping damage)...but back to my original point
5d6 fireballs aint so bad when you can easily negate 48+ points of damage.

The thing is that your system widens the gap, which is the opposite of what you said you wanted. Also, not all martial characters are optimized for damage, and this hurts those MORE. For example (using reasonable damage expectations):

Wizard: Fires off a 150 damage Meteor Swarm against a foe in full plate.

Paladin: Hits three times, each time dealing the average for his magical greatsword (+5 Holy) plus his 29 Strength and we'll say he Smites (+20). That's a total of 4d6 + 38, averaging 52 damage.

As you said, you can negate, we'll say 48 damage. Actually we'll say that's a high roll, and estimate an average of around 30.

The Wizards deals 150 flat damage, and the Paladin deals 156 flat damage. Advantage Paladin. But the Wizard deals damage in one chuck, resisted as one attack: 120 damage. The Paladin deals damage in THREE chunks, resisted separately, reducing his damage per hit from 52 to 22, for a total damage of 66. Although he's dealing MORE damage, he actually ends up dealing barely half of the Wizard's damage.

And if he was out of Smite Evil uses? He deals 6 damage. A Rogue could never damage a heavily armored target except with a Sneak attack. A monk deals no damage whatsoever. And did I mentions that hitting three attacks against a heavily armored foe would actually be somewhat rare? Yeah...

More importantly, helping is fun. A character who can never damage his target is a player getting bored and annoyed, which isn't good for the game as a whole.

This system might work in a 4e style system where everyone makes one attack, and all damage is added up and chunked together to determine resists (a Wizard dealing 150 ends up dealing 120. A Paladin with three attacks dealing 156 counts as one attack dealing 156, so he deals 126 damage). Even then, though, it makes characters wielding smaller weapons (or unoptimized for raw damage) feel rather useless. Nevermind the fact that armor just wasn't actually THAT good. Beating up a guy in full-plate was hard to do with, say, a saber, but a Greataxe, Greatsword, Mace, Punching Dagger, or yes, even a rapier, wasn't that hard. He's resist a few more blows, but not THAT much more.

Conclusion
Basically, if you want realism, set armor as a hit point buffer as well as an AC boost. There...you can now take a few more hits. Let some weapons bypass this, and you're good to go. Now that Knight has, say, 3 more hit points per character level when wearing fullplate, but only 1 more per character level when wearing Chain Mail. This gets the maximum balance between fairness (all classes can still do damage), simplicity (you add to your hit points), and realism (armor protects, but enough attacks from any weapon will eventually go through it). If you want more differentiation, make it per encounter. If you want more realism, insist on armor repairs to get this value back up.

Best of all? Everyone gets to feel useful. No character will simply be unable to harm the armored juggernaut. In fact, the Rogue who gets out a Punching Dagger might be able to really help the party by bypassing the armor of the target while the Fighter keeps him occupied with crushing blows. And, like you want, your heavily armored characters keep fighting for longer than they would have before. Everyone wins.

And a note from me personally: I may come off as a bit harsh, but that's just my critiquing style. While I don't think your system accomplishes its goals, I still think it was a very good attempt, 'cause it allows us (by picking at the bits that don't work) to get closer to the crux of the problem you're trying to fix, and maybe find a better workaround for it. :smallbiggrin:

Showzilla

2011-09-12, 09:26 AM

The thing is that your system widens the gap, which is the opposite of what you said you wanted. Also, not all martial characters are optimized for damage, and this hurts those MORE. For example (using reasonable damage expectations):

Wizard: Fires off a 150 damage Meteor Swarm against a foe in full plate.

Paladin: Hits three times, each time dealing the average for his magical greatsword (+5 Holy) plus his 29 Strength and we'll say he Smites (+20). That's a total of 4d6 + 38, averaging 52 damage.

As you said, you can negate, we'll say 48 damage. Actually we'll say that's a high roll, and estimate an average of around 30.

The Wizards deals 150 flat damage, and the Paladin deals 156 flat damage. Advantage Paladin. But the Wizard deals damage in one chuck, resisted as one attack: 120 damage. The Paladin deals damage in THREE chunks, resisted separately, reducing his damage per hit from 52 to 22, for a total damage of 66. Although he's dealing MORE damage, he actually ends up dealing barely half of the Wizard's damage.

And if he was out of Smite Evil uses? He deals 6 damage. A Rogue could never damage a heavily armored target except with a Sneak attack. A monk deals no damage whatsoever. And did I mentions that hitting three attacks against a heavily armored foe would actually be somewhat rare? Yeah...

More importantly, helping is fun. A character who can never damage his target is a player getting bored and annoyed, which isn't good for the game as a whole.

This system might work in a 4e style system where everyone makes one attack, and all damage is added up and chunked together to determine resists (a Wizard dealing 150 ends up dealing 120. A Paladin with three attacks dealing 156 counts as one attack dealing 156, so he deals 126 damage). Even then, though, it makes characters wielding smaller weapons (or unoptimized for raw damage) feel rather useless. Nevermind the fact that armor just wasn't actually THAT good. Beating up a guy in full-plate was hard to do with, say, a saber, but a Greataxe, Greatsword, Mace, Punching Dagger, or yes, even a rapier, wasn't that hard. He's resist a few more blows, but not THAT much more.

Conclusion
Basically, if you want realism, set armor as a hit point buffer as well as an AC boost. There...you can now take a few more hits. Let some weapons bypass this, and you're good to go. Now that Knight has, say, 3 more hit points per character level when wearing fullplate, but only 1 more per character level when wearing Chain Mail. This gets the maximum balance between fairness (all classes can still do damage), simplicity (you add to your hit points), and realism (armor protects, but enough attacks from any weapon will eventually go through it). If you want more differentiation, make it per encounter. If you want more realism, insist on armor repairs to get this value back up.

Best of all? Everyone gets to feel useful. No character will simply be unable to harm the armored juggernaut. In fact, the Rogue who gets out a Punching Dagger might be able to really help the party by bypassing the armor of the target while the Fighter keeps him occupied with crushing blows. And, like you want, your heavily armored characters keep fighting for longer than they would have before. Everyone wins.

And a note from me personally: I may come off as a bit harsh, but that's just my critiquing style. While I don't think your system accomplishes its goals, I still think it was a very good attempt, 'cause it allows us (by picking at the bits that don't work) to get closer to the crux of the problem you're trying to fix, and maybe find a better workaround for it. :smallbiggrin:

I don't find you harsh and this is exactly why I put this up here, I'm currently running this in my current game.
as for my number of 48 vs meteor swarm, I threw out 48 as a random number, refer to my knight build above who could stop 192 damage on his best roll with a non optimized set of numbers.
as for great axes, great swords and all other weapons historically known to give armor hell, the system already has that in place.
full plate vs Great Hammer
1d12 vs 1d12
x4 vs x4
1x con vs 1.5 strength mod
so a foe slamming a big ass weapon can still put a good ass whooping on an armored foe.
I also kept in mind that even if some classes couldn't hurt an armored foe, they can still cause him hell if they fight right. Monks using trip and run tactics to annoy and piss off knights, a rogue sets some traps (like dead falls, tiger traps, nooses). so even if the juggernaut cant be stopped, he can sure as **** be slowed down
Also, because I did a little reading before I actually came up with these rules. The feat chink in armor allows the rogue to ignore up to dex or int mod in the base soak roll.
still, I thank you for your input.

Pyre_Born

2011-09-12, 09:50 AM

Had my group use these rules to see how it felt for our group.

*Reminder, Defense Roll, Armor as DR, Wound/Vigor points (pathfinder) are in effect for my group. So Armor doesn't add to defense, it limits how much of your bonus you can use.

Basically since we're already rolling it wasn't a time hog during battle just rolled 2 dice at once, one for defense, one for crit chance. Since Armor doesn't grant defense bonus, the light armored or no armored characters didn't see much of a difference, it usually didn't effect them much. However the tanks, who were already getting hit more than usually felt a little more relieved when they had a chance of "ignoring" more damage. It really helped when someone was down to just Wound points and rolled a crit on their defense or when someone rolled a Crit and it stopped them from going over the max damage threshold :smallbiggrin:

Overall, for my group with alternate rules already in place nothing really changed. The only real difference was when someone rolled a 20 on their defense rolls.

Overall, not for everyone, but for us, it's a wonderful and simple addition :)

Peace,
Pyre

Showzilla

2011-09-12, 11:07 AM

Yitzi

2011-09-12, 11:14 AM

The thing is that your system widens the gap, which is the opposite of what you said you wanted.

Not really; so long as that wizard can't wear armor (and getting rid of ways for wizards to effectively wear armor is probably something needed for balance anyway, particularly if using this), it weakens martial characters' offense only against other martial characters. Which makes a lot of sense, and may open up room to weaken casters' offense in other ways (which is definitely needed anyway.)

Also, not all martial characters are optimized for damage, and this hurts those MORE.

True. That's a large part of why I suggested making it into a feat (i.e. not everyone will have it) that trades AC for DR. That way, those martial characters not optimized for damage will be weak against characters who have it, but still good against others. (And of course a martial character optimized for versatility might actually be as good as he's supposed to be.) (Also, by forcing it to come out of dodge and DEX bonuses, getting DR high enough to make any substantial attack useless will require a build meant to take advantage of armor-as-DR.)

And if he was out of Smite Evil uses? He deals 6 damage. A Rogue could never damage a heavily armored target except with a Sneak attack.

And? Rogues aren't supposed to be able to go head-to-head with martial characters.

A monk deals no damage whatsoever.

Well, until he runs into an unarmored opponent (such as that wizard).

Tyndmyr

2011-09-12, 11:16 AM

When players in my campaigns ask about armor, I tell them to only armor the piece of their body that they want to keep.

My advice is to use the draconomicon table (near the back) for crits, then decide how to confirm the crit depending on how well that area is protected.

Followthrough with some REALLY nasty effects for crits, and there you go.

Armor also contextualizes how damage effects you overall. A tin can may be bashed around, tired out and eventually pass out where as an unarmed character may pass out from bruised and crushed organs.

Wearing chainmail might protect you from a sword, but if you get roasted with fire it's just going to make it equally bad, also scar you with a chainmail pattern, where as leather is going to make you take nearly no damage on that part of your body from a blast of fire.

*sigh*

Go, look up every thread where crit effect tables are discussed. They are problematic. Really nasty effects for crits? This doesn't make armor effective, this makes melee ineffective.

I think that's made for 2e, there was a thread about it in the 3.5 or Roleplaying sections. But then again, it could probably be adapted pretty easily.

Yes. There was a six page thread about how BAD it was.

Also, there's a defense roll variant in UA, but it sounds like your current way of doing things adds an extra roll to every hit. Seems painfully slow.

Djinn_in_Tonic

2011-09-12, 11:19 AM

And? Rogues aren't supposed to be able to go head-to-head with martial characters.

According to whom? Sure, a well-built Fighter may beat a Rogue in a straight-up brawl, but he already can. Now he just does it without getting hurt, which is ridiculous. Unless the Rogue can drop him in a single round with Sneak Attacks, the Fighter will win, even if he's been severely damaged.

Well, until he runs into an unarmored opponent (such as that wizard).

The problem is that this pigeon-holes classes. Now the Monk is only useful against unarmored opponents, as is the Rogue. The Fighter is best against unarmored opponents. And the spellcasters don't care either way, which, again, widens the gap.

Personally, I don't like to feel useless at the game table. If I've built an agile, somewhat damage-light Swashbuckler, I want to be able to damage and maybe even defeat the heavily armored knight by being faster, hitting him in gaps in his armor (through skill, not necessarily through sneak attacks), and basically stand a chance against him. I want to avoid attacks with speed, not soak them with armor.

This system invalidates such a character, and many others. It removes options rather than making all options still valid.

Showzilla

2011-09-12, 01:12 PM

and the rain will kill us all.
we throw ourselves against the wall.
but no one else can see, the preservation of the martyr (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=214740) in me

anywho, back to the topic at hand, will this armor roll be included in 3.825?
should heavy,mountain and battle plate have higher numbers than full plate?

Djinn_in_Tonic

2011-09-12, 01:17 PM

anywho, back to the topic at hand, will this armor roll be included in 3.825?

If you're asking "is this currently good enough to be included as part of a 3.5 revision?" I'm going to have to say "No." You've got the start of something possibly really good here, but the number of issues it raises is still, in my opinion, still to great for me to green-light it as written.

