Making Rules for Original Tabletop RPG

[Dachimotsu]

I've been working on an original tabletop RPG for a few years now. Deciding that he wants to give it a try too, my friend decides to start building his own game as well. It was kind of an on and off process for the first year, but recently, we've both gotten really into the creation of his game. Whenever an aspect of the gameplay comes up, we can usually come up with something great and balanced within the hour. One thing we're really struggling with, however, is equipment.

My friend has this vision of what he wants the game to be like, and one of those visions involves balanced equipment usage. The idea is that a character's armor will degrade with time and wear, which will make all the armor found on dead bodies while adventuring far more useful, rather than them just being loot to sell. It's also necessary to make one of the game's classes more useful, in that it will be coveted for its ability to repair items mid-battle.

As far as my knowledge extends, armor in tabletop games tends to attribute to Armor Class, which is the threshold that attack rolls need to meet in order to hit. My friend wants to do away with that, and has implemented a new feature called Evasion, where the target makes the roll instead. The lighter your armor, the easier it is to evade.

Right now, there are three types of armor: Cloth (light), Mail (medium), and Plate (heavy). Cloth offers the least protection, but grants the largest bonus to evasion (the same as being naked, actually) as well as the ability to have two enchantments on at once (as opposed to mail or plate which can only have one). Plate offers the best protection, but slows movement slightly and makes you unable to evade. As for mail, we haven't come up with anything that makes it unique.

With all that out of the way, our problem is this: how do we handle equipment breaking? At first, it was simple, but it just ended up getting more and more complicated, until eventually it just stopped making sense. The idea is that each piece of armor can take a certain number of hits before it's destroyed, but determining this number has proven incredibly challenging.

The following is a list of individual ideas we've had for equipment. They have never been present in the game simultaneously, nor have any one of them been in the game by itself, for we keep trying to mix and match everything in hopeless attempts to find balance.

1. Dividing armor into tiers. Seven tiers, each made from a different material. What changes between materials is either the way damage dealt to the wearer is reduced, how many hits the material can take, or both.
2. Since fixed "damage reduction" values throw subtraction into the mix, making things more complicated than they need to be, we considered making plate halve the damage the wearer takes, while cloth offers no damage reduction in favor of enchantments and evasion. We couldn't decide on a simple function for mail.
3. When an armored creature takes a hit, some damage is dealt to both the creature and the armor. How much is usually determined by the armor's damage reduction.
4. Rather than giving armor pieces "hit points" that rise with material tier, they simply have a number of hits they can take before breaking. This number will always go down by 1 when struck, regardless of the source.
5. If Equipment HP is used, the character's "Equipment HP" value will be equal to that of the strongest armor piece. Usually, this is the torso armor. When this value is depleted, a roll is made to randomly determine which armor piece breaks (head, arms, legs, etc.). Once done, the equipment hp value resets to that of the next highest armor piece (which will likely be the torso's again if it wasn't randomly chosen to break).
6. To increase the longevity of armor, certain types are resistant or vulnerable to various damage types. For example, Cloth is immune to bludgeoning, but susceptible to slashing, piercing, and fire. However, it is never both resistant and vulnerable at the same time. If we're using resistance rules, their resistant element is the only thing that cannot damage the armor, whilst everything else can by the same increments. If using the vulnerable rules, their vulnerable elements are the only things that CAN damage the armor, while everything else does nothing.
7. High HP or low HP? Having low HP means at least one piece of armor will break every battle, which appeals to my friend, but it's not realistic and would require constant trips back to town. Not to mention, it would make dungeon-crawling near impossible. Having high HP compromises the usefulness of found armor, or the equipment-fixing abilities of one of the game's classes.

Other games feel that it's far more simple to leave equipment degradation to rust monsters and the like, but my friend really wants equipment breakage to be a constant threat. With everything said in mind, is there an easy, balanced way to handle all this without drowning the players with overcomplication?

[Glimbur]

First thought: if you keep having trouble finding design space for mail, throw it out. Heavy and light armor only.

The first thought I had for how to handle armor getting damaged is a Damage Track, a la White Wolf. Each type of armor, or possibly each material in both light and heavy, gets a certain number of boxes. Every time you get hit, x out a box. Each box is also labeled with the penalty you get; the first few might be nothing, then a penalty to however armor ends up protecting, then increasing penalties until the armor is worthless. Your in-combat repair removes boxes, as does scavenging armor from the fallen during an adventure. It seems like it applies penalties as armor is used but should also be kind of simple in practice. You'd have to decide how many hits a person can take and use that to help balance how many boxes different armors get, and how quickly the penalties stack up.

[goto124]

First thought: if you keep having trouble finding design space for mail, throw it out.

I hate spam mail too.

