Should armor figure in to DEX saves? Should there be an "armor save"?

[Greywander]

If I shoot one arrow at a guy, I make an attack roll against his AC. If the dude is in heavy plate armor, I'm unlikely to penetrate it.

If I use my special elven ranger ability to shoot a hundred arrows into the sky and rain them down over a wide area, the guy (and anyone else in the AoE) would make a DEX save against my save DC. Suddenly, armor does nothing to help deflect those arrows, and if the guy is wearing plate armor, he's unlikely to have very high DEX.

It seems like it would make sense to make a new "armor save" based off of your AC (e.g. AC is just a "passive armor save" value) and move some things that are DEX saves to using armor saves instead. Now, it wouldn't make sense for everything. I doubt armor is going to help much against a Lightning Bolt or Fireball. But given that every AoE seems to use saving throws, even ones based off of using weapons, like the rain of arrows example above, there would still likely be quite a few that would make sense to use an armor save.

[Anymage]

Making attack rolls against everybody in an area is quite possible within the system. And past that, it's in theory quite possible for armor to provide damage resistance or flat bonus against anything B/S/P instead of armor being its own thing.

In practice there will always be edge cases, and people who want the D&D rules to keep doing what D&D rules are doing because that's what they're most familiar with. So you can make mass attacks like barrage of arrows trigger attacks instead of saves, but at some point your options are to accept that D&D embraces its oddities, or do a ton of homebrew.

Also, from a very quick look, what elven ranger ability are you talking about? The hunter ranger looks like it makes a bunch of attacks.

[Rynjin]

This seems like the kind of thing that even in 5e is best handled by a class feature or even a Feat, because it's the kind of thing that hedges one option (heavy armor) ahead of another (light armor/high Dex).

Eg. Something that grants proficiency in Dex saves and lets you treat your base Armor Class from equipped armor as your effective Dex score.

[sithlordnergal]

So, narratively it does make sense for armor to help defend against those specific types of saving throws. Mechanically, you're getting into 3.5's Regular/Touch/Flat Footed ACs territory. Given 5e went out of its way to simplify all of that, I feel like it'd be a bad fit.

[Dienekes]

If I shoot one arrow at a guy, I make an attack roll against his AC. If the dude is in heavy plate armor, I'm unlikely to penetrate it.

If I use my special elven ranger ability to shoot a hundred arrows into the sky and rain them down over a wide area, the guy (and anyone else in the AoE) would make a DEX save against my save DC. Suddenly, armor does nothing to help deflect those arrows, and if the guy is wearing plate armor, he's unlikely to have very high DEX.

It seems like it would make sense to make a new "armor save" based off of your AC (e.g. AC is just a "passive armor save" value) and move some things that are DEX saves to using armor saves instead. Now, it wouldn't make sense for everything. I doubt armor is going to help much against a Lightning Bolt or Fireball. But given that every AoE seems to use saving throws, even ones based off of using weapons, like the rain of arrows example above, there would still likely be quite a few that would make sense to use an armor save.

Star Wars Saga Edition had something similar to what you’re talking about. Except it just replaced AC with Reflex Defense and allowed armor to increase that. Worked pretty darn well. Your armor should offer some protection from most things that get sent at you anyway. At least as much as dodging through an exploding fireball makes sense.

Of course, that used a static defense system. 5e uses static AC and rolled saves. And I doubt they’re going to make you roll for every attack made against you.

As is, I could definitely see this as a subclass ability or part of some armored expert feat. But that’s about it.

Though it is interesting, I’m thinking if there was some ability of replace the dex in dex saves with your AC above 10 from your armor/shields if that would make Strength more useful than Dex. And, honestly, I don’t think it would. Yeah the hp saved from having high Dex saves would be very nice. But is it worth more than Initiative and Dex skills? I’m leaning toward no.

[Greywander]

Also, from a very quick look, what elven ranger ability are you talking about? The hunter ranger looks like it makes a bunch of attacks.
Well, it was mostly hypothetical. Mostly. I'm sure there probably already exists a number of spells or abilities that this would make sense for, but it just so happens that I recently wrote up a homebrew class that has an ability pretty similar to what I described in the OP. It's a class that lets you turn into a vehicle, such as a battleship or airship, and one of the features you get lets you shoot all your cannons at once to bombard an area. It uses a DEX save.


