Armor redux

[Theodoxus]

I'm thinking of modifying armor in a pretty radical way, and was hoping for any thoughts/criticisms/screaming problems with it.

1) Grant everything a base Defense equal to 10 + Dex or Int Mod. This is the floor of their AC. Rolling below it is a miss.
2) Armor provides a static bonus: Light is +3, Medium is +5, Heavy is +7.
3) Armor also has Armor Hit Points (AHP):

Spoiler

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Armor Type
Padded 30 AHP Leather 40 AHP Studded Leather 50 AHP Hide (moved to Light) 60 AHP Chain Shirt 45 AHP Scale Mail 60 AHP Breastplate 75 AHP Half Plate 90 AHP Ring Mail 60 AHP Chain Mail 80 AHP Splint 100 AHP Plate 120 AHP

Hitting between the base Defense and the modified AC hit armor instead of meat, reducing the AHP by the amount of damage dealt.
4) A crit always bypasses armor, even if 20+mods is below the AC.
5) AHP can be restored using mending, which restores 1d6 AHP per level of the caster, per casting. Anyone trained with smith tools or leatherworking tools can restore 1d6 AHP per gold piece spent. A maximum of 30 AHP can be restored in this manner during a short rest.
6) If reduced to zero AHP, you no longer benefit from any armor traits, and it can no longer be restored in the field. Each restoration of AHP by any method short of wish reduces the maximum AHP by 1.
7) Magic bonuses to AC (+1 armor, ring of protection, cloak of protection, etc.) increase Defense, raising the floor for missing.
8) [Optional] Light armor is resistant to piercing and vulnerable to slashing, Medium armor is resistant to slashing and vulnerable to bludgeoning, Heavy armor is resistant to bludgeoning and vulnerable to piercing.
8a) If 8 is used, enchanted armor reduces incoming damage equal to the bonus. This reduction is allocated before resistance or vulnerability is calculated.

This change does make certain calculations necessary for classes. Defense for Barbarian and Monk would still use Dex or Int, but in both cases, outside of some niche build, Dex will always be higher than Int, so in effect, it doesn't change anything. It does make Barbarians think more about wearing armor, having ablative armor that is the equivalent of a +5 bonus is nearly a no-brainer.

Mage Armor and the like would simply add to Defense and provide no AHP.

Are there any edge cases I'm not taking into consideration, or worse yet, something blaringly obvious that needs to be addressed that I've completely missed?

[MrStabby]

I wonder if it might be simpler to tie this in the the existing temporary HP mechanic?

If armour gives a certain amount of temp HP per round and heavier armours give you more then you do get a lot of extra damage mitigation from armour but it leans into bounded accuracy more.

Then adjust temp HP so it only protects against non critical BPS damage. This wi devalue other sources of temp HP - some could be rebalanced to healing, others are still powerful enough to be perfectly useful, others still might be moved to aid type effects that boost max HP. If you get HP back at the start of your turn then it can still be useful to top up in the middle.

One thing to think about, is how armour HP is supposed to interact with things like resistance?

[kosh49]

This rule is not to my personal taste, but I can understand why you might want to try it out.

Is there a limit to the total amount of AHP that can be restore by mending? Because the short rest limit does not seem to make sense since you can cast mending outside of a rest, and as a cantrip there is no limit on how often a caster can use in a day. If there is no limit, it seems like everyone who can learn mending does so that after every fight everyone can sit down and use mending to get all of the party's armor back to full strength.

One potential issue is that armor being reduced to 0 AHP (which functionally destroys it) looks like it might not be that uncommon. If players are constantly having armor irreparably destroyed in the middle of the dungeon, they might start to find that frustrating.

[Theodoxus]

I ran a combat with my players last night. 30 enemy combatants, mostly undead, using the armor rules. Players used 5E standard armor.

I halved the base HP of each enemy and put them in varying light armor with the second half of the base HP as AHP. Undead defense was 10, AC was 14 to 15. They had 10 HP each. During play, the armor was hit 6 times, and bypassed the rest of the time. Though armor was hit, it was never destroyed.