Showzilla

2011-09-12, 01:28 PM

If you're asking "is this currently good enough to be included as part of a 3.5 revision?" I'm going to have to say "No." You've got the start of something possibly really good here, but the number of issues it raises is still, in my opinion, still to great for me to green-light it as written.
Now would be a good time for me to reveal a few more changes that came with my "defense" package.
armor: what we be talking bout.
blocking: basically turning your BAB into your AC
additional stats:
appearance: this acts a DC that normally only works against npc(cuz I'm nice to my players) but yeah, make a will save equal to the score, failure allows the character to add the mod from appearance to charisma checks and skills (you could have called the tavern wenches BS but her cleavage was too distracting)
sanity:ah, a stat that's good high or low...if it hits zero, you are done for, but the lower it is, the harder it is for it to take damage.
luck: used to multiply starting gold and determines a number of rerolls you get per day
mobility: every +1 gives you +5 ft to every movement speed. every +2 gives you an additional swift action per round. ever +4 gives you an additional standard action. every +8 gives you an additional full round action.

Shifting(combat manuever): for those who can't take a hit, why take it at all?
add your mobility mod to your ac and move up to a number of squares equal to your modifier. moving over half this distance provokes attacks of opportunity from other creatures.
and don't worry, I've released a few feats and expanded the powers of older feats to handle armor (like the feat chink in armor).
so far the playing has revealed that it slows down casters(their spells arent instant damages anymore, so martial classes now have time to reach their fire flinging foes)

jiriku

2011-09-12, 05:37 PM

This came up a bit when the rogue kept complain about a faceless NPC(Sir Jason) who they could never kill and had consistently killed at least one party member (their first encounter: Barbarian was crushed under a great hammer, monk got beaten to death and the wizard was fish hooked into oblivion. Second encounter: Barbarian tries to grapple Knight and gets his neck broken in the process, the wizard rerolled a necromancy....who got fish hooked into oblivion. Third encounter: he is being paid to help them, so they ditch him when the Tarrasque shows up, he and the Tarrasque throw down and he barely takes any damage after beating the ever loving **** out of the Tarrasque. fourth encounter: he's pretty pissed about his "allies" betraying him, so he taps his valor and martyr power in the first two rounds of combat and kills all but the rogue.Fifth encounter: He sneaks up on the rogue and quietly strangles her. sixth encount: kills two casters before getting teleported to a different plane. Final encounter: the black queen convinces him to be her consort and he kills the entire party.)

appearance: this acts a DC that normally only works against npc(cuz I'm nice to my players)

Heh. Heh heh. Heh heh ha hah hah. You amuse me, sir.

Variable DR could actually scale pretty effectively with level if we took a page from 4e and provided an automatic multiplier based on armor type. So full plate gives 1d12 DR, mithril full plate 2d12 (or adamantine full plate 2d12+3), astral steel full plate 3d12, unobtainium full plate 4d12, etc, etc. Basically, every 5 or 10 levels, everyone upgrades to a new and astronomically more expensive material that keeps their DR competitive with damage dealt by level-appropriate enemies.

This would still not change the fact that massive and ubiquitous DR completely queers the balance of existing character archetypes and monsters. Anything that relies on large numbers of relatively weak attacks is pooched, and needs to be either re-CR'd or redesigned from the ground up.

However, I do see a gem in here, which is the idea that damage reduction ought to be valid against energy damage, and that armor might provide both. What if barbarian DR was applicable against energy damage? A mid-level barbarian could walk across hot coals barefoot, tolerate extreme environmental conditions with ease, and suffer a little less when blasted with nasty orbs of fire. These sound like good, chest-thumping activities for a barbarian to me. What if adamantine full plate gave you DR 3/- against energy damage too? Again, the BSF is now dead 'ard in a variety of circumstances, and his precious hit points last a little longer against energy damage. Werewolf shrugs off flames? Vampire doesn't mind your lightning bolt so much? Skeleton doesn't sizzle quite like you expected when that acid arrow hits him? I'm thinking that all of these are good things. Now, it does change the relative value of various options, but if it's just options that are reweighted, rather than whole classes, archetypes, or categories of monsters, that's just a matter of making different decisions when building your character or encounter. It's not a thousand hours of work rewriting the system.

Showzilla

2011-09-12, 10:09 PM

Heh. Heh heh. Heh heh ha hah hah. You amuse me, sir.

Variable DR could actually scale pretty effectively with level if we took a page from 4e and provided an automatic multiplier based on armor type. So full plate gives 1d12 DR, mithril full plate 2d12 (or adamantine full plate 2d12+3), astral steel full plate 3d12, unobtainium full plate 4d12, etc, etc. Basically, every 5 or 10 levels, everyone upgrades to a new and astronomically more expensive material that keeps their DR competitive with damage dealt by level-appropriate enemies.

This would still not change the fact that massive and ubiquitous DR completely queers the balance of existing character archetypes and monsters. Anything that relies on large numbers of relatively weak attacks is pooched, and needs to be either re-CR'd or redesigned from the ground up.

However, I do see a gem in here, which is the idea that damage reduction ought to be valid against energy damage, and that armor might provide both. What if barbarian DR was applicable against energy damage? A mid-level barbarian could walk across hot coals barefoot, tolerate extreme environmental conditions with ease, and suffer a little less when blasted with nasty orbs of fire. These sound like good, chest-thumping activities for a barbarian to me. What if adamantine full plate gave you DR 3/- against energy damage too? Again, the BSF is now dead 'ard in a variety of circumstances, and his precious hit points last a little longer against energy damage. Werewolf shrugs off flames? Vampire doesn't mind your lightning bolt so much? Skeleton doesn't sizzle quite like you expected when that acid arrow hits him? I'm thinking that all of these are good things. Now, it does change the relative value of various options, but if it's just options that are reweighted, rather than whole classes, archetypes, or categories of monsters, that's just a matter of making different decisions when building your character or encounter. It's not a thousand hours of work rewriting the system.
hahahahahaha, thanks for pointing that out. I am truely nice to my characters, the reason Sir Jason was constantly beating them ****less was that I designed him as a friendly NPC who was going to be their tankzilla, but they instantly tried to kill him in their first encounter, so yeah, I'm nice but no amount of nice can save that much stupid. The fact that he could be paid off to not kill them was a blessing. and if you want to know how sir jason was so damn kick ass, go to this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=214740) page.
now as for my new system, I don't fancy the idea of the armor's leveling up like that, even I must say that breaks things. I built the armor in regards to its real world efficiency then scaled it up to Dnd's super human standards, I've also kept in several small weakness in armor that still bring it down to earth. The main reason for this was to make tanking easier in game and to finally make head to head classes impossible to be fought up front by non head to head classes, casters now have to worry about wasting spells on foes who simply shrug them off with no ill effect, rogues actually have to be sneak and crafty to fight a knight, and monsters becoming even scarier.

Hanuman

2011-09-13, 04:12 AM

*sigh*

Go, look up every thread where crit effect tables are discussed. They are problematic. Really nasty effects for crits? This doesn't make armor effective, this makes melee ineffective.
1) Armor contextually blocks nasty contextualized crits.
2) Melee causes nasty contextualized crits.

Considering the AC and BAB of enemy monsters at higher levels I can't see how scoring a lucky crit acts as anything else but leveling the playing field for melee who can neither effectively mechanically block nor do sizable mechanical damage without picking from a few selected builds.

Sure, inigo montoya might get impaled, which then improves the use of armor for contextual blocks...

Yitzi

2011-09-13, 08:27 AM

According to whom?

The way the class is built. (And yes, exceptions may exist, but they'll usually be exceptions to what you said as well.)

[/quote]Unless the Rogue can drop him in a single round with Sneak Attacks, the Fighter will win, even if he's been severely damaged.[/quote]

It is a poor Rogue that can only Sneak Attack once per fight. Leaving aside stuff like "5' away and drink a potion of invisibility" (never mind having the wizard help out with Improved Invisibility), he can flank or feint in order to get that fistful of d6's.

The problem is that this pigeon-holes classes. Now the Monk is only useful against unarmored opponents, as is the Rogue. The Fighter is best against unarmored opponents.

It does somewhat increase the tendency of certain classes to certain roles...but I see that as a feature, not a bug.

And the spellcasters don't care either way, which, again, widens the gap.

As long as the offensively powerful spellcasters (i.e. wizard, sorcerer, cleric only with DMM cheese, and druid to a small extent) can't wear strong armor, that should be compensated for by the fact that they can't use it either. So remove DMM cheese and most of the ways to decrease ACP, and things should be ok.

Personally, I don't like to feel useless at the game table. If I've built an agile, somewhat damage-light Swashbuckler, I want to be able to damage and maybe even defeat the heavily armored knight by being faster, hitting him in gaps in his armor (through skill, not necessarily through sneak attacks), and basically stand a chance against him.

Yes, this would be a problem for such characters. Of course, one option is simply to accept that this rule would make such characters far less effective, but that's somewhat undesirable. Perhaps the best approach would be a rule that characters using Weapon Finesse ignore the damage soak (perhaps with more feats to make armor somewhat effective even against Weapon Finesse.)

jiriku

2011-09-13, 12:00 PM

As long as the offensively powerful spellcasters (i.e. wizard, sorcerer, cleric only with DMM cheese, and druid to a small extent) can't wear strong armor, that should be compensated for by the fact that they can't use it either. So remove DMM cheese and most of the ways to decrease ACP, and things should be ok.

I would disagree. If all classes relied equally on dealing damage to be successful, this wouldn't spoil the pudding. If the stronger classes relied on damage more than the weaker, it would even improve game balance. But because weaker classes need to deal damage, while stronger classes merely can, but have other/better strategies available, significant damage resistance is a heavy burden to the weakest classes in the game, and a minor hindrance to the strongest.

For example, let's have a look at the DMPC du jour, Sir Jason. As a high-level knight, he's optimized for dealing direct damage in melee and generating massive damage soak. Classes like rogue, ranger, samurai, and monk are basically hosed against him. A fighter or barbarian might be able to threaten him by devoting their entire build towards dealing excessive damage, but that's doing it the hard way by trying to overcome his greatest strength through brute force. A druid, however, could wild shape into a dire bear, grapple, and pin him, rendering him helpless. A wizard can lock him in a forcecage or charm-spam him until he fails a Will save. A cleric can throw SoD spells like destruction and implosion until he's just a greasy spot on the ground. And really, any of the Big 3 could use half a dozen other tactics to kill him or render him helpless -- all without ever dealing a single point of damage.

Djinn_in_Tonic

2011-09-13, 12:19 PM

I would disagree. If all classes relied equally on dealing damage to be successful, this wouldn't spoil the pudding. If the stronger classes relied on damage more than the weaker, it would even improve game balance. But because weaker classes need to deal damage, while stronger classes merely can, but have other/better strategies available, significant damage resistance is a heavy burden to the weakest classes in the game, and a minor hindrance to the strongest.

For example, let's have a look at the DMPC du jour, Sir Jason. As a high-level knight, he's optimized for dealing direct damage in melee and generating massive damage soak. Classes like rogue, ranger, samurai, and monk are basically hosed against him. A fighter or barbarian might be able to threaten him by devoting their entire build towards dealing excessive damage, but that's doing it the hard way by trying to overcome his greatest strength through brute force. A druid, however, could wild shape into a dire bear, grapple, and pin him, rendering him helpless. A wizard can lock him in a forcecage or charm-spam him until he fails a Will save. A cleric can throw SoD spells like destruction and implosion until he's just a greasy spot on the ground. And really, any of the Big 3 could use half a dozen other tactics to kill him or render him helpless -- all without ever dealing a single point of damage.

Yep. This is exactly my point. The classes that need the most help in combat are, under this system, even more hosed. As mentioned, monks rogues, rangers, samurai, monks, and the like may as well just not carry a weapon, and should just run from anyone in any half-decent suit of armor. Fighters need to deal boatloads of damage to perform even close to where they used to.

Wizards and the like? They never really relied on damage anyway. All this does is encourage them to use even MORE of their 1-hit kill spells (or worse...there are ways to shut down people where they don't even get a save), and thus doesn't effect their power level at all while nerfing everyone who actually could have used the help in being effective in combat.

NeoSeraphi

2011-09-13, 12:43 PM

It is a poor Rogue that can only Sneak Attack once per fight. Leaving aside stuff like "5' away and drink a potion of invisibility" (never mind having the wizard help out with Improved Invisibility), he can flank or feint in order to get that fistful of d6's.

