armor soaks, extra stats, new stat rolling, ect.

[Showzilla]

k, so you all saw armor. let me go through this process again before moving on.
you get hit. roll your armor's effectivness(1d20, natural roll of 20-whatever your armor's range is, ex: breast plate is 18-20, this "criticals" and you multiply your soak roll, ex: breast plate is medium, so it's x3). having rolled your effectiveness, roll the armor's dice, ex: full plate 1d12, and add your con mod.
standard armor

{table=head]armor|dice|coverage(crit range)|protection(crit mod)
light armor|||
padded|1|20|x2
leather|1d2|20|x2
studded leather|1d3|20|x2
chain shirt|1d4|19-20|x2
medium armor|||
hide|1d3|19-20|x2
scale mail|1d4|19-20|x3
chain mail|1d6|19-20|x3
Breast plate|1d8|18-20|x3
heavy armor|||
splint mail|1d8|18-20|x4
banded mail|1d8|18-20|x4
half plate|1d10|18-20|x4
full plate|1d12|17-20|x4
[/table]

defensive actions: you get two standard actions when your offensive turn ends. This is used to do extra stuff to save your hide.
shift:move a number of spaces equal to your mobility mod, moving over half this number provokes attacks of opportunity. To perform this by making a reflex save +your mobility mod vs DC the attack roll.
block: your attack becomes your AC.....you can add your shield bonus to this.
if your using a shield and the attack goes through, you can roll an armor roll for the shield(effectiveness roll, soak roll, add the strength mod of that hand)....before rolling your actual armor.
extra stats:
appearance: this and your charisma mod are applied to attempts to seduce people. it can be applied to all charisma checks (alongside charisma itself), if the foe fails a will save. The DC is equal to the score itself(some later feats augment this DC), if the save is failed, you can add the modifier of this score to charisma checks. People of incompatible orientation should get a nigh impossible to scale bonus and folks who are married (and committed or at least considerate of their other half) should be nigh impossible to seduce with out mind effecting intervention.
Sanity: if this hit zero you become nigh catatonic. the lower this gets, the harder it is to do damage to it. if below 10, subtract your score from 20. those are your bonus to will saves against sanity damage.
Mobility: every +1 grants a +5ft movement bonus to all forms of motion. every +2 grants an additional swift action. every +4 grants one extra standard action. +8 grants a full round action.
Luck: This grants a reroll per day for every +1, and every +4 grants you one roll per day that you can add your luck to the roll. The luck bonus is slightly different from other bonuses, it doesn't add to the roll, it changes the roll...yes a 16 becomes a 20...once per day if you use it, but you must call the use before the roll.
Godzilla eats the Tarrasque and it is effectively dead....that is all. random joke.
too many additional weapon to list at once
pierce: grants % chance of ignoring armor crits.
penetration: each +1 ignores 1 point of soak....base soak...****s with crits a lot.
weapons got some changes to damage based on battle field comparisons.
flails go up to X4 19-20 if you spend a swift action to build up momentum.
Great swords(and the many variations) and bastard swords got a change but I'm not going into that, any arguments with still be the same with either stats.
feats:
augment crit: 2x to x3. x3 to x5. x4 to x7.
chink in armor: ignores amount of base soak equal to you dex mod.
ect.ect.ect.ect.
new stat rolling:
you get 3d6 per stat available, you allocate to each stat (max of 5 to a single stat), no rerolls . yes, a 30 in a stat is broken, a 2 is not.
theres other stuff, but I'm out for now.

[Spiryt]

Well, that looks like interesting system and all, using existing crit. mechanics for some armor homebrew -

- But the thing is that the whole post seriously needs edition - more logical sentences, capital letters, space between stuff et cetera....

I'm not Gramar Nazi at all, really, but I've tried to read it few times and got stuck quickly, unfortunately.

[Showzilla]

Well, that looks like interesting system and all, using existing crit. mechanics for some armor homebrew -

- But the thing is that the whole post seriously needs edition - more logical sentences, capital letters, space between stuff et cetera....

I'm not Gramar Nazi at all, really, but I've tried to read it few times and got stuck quickly, unfortunately.

it's cool, I typed this after school work and on no sleep. fixes to be made

[Ashtagon]

Ignoring damage modifiers and criticals, a longsword vs breastplate (1d8 vs 1d8) will now do on average 1.125 hp per hit (4.5 normal).

The original complaint that it results in two additional sets of die rolls per hit, slowing the game, still stands.

[Spiryt]

Ignoring damage modifiers and criticals, a longsword vs breastplate (1d8 vs 1d8) will now do on average 1.125 hp per hit (4.5 normal).

The original complaint that it results in two additional sets of die rolls per hit, slowing the game, still stands.

This is true.

Generally, idea is very interesting, but to justify two additional rolls, this should be better balanced and streamlined...

Anyway, as written, it holds status quo of badly designed armor types - still there's pretty much no point of anything save chain shirt, breastplate, and full plate.

