A quick and dirty armor fix

[ngilop]

Hello everybody. Ngilop here for another Quick and Dirty fixTM.

I have long been disappointed with the way Armor works in 3rd ed. I know that the WoTC guys wanted every armor to be identicale and not have 1 been the end all be all of armor, but what ended up happening was heavy armor had all of these big penalties and no real boons to compensate for that.

I have went through a lot of differnet ideas in my head and most of them are rather long and a bit complicated. But, I do beleive i found a rather easy 'fix' if you will.

What about making armor give a certain amount of temporary hit points at the start of every round, and then cross reference that with itinerative attacks?

I was thinking you get a number of temporary hit points equal to the base Armor Bonus of said armor that renews every round, so full plate would give you 9 Temporary Hit Points every round while a chain shirt would only give you 4.
To make this not seem worthless at higher level i think tieing it to BaB via Itinerative attacks is perfect. So for each BASE Itinerative attack one character could make in a full round ( flurry of blows and rapid shot non-withstanding) the number of temporary hit points are mulitplied by that number. so at level 20 for instance a fighter has 36 temporary hit points from full plate while the same fighter only has 16 with the chain shirt.

I thik this is nice, as it supports the fluff of the heavy armor guys being able to take more damage than the usually more foragile skirmish types.

anyways, what do you all think of this idea?

and I apoloize if this idea came out hard to understand in the transition from brain to internet.

[Seharvepernfan]

This is a really good idea. It's strictly better than damage reduction, and I've always felt that armor should protect you against fireballs and the like.

I kinda feel like it should be x hp/hit, but that makes it weaker against powerful singular attacks.

The problem is the bookkeeping involved (as usual).

[Seerow]

I find this really funny considering you recently said you've disagreed with almost every idea I've posted but...


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=228380

Check out the middle of that post. Particularly the section labeled "Providing a Secondary Benefit for Armor".

I think you'll find it looks pretty familiar.

[ngilop]

I did say almost everything. and this was one that I did not happen to see at all. i now feel rather odd that i had this idea that is basically the same as yours

Bolded part for emphasis.

[Seerow]

I did say almost everything. and this was one that I did not happen to see at all. i now feel rather odd that i had this idea that is basically the same as yours

Bolded part for emphasis.

Yeah I wasn't accusing you of anything, I assumed you hadn't seen it. I just thought it was really funny that you came to basically the exact same solution I did. The only differences really are semantics, and yours not explicitly including enchantment bonuses.

[ngilop]

:). i also did not think of natural armor at all. thats something that completely slipped my mind.

[Ashtagon]

Why is it that when I suggested this idea months ago, it got slammed down?

[Seerow]

Why is it that when I suggested this idea months ago, it got slammed down?

I dunno, got a link?

[DMMike]

Maybe I'm missing something (internet to brain, and all) -

but isn't Armor as Damage Reduction much simpler?

Or if you want to keep your AC bonuses, give the armor tiny amounts of DR, like DR1/- for medium armor and DR3/- for heavy armor.

Or give each set of armor an certain amount of hit points, and allow the player to choose, at any time, how much of his character's damage that the armor takes instead. This leads directly into an oft-overlooked issue: just how well is my armor holding up to all this beating, anyway?

[ngilop]

Why is it that when I suggested this idea months ago, it got slammed down?

Its how how the forums are fickle like that.

One of my first posts ever on this forum ( oddly enough side note here, i read the comic for years before ever knowing this site had a forum, LOL) was about the short comings of the fighter and why those shortcoming really existed. I had a lot fo 'your wrong' posts on my thread then just a couple of months ago Zegiander did a post about the same thing and said a lot of the same things I did about the issues with the fighter. Rruthfully those some people who derided me about my ideas on what was inherently wrong with the fighter applauded him on syaing the same thing.

It is just one of the things about this forum as a whole that strikes me as odd.

DMMike, yeah damage reduction is simpler but it needs to be higher than DR 3/- to keep it relevant at all levels beyond 2nd/3rd. that is one of my armor fixes i have already full plate ends up getting DR 10/- and +15 AC at Level 20.