I believe he was referring to the fact that a rogue's weakest d6 is the one he rolls for his hit dice, and if the rogue didn't take the fighter out in the first round, the fighter would calmly smash his greataxe into the rogue's face and move on.

Additionally, feinting against a foe that has full BAB is harder than you might think. (20th level rogue vs 20th level fighter, rogue gets 23+Cha if he spent full ranks in Bluff, fighter gets 20+Wis if he has absolutely no ranks in Sense Motive, or 31+Wis if he has full ranks in Sense Motive)

It does somewhat increase the tendency of certain classes to certain roles...but I see that as a feature, not a bug.

So the reason the 3.5 wizard, cleric, and druid are considered the best classes is because they can generally handle any given foe, any situation, even better than those who "specialize" in dealing with that situation, and you say that narrowing the combat ability of the weaker classes to more specific foes is a good thing?

As long as the offensively powerful spellcasters (i.e. wizard, sorcerer, cleric only with DMM cheese, and druid to a small extent) can't wear strong armor, that should be compensated for by the fact that they can't use it either. So remove DMM cheese and most of the ways to decrease ACP, and things should be ok.

This is funny. This is very funny. You assume that taking away a cleric's ability to persist his amazing spells makes him weaker. "Oh no, I have to actually prepare more than one Divine Power, Righteous Might and Divine Favor per day, and I might have to spend the first three rounds of combat buffing to turn into a melee monster"

Take away his DMM Persist. What happens then? He's still a Large-sized, full BAB, +6 Str monster in full-plate. It just took him a few turns to enter combat.

And the druid, with his auto-natural armor, doesn't really care about whether he has an armor bonus or not. He turns into a bear. Free natural armor, which gives him DR under this system.

And wizards fly. They turn invisible. They dodge 50 percent of attacks. And they do all of this without wearing armor anyway.

Yes, this would be a problem for such characters. Of course, one option is simply to accept that this rule would make such characters far less effective, but that's somewhat undesirable. Perhaps the best approach would be a rule that characters using Weapon Finesse ignore the damage soak (perhaps with more feats to make armor somewhat effective even against Weapon Finesse.)

That would be what is called a "feat tax", or a feat that is required to make a class effective, rather than spending that feat on something specific to your character, like Goad for a character who likes taunting people IC, or Nymph's Kiss for a character who wants to be social and gain skill points.

Consider that rogues already have the Two-Weapon Fighting tree as a feat tax (for that type of build). A rogue would have Weapon Finesse, Two-Weapon Fighting, Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, Greater Two-Weapon Fighting, and, let's say, Craven, for optimization's sake. That's 5 feats already out of the 7 feats a rogue gets over 20 levels.

Yitzi

2011-09-13, 01:02 PM

But because weaker classes need to deal damage, while stronger classes merely can, but have other/better strategies available, significant damage resistance is a heavy burden to the weakest classes in the game, and a minor hindrance to the strongest.

Ah, yes that is an issue. But I don't think it will need fixing that much more with this change than without it, so might as well add this change to make armor count and fix the nondamaging effects with a different fix.

Djinn_in_Tonic

2011-09-13, 01:08 PM

Ah, yes that is an issue. But I don't think it will need fixing that much more with this change than without it, so might as well add this change to make armor count and fix the nondamaging effects with a different fix.

The problem is that armor CURRENTLY counts. It makes you harder to hit. Now it makes you harder to hit and removes the damage abilities of the classes that already need help contributing damage to a fight.

In short, it fixes the wrong problem. It's an intriguing idea, but those classes need compensation if this goes into effect. Currently, it makes a large number of classes either worthless, or entirely dependent upon circumstantial tricks.

Yitzi

2011-09-13, 01:34 PM

The problem is that armor CURRENTLY counts. It makes you harder to hit.

If so, then the whole "question" of this thread is wrong. I'm assuming its problem is that with high DEX, you lose as much as you gain.

Djinn_in_Tonic

2011-09-13, 01:50 PM

If so, then the whole "question" of this thread is wrong. I'm assuming its problem is that with high DEX, you lose as much as you gain.

Pretty much. Alternatively, it doesn't make you hard ENOUGH to hit, but that is, in my mind, more a problem with the attack system than with armor...there's to much variance, meaning that for a Wizard's dagger attack to be at ALL possible, a Fighter must be basically assured a hit. When you're looking at a variance of, say, a +10 BaB and a -2 Strength penalty (+8 to hit) versus a few feats, a +5 magical weapon, a +8 Strength, and a +20 BaB (+42 or more to hit), ACs of monsters and player characters have way to much chaos placed into them. That's one thing 4e did right: Fighters are more likely to hit, yes. They deal more damage WHEN they hit. But Wizards aren't so far behind that ACs can't be in a good range for both classes to have a chance to hit.

But, back to 3.5, melee classes already have to hit to deal damage. Making it so they CAN'T deal damage even IF they hit is not, in my mind, the answer. 'cause let's face it...armor wasn't actually that good.

In fact, it's also not realistic, if that was part of the goal at all. You could kill an armored Knight with a knife, dagger, or any weapon that bashes or pierces. Average footsoldiers often would, in fact: a Knight who had fallen off his horse was basically done for, as the armor which had protected him now made him slow and unwieldy, and really wasn't actually that good at surviving multiple attempts to smash him with, say, a heavy club. What armor was actually best against was the sort of attack another Knight would be likely to throw at you, or the sort of prodding and poking you'd get from pikemen while riding a horse. Elsewhere, your best bet was to be fast and lightly armored: you're less likely to get hit, and might be mildly protected if you were.

So , in D&D terms, a Rogue would actually be fairly likely to kill an armored knight, as they'd dance around him and hit him in all the weak points in his armor. That's not a sneak attack...that's just exploiting weaknesses in straight up combat. Sure, if he got hit he's in trouble, but he'd also be able to deal tremendous damage if he scored a hit. As you've written this system, he'll NEVER be able to deal significant damage.

Spiryt

2011-09-13, 02:21 PM

In fact, it's also not realistic, if that was part of the goal at all. You could kill an armored Knight with a knife, dagger, or any weapon that bashes or pierces. Average footsoldiers often would, in fact: a Knight who had fallen off his horse was basically done for, as the armor which had protected him now made him slow and unwieldy, and really wasn't actually that good at surviving multiple attempts to smash him with, say, a heavy club. What armor was actually best against was the sort of attack another Knight would be likely to throw at you, or the sort of prodding and poking you'd get from pikemen while riding a horse. Elsewhere, your best bet was to be fast and lightly armored: you're less likely to get hit, and might be mildly protected if you were.

I'm sorry to interrupt your nice thread about homebrew rules with this, but this simply has nothing to do with any truth or 'realism'.

No one was going 'fast and lightly armored' on medieval, ancient, etc. battlefields if he had any choice about it.

Person wearing jack or some light armor would be absolutely screwed in fight against someone in complete suit of mail, plate, or whatever - while all other things being even remotely equal.

Likewise, knight out of horse wasn't in any way " done for", armored fighting on foot was done trough whole history by heavy cavalry that dismounted from whatever reason. It wasn't really making anyone very "slow and unwieldy" either.

Princes of Persia's, Assasin's Creeds and other lightly armored guys jumping around and slaying fool's with daggers are nice fantasy stuff, but please don't try to push them into real world history from whatever reason.

Yitzi

2011-09-13, 02:26 PM

Pretty much.

And that, this does help with, both by giving armor another advantage and (perhaps too much) by making high-DEX characters less viable.

Alternatively, it doesn't make you hard ENOUGH to hit, but that is, in my mind, more a problem with the attack system than with armor...there's to much variance, meaning that for a Wizard's dagger attack to be at ALL possible, a Fighter must be basically assured a hit.

By the point that is true, the wizard's dagger doesn't have to be viable.
If there's a problem with the attack system, it lies in the fact that the d20+bonus mechanic makes AC worth far more to high-AC characters than low-AC characters; if you want to fix that, the best way would probably be either to switch to the 3d6 variant (which pulls the "sweet spot" of highest efficiency more toward the middle), to make targeted armor type less class-dependent/build-dependent (so that everyone has attacks that ignore AC, although that has its own problems), or to change to a multiple-dice system more similar to that found in World of Darkness and similar. (A fourth option would be to use some sort of exponential system to make the effectiveness constant, but that could get complicated.)

Djinn_in_Tonic

2011-09-13, 02:47 PM

And that, this does help with, both by giving armor another advantage and (perhaps too much) by making high-DEX characters less viable.

Is there a problem with evasion being as effective as armor? As I pointed out above, they ARE (and, historically, WERE) both effective ways of mitigating damage, and one shouldn't be THAT much better than the other. Alternatively, they should both have equally good advantages, even if those advantages are different.

The system here makes armor flat-out better than simply not getting hit. You get hit about the same amount, but you can also resist damage.

A more fair solution would be to make armor resist SOME damage (nowhere near as high as presented here, so as not to invalidate characters who rely on smaller damage values), and to give a greater AC bonus to those NOT wearing armor.

So wearing no armor might provide, say, a bonus to AC based on your Base Attack Bonus or your class...something that starts at maybe +4, and increases with either BaB or level. Armor, on the other hand, might cap at something like a +4 or a +6 bonus, but might provide an equivalent amount of straight Damage Absorption PER ROUND, again possibly scaling with level (Fullplate as something like DR 5 + your character level).

Now armor negates a solid amount of damage from an attack or two, but a sufficiently large amount of smaller blows (or one big one) can break through its defenses. In 1v1 combat with 1-2 attacks per round, it's great. The more you get hit, the more likely one of those hits is to get through your armor (i.e. you take more damage in a round than your armor's absorption value, and you begin to get hurt).

Stuff about attack rolls and AC

Yeah...there are a number of solutions to this problem, but that's not the discussion on the table here, so I don't really want to derail the OPs thread that much. :smallbiggrin:

No one was going 'fast and lightly armored' on medieval, ancient, etc. battlefields if he had any choice about it.

Not saying they HAD a choice. Armor was effective, yes. But bear in mind that your average medieval soldier had no real formal training in arms or combat, and probably wouldn't know the first thing about effective combat dodging, keeping your distance, attacking into your opponent's recovery, and so forth.

Person wearing jack or some light armor would be absolutely screwed in fight against someone in complete suit of mail, plate, or whatever - while all other things being even remotely equal.

While true, one of the reasons that piercing weapons came into play is because those weapons could effectively penetrate armor. If someone could avoid being hit (which was my suggestion...in D&D characters CAN be that fast), they should be able to win, eventually. Yeah, if you get hit with a Greataxe, fullplate would be MUCH more useful than leather armor. But the trick is to not get hit, which should be an option. It's a lot easier to avoid the hit without armor, and a lot easier to resist it WITH armor.

Likewise, knight out of horse wasn't in any way " done for", armored fighting on foot was done trough whole history by heavy cavalry that dismounted from whatever reason. It wasn't really making anyone very "slow and unwieldy" either.

Have you tried moving in a full suit of armor? I have...your range and quickness of motion is drastically less. Against competent foes, you're in trouble. Yes, it protects you against many blows, but my point is that is comes NOWHERE close to making you impervious. Of course, most of those competent foes ALSO had armor, 'cause you don't want your best guys being laid out by a lucky shot from an average footsoldier. Still, a Knight without armor is, quite simply, less likely to be struck by a hit from a Knight IN armor. He's just going to hurt a lot more when he IS eventually hit.

As for the last point, I'm not trying to push fantasy stuff. I'm basing this on personal experience, both in armor (although only a small number of times) and as a trained fencer and rapier fighter who HAS, on a number of occasions, sparred with someone in armor and/or wielding a much larger weapon. You can indeed run circles around such a fighter, and, although it would require more blows, I could definitely deal some lethal damage to such an individual if I so desired.

Conclusion: Armor is great, yes. It's not a straight-up advantage though--it makes you slightly slower, slightly less reactive, and an easier target. It DOES assist greatly when you get hit, but, in exchange, it does make you easier to hit. It's simple fact: a guy wearing 25kg of steel on his body and chain mail around his joints can't move as fast as the same guy without all that.

So if you're going to add resistances (i.e. reduction from armor) upon being struck, then you have realistic armor: you get hit, you take less damage. Thus, make guys with armor easier to hit than faster guys without armor. Armor doesn't have BOTH advantages.