[Dachimotsu]

Okay, awake now. Let's see what we've got.


First thought: if you keep having trouble finding design space for mail, throw it out. Heavy and light armor only.

That'll be entirely up to my friend. If he insists on keeping it, we'll just need to make it the in-the-middle, nothing-special armor type.


The first thought I had for how to handle armor getting damaged is a Damage Track, a la White Wolf. Each type of armor, or possibly each material in both light and heavy, gets a certain number of boxes. Every time you get hit, x out a box. Each box is also labeled with the penalty you get; the first few might be nothing, then a penalty to however armor ends up protecting, then increasing penalties until the armor is worthless. Your in-combat repair removes boxes, as does scavenging armor from the fallen during an adventure. It seems like it applies penalties as armor is used but should also be kind of simple in practice. You'd have to decide how many hits a person can take and use that to help balance how many boxes different armors get, and how quickly the penalties stack up.

At first, this sounded exactly like our so-many-hits-to-break idea we already came up with. Then, after reading into it a bit more, I realized it was different, but also kind of complicated. It'd be difficult for players to keep track of the individual boxes for each piece of armor worn. Granted, I like the idea of armor becoming progressively less useful, as it doesn't make sense otherwise for armor to grant its full potential until completely shattered. But there's also the problem of deciding which piece of armor gets hit. Do they all get hit at once, is one rolled randomly, or does the attacker/target choose which one takes the blow?

[Glimbur]

I had envisioned armor coming by the suit; you don't (mechanically) wear a leather helmet, a plate curiass, mithral gauntlets, and chain boots. You wear a full set of Steel Plate, or Cloth Armor, or Whisper-silk Armor, or Dwarven Iron Plate, or so on. So each character only has one 'armor track' to keep track of. It does reduce the customization, but it also make things much simpler.

[SowZ]

Keeping track of hits and little incremental damage is too much bookkeeping. Give armor a 'damaged' and 'broken' condition and a threshold.

If you ever take more than X damage in one hit, armor is damaged and it has, oh, half effectiveness? Or, if already damaged, broken. This makes armor more balanced, too. As it stands, light armor gives two advantages, (evasion/enchantments,) and heavy only one, (damage reduction.) Heavy Armor will now have a second advantage, (higher threshold.)

[Ghost49X]

Try looking up a game called Anima: Beyond Fantasy. It's seems close to what you wanted so I'd recommend you use it for inspiration.

Here's a few things that it covers:

Evasion: Well in this game it can either be parry or dodge. After being attacked the defender rolls dodge and compares it to the attacker's roll, if the attacker rolls higher the difference between the rolls contributes to the damage formula and if the defender rolls higher he gets an opportunity to counter attack immediately
Breaking of weapons and armor: All weapons and armor have a fortitude stat and weapons have a breakage stat. When hitting the enemy you may roll breakage to see if you destroy something.
Stacking layers of armor: You can wear several layers of armor, like chainmail under your plate and so on for stacking benefits.

[D-naras]

Here is my suggestion:

Use the gaming table to your advantage. Each character wearing armor has a set area on the table where he rolls for the damage he takes (or the GM throws his dice in that area). In that area, spread out regular playing cards in a vaguely humanoid shape. 4 for the torso, 1 for the head, 2 for the arms and legs. Where the damage die came to rest, determines the armor part that got struck. If it landed on a chest card, then the torso armor is potentially damaged, if it came to rest on the head then the helmet and so on. If it falls on uncovered space, then either the player or the attacker determines which part got struck. If the die's value is higher than the card's then that part is damaged and you replace it with a card of smaller value. If not then that card remains there.

This way, you can use the card suits to represent different materials and the figures can be enchantments or whatever. It also makes it cooler to give out random cards after a fight and turns combat into a quick and funny minigame.

[Knaight]

My friend has this vision of what he wants the game to be like, and one of those visions involves balanced equipment usage. The idea is that a character's armor will degrade with time and wear, which will make all the armor found on dead bodies while adventuring far more useful, rather than them just being loot to sell. It's also necessary to make one of the game's classes more useful, in that it will be coveted for its ability to repair items mid-battle.

As far as my knowledge extends, armor in tabletop games tends to attribute to Armor Class, which is the threshold that attack rolls need to meet in order to hit. My friend wants to do away with that, and has implemented a new feature called Evasion, where the target makes the roll instead. The lighter your armor, the easier it is to evade.


If that's as far as your knowledge extends, you might want to familiarize yourself with a few more systems. AC is a D&D and D&D knockoff trope, and is one of a lot of different ways armor gets handled. The evasion roll detailed seems like it's basically the same as AC mechanically, but with a different person doing the rolling. It's not a significantly different mechanic, which isn't necessarily the problem, but it being seen as one is indicative of a lack of exposure to other systems.