Coverage and dice might in fact sort it out a bit, but instead they just kinda go along.

[Ziegander]

And do you play the monsters as if they have Appearance, Sanity, Mobility, and Luck?

Why the hell does Appearance even exist? Bluff and Diplomacy are skills. If you are faking your seduction attempt, roll Bluff. If not, roll Diplomacy. Or don't roll at all, because who cares about making seduction into a "challenge?" Do you have rules for a Seduced condition?

What does Sanity do? If nothing, why not roll your "going insane" rule into Wisdom damage?

Are Pierce and Penetration magical weapon properties? Or what?

Does natural armor have soak, effectiveness, and protection values?

All in all, these houserules seem to only make combat take an extremely, inappropriately long amount of time. Between rolling armor soak, shifting, and blocking most people aren't even going to ever be hit, let alone damaged.

[Showzilla]

And do you play the monsters as if they have Appearance, Sanity, Mobility, and Luck?

Why the hell does Appearance even exist? Bluff and Diplomacy are skills. If you are faking your seduction attempt, roll Bluff. If not, roll Diplomacy. Or don't roll at all, because who cares about making seduction into a "challenge?" Do you have rules for a Seduced condition?

What does Sanity do? If nothing, why not roll your "going insane" rule into Wisdom damage?

Are Pierce and Penetration magical weapon properties? Or what?

Does natural armor have soak, effectiveness, and protection values?

All in all, these houserules seem to only make combat take an extremely, inappropriately long amount of time. Between rolling armor soak, shifting, and blocking most people aren't even going to ever be hit, let alone damaged.

appearance: so many of my friends bitched and said that charisma didn't cover, the stat is very much a flavor stat, it has very few applications and is very much a DM discretion.
sanity: read some Cthulhu and thought why not. The final thought that made it stay was some gamers stating that they liked it keeping damage of other mental stats. it is a flavor stat that actually has an application..against detect spells, kinda of hard to tell your alignment when you yourself don't know it all that well. it was going to get dropped kicked but popular demand kept it in.
penetration and pierce are applied abilities.
Natural armor does provide protection, a rule of thumb is that a monster gains soak of around the armor that has it's same ac bonus, special rules come into play for your +20 something odd monsters. The general coverage and protection is nat 20 and x2. constructs get a minimum of x3 and 19-20, same with dragons(cuz dragons are bad ass and we all know it). whats good for the goose is good for the gander.
monsters have those stats: appearance bonus= approx. there charisma bonus. sanity:general guesstimated based on theme. mobility: given as appropriate.
shift and blocks: so far with them in place, only people who suck at taking a hit use it (rogues and monks, sometimes a barb or a rare fighter, most of my knight players have never shifted). blocks....you get overwhelmed eventually.
slowing it down, yeah, I haven't had anything too bad yet (generally offensive out put keeps up with the defense and vice versa).
it might also have helped that I warned they older gamers my changes in armor and they stopped doing the whole "slug fest" deal. They mixed things up and refused to go toe-to-toe with a ogre wearing half plate for more than a round unless they themselves were a walking mountain of metal and meat.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Previous Combat Round Math

Make an attack roll.
If successful, make a damage roll.
Reduce damage by any damage resistance.
Deal damage.


New Combat Round Math

Make an attack roll.
Target makes a Block roll.
If attack hits and target has a shield, target makes a shield roll.
If the shield roll is successful, target makes a Shield Soak roll and adds Strength to the result.
Target makes an armor roll.
If the armor roll is successful, target makes an Armor Soak roll and adds Constitution to the result.
If the armor roll crits, make a d% roll to see if your Pierce overcomes the crit.
Attacker makes a damage roll.
Attack subtracts his weapon penetration from the result of the target's shield roll + the target's armor roll.
Subtract the result of the shield roll and the armor roll (-the attacker's weapon penetration) from the damage roll.
Reduce damage by any damage resistance.
Deal damage.

We've gone from seven steps requiring little actual math to twelve steps, many of which do require match. Your Luck re-rolls could increase this number as well, as would any critical hits (which, by definition, require a confirmation roll). In short, you've more than doubled the length of the average combat round. Not a good thing by any standards.

It's also extremely easy to negate almost all damage from un-optimized or low-level attacks, regardless of the level of the defender. Two level 2 Fighters in Fullplate with shields and Longswords will, basically, never hurt each other. Offense does not keep up with defense: at higher level you'll deal damage, yes, but the melee combat classes didn't need to be made less effective at dealing damage.

Your additional stats I haven't fully parsed the benefits of yet, but from what I've seen the presentation is incredibly clunky, and the stats don't function like the other stats in the game, so I'd say you're mismanaging the 3.5 design space by making those follow the same pattern as the core 6 stats.

[Spiryt]

Yeah, I was only commenting on armor thing, because the rest seems mostly unfinished.