Also, the amount of damage resisted is still to high. If a peasant throws a dagger at you, yeah...it'll bounce off. If a trained fighter jabs the same knife in the mail around your neck or shoulder, you're in a world of trouble.

Spiryt

2011-09-13, 03:09 PM

I'm sorry, but it's all pretty incorrect, and I'm not sure it's worth to consider it in this thread.

You can encounter literally dozens of such thread and questions even inside of this board "Real Armour and Weapons" thread.

And in short, no, while talking about melee, and non gunpowder missile weapons, there aren't really any advantages of being armorless compared to armored in actual fighting.

You can ask it even in mentioned thread and you will see the responses.

But the trick is to not get hit, which should be an option. It's a lot easier to avoid the hit without armor, and a lot easier to resist it WITH armor.

It's many times easier to avoid getting hit with armor.

You doesn't have to avoid the blow completely, merely assure that it lands on your armored part, and in the way and place that won't really bother you - if you think that powerful blow of, say, axe may indeed damage you.

Simple geometry of movement.

Against competent foes, you're in trouble.

You are in trouble against competent foes without armor. Because they can just flay your arm with a simple flick of the wrist if they're good with the sword, for example.

You can indeed run circles around such a fighter, and, although it would require more blows, I could definitely deal some lethal damage to such an individual if I so desired.

I'm sorry, but this just means that you wear doing something terribly wrong/ on weird rules.

Fighting with rapiers even in reenacting fight with blunt weapon against someone with armor would make you bull rushed and pummeled, because no one would really have to worry about rapier while closing in.

People trough the history were spending tremendous amount of wealth on complete armors.

Usually those were most competent combatants all around as well.

At no point they would be doing it if this all shouldn't dramatically improve their chances against everything, including some guy without armour or battlefield weapons at all. Let alone lower it.

Similarly, rapiers weren't ever involved in battle as well - they were from definition civilian weapons.

it would require more blows, I could definitely deal some lethal damage to such an individual if I so desired.

It would require fitting point into the gaps, which would be infinitely difficult if competent opponent has anything to say about it in that matter.

And if gaps were actually covered with solid mail, matter is really approaching lost cause quickly.

Opponent in say, full mail, have ridiculous advantage in someone without armor, period.

Because mobility will be obviously on the side of "bare' man, he could indeed attempt to avoid this weird hypothetical fight more readily.

Have you tried moving in a full suit of armor?

Yes, quite bad stuff. Although never tried in suit actually made for me, which makes all difference in the world.

Also, the amount of damage resisted is still to high. If a peasant throws a dagger at you, yeah...it'll bounce off. If a trained fighter jabs the same knife in the mail around your neck or shoulder, you're in a world of trouble.

And if he doesn't have similar mail, you can just jab him all around his body while he tries to close in to jab you... You can just cover your neck with your mailed arm to, if you're really afraid about your neck. While he can't, obviously.

Completely unfair trade.

And knife really wouldn't have much chance, some very pointy dagger certainly, but....

Really, no one sane would be wearing all that heavy stuff if it wasn't making him safer and more effective fighter than without it. This alone could basically end the discussion.

EDIT:

Some relatively weird topic, but a lot of that stuff had been covered thouroughly (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=210555)

Djinn_in_Tonic

2011-09-13, 03:16 PM

It's many times easier to avoid getting hit with armor.

This is the crux of our disagreement as it pertains to this ruling (And not to personal experience, since you're not going to be able to change my personal experience. Sorry. I'll admit that many of those posts are correct, but the context of D&D and of any particular fight in question throw in so many variables that I won't bother to argue further, if that's alright with you. :smalltongue:).

For the purposes of a system which reduces damage upon a hit, I consider "hit" to be "a weapon has made contact with you and/or your armor," since, as there's a qualifier before damage, there is something else effecting the damage.

If you make it so that damage might be reduced upon a valid hit, then that's a result of defenses. In this case, I interpret it to be "you have been hit, and your ability to utilize your armor effectively has reduced your damage." I consider NOT being hit to be "your opponent has not struck you, period, end of story."

Armor does not do both. You are an easier target for contact, simply due to the extra weight. You might be able to deflect damage with your skill in using your armor, but you are easier to "hit" by a definition of "a weapon makes contact with you."

Tyndmyr

2011-09-13, 03:19 PM

1) Armor contextually blocks nasty contextualized crits.
2) Melee causes nasty contextualized crits.

Considering the AC and BAB of enemy monsters at higher levels I can't see how scoring a lucky crit acts as anything else but leveling the playing field for melee who can neither effectively mechanically block nor do sizable mechanical damage without picking from a few selected builds.

Sure, inigo montoya might get impaled, which then improves the use of armor for contextual blocks...

Increased variability hurts PCs.

Also, it focuses heavily on crits and armor. Not all melee classes do the same. In fact, a LOT of classes focus on other things.

The wizards, on the other hand, have miss chances and spells without attack rolls. I don't see how this levels the playing field vs an ethereal wizard casting force cage in the slightest.

Spiryt

2011-09-13, 03:23 PM

Yes, with D&D you can wield a sword that sears trough the stuff because of flame, or whatever.

That's why I don't think that OP ideas are really that much suitable for D&D, that's not only pretty unrealistic system - it also becomes hell of a high powered fantasy real quick.

I was just commenting the real world analogy, which wasn't really good for this purpose.

In real world going with dagger against man with, say, dagger, but a plate too would be rather suicidal idea.

But D&D is not real world for most gaming uses.

~Corvus~

2011-09-13, 05:02 PM

Yitzi

2011-09-13, 05:07 PM

Is there a problem with evasion being as effective as armor?

If not, then what's this thread about?

Djinn_in_Tonic

2011-09-13, 05:17 PM

If not, then what's this thread about?

That's what I'm sort of wondering. I'm puzzled as to why we need a marked differentiation between the two forms of defense, or why, if we DO need a marked differentiation, one must necessarily be outright BETTER. It's also leading me to question what the OP means when a PC gets "hit" by an attack.

I think the system of Unarmored = higher base AC, Armored = lower AC than unarmored (but granting DR) is a very good one for replicating the differences between the two styles. As mentioned, I've gone entire combats (admittedly not lethal fights) without having an opponent land a hit on me, so it's clearly an effective means of avoiding attacks. And, with my almost complete lack of armored-combat skill, I'd be MUCH more vulnerable if I were wearing a suit of armor. For some people, evasion > tankiness.

I guess I'm saying that this not only invalidates all low-damage characters (in addition to widening the gap between save-or-die spells and physical damage), but it also invalidates an entire archetype which is built into the game at a fundamental level: monks, rangers, rogues, scouts, and other speed-over-brawn classes suffer twofold in both damage AND in defense. That's horrible for the state of the game as a whole, even if the idea of damage mitigation is appealing.

The system has some promise, but it has HUGE holes in it that need to be addressed. In an environment where everyone is a heavily armed and armored, high-damage/high-defense juggernaut, it's great. But that game isn't exactly D&D, 'cause D&D has a spectrum of characters across all archetypes. The rules, therefore, need to take them all into account.

The third encounter particularly bugs me. I did a double take. I know, the Tarrasque is HARDLY the difficult monster to defeat anymore, but... THIS
http://images.wikia.com/non-aliencreatures/images/c/c2/Tarrasque.gif
was defeated by a knight simply by his armor?

Also note that the Knight soloed, without taking much damage, the monster with the highest damage per attack routine of anything in the Monster Manual that isn't a Gargantuan or Colossal Dragon, and that the damage the dragons deal isn't that much higher.

He also appears to have single-handedly rolled easily through every encounter you've had him in, which doesn't say good things for the balance of this system.

This may be a problem with your Knight class (which I haven't seen), but I imagine a large portion of that comes from the insane amount of resistance this system gives.

It seems the party Rogue's (see...I said it would be the Rogues and Monks who suffer most) irritation at the invincible Knight NPC was well founded. With an average damage negation (that "base soak" you talked about) of 48 and the ability to raise it up to 192 damage soaked per attack, there's literally nothing you can do to him short of insane damage cheese and/or save-or-die spells. If that's the sort of game you want, than this works...everyone will be a 1-shotting caster or an invincible juggernaut, and battles will be tanks ineffectually smacking each other until one of them fails a save on a spell cast by the Wizards in the back row.

To me, that doesn't sound fun. :smallfrown:

Some Math: I realize I've been throwing out logic without a sound backing, so here's some math. Assuming a character with 200 hit points, and an average attack damage of 40 (1 in 20 chance to crit, for x3, just as a baseline), with a soak of 48...

An average attack deals minimal to no damage. 1 in 20 attacks will damage (assuming no armor crits), and it'll deal 80 points of damage. This means that about 50-60 attacks are required to kill the character, assuming no healing.

...which means, assuming the average attack value, that it's taking 2000-2400 damage to kill a character with 200 hit points. You've just multiplied his health by a factor of over ten. And that's assuming his armor never crits, and he's fighting foes whose attacks deal more damage on average than a Great Wyrm Gold Dragon (whose average damage value on its biggest attack is a little over 30, and who only crits for x2 damage).

Fighting that Great Wyrm (assuming it gets just that one attack...about 3 of its attacks can penetrate, but the less low-damage hits it gets the more the math favors the Wyrm, so we'll give it the benefit of the doubt), it takes about 200 hits to kill the Knight, so that's about 8,000 extra effective health. That's crazy. Every hit point is effectively 40 hit points.

I don't know about you, but in a suit of armor I might withstand an extra hit or two (maybe three) with an axe wielded by someone of comparable skill. That said, I'm definitely not going to be able to stand there an let a psychopath wear out his axe arm on my face. Your Knight basically stands there for a few hours letting the guy wail on him before going down. Maybe a few days. That dragon, at least, can down him in 20 minutes with a rate of one attack per round. That's about the fastest he'll go down.

jiriku

2011-09-13, 05:48 PM

Agreed. Much grief has been caused by designing classes and combat rules with the assumption that combatants are always humanoids standing on the ground and wielding weapons. In D&D, you can open a page at random in any Monster Manual and there's a better than even chance that you won't find any monsters on that page who MUST fight like that.

Me, I hate extra rolls, so I'd be just as happy with a quick fix that makes armor block attacks more often without making anyone at the table do anything different from what they're already doing.

Djinn_in_Tonic

2011-09-13, 06:01 PM

Huge math + Logic post editted onto my post on the previous page. Take a look. The numbers are crazy.

Showzilla

2011-09-13, 09:27 PM

I'm liking what Djinn is saying. And Spiryt seems to be going in the same "this isn't quite viable" direction, but by means of realism, not in D&D terms.

I'm feeling bugged by something Showzilla said earlier about what this system allows him to accomplish:

The third encounter particularly bugs me. I did a double take. I know, the Tarrasque is HARDLY the difficult monster to defeat anymore, but... THIS
http://images.wikia.com/non-aliencreatures/images/c/c2/Tarrasque.gif
was defeated by a knight simply by his armor? You mean to tell me that the Tarrasque didn't, like, try to sit on the knight? ...And then my sheer weight mechanics...CRUSH the bastard? This is a behemoth that has no trouble bringing down cities. It wouldn't have the trouble in Tokyo that Godzilla did. ...And the knight didn't take damage? :confused: (Edit: I'd think the Tarrasque would out-grapple the Knight and use the dude as an amusing play-toy that doesn't squish. Something that spends most of its time in hibernation would want some amusement, and I think the Tarrasque would enjoy tossing the knight and watching it run back to it again and again, shouting "I'll slay you, foul creature!!" :smallbiggrin:)

As a DM, I don't buy it. Armor is mere metal, not impenetrable bull****tium. A friggin' rapier can pierce through full plate, no problem. A wall of force is a totally different story. But we're talking armor mechanics which, as Djinn has been saying, widens the gap.