After action report from my player who actually pays attention was "interesting, worked better than I thought. It was more fun to hit and damage armor, especially with the vulnerable slashes, than just miss. Not sure if I want to use it on my PC, but keep using it on our enemies."

I did run into a situation where the bladesinger in the party cast shadowblade and then hit armor. I ruled at the time that since it was psychic damage, it would phase through the armor. That does provide a big boost to psychic damage though, so I'll probably treat psychic vs armor as a miss instead. The player didn't know the difference, as I just said it bypassed armor, which was the wording I was using whenever they rolled higher than the AC.

I'm still mulling over energy vs armor. One player suggested acid simply causes degradation to the armor, lowering max AHP that can be restored by the rolled amount. Light (leathers) armor might be resistant to fire, while heavy (plates) might be vulnerable... but I'd rather not have magic work that way, weapons were confusing enough with Rochambeau.

As for repairing, I'm still debating that. Since the players don't currently want to convert over, it's less critical, but I agree 1) mending will become de facto mandatory. and 2) a max repair amount is artificial. I'll probably drop that at the minimum.

[MrStabby]

After action report from my player who actually pays attention was "interesting, worked better than I thought. It was more fun to hit and damage armor, especially with the vulnerable slashes, than just miss. Not sure if I want to use it on my PC, but keep using it on our enemies."

I feel that is this is the crux of the issue it will mean that feats like GWM and SS will become even better if misses are converted to armour damage. Unless armour has so many HP that it neve gets destroyed, then ploughing through it rather tan going round it will often be the best option. On the other hand, if armour has so many HP that it never actually gets destroyed then it is identical to hitting armour just being a miss - just with exra bookkeeping.

[Rilmani]

So some forumgoers think armor breaking mid-combat is interesting. I get that, for roleplay moments and for enemies who wear armor. I’d like to approach it from a different direction using The Black Hack’s Usage Die. After a combat in which you took X damage (listed with the armor’s stats) or more, roll the armor’s usage die, which ranged from a d4 to a d12. On a roll of 1 or 2, the armor is damaged and any subsequent 1 or 2 on the usage die destroys it. Destroyed armor can be worked into newly crafted armor’s pattern, but it cannot be restored to working order. Atypical effects and damage types decrease the size of your armor’s die until it is properly repaired. Heat Metal and Disintegrate could always degrade armor to damaged armor.

I suppose… if you want to include this and go with the “armor can be destroyed in combat approach” you could tie it into critical fails. When you roll a natural one in certain circumstances, you are forced to roll the Usage Die for your armor.

I admit that using hit points to track an item’s durability is convenient for bookkeeping, but part of me resists it. Also, if anyone doesn’t like this example for the usage die, perhaps you’d prefer it for non-quantifiable things like magic.

[Breccia]

Through materials and/or magic, you're going to need to increase AHP at higher levels.

Someone wearing plate armor has about a 35% chance their armor will take the hit instead of them. So if the party's defender is being attacked by three monsters doing 10 avg damage per hit, their armor will be broken in 12 rounds. Now, they probably will have short rests to repair in that time. So far, no problem.

Hill giants do closer to 20 damage than 10.

And an adult red dragon does closer to 50.

Now it's probably realistic that a creature the size of several elephants with claws harder than steel could tear open plate mail like a Snickers wrapper, but I don't think the fighter or paladin in the front will appreciate it. It's forseeable that the party's defender could be left without armor by the fourth round of combat, making them a far less effective member of the party for what's left of their short life. Or, someone in the party has to burn an Action to cast mending instead of something that would be more classically useful.

Mithril, adamantium, and +X armor should be harder to break, and by level 17 should be something the players have access to.

EDIT: Also, what about shields?

[Breccia]

I admit that using hit points to track an item’s durability is convenient for bookkeeping, but part of me resists it.

It's because these rules almost always benefit the monsters more than the player. The last campaign I ran with item damage, it was a solid part of the system that most monsters used garbage-tier weapons and armor with low AHP, meaning that breaking them was a viable option. These rules, as written, don't have that. The first bugbear the PCs find will have the same AHP as the fourth or fifth one, but by then, their own armor will be starting to fall apart. As such, item degredation tends to be an issue that only hurts and doesn't help the players. The bugbear doesn't care about his AHP, he'll be dead in three rounds.