So, narratively it does make sense for armor to help defend against those specific types of saving throws. Mechanically, you're getting into 3.5's Regular/Touch/Flat Footed ACs territory. Given 5e went out of its way to simplify all of that, I feel like it'd be a bad fit.
Not necessarily. All I'm proposing is add a new type of saving throw to the game that scales off of AC and then move some DEX saves (maybe some STR or CON saves, too) over to the new AC save.


Of course, that used a static defense system. 5e uses static AC and rolled saves. And I doubt they’re going to make you roll for every attack made against you.
I actually just recently posted a thread inquiring into why attacks are handled differently from saving throws. I think the conclusion I've come to is it's possible to take a cue from skills, where you can actively roll a skill like Perception, but also have passive Perception, and apply the same logic to attacks and saves. So you'd have an attack bonus for when you roll an attack, but also a defense bonus for when you roll a defense, and you'd also have passive attack and passive defense. Your spell save DC is really just another way of saying "passive spell attack". This way, any interaction can be handled by either rolling attack against passive defense (like an attack roll), or rolling defense against passive attack (like a saving throw), and the math is identical either way, so it really is just down to preference. Different players at the same table could even choose to do it differently, or the same player on different occasions.

If we did this, we wouldn't even need a new save, as AC could be used passively (like it is against attack rolls) or rolled as a save (where your save bonus is your AC - 10). And you could choose if you'd rather roll or if you'd rather have the other guy roll.

[Chronos]

I'm confused. The ranger ability to rain down a bazillion arrows from the sky into an area does use attack rolls. Are you referring to the ranger ability to make magical thorns strike into an area around an arrow? Because those are magical thorns, not arrows, and so they work differently.

[Psyren]

I'd say armor doesn't need to, but shields definitely should.

Now, before you shout "Shield Master exists!" I have a couple of big problems with it:

1) The save benefit should be baseline rather than needing yet another martial feat tax. Proficiency with a shield should be more than enough training to put the shield between you and an inhaling dragon's mouth.
2) Even with Shield Master, you can't protect anyone but yourself.Meanwhile fantasy art has plenty of examples of the knight or paladin protecting people standing behind them. (Hell, WotC themselves even used it in the Dragonlance promo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0PJhABCb3o) (0:30).) A permissive DM might invoke the half-cover rules here if your tank character is Medium, but it's not guaranteed, and it really should be; even if they do, you still run into:
3) It doesn't work against all dragons. This image (https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/677c59ea-6a2d-44be-b9b2-9e63fd2f534f/d5t337t-4952e310-b724-442d-82ae-cdbcebe4d706.jpg) is just as iconic as all the rest, but 5e makes it impossible as written, because neither SM nor the cover rules affect any save except Dex.

[Sigreid]

If I shoot one arrow at a guy, I make an attack roll against his AC. If the dude is in heavy plate armor, I'm unlikely to penetrate it.

If I use my special elven ranger ability to shoot a hundred arrows into the sky and rain them down over a wide area, the guy (and anyone else in the AoE) would make a DEX save against my save DC. Suddenly, armor does nothing to help deflect those arrows, and if the guy is wearing plate armor, he's unlikely to have very high DEX.

It seems like it would make sense to make a new "armor save" based off of your AC (e.g. AC is just a "passive armor save" value) and move some things that are DEX saves to using armor saves instead. Now, it wouldn't make sense for everything. I doubt armor is going to help much against a Lightning Bolt or Fireball. But given that every AoE seems to use saving throws, even ones based off of using weapons, like the rain of arrows example above, there would still likely be quite a few that would make sense to use an armor save.

Well, in the situations you described, when you make an attack role you are trying to hit one of the vulnerable areas of the armor. So one try to hit the golden spot. With 100 arrows raining down, there's a high chance one of them at least will hit a golden spot and you're only real defense is to get out of the way or get your shield up or get under cover or some such. So, I think it's fine personally.

[Damon_Tor]

Also, from a very quick look, what elven ranger ability are you talking about? The hunter ranger looks like it makes a bunch of attacks.

The barrage spell, I think.

[diplomancer]

In a game without multiclassing, that could be an interesting idea, though I think it could get fiddly- for example, are you carving out an exception for lightning damage?

But if there IS multiclassing, we don't need yet more reasons why casters should multiclass for armor. It's already bad enough as it is.