Edit: I don't mean to sound cruel or harsh, it's simply my style of critique >_<. I like the spirit of the idea, but I just don't buy the idea.

k, I see.....but...time to put somethings too rest....
armor making you slow/clumsy:
the heaviest of full plate weighed in a 65 lbs, modern soldiers carry more and all their weight is put on their shoulders, not on their whole body like with armor. Not to mention the men who trained to fight with armor did things like running miles, mounting and dismounting horses, wrestling, climbing, SWIMMING, ect.
and now a modern day person with none of the knights training. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm11yAXeegg&list=FLCxOXJr9NtDLAcCGQbQMknw&index=18)
second....a rapier...going through a solid plate?!?!?!?!?!? Ive used those on wooden planks before, those thing bend enough with what I did, if I hit a solid metal plate the sword would have snapped.
as for how well armor saves your skin here....everyone seemed to forget that this is a fantasy setting with people of high levels pulling of super human feats no person (or living thing) in real life is capable of. beheading T-rex with an axe, surviving orbital falls, casting fireballs for Christ's sake....I just took everything armor could pull off in real life and scaled it up Dnd's standards.

now to ask how sir Jason survived the Tarrasque.
his stats: being a knight these are the three actually gave a damn about.
str: 50
con: 30
char: 32
he taps valor going into the fight
this is his soak capability
3d12+42/14-20/x7
the Tarrasque swings and hits on his first hit:
37 is his damage
yeah, no damage
second hit (bite) and he rolls a nat 20
49x3=147
now Sir jason must roll: d20 came up 16...his d12s...errrgggg
45*7=315 "is that all you've got you over hype inbred dinosaur fiend from the depths of hell, I say, have at thee"
third hit:
20
nope
and so on
round 2: sir Jason takes a ton of attacks of opportunity as he closes the distance.
Tarrasque bites, crits.
61
Jason soaks
45
Jason takes
16 points of damage
"well done, now(swaps to scary voice), my turn"
round 3
we go through the Tarrasques hit again, then sir Jason swings out with his great hammer
d20=19
The Tarrasque shudders
damage out put:1428 damage
Jason: "have no fear my questionable fellows, for I have fell the beast, now, lets use take the heart of Quzi and...hey, wait for me you naves!!!"
The party seals him in as the Tarrasque rises back up
he taps valor again for this fight
wham*wham*wham*wham*wham*wham*wham*wham*wham
They sent a solar to get him when they realized HE had their papers.

jiriku

2011-09-13, 09:56 PM

Showzilla, assuming that your DMPC was a non-epic character, mostly what this demonstrates is that your knight class isn't properly balanced, and that your DMPC doesn't carry level-appropriate gear. And if the character was epic, easily defeating a non-epic monster doesn't prove anything. All characters are expected to easily defeat monsters that are many levels lower than they are.

Ziegander

2011-09-13, 10:07 PM

a rapier...going through a solid plate?!?!?!?!?!? Ive used those on wooden planks before, those thing bend enough with what I did, if I hit a solid metal plate the sword would have snapped.

It may surprise you to know that a plank of wood (unless we're discussing a couple milimeters of balsa wood and I assume we're not) absorbs blows much better than, at best, a centimeter of steel plate. It is, of course, much easier to chip away at, it has much lower hardness (which is a measurable real-life value as well as a D&D value), but it is much more malleable.

now to ask how sir Jason survived the Tarrasque.
his stats: being a knight these are the three actually gave a damn about.
str: 50
con: 30
char: 32

Alarm bells are ringing, Tyrone. How on earth has he achieved these stats? Assuming a human, an extremely generous 40pt buy, starting stats of Str 18 Dex 13 Con 14 Int 9 Wis 10 Cha 15, five level points into Str, a +6 item for each of Str, Con, and Cha, as well as +5 inherent Wish bonuses to each of Str, Con, and Cha, that gets us up to Str 34 Con 25 and Cha 26.

Jason makes a joke out of the Terrasque
he taps valor going into the fight
this is his soak capability
3d12+42/14-20/x7
the Tarrasque swings and hits on his first hit:
37 is his damage
yeah, no damage
second hit (bite) and he rolls a nat 20
49x3=147
now Sir jason must roll: d20 came up 16...his d12s...errrgggg
45*7=315 "is that all you've got you over hype inbred dinosaur fiend from the depths of hell, I say, have at thee"
third hit:
20
nope
and so on
round 2: sir Jason takes a ton of attacks of opportunity as he closes the distance.
Tarrasque bites, crits.
61
Jason soaks
45
Jason takes
16 points of damage
"well done, now(swaps to scary voice), my turn"
round 3
we go through the Tarrasques hit again, then sir Jason swings out with his great hammer
d20=19
The Tarrasque shudders
damage out put:1428 damage
Jason: "have no fear my questionable fellows, for I have fell the beast, now, lets use take the heart of Quzi and...hey, wait for me you naves!!!"
The party seals him in as the Tarrasque rises back up
he taps valor again for this fight
wham*wham*wham*wham*wham*wham*wham*wham*wham
They sent a solar to get him when they realized HE had their papers.

And this seems reasonable to you? How exactly is he dealing over 1400 damage in a single attack without so much as a charge or a jump check? That would indicate that even without the x3 crit of a Greataxe that he'd have dealt over 400 damage. This is normal for your games? Because it isn't for the games played around here.

NeoSeraphi

2011-09-13, 10:15 PM

And this seems reasonable to you? How exactly is he dealing over 1400 damage in a single attack without so much as a charge or a jump check? That would indicate that even without the x3 crit of a Greataxe that he'd have dealt over 400 damage. This is normal for your games? Because it isn't for the games played around here?

Greathammers have a crit of x4, actually. (Exotic Goliath weapon from Races of Stone)

So if he dealt 1428, that's 357 damage before crit. Base damage from a greathammer is 1d12. Valor adds double your Charisma modifier to your Str score, so his Str was 72 (+31 modifier) and the knight's Powerful Blows ability means he deals 4 times his Str modifier on two-handed weapon damage rolls rather than 1 1/2 times, with an additional +5 damage on a single attack roll.

Assuming a +5 greathammer, that's a total of 1d12+134 so far. I don't know the rest.

Ziegander

2011-09-13, 10:51 PM

Greathammers have a crit of x4, actually. (Exotic Goliath weapon from Races of Stone)

So if he dealt 1428, that's 357 damage before crit. Base damage from a greathammer is 1d12. Valor adds double your Charisma modifier to your Str score, so his Str was 72 (+31 modifier) and the knight's Powerful Blows ability means he deals 4 times his Str modifier on two-handed weapon damage rolls rather than 1 1/2 times, with an additional +5 damage on a single attack roll.

Assuming a +5 greathammer, that's a total of 1d12+134 so far. I don't know the rest.

Ah, you ninja edited! I was about to point out that it's only the charisma modifier.

Now, because the Powerful Blows ability is kind of a mess, I can't tell what multiplier the Knight is supposed to use with his two-handed weapons, but let's assume it's x12 for a full attack, which will get us up to 1d12+377. So, that's not it, but it's close?

NeoSeraphi

2011-09-13, 10:57 PM

Ah, you ninja edited! I was about to point out that it's only the charisma modifier.

Now, because the Powerful Blows ability is kind of a mess, I can't tell what multiplier the Knight is supposed to use with his two-handed weapons, but let's assume it's x12 for a full attack, which will get us up to 1d12+377. So, that's not it, but it's close?

No, it's x4 Str modifier, with an additional +12 damage (not multiplied) for two-handed weapons in a full attack. (He said he moved and took a bunch of AoOs though, so I assume it was just one attack). If it was just one attack, it would be +5, and the damage would be as I listed it.

If it was the first in his full attack, it would be 1d12+141 instead.

Showzilla

2011-09-13, 11:01 PM

Ah, you ninja edited! I was about to point out that it's only the charisma modifier.

Now, because the Powerful Blows ability is kind of a mess, I can't tell what multiplier the Knight is supposed to use with his two-handed weapons, but let's assume it's x12 for a full attack, which will get us up to 1d12+377. So, that's not it, but it's close?

I gave them the ability to choose to augment a critical as per the rules of it that I found out here(x2 to x3,x3 tox5,x4to x7). Mainly because I made it an available feat so knights get it as a bonus feat.
so his hammer became x7 and I had alot of problems find the fight numbers so forgive is somethings seem off.

NeoSeraphi

2011-09-13, 11:07 PM

I gave them the ability to choose to augment a critical as per the rules of it that I found out here(x2 to x3,x3 tox5,x4to x7). Mainly because I made it an available feat so knights get it as a bonus feat.
so his hammer became x7 and I had alot of problems find the fight numbers so forgive is somethings seem off.

Ah, so a total of 204 damage before the crit then? That's actually relatively easy, especially with 72 Str and a 2-handed weapon, I bet the rest was Power Attack and something else.

Showzilla

2011-09-13, 11:26 PM

Ah, so a total of 204 damage before the crit then? That's actually relatively easy, especially with 72 Str and a 2-handed weapon, I bet the rest was Power Attack and something else.
more or less, I made him very beast mode because he was originally an insurance policy for a bunch of "spedecial" players, but they made an enemy of him real ****ing quick.

brujon

2011-09-13, 11:41 PM

I personally like the Armor as DR variant, although i generally progress the DR as characters advance in level. But it creates a mess of other problems. Namely it makes multiple attacks much less useful than a 1-hit-kill charge. I for once, like Armor as Cover. It's something i've been toying with. Basically, armor makes you harder to hit. They roll percentage dice, like with normal cover. If they hit, armor takes damage, enough damage reduces the amount of armor coverage (as your armor "breaks"). Calculate armor damage as if they tried to sunder it, using normal HP and Hardness. For every 10% damage, it's 5% less coverage. If they miss, they miss. Blow is deflected, or you dodged, anyway, the armor doesn't take damage. This still makes TWF less effective, but for the same reasons TWF is already innefective. And basically, all you need to do is add 5% cover for every point of AC beyond 10. Note that this does include tower shields, and dodge/deflection/etc bonus.

Conversely, every point of attack bonus beyond 10 let's you ignore 5% of cover, or 1 point of AC.

So if you have a regular, mildly optimized level 20 fighter, with 18 + 4 (level) + 5 (tome) + 6 (item) strenght, with a +6 sword, he has: 20 + 11 + 6 = 37 Attack bonus.

This let's him ignore 135% of cover, or 27 AC.

The defending fighter has persistent blinking, +6 mithral mountain full plate (Races of Stone), 16 dex. This gives him an AC of 10 + 3 + 15. = 28. Plus 50% from his blinking (0r 20% if the fighter can see invis)

So he has 140% cover, or 120% if the other fighter can see invis. If we throw a +6 tower shield, plus ring of defleciton +5, and total defense action for +4, then we go to 215% or 195% if the other fighter can see invis.

Subtract... 80% if the attacker can't see invis, and 60% if he can(Chance to not be hit). For the first attack, then it goes 25% less chance for every other iterative. Then we go into buffs and other stuff... Basically this makes armor much stronger. If you want to balance it differently, you just alter when AC or AB give chance to miss/hit. Like 12+ or 15+ for one, 10+, 8+ for the other, etc...

This also makes long dungeon crawls more money and time consuming, as you'll have to take your time to repair your armor, and either spend money or other resources to repair the armor. I like this, and i'm toying with it, but haven't gotten yet the kind of playtest this needs...

As for the system hereby defined in the OP, i think it's unbalancing. Too strong. You always have to balance things to be 50%/50% for opponents of equal level. Enemy fighter 20 has to deal damage to opponent fighter 20 50% of the time. Here it's like the opposite. Combat taking forever. This is totally unreal. RL combat goes on for like, 2 min, tops. By that time someone has already crushed skulls. This equates to 20 rounds, roughly, which is more than enough time for combat to resolve.

jiriku

2011-09-14, 12:36 AM

Cover grants an AC bonus, not a miss chance. Perhaps you're thinking of concealment?

Djinn_in_Tonic

2011-09-14, 12:58 AM

the heaviest of full plate weighed in a 65 lbs, modern soldiers carry more and all their weight is put on their shoulders, not on their whole body like with armor. Not to mention the men who trained to fight with armor did things like running miles, mounting and dismounting horses, wrestling, climbing, SWIMMING, ect.
and now a modern day person with none of the knights training. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm11yAXeegg&list=FLCxOXJr9NtDLAcCGQbQMknw&index=18)

Yep, he's good. Is he more agile without it? I bet he is. But that's really here nor there in this discussion.

as for how well armor saves your skin here....everyone seemed to forget that this is a fantasy setting with people of high levels pulling of super human feats no person (or living thing) in real life is capable of. beheading T-rex with an axe, surviving orbital falls, casting fireballs for Christ's sake....I just took everything armor could pull off in real life and scaled it up Dnd's standards.