[Theodoxus]

Through materials and/or magic, you're going to need to increase AHP at higher levels.

Someone wearing plate armor has about a 35% chance their armor will take the hit instead of them. So if the party's defender is being attacked by three monsters doing 10 avg damage per hit, their armor will be broken in 12 rounds. Now, they probably will have short rests to repair in that time. So far, no problem.

Hill giants do closer to 20 damage than 10.

And an adult red dragon does closer to 50.

Now it's probably realistic that a creature the size of several elephants with claws harder than steel could tear open plate mail like a Snickers wrapper, but I don't think the fighter or paladin in the front will appreciate it. It's forseeable that the party's defender could be left without armor by the fourth round of combat, making them a far less effective member of the party for what's left of their short life. Or, someone in the party has to burn an Action to cast mending instead of something that would be more classically useful.

Mithril, adamantium, and +X armor should be harder to break, and by level 17 should be something the players have access to.

EDIT: Also, what about shields?

I'm thinking magic armor would provide damage reduction. Special materials would provide more. I'm also considering allowing magic armor to regenerate damage, with new enchantments that would increase the regeneration amount.

As for shields, they provide a flat bonus to Defense, so move the armor window. I'm considering allowing a 13th Age style 'shield sacrifice' for blocking massive hits... but for now, it's just a bonus to Defense.

It's because these rules almost always benefit the monsters more than the player. The last campaign I ran with item damage, it was a solid part of the system that most monsters used garbage-tier weapons and armor with low AHP, meaning that breaking them was a viable option. These rules, as written, don't have that. The first bugbear the PCs find will have the same AHP as the fourth or fifth one, but by then, their own armor will be starting to fall apart. As such, item degredation tends to be an issue that only hurts and doesn't help the players. The bugbear doesn't care about his AHP, he'll be dead in three rounds.

I'm using heavily modified rules for monsters. Basically, dividing their HP in half and granting half as AHP and half as "meat". If players roll particularly poorly, there wouldn't be much difference than fighting the mobs sans change - but good rolls will speed up combat, with the occasional armor hit still being meaningful if not definitively impactful. The quick and dirty conversion is to generate the Defense using 10+Dex mod and keeping their AC whatever the statblock states. If they're the same, they don't get AHP. If they're different, even by 1 point, their HP is halved.

So far, it's greatly sped up combat. I've been using magical attacks against monsters that are save based to be split between both AHP and HP. Seemed fairer that way. I'm vacillating on allowing players to soak magic damage with armor. But I'm open to the idea.

[Breccia]

I'm using heavily modified rules for monsters.

Good, in my opinion that's necessary.

Here's where the current rules stand:
Miss by a lot: no effect
Miss by a little: no effect
Hit: cause damage

Here's where your rules stand:
Miss by a lot: no effect
Miss by a little: chip away at the armor until gone, then cause damage
Hit: cause damage

The bolded part is the change in effect. As long as the bolded part isn't purely a penalty to players, then I don't see anything wrong with that. Monsters using damaged/low-quality armor and PCs with better-quality armor just need to be balanced.

This also opens up the option of having armor with various resists/vulnerabilities/bypass. Maybe, for example, steel plate armor isn't vulnerable to piercing but acid. Maybe the grimlocks in the cave use fur/wood armor that's vulnerable to fire. Maybe metal armor doesn't stop electricity. There are plenty of spells that use attack rolls, after all. PCs could prepare spells accordingly. Or, monsters could -- monsters that spam acid attacks could be seen as a major threat to the plate-wearing party defenders.

Overall I think your idea has significant merit and I hope it works.

[Kane0]

Mage Armor and the like would simply add to Defense and provide no AHP.

Are there any edge cases I'm not taking into consideration, or worse yet, something blaringly obvious that needs to be addressed that I've completely missed?

What about natural armor?

You've probably already considered it, but the vast majority of the critters in the MM do not wear armor, humanoids are sort of special in that way.