Anyway, I would say that armor coverage and stuff can work quite nicely, but should probably have much lesser bonuses - with bonuses way more dependent on character level and stuff.

That keeps up with D&D feel way more.

[Showzilla]

Yeah, I was only commenting on armor thing, because the rest seems mostly unfinished.

Anyway, I would say that armor coverage and stuff can work quite nicely, but should probably have much lesser bonuses - with bonuses way more dependent on character level and stuff.

That keeps up with D&D feel way more.

awake now....I don't like appearance or sanity all that much after I used them in one game but they kept coming back because people liked them (not to mention it keeps them from breaking characters as easily). as for armor, I had the idea "k, full plate is the best **** possible, so a d12 is a given for it, now to round everything else down from that" so me and a few friends got together and started applying numbers and here we are. mobility started out as only a +5 ft movement every modifier and then some one pointed out the problem with running over 150 ft on a single move action and still only getting 1-4 attacks seemed weird, though my other thought was that you traveling the +5ft per mod was a swift action. appearance...flavor,flavor,flavor, but I still had to ghetto rig it into the game some how, its there to do what the character who invest in it does, look pretty. though in hindsight if you got it high enough you'd never need to fight unless some one who thinks your "not their type" puts a blade between thy shoulder blades.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

The thing is that they don't feel like stats, so I wouldn't treat them as such.

But I feel the biggest change you have here is the armor rules, and I'd like to see your response to my comments, and whether or not I'm missing something in the efficiency of these rules.

[Showzilla]

The thing is that they don't feel like stats, so I wouldn't treat them as such.

But I feel the biggest change you have here is the armor rules, and I'd like to see your response to my comments, and whether or not I'm missing something in the efficiency of these rules.

it relies on the natural deal of "player, its your defensive measure, so it's your job to keep up with it, tell me when your dead or dying"
the d20 roll for armor isn't to see if it works, its to see if it crits, by the way.
when I tell some one that their foe is taking a swing, they go about how to deal with it, this comes down to telling me if they shift ,block or just take it.
so it's more like this:
I say your getting attack: I roll to hit|you roll to crit
I roll damage|you roll soak
I take care of fortification or penetration and notify you if base soak is comprimised.
you calculat damage.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

it relies on the natural deal of "player, its your defensive measure, so it's your job to keep up with it, tell me when your dead or dying"
the d20 roll for armor isn't to see if it works, its to see if it crits, by the way.
when I tell some one that their foe is taking a swing, they go about how to deal with it, this comes down to telling me if they shift ,block or just take it.
so it's more like this:
I say your getting attack: I roll to hit|you roll to crit
I roll damage|you roll soak
I take care of fortification or penetration and notify you if base soak is comprimised.
you calculat damage.

My point being that, whoever's job it is, you've more than doubled the number of rolls required.

[Showzilla]

My point being that, whoever's job it is, you've more than doubled the number of rolls required.

eh, the defender gains extra rolls, but as long as they pay attention to the sitiation, then we don't slow down

[Ziegander]

I have no idea why your players don't use Shift more. With a Mobility score of 12 (+1 modifier) you can shift 5ft as a defensive action twice per round. That means you can dodge two full attacks per round. And you can do that at 1st level. With a higher Mobility score you gain the possibility to avoid area effects and even get extra actions on your own turn.

I guarantee I would have at least Mobility 12 every game no questions asked. It's the most effective defense in the game with the least opportunity cost. Of course Mobility 14+ is the best defense (move 5ft or more twice per round without provoking AoOs).

What sucks about that is that monsters can shift too, so as awesome I am at never getting hit, the monsters are as good if not better.

But that's okay, because I would just play a caster with Mobility 12. Then I can dodge two full attacks while flying and casting spells that just can't be avoided. Sweet.

Unless of course you have house rules that effect spellcasters, in which case we need to hear them.

When you say Pierce and Penetration are "applied abilities" what does that mean? Is it something like Composite to a Longbow?

[Showzilla]

I have no idea why your players don't use Shift more. With a Mobility score of 12 (+1 modifier) you can shift 5ft as a defensive action twice per round. That means you can dodge two full attacks per round. And you can do that at 1st level. With a higher Mobility score you gain the possibility to avoid area effects and even get extra actions on your own turn.

I guarantee I would have at least Mobility 12 every game no questions asked. It's the most effective defense in the game with the least opportunity cost. Of course Mobility 14+ is the best defense (move 5ft or more twice per round without provoking AoOs).

What sucks about that is that monsters can shift too, so as awesome I am at never getting hit, the monsters are as good if not better.

But that's okay, because I would just play a caster with Mobility 12. Then I can dodge two full attacks while flying and casting spells that just can't be avoided. Sweet.

Unless of course you have house rules that effect spellcasters, in which case we need to hear them.

When you say Pierce and Penetration are "applied abilities" what does that mean? Is it something like Composite to a Longbow?

I need to redo my initial post now that I've slept. Shift requires a little roll as well. check above