Fair enough. Now look at my math at the end of the last page: you've effectively multiplied the hit points of your character by 40, against the highest damaging foes you can hope to face in the Monster Manual. Against less damaging foes, this multiplier is even greater. In return for granting tanks this insane ability (the ability to, given an average damage of 30 per round to a Great Wyrm dragon, single-handedly dispatch about...oh...10 of them before falling), you've simultaneously rendered armorless characters useless, low-damage characters useless, and tanks basically invincible to 95% of physical attacks. If people ARE capable of these crazy feats you suggest, why can't the Rogue defeat a Knight, say, at least 25% of the time? Why can't he even DEAL DAMAGE to said Knight?

As written, a Rogue dealing 50 damage per attack takes (with my examples on the previous page) 100 attacks to fell the Knight. In this time, the Knight could probably kill two dozen such Rogues.

Can you address this directly? The numbers, quite frankly, don't lie: this is incredibly overpowered, both in terms of granting tanks almost complete immunity (using the soak numbers you yourself provided) and granting these "escalated achievement" superpowers to only the heavily armored classes. There's now super-armor, but no super-dodging or super-attacking to even the playing field. The tank is just as hard (if not harder) to hit, deals more comparable damage (as his damage isn't mitigated, since the Rogue has no armor), hits more often, and effectively has thousands of hit points (as my math on the previous page indicates). How is this in ANY way fair to non-heavily armored classes?

Showzilla

2011-09-14, 02:10 AM

Yep, he's good. Is he more agile without it? I bet he is. But that's really here nor there in this discussion.

Fair enough. Now look at my math at the end of the last page: you've effectively multiplied the hit points of your character by 40, against the highest damaging foes you can hope to face in the Monster Manual. Against less damaging foes, this multiplier is even greater. In return for granting tanks this insane ability (the ability to, given an average damage of 30 per round to a Great Wyrm dragon, single-handedly dispatch about...oh...10 of them before falling), you've simultaneously rendered armorless characters useless, low-damage characters useless, and tanks basically invincible to 95% of physical attacks. If people ARE capable of these crazy feats you suggest, why can't the Rogue defeat a Knight, say, at least 25% of the time? Why can't he even DEAL DAMAGE to said Knight?

As written, a Rogue dealing 50 damage per attack takes (with my examples on the previous page) 100 attacks to fell the Knight. In this time, the Knight could probably kill two dozen such Rogues.

Can you address this directly? The numbers, quite frankly, don't lie: this is incredibly overpowered, both in terms of granting tanks almost complete immunity (using the soak numbers you yourself provided) and granting these "escalated achievement" superpowers to only the heavily armored classes. There's now super-armor, but no super-dodging or super-attacking to even the playing field. The tank is just as hard (if not harder) to hit, deals more comparable damage (as his damage isn't mitigated, since the Rogue has no armor), hits more often, and effectively has thousands of hit points (as my math on the previous page indicates). How is this in ANY way fair to non-heavily armored classes?
heavily armored player vs dragon...that came up and I loved turning it on the fighter: what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
The dragon has natural armor, and being epic badass....their armor is better than most monsters

Ashtagon

2011-09-14, 02:24 AM

heavily armored player vs dragon...that came up and I loved turning it on the fighter: what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
The dragon has natural armor, and being epic badass....their armor is better than most monsters

I think he was asking specifically about low-armour PC/NPC classes, not monsters with natural armour. IN other words, it is an armoured vs swashbuckling issue, not a hero vs monster issue.

Showzilla

2011-09-14, 02:31 AM

I think he was asking specifically about low-armour PC/NPC classes, not monsters with natural armour. IN other words, it is an armoured vs swashbuckling issue, not a hero vs monster issue.

k, my friend just ran some numbers
chainmail: 1d6. rogue: hp av:10
breast plate: 1d8 fighter: hp av:14
the average difference in their soaks(assuming max stats at lvl 1 for humans), is 1 point.
the average damage out put:
rogue: 14 if both weapons hit
fighter: 12
so the rogue actually survives because he had armor

Ashtagon

2011-09-14, 03:49 AM

Showzilla

2011-09-14, 04:11 AM

Why would a 1st level rogue be wearing chainmail? And even with the 2WF feat (making him sub-optimal in many other areas), his hit chance is about 80% of the fighter, making his damage per round lower. Plus, the fighter gets to count his armour soak twice, sine it is two separate attacks.

IDK, I ask my number runner when he wakes up

Djinn_in_Tonic

2011-09-14, 07:50 AM

k, my friend just ran some numbers
chainmail: 1d6. rogue: hp av:10
breast plate: 1d8 fighter: hp av:14
the average difference in their soaks(assuming max stats at lvl 1 for humans), is 1 point.
the average damage out put:
rogue: 14 if both weapons hit
fighter: 12
so the rogue actually survives because he had armor

This is at 1st level, where the difference in character numbers is small. AC works fine then, as the difference in attack values is, at most, about a Wizards -2 to a Fighter's high of, say, about +7. That allows you to pick a good enemy AC at maybe 16-17 or so.

I was using your soak values at 20th, and, as I showed, a 200 hp character with 48 soak (pulled from your Knight NPC example) has 8,200 effective hp. A Rogue will have, at best, only another two to three dozen effective hp (so, assuming 200 hp for both [not a good estimate, but it shows the disparity], the Rogue has about 240 effecting hp, while the Knight has 8,200).

Also, a first level Rogue will NOT reliably hit with both weapons, nor is he liable to be wearing chain main.

And yes...armor soaks per attack under your system. Assume the Rogue is dual-wielding Shortswords, with a base damage of 1d6 each. That's a smaller die than the Fighter's soak die, meaning that, under your system, not only is the Rogue hitting less, but, when he does, he can barely deal any damage. I don't trust this math you're showing us, 'cause we don't get to see where it's coming from.

See the problem?

Also, can we see your mechanics for scaling Soak with levels? The Knight in your example had 48 soak, so there's some scaling mechanic you haven't introduced that would help me run numbers.

Showzilla

2011-09-14, 10:22 AM

This is at 1st level, where the difference in character numbers is small. AC works fine then, as the difference in attack values is, at most, about a Wizards -2 to a Fighter's high of, say, about +7. That allows you to pick a good enemy AC at maybe 16-17 or so.

I was using your soak values at 20th, and, as I showed, a 200 hp character with 48 soak (pulled from your Knight NPC example) has 8,200 effective hp. A Rogue will have, at best, only another two to three dozen effective hp (so, assuming 200 hp for both [not a good estimate, but it shows the disparity], the Rogue has about 240 effecting hp, while the Knight has 8,200).

Also, a first level Rogue will NOT reliably hit with both weapons, nor is he liable to be wearing chain main.

And yes...armor soaks per attack under your system. Assume the Rogue is dual-wielding Shortswords, with a base damage of 1d6 each. That's a smaller die than the Fighter's soak die, meaning that, under your system, not only is the Rogue hitting less, but, when he does, he can barely deal any damage. I don't trust this math you're showing us, 'cause we don't get to see where it's coming from.

See the problem?

Also, can we see your mechanics for scaling Soak with levels? The Knight in your example had 48 soak, so there's some scaling mechanic you haven't introduced that would help me run numbers.
no problem, my pal is getting his numbers together as we speak.

Ziegander

2011-09-14, 02:09 PM

no problem, my pal is getting his numbers together as we speak.

Wait, I'm confused. If you can't run the numbers of your own suggested houserules, not to sound like a complete jerk, but... don't run the houserules. It's that simple.

Actually:

1) If you don't fully understand the normal rules of 3.5 in general, then don't write any houserules.

2) If you write houserules that you don't fully understand, then don't use those houserules.

Showzilla

2011-09-14, 02:31 PM

Ashtagon

2011-09-14, 02:37 PM

Have you considered running your own numbers?

Ziegander

2011-09-14, 02:52 PM

he ran those numbers and I have no idea what weapons and armor he used, so I don't want to say something and it not be true

Have you considered running your own numbers?

Exactly. If these are your houserules, then run your own numbers. If you can't run the numbers to your houserules, then stop running the houserules.

jiriku

2011-09-14, 03:01 PM

To put this more tactfully, D&D is not an especially well-balanced game. If you do not possess firm system mastery, it is easy to make a change that seems good to you and all your friends, but proves to be disastrous once it's in the game. I myself have done this many times in the past, much to my regret.

That's one of the reasons I always post my homebrew classes here in this forum before using them in my games. Ziegander, Djinn, and many other very bright people almost always spot problems that I would have overlooked, and help me correct them. As the saying goes, "all of us is smarter than any of us".

Djinn_in_Tonic

2011-09-14, 03:05 PM

As the saying goes, "all of us is smarter than any of us".

Except for me. Clearly, I am the smartest. :smalltongue:

My own hubris aside (:smallbiggrin:), this is very true. A number of people on the forums have helped me spot no end of little flaws and loopholes in my own work, and I've been doing this stuff for years. Yet I still manage to forget things, overlook obvious ramifications, and so forth...the fact that on these forums people will point them out and help me solve the problems is one of the reasons I love this place.

Yitzi

2011-09-14, 03:11 PM

Except for me. Clearly, I am the smartest. :smalltongue:

No, I am. :bigtongue:

But even the smartest of us isn't as smart as all of us put together.

Showzilla

2011-09-14, 03:28 PM

Have you considered running your own numbers?

haven't had a chance all damn day
currently crunching

Tyndmyr

2011-09-14, 03:48 PM

Wait, I'm confused. If you can't run the numbers of your own suggested houserules, not to sound like a complete jerk, but... don't run the houserules. It's that simple.

Actually:

1) If you don't fully understand the normal rules of 3.5 in general, then don't write any houserules.

2) If you write houserules that you don't fully understand, then don't use those houserules.

You are not a jerk. This is entirely correct, and should be fairly basic info.

If you don't know how your rules work in detail, they are not ready to be used.

I'm sorry to say, but this looks like a very, very problematic set of house rules resulting from inexperience and wild disregard for existing rules. The game appears to resemble a strange mishmash of freeform and rules heavy homebrew.

This does not seem to be a game run as 3.5 is expected to be run.

hahahahahaha, thanks for pointing that out. I am truely nice to my characters, the reason Sir Jason was constantly beating them ****less was that I designed him as a friendly NPC who was going to be their tankzilla, but they instantly tried to kill him in their first encounter, so yeah, I'm nice but no amount of nice can save that much stupid. The fact that he could be paid off to not kill them was a blessing. and if you want to know how sir jason was so damn kick ass, go to this page.

The above looks more like...you are congratulating yourself on how awesome you are. It is not balance. It is not support for your rules or the application of them. It's just bragging about how awesome your DMPC is when he breaks the rules and has giant piles of poorly tested homebrew applied to him. There are flashing warning lights everywhere here.

now as for my new system, I don't fancy the idea of the armor's leveling up like that, even I must say that breaks things. I built the armor in regards to its real world efficiency then scaled it up to Dnd's super human standards, I've also kept in several small weakness in armor that still bring it down to earth. The main reason for this was to make tanking easier in game and to finally make head to head classes impossible to be fought up front by non head to head classes, casters now have to worry about wasting spells on foes who simply shrug them off with no ill effect, rogues actually have to be sneak and crafty to fight a knight, and monsters becoming even scarier.

All of the above indicates a significant lack of experience with the game. I strongly suggest learning the rules well and using them as written before modifying them heavily.

Also note that you haven't supported why your assessment of "real world efficiency" is at all accurate or desirable.

The long laundry list of widespread changes looks like each additional layer of homebrew is causing more extensive problems that you are attempting to solve by further layers of untested homebrew. This is, to put it bluntly, not going to work.

