In my last post about armor, I discussed the possibility of a system where we introduce different types of attack damage, and therefore different types of armor. This worked in my mind just fine for the players, but once it came to NPCs and monsters, whom I want to generate and track with ease, it quickly became too complicated. So we're back to the drawing board.
My latest thoughts have been wandering in the direction of armor as a last-ditch roll to save. Basically, I first have my players roll to "dodge", and then if they get hit, roll again to see if the attack hits their armor. This means that the players should have an armor rating of 0-100%, representing how much of their body is covered. I have two ideas for how this will protect the character.
First though, we have to define 'how well armored' someone is. Let's throw out some numbers, like light armor = 50%, medium armor = 75%, heavy armor = 100%, and ultra armor is 120%.
Idea #1 is that, if the armor is hit, then it soaks the damage, completely protecting the character from harm. The downside to this is that it's slightly unrealistic; any hit should still "hurt" the player, which is what I was going for in my last attempt. The upside is that it's so much easier to work with, but still embodies what armor actually means to a character, rather than just adding onto a "to hit" value or having pure damage reduction.
Alone though, idea #1 doesn't do anything mechanically that just having a "to hit" value doesn't do. In fact, being "fully armored" from head to toe would mean that you are literally an indestructible tank. Obviously that's also completely unrealistic, so we need something else.
Idea #2 is that armor itself should take damage, and get weakened over time. I know some systems do this and most don't, and I want to know how people feel about it. The way I'd implement it is that each armor material would have a "hardness" that was pure damage reduction. For example, nonmetal materials like leather or bone could have a hardness of 2, vs. metal armors that have a hardness of 5. Then, any damage on top of that would degrade the quality of the armor, mechanically lowering the % coverage. Now heavy armor will always block the first attack, but any subsequent attacks start having a higher and higher chance of actually wounding the character.
This armor system isn't without its share of problems, and I'm on the fence about it. It is basically like temporary HP, but when you have a system with magical healing, do you also now need magical blacksmithing? There's also now extra rolls and calculations in the mix, so is it again simply "too much"? I like a light amount of crunch in my games, so this feels right to me, but I might be missing something.
How do you feel about having armor degrade?
One important note is that, despite magical healing, it's really really bad to get hit in my game, because the stats you use to accomplish tasks are also the health that gets damaged by an attack. In this sense, armor as temporary HP is a god-send to the player characters.
As always, I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the matter, so please leave a comment below!
1). Does your System have Critical Hits?
ReplyDelete2). Does it have Stun as an effect, without it doing actual harm to a target?
3). How is a strike rolled in your game system?
Once I know these, I can ask better questions and speak more meaningfully.
1) Yes - critical hits will deal extra damage and/or have special effects like knockback or stun.
Delete2) I've been playing around with different types of damage, but with this armour system I would only have one. So no, not other than through criticals.
3) All rolls in the game are player-facing, meaning that they both roll to attack and to dodge. All rolls, if they miss, then have what I call a 'crash' roll - an extra roll that determines your "degree of failure". Likewise, if you crit, you roll an "overdrive" to determine your degree of... over-success haha.
What I'm trying to do here is tie in the armor to the "crash" roll of dodging attacks. Hopefully that answers your question...
Thanks for taking time to respond!
I like these sorts of problems to try and tackle to the satisfaction of the designer.
DeleteIn a system called Encounter Critical, armour and other protections have a percentile chance to halve damage. The maximum percentage is 95, I think. If one makes a Critical success on the Armour Roll, the damage is entirely negated.
In my expansion of those rules, I added that if the strike was a Critical, the Armour Roll had also to be a Critical to bring the damage down to Normal levels.
PCs often have more than one type of protection, and I have them roll their outermost first in most circumstances, so someone with an energy screen could conceivably defeat or reduce a strike with their first roll, but it may take multiple rolls to determine if the damage was first Normalised, then second, halved, then on a third successful Armour Roll, eliminated.
Perhaps something in these ideas helps you with the way you wanted Criticals and Crashes to work.
That is definitely neat - and while less dynamic than what I proposed it's more streamlined, which might be good. I will chew on this, thanks!
DeleteMaybe I understand it wrong, so I repeat in my own words. A NPC tries to hit me, I roll defense. If I do not defend myself, I roll whether the attack hits my armor or me. So basically I am rolling whether my armor takes the damage or if I take the damage. Depending on the hardness of the armor, it will protect me less in the future.
ReplyDeleteAgain if I understand it correctly, armor would be an amount of temporary hitpoints I wear, but with the advantage that those hitpoints will not decrease as fast as my normal ones depending on the kind of weapon that hits what kind of armor. Which means that those amount of temporary hitpoints is simply more temporary hitpoints than it looks like.
Sounds nice for player survivability, but doesn't it drag out defeating a NPC. Especially wouldn't it mean that I always have to club down those fancy 100-120% armors before I actually hurt my enemy? Or in other words: you want your players to ruin their loot first, right?
What can I do, when I only have light or small weapons against an highly armored foe? Do I have choices besides fleeing, moping and using a net to bring the enemy down within his fancy pants?
Your understanding is correct, and you make a very valid point. I will have to include other options, such as armor-piercing ammo, perhaps acidic bombs, and certain magnetic-based magics that can help deal with these foes.
DeleteI'm also going to have enemies be asymmetric from the players, where in general they won't be fully armored up. A lot of balance to be considered, but it might work...