As for armor damage systems, look at Burning Wheel, particularly earlier versions. It explicitly has this as a mechanic.

[ImNotTrevor]

You might also try a system like Dark Heresy uses. Armor serves to reduce damage taken, rather than make it harder to hit you. You would use Evasion to avoid damage, and if you are hit the armor absorbs damage.
On a critical hit, the damage reduction is permanently reduced by 1.

That way the armor doesn't have to be replacef constantly, but will still degrade.

[Morgenmuffel]

Heya!

Hmmm, so keeping track of your armor's HP would be too complex I suppose... What if you give every armor a certain 'hardness' or 'durability' rating. Once the armor suffers (=blocks) that amount of damage in one attack, it breaks. This avoids you needing to keep track, but it also increases the chance of 'weak' armor types breaking easily, while very strong types might stay usable for a very long time.

If the step from 'in perfect shape' to 'broken' is too extreme, you can also give every armor a limited number of stages, a bit like mentioned above. For example: any armor could have the levels 'Perfect state; Worn; Damaged; and Destroyed'. When the durability limit has been reached once, the armor then sinks one level.

Knuddels,
Mm

[Thisguy_]

EDIT: Wow, what a wall o' text. in short, I suggest a damaged/broken dichotomy and two degrades per play session with the assumption that a dungeon crawl can be completed in one to one and a half sessions. I also suggested eliminating bookkeeping related to armor on the player-side.



I like the idea of armor becoming less useful with degradation, but it doesn't seem realistic that it would constantly lose DR for being hit. Armor is a made-to-last or made-cheap deal: either you're outfitting someone important who needs to live a long time, or you're outfitting several thousand people that all need an edge for a few battles. Armor for PCs is kind of a weird in-between since so many of them in fantasy aren't nobles or rich, and therefore end up with cheaper armor like leather. (Leather is a cloth type here, no?)

I think a good ground to stand on would be for one piece of armor to break every other play session. I liked the idea of the healthy/damaged/broken condition set, so have you considered tuning it such that for a party of four, two degradations will occur per session? It isn't realistic. But, from a game balance perspective, this seems to mesh your two viewpoints together well enough; yours, in that armor will survive for more than a fight, and his, in that armor breakage should be a constant threat.

It also makes sure that the class capable of field repairs is useful (incredibly so, really) each session. He'll feel like he's providing constant benefit to his party, and they'll be glad he picked fixbot as his class, with the looming threat of armor. Even then, a dungeon crawl will be possible without an armor repair specialist; you would simply need to repair your armor when you got back to town after all the damage it would have taken. There's also a risk factor in tanking without an armor fixer in that there's a small chance that this session's two degradations will both hit you!

Armor HP is a lot of bookkeeping. With a healthy/damaged/broken system, your players won't have to keep track of anything. Try using a 3d6 or 2d20 roll to make high (or low if you like) rolls somehwat rare, then look at how many hits your players will take per combat-focused session and balance what ranges and in what amounts constitute a degrade.

Armor repair could even be made implicit upon visitation of town; consider allowing players to acquire unnamed amounts of treasure in the field, return to town for repairs, then count their gold. They'd know within an order of magnitude how much cash they get in any given looting and how much they come out with in the end, and the repairs don't even have to genuinely cost anything: they just need to seem to cost something, when in reality your "WBL" will grant appropriate cash for your adventurers and armor repair will be a non-issue for them. Always good to reduce bookkeeping on their end.

As far as the effect of having damaged armor, if a strap on your plate is ruined, it won't hurt you much, and neither will having a rip in your shirt or a deep slash cutting ALMOST through your leather chest piece. I suggest you make the penalty for using damaged armor on the lenient side, but the broken condition will obviously mean the armor no longer functions. The broken condition is scary, and the damaged condition is detrumental, but you still wouldn't strictly need a fixer (and you shouldn't strictly need any particular class), but having one would be a benefit to the party that they could appreciate immediately.

[RedZayda]

Didn't read the whole thread but chainmail was originally useful for it's resistance to arrows and piercing/slashing in general. It was the bullet proof armour of it's day. Platemail was great against swords arrows and bludgeoning weapons i've read it wasn't as good against piercing as chainmail but don't quote me on that. Don't know if that gives you any good ideas but thought i'd mention it.

[Dachimotsu]

Didn't read the whole thread but chainmail was originally useful for it's resistance to arrows and piercing/slashing in general. It was the bullet proof armour of it's day. Platemail was great against swords arrows and bludgeoning weapons i've read it wasn't as good against piercing as chainmail but don't quote me on that. Don't know if that gives you any good ideas but thought i'd mention it.

Not that I'm ungrateful for the advice, but necroposting might be against the rules.
I'd advise against it, just in case.