Showzilla

2011-09-20, 09:58 PM

Human rogue level 1

HP=10

Dex 18, strength 18, con 18

Feats: two-weapon fighting, dodge

AC=10+4+4=18

Weapons: 1 rapier (1d618-20x2), 1 short sword (1d619-20x2)

Armor: chainshirt (+4 AC, 4 max dex bonus, 1d6 19-20 soak)

Average soak=4+3=7 (max 10, min 5) x2 (max 20, min 10)

Probability to critical soak= approximately 1/10

Average damage= 2 attacks (at +2 to attack rolls)= 6 +6=12 (max 18, min 8):main attack=3+4=7
(max10, min 5): off-hand attack+3+2=5 (max 8 min 3): average sneak attack=17 (max 26, min11): main
attack+sneak attack= 13 (max 16, min 6): off-hand attack+sneak attack=8 (max 14, min 4): ½ crit (one
weapon crits)=19 (max 28, min13)—plus sneak=average of 22 (max34, min 14): crit= 24 (max 36, min 16)
—plus sneak attack=average of 30 (max 42, min 17)

Probability to land a critical hit (rapier)= approximately 3/20

Probability to land a critical hit (short sword)=1/10

Probability to land a critical hit(both)= 1/10

Human fighter level 1

HP14

Dex 18, strength 18, con 18

Feats: weapon focus (great ax), iron will, lightning reflexes

AC=10+5+3=18

Weapon: 1 great ax (1d12 x3)

Armor: breast plate (+5 AC, 3 max dex bonus, 1d8 18-20 soak)

Average soak at level one=6+4=10 (max16, min5) crit=40 (max 64, min 20)

Probability to critical soak= approximately 3/20

Average damage=1 attack (at +5 to attack rolls)=6+6=12 (max 18, min 7) crit=36 (max 54, min 30)

Probability to land a critical hit= 1/20
finally back, chew on this and tell me what ya think....next, we see at level 20.
both were made using PH1

Yitzi

2011-09-20, 10:35 PM

Showzilla

2011-09-20, 11:10 PM

Ok...first of all, STR 18, DEX 18, CON 18 is automatically a 48-point buy even if all mental stats are dumped (which for a rogue at least they almost certainly won't be.) 36-point is considered very high-powered, so keep in mind that you're using a set of ability scores that highly favors MAD classes.

You didn't include the strength bonus to weapon damage; each will get a total of +6 (+6 for the fighter, +4/+2 for the rogue.)

And yes, this change does definitely favor fighters more in comparison to rogues (and two-handed-weapon uses as compared to 2WF-ers).

first, the strength bonus was accounted for.
second, this was an optimized combat, the fighter isn't getting 18 in con and strength and the rogue isn't getting an 18 in strength and dex...in fact, this "point" you have brought up seems to be a nit pick...
third, this is adjustable, it can be changed and morphed to fit other rolls(or point buy builds), the proportions can be easily adjusted and the damage with change with those proportions.

Ashtagon

2011-09-20, 11:53 PM

How exactly are you calculating the average soak? Since I make those values 3.5 and 4.5, not 7 and 10.

Showzilla

2011-09-21, 12:32 AM

How exactly are you calculating the average soak? Since I make those values 3.5 and 4.5, not 7 and 10.
The .5 does not make enough of a statistical difference in the soak to really effect things. you can adjust these numbers, as long as you keep them proportional, and you'll get the same proportional results

Ziegander

2011-09-21, 12:32 AM

The math here seems to be wrong, but also doesn't seem to arrive at any conclusion. I'll try to do some math myself. I'll try to organize things a bit and use numbers that make more sense?

Human Rogue 1

Vital Stats
HP: 8
AC: 18

Ability Scores
28pt buy
Str 14 Dex 18 Con 14 Int 8 Wis 8 Cha 8

Feats & Special Abilities
Sneak Attack +1d6, Weapon FinesseB, Two-Weapon Fighting

Equipment
Max Starting Gold (200gp)
Rapier (main-hand) (+2 to hit, 1d6+2 damage, 18-20 x2)
Shortsword (off-hand) (+2 to hit, 1d6+1 damage, 19-20 x2)
Chain Shirt (+4 to AC, +4 max dex, 1d6+2 soak, 19-20 x2)

VS!

Human Fighter 1

Vital Stats
HP: 12
AC: 19

Ability Scores
28 pt buy
Str 18 Dex 14 Con 14 Int 8 Wis 8 Cha 8

Feats & Special Abilities
Power Attack, Weapon Focus (Morningstar), Iron Will

Equipment
Max Starting Gold (240gp)
Morningstar (+6 to hit, 1d8+4 damage, 19-20 x2)
Breastplate (+5 to AC, +3 max dex, 1d8+2 soak, 19-20 x3)
Heavy Steel Shield (+2 to AC, ? soak, ?)

In a face-to-face confrontation the Rogue hits the Fighter only one-in-ten tries, but luckily every time he hits he threatens a critical. His average damage is 5.5 with the Rapier and 4.5 with the Shortsword. The Fighter's average soak is 6.5 which means that the Rogue can't even hurt the fighter unless he rolls max damage or crits (a 17% and 10% chance respectively). Let's just assume that every threat is an auto-crit for simplicity's sake. That would mean that less than 3 out of every 10 of the Rogue's successful attacks can even hurt the Fighter without the help of Sneak Attack. It will take the Rogue roughly 4 successful crits to take down the Fighter meaning that the Rogue will have to attack roughly 40 times to win this fight (considering a max dmg attack happens less than 1-in-50 attacks), yet one-in-ten of the Fighter's soak rolls will crit completely eliminating the Rogue's attack with an average soak crit of 19.5. At 2 attacks per round this will take 20 rounds at the very least.

On the other hand, the Fighter hits the Rogue every other attack and threatens a critical with every tenth attack. His average damage with his Morningstar is 9.5 against the Rogue's average soak of 5.5. This means that the Fighter will likely take that Rogue down before he ever rolls a critical hit, needing to land only 2 hits to win this fight and the Rogue's armor only crits 1/10 hits for an average soak crit of 11. He can do this in as few as 4 rounds. He can win with a single average damage crit, even if the Rogue's armor crit soaks against it.

With Sneak Attack the numbers change considerably. With no flanking it can be assumed that the Rogue is hiding and bluffing his way to the extra damage, which robs the Fighter of his dex bonus and reduces his AC by 2 points. This doubles the Rogue's hit percentage from 10% to 20% and has the added benefit of increasing the damage of each of his hits by 1d6. The average sneak attack damage becomes 9 (with Rapier) and 8 (with Shortsword). If he hits once every five attacks, at two attacks per round, in five rounds he will hit twice, let's assume once with Rapier and once with Shortsword for 2.5 and 1.5 respectively (after the Fighter's soak). Still looking very grim for our Rogue, this would take him 15 rounds at average damage. Of course, he still has max damage or crits to look forward to (17% and 15% with the Rapier and 17% and 10% with the Shortsword) once in a while, but he must still contend with the Fighter's outstanding crit soak rolls.

EDIT: Oh, and I don't have a clue what you do with shields, if anything. I remember there was something about block strikes, but I don't know if shields add to soak or anything like that. If they do the Rogue here is completely and utterly screwed.

EDIT: Fixed my math errors in the first paragraph.

Showzilla

2011-09-21, 12:49 AM

The math here seems to be wrong, but also doesn't seem to arrive at any conclusion. I'll try to do some math myself. I'll try to organize things a bit and use numbers that make more sense?

Human Rogue 1

Vital Stats
HP: 8
AC: 18

Ability Scores
28pt buy
Str 14 Dex 18 Con 14 Int 8 Wis 8 Cha 8

Feats & Special Abilities
Sneak Attack +1d6, Weapon FinesseB, Two-Weapon Fighting

Equipment
Max Starting Gold (200gp)
Rapier (main-hand) (+2 to hit, 1d6+2 damage, 18-20 x2)
Shortsword (off-hand) (+2 to hit, 1d6+1 damage, 19-20 x2)
Chain Shirt (+4 to AC, +4 max dex, 1d6+2 soak, 19-20 x2)

VS!

Human Fighter 1

Vital Stats
HP: 12
AC: 19

Ability Scores
28 pt buy
Str 18 Dex 14 Con 14 Int 8 Wis 8 Cha 8

Feats & Special Abilities
Power Attack, Weapon Focus (Morningstar), Iron Will

Equipment
Max Starting Gold (240gp)
Morningstar (+6 to hit, 1d8+4 damage, 19-20 x2)
Breastplate (+5 to AC, +3 max dex, 1d8+2 soak, 19-20 x3)
Heavy Steel Shield (+2 to AC, ? soak, ?)

In a face-to-face confrontation the Rogue hits the Fighter only one-in-ten tries, but luckily every time he hits he threatens a critical. His average damage is 5.5 with the Rapier and 4.5 with the Shortsword. The Fighter's average soak is 6.5 which means that the Rogue can't even hurt the fighter unless he rolls max damage or crits (a 17% and 10% chance respectively). Let's just assume that every threat is an auto-crit for simplicity's sake. That would mean that less than 3 out of every 10 of the Rogue's successful attacks can even hurt the Fighter without the help of Sneak Attack. It will take the Rogue roughly 4 hits at max damage or crit to take down the Fighter meaning that the Rogue will have to attack roughly 15 times to win this fight, yet one-in-ten of the Fighter's soak rolls will crit completely eliminating the Rogue's attack with an average soak crit of 19.5. At 2 attacks per round this will take 8 rounds at the very least.

On the other hand, the Fighter hits the Rogue every other attack and threatens a critical with every tenth attack. His average damage with his Morningstar is 9.5 against the Rogue's average soak of 5.5. This means that the Fighter will likely take that Rogue down before he ever rolls a critical hit, needing to land only 2 hits to win this fight and the Rogue's armor only crits 1/10 hits for an average soak crit of 11. He can do this in as few as 4 rounds. He can win with a single average damage crit, even if the Rogue's armor crit soaks against it.

With Sneak Attack the numbers change considerably. With no flanking it can be assumed that the Rogue is hiding and bluffing his way to the extra damage, which robs the Fighter of his dex bonus and reduces his AC by 2 points. This doubles the Rogue's hit percentage from 10% to 20% and has the added benefit of increasing the damage of each of his hits by 1d6. The average sneak attack damage becomes 9 (with Rapier) and 8 (with Shortsword). If he hits once every five attacks, at two attacks per round, in five rounds he will hit twice, let's assume once with Rapier and once with Shortsword for 2.5 and 1.5 respectively (after the Fighter's soak). Still looking very grim for our Rogue, this would take him 15 rounds at average damage. Of course, he still has max damage or crits to look forward to (17% and 15% with the Rapier and 17% and 10% with the Shortsword) once in a while, but he must still contend with the Fighter's outstanding crit soak rolls.

EDIT: Oh, and I don't have a clue what you do with shields, if anything. I remember there was something about block strikes, but I don't know if shields add to soak or anything like that. If they do the Rogue here is completely and utterly screwed.
first off to destroy your first paragraph, a rogue is to never fight toe-to-toe, every one is complaining that a rogue must now be stealthy and fight guerrilla style.
second, the rogue should only be engaging the fighter for long periods of time if he can flank him.
I'm sorry if this change would mean that rogue has to actually fight like a rogue.
as for shields, they only contribute to soak when you swing to block, so the flanking rogue is not getting stopped by the shield.

Seerow

2011-09-21, 12:53 AM

as for shields, they only contribute to soak when you swing to block, so the flanking rogue is not getting stopped by the shield.

Huh? What?

Showzilla

2011-09-21, 01:06 AM

Huh? What?

rewind, restate.
you have two actions you could make when be attacked per round.
blocking:when the enemy makes the attack, you make an attack roll, if you equal or exceed the attack roll, you negate it. with shields, you get to add the ac bonus to the attack roll to counter the attack and if you don't negate the attack, you get to add the shield's dice and the strength mod of the hand used to block the attack to your soak.

Ziegander

2011-09-21, 01:15 AM

first off to destroy your first paragraph, a rogue is to never fight toe-to-toe, every one is complaining that a rogue must now be stealthy and fight guerrilla style.
second, the rogue should only be engaging the fighter for long periods of time if he can flank him.
I'm sorry if this change would mean that rogue has to actually fight like a rogue.
as for shields, they only contribute to soak when you swing to block, so the flanking rogue is not getting stopped by the shield.

1) You still have the math of the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs to deal with. These paragraphs clearly show that the Fighter's superior armor is protecting him to a nearly ludicrous degree.

2) You are attempting to refute my evidence by claiming that the Rogue will always flank the Fighter, stating, correct me if I'm wrong, that the Rogue has a friend in this contest?

3) There is nothing stated, that I can tell, in your houserules that prevents a flanked target from using his Shield, which means that the Fighter might as well be invincible for this contest.

and 4) You seem to be missing the point, which is, even if the Fighter had no shield, even if the Rogue is getting sneak attack, the Rogue is screwed. He deals too little damage per attack and the Fighter's armor soaks too much of his damage per attack. There is nothing the Rogue can do to win this fight. In the best possible scenario for the Rogue he gets completed demolished, almost certainly without even taking the Fighter to half HP.

Showzilla

2011-09-21, 01:29 AM

1) You still have the math of the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs to deal with. These paragraphs clearly show that the Fighter's superior armor is protecting him to a nearly ludicrous degree.

2) You are attempting to refute my evidence by claiming that the Rogue will always flank the Fighter, stating, correct me if I'm wrong, that the Rogue has a friend in this contest?

3) There is nothing stated, that I can tell, in your houserules that prevents a flanked target from using his Shield, which means that the Fighter might as well be invincible for this contest.

and 4) You seem to be missing the point, which is, even if the Fighter had no shield, even if the Rogue is getting sneak attack, the Rogue is screwed. He deals too little damage per attack and the Fighter's armor soaks too much of his damage per attack. There is nothing the Rogue can do to win this fight. In the best possible scenario for the Rogue he gets completed demolished, almost certainly without even taking the Fighter to half HP.
why would a rogue fight toe-to-toe.
by the way, the numbers you posted aren't proportional to the ones I posted.
now, time to kill off the build....I've posted that feats have gotten extra benefits with in this system.....namely chink in armor which I stated can ignore soak values equal to his dex or int mod.
so subtract 4 from the fighters soak now.

Ziegander

2011-09-21, 01:38 AM

why would a rogue fight toe-to-toe.

In my analysis I ran numbers for when the Rogue fights toe-to-toe AND for when he was hiding and feinting. As the numbers show, no matter which he does he loses terribly. Trying to throw in an ally for the Rogue and making the contest Rogue + Friend vs Fighter does not accurately show the impact your armor rules make on a combat.

EDIT 1: However... why not? Using the numbers I've presented above, let's have the Fighter up against two Rogues who are constantly flanking the poor SoB. It will take him 4 rounds to kill one of them, and 4 rounds to kill the other. In 5 rounds, the Rogues will hit approximately 4 times, dealing the Fighter about 8 damage after soak. One of them will be dead before that happens, and after that it will take the remaining Rogue another 5 rounds to finish the Fighter off. Meaning that the Fighter can almost certainly kill both of them before his armor and hp fail him.

EDIT 2: Oh, yeah, he's got a shield. Pfft. I almost want to run numbers on how the Fighter fares against 8 gorram Rogues with his shield blocks and soaks taken into account.

by the way, the numbers you posted aren't proportional to the ones I posted.

True. Because your numbers are incorrect and furthermore incongruent with your own houserules as you presented them in the original post. *blink*

so subtract 4 from the fighters soak now.

I could do that. That is if a 1st level Rogue with Int 8 can qualify for this Chink in the Armor feat (I'll assume for now that he can). However, if I did, the Rogue would have to lose Two-Weapon Fighting because he's only got 2 feats.

EDIT 3: Also, shield = dead Rogue.

You seem to be shifting the goalposts constantly in an attempt to avoid the actual arguments and numbers being presented in front of you. If you want to ignore the facts about how broken your armor system is, and continue playing in your houseruled version of the game where the numbers are made up and the points don't matter, then be my guest.

Showzilla

2011-09-21, 01:53 AM

In my analysis I ran numbers for when the Rogue fights toe-to-toe AND for when he was hiding and feinting. As the number show, no matter which he does he loses terribly. Trying to throw in an ally for the Rogue and making the contest Rogue & Friends vs Fighter does not accurately show the impact your armor rules make on a combat.

True. Because your numbers are incorrect and incongruent with your own houserules as you presented them in the original post. *blink*

I could do that. That is if a 1st level Rogue with Int 7 can qualify for this Chink in the Armor feat (I'll assume for now that he can). However, if I did, the Rogue would have to lose Two-Weapon Fighting because he's only got 2 feats.

You seem to be shifting the goalposts constantly in an attempt to avoid the actual arguments and numbers being presented in front of you. If you want to ignore the facts about how broken your armor system is, and continue playing in your houseruled version of the game where the numbers are made up and the points don't matter, then be my guest.

one question, why does everyone use point buy?
second, you switched the goalposts first and made everything harder, you changed the stats to suit the characters, so you should have put a good score in int and dex. the thing is you decided to pull a run around and you didn't like it when I did the same thing. final blow, I've been running this damn rule for 4 different groups, 1 noob group (with mr.Jason as their intended insurance policy npc) 2 testers groups and my current campaign. The tester groups showed that if a class not built with tanking in mind tries to go toe-to-toe, hit for hit, with a tanking class, the non-tank get's their ass handed in a matter of seconds, like in real life. The non-tanks (rogues,monks, assassins, ect.) were still very capable of fighting if they fought like they should. Rogue elf vs ogre barbarian, hamstrings him, hit and run, hit and run, hit and run, hit and run, crit, crit, crit, hit and run, hit, dead.

Fera Tian

2011-09-21, 02:03 AM

In my analysis I ran numbers for when the Rogue fights toe-to-toe AND for when he was hiding and feinting. As the numbers show, no matter which he does he loses terribly. Trying to throw in an ally for the Rogue and making the contest Rogue + Friend vs Fighter does not accurately show the impact your armor rules make on a combat.

EDIT 1: However... why not? Using the numbers I've presented above, let's have the Fighter up against two Rogues who are constantly flanking the poor SoB. It will take him 4 rounds to kill one of them, and 4 rounds to kill the other. In 5 rounds, the Rogues will hit approximately 4 times, dealing the Fighter about 8 damage after soak. One of them will be dead before that happens, and after that it will take the remaining Rogue another 5 rounds to finish the Fighter off. Meaning that the Fighter can almost certainly kill both of them before his armor and hp fail him.

EDIT 2: Oh, yeah, he's got a shield. Pfft.

True. Because your numbers are incorrect and furthermore incongruent with your own houserules as you presented them in the original post. *blink*

I could do that. That is if a 1st level Rogue with Int 8 can qualify for this Chink in the Armor feat (I'll assume for now that he can). However, if I did, the Rogue would have to lose Two-Weapon Fighting because he's only got 2 feats.

EDIT 3: Also, shield = dead Rogue.

You seem to be shifting the goalposts constantly in an attempt to avoid the actual arguments and numbers being presented in front of you. If you want to ignore the facts about how broken your armor system is, and continue playing in your houseruled version of the game where the numbers are made up and the points don't matter, then be my guest.

I didn't read much of the thread but it seems like sneak attacks are reduced by armor, or something like that. When you're being sneaky you aren't hitting people in their armor, you're cutting their throat or stabbing at their arteries. Just have sneak attacks ignore armor.
(you isn't aimed at anyone in particular)
Also a man in chain+plate armor with a mace/shield or whatever can easily take out a bunch of people in clothes with knives (when they try to fight him straight on).

Ziegander

2011-09-21, 02:10 AM

one question, why does everyone use point buy?

So as to start the debate on a level playing field. That's why I'm using it here anyway.

second, you switched the goalposts first and made everything harder, you changed the stats to suit the characters, so you should have put a good score in int and dex. the thing is you decided to pull a run around and you didn't like it when I did the same thing.

You provided incorrect math. I used standardized numbers and simple character builds to lay groundwork so that when I used the correct numbers and figured the correct math everything would be in proper order. How is this a run around? How would giving the Rogue a high Int have done anything at all to help him not get destroyed so easily?

I've been running this damn rule for 4 different groups, 1 noob group (with mr.Jason as their intended insurance policy npc) 2 testers groups and my current campaign. The tester groups showed that if a class not built with tanking in mind tries to go toe-to-toe, hit for hit, with a tanking class, the non-tank get's their ass handed in a matter of seconds, like in real life. The non-tanks (rogues,monks, assassins, ect.) were still very capable of fighting if they fought like they should. Rogue elf vs ogre barbarian, hamstrings him, hit and run, hit and run, hit and run, hit and run, crit, crit, crit, hit and run, hit, dead.

Let's see... Elf Rogue 7 has 4d6 sneak attack and three feats... Weapon Finesse, Two-Weapon Fighting, and Chink in the Armor... nope, not seeing any room in there for Hamstring or Spring Attack (considering to even get Spring Attack he'd need 9 more levels). Sounds like your game is houseruled to oblivion and back to me.

Showzilla

2011-09-21, 02:22 AM

now to post a build that has a bit of armor penetration built in.
lvl 10 rogue human

stats(ROLLED with a random number generator)
str:10
dex:18
con:8
wis:11
int:14
cha:18
Hp:21
feats: combat expertise, chink in armor, hamstring,improved disarm, improved trip, improved feint
keened, augmented Rapier of +3 penetration(penetration is a special feature that helps punch through armor, why no previous mention? because no one has asked me, all I've heard is how bad this is and yet to ask the new things it opens up like breaking weapons(think fortification but in reverse), but does any get curious and ask if theirs anything else that comes with? nope...by the way, just like keened is the bought version of imp. critical, penetration is the bought form of a feat called solid shot).
damage on a sneak attack: 5d6+(1d8/15-20/x3)
amount of Soak ignored each hit:7
I could go into more details, but I think this should be enough....screw it, me and my friends keep running numbers, nothing is getting through

Showzilla

2011-09-21, 02:31 AM

So as to start the debate on a level playing field. That's why I'm using it here anyway.

You provided incorrect math. I used standardized numbers and simple character builds to lay groundwork so that when I used the correct numbers and figured the correct math everything would be in proper order. How is this a run around? How would giving the Rogue a high Int have done anything at all to help him not get destroyed so easily?

Let's see... Elf Rogue 7 has 4d6 sneak attack and three feats... Weapon Finesse, Two-Weapon Fighting, and Chink in the Armor... nope, not seeing any room in there for Hamstring or Spring Attack (considering to even get Spring Attack he'd need 9 more levels). Sounds like your game is houseruled to oblivion and back to me.

gun,loaded,cocked, fire...
you made more assumptions(the level and the feats), the hit and run was set up by the elf luring the ogre into a section of the dungeon with lots of cover, hamstring him with her first shot and then retreating and taking cover, moving about unseen, sneak attack, retreat, cover, sneak attack, rinse, lather, repeat.

NeoSeraphi

2011-09-21, 02:33 AM

now to post a build that has a bit of armor penetration built in.
lvl 10 rogue human

feats: combat expertise, chink in armor, hamstring,improved disarm, improved trip, improved feint

You have 1 too many feats in that build.

1st
Human
3rd
6th
9th
5 feats. You gave them 6.

Also, your rogue can never hit anyone without Weapon Finesse. I mean, with that +3 weapon, you have a total of +10 to hit, when if the fighter has the same enhancement on his armor, (+3 Full Plate) he has +11 to his AC with no shield and only 10 Dex.

Even if you're flanking every round and penetrating, won't help a thing if you can't hit.

Showzilla

2011-09-21, 02:34 AM

You have 1 too many feats in that build.

1st
Human
3rd
6th
9th
5 feats. You gave them 6.

Also, your rogue can never hit anyone without Weapon Finesse. I mean, with that +3 weapon, you have a total of +10 to hit, when if the fighter has the same enhancement on his armor, (+3 Full Plate) he has +11 to his AC with no shield and only 10 Dex.

Even if you're flanking every round and penetrating, won't help a thing if you can't hit.

the rogue rules allow you to swap out a special ability for a bonus feat
and a mistake on my part, swap out disarm or trip for finesse. It's 2:36 in the morning, not thinking correctly...or at all...maybe....

NeoSeraphi

2011-09-21, 02:37 AM

the rogue rules allow you to swap out a special ability for a bonus feat

Alright then.

Ziegander

2011-09-21, 02:45 AM

gun,loaded,cocked, fire...
you made more assumptions(the level and the feats), the hit and run was set up by the elf luring the ogre into a section of the dungeon with lots of cover, hamstring him with her first shot and then retreating and taking cover, moving about unseen, sneak attack, retreat, cover, sneak attack, rinse, lather, repeat.

You, sir, are impossible.

I made assumptions, because I have to make assumptions. As long as you refuse to provide the whole of your houserules or any other context to frame the discussion in, I have to make assumptions of my own to create that context. I try to make educated guesses, but you get offended.

So, my suggestion for you, which should solve all of the communications problems of this thread (if not likely the balance problems), is to post a new thread with literally all of your houserules and homebrew content in it. Because nobody can debate the merits of your armor system if you're going to keep pulling related bits of homebrew from the ether that makes the debates irrelevant. I'm trying to debate based on the grounds of the standard 3.5 rules set. Since that's not good enough for you, give me your house rules set, and I'll try to debate this more on your terms. Until then, have fun and happy gaming.