Armour Mechanism

[kaikatsu]

BRTC, I'll take a look.

Uccisore, absolutely.  Partial armour on the arms can provide deflection bonuses -- so even if it's not reducing the amount of damage you take, it can act as a shield in certan cases.  There are still reasons to wear hard gauntlets, but MORESO vs melee than vs firearms, which are harder to deflect.

[phookadude]

I have allways thought of random damage as being an abstraction of hit location. With firearms especially the bullet is pretty much allways doing the same damage to the target, the real variable is where the bullet hits. You could somehow tie your damage roll to hit location. I think morrow project does it like that.

[FzGhouL]

I like Phooka's idea but I think damage isn't just like a locational thing.

Damage is pretty much Location, Force, and the effects like crushing bones or whatever. (Like a sword has just killing ability as a mace, but the mace will smash bones while the sword will cut limbs or make them bleed).

So, I'd say do a system like Phooka's idea where you block ceratin roll values, individual values rather than like a sum.

But add in some other factors. A total damage roll would be like..

-Area hit damage: Base damage based on area hit; Some Armors will reduce this by deflection. Accuracy would improve this damage by a set modifier maybe?
-Force Damage: Damage based on the strength of the Attacker. Some armours will reduce this by physically soaking up damage.
-Weapon Effect Damage: The wound damage effects and so forth.

So, the roll wouldn't be insanely complicated because you could roll at once and simply look/memorize the effects of things fairly quickly. But it'd be like...an exaaample...

Projectile Weapon (Lets say Bow. Or Gun if you like):
Area Hit Damage: Large range, anywhere from hitting a toe or so forth to actually smashing into the skull; lets say 1d20. Further away would reduce accruacy, thus less area hit damage.

Force Damage: For a gun, this would be a nonvariable constant. For a bow, there would be a limit based on the bows ability to shoot. Further away would lead to less force damage, due to velocity of the projectile slowing down. For a bow and Arrow, force damage wouldn't really play much of a role, maybe take whatever existing strength or attack type attribute you have and divide it by something. (I'll talk more about force further down)

Weapon Effect Damage: A bow can't really chop off a limb, or such, so where it hits is th biggest chance for effect. Maybe make this a coin, 1-2.


Lets take that opposed to a mace for example.
Area hit damage: Well, a mace is pretty much going to hit near the center see'ing how the range its being used from makes it virtually impossible to miss. But, where it hits won't have a tremendous effect. I suggest 2d4.

Force: REALLY buff doods can smash with maces like no other. The attack or strength attribute role will be huge. Maybe multiply it.

Effect Damage: Well, mostly the damage is based on how hard the smashing is done, but some effects of the blunt object hitting can do some serious side effect damage. 1d6.


FORCE: So, I dont know if you use an attack, or a strength, or a trait to show how physically strong characters are but some ideas are;
If you have Mods like D&D, specify rolls to the mods for force rolls. EX: no mod would be 1d4, +1=2d2, +2=1d6, +3= 1d4+1d2. +4=1d8 +5=1d6+1d2 +6=1d4 +2d2.  ETC

The increase would be slight per mod. Then, Non-Force based weapons, like Bows would be a like; Force Mod/2. Then you'd look at the corresponding Mod, (Say the mod was +6, now is +3) and roll that.
Medium wouldn't change the mod, Strong would double.
Notice how +3 = 2-6, while +6 = 3-8. The difference is actually not that big. But, it is significant enough to show a change in a force.

Now, say you use a trait. You could still do that kind of thing, just with trait scores of strength. I'm not totally sure what kind of system you work with, but yeah.


So, lets say Fred the Shed is mace user.
He has an attack property of +6. Uses a standard mace.
2d4 for Area, 1d4 + 2d2 for Force, 1d6 for Weapon Effect.
1d6 + 3d4 + 2d2.
6-22 damage, based on various factors. He's a pretty buff Mace user.
So lets say, he is attacking Paul the Wall (like the names?) who is wearing some small gloves (nullify a single rolled one on area roll.), and some chain mail (nullify two rolled ones on an area roll and nullify a single 18, 19, and a 20 on an area roll, and nullify two rolled ones and one rolled two one a force roll).

Fred rolls, lets say he rolls 1 one for area and a 2, Crappy shot. The gloves'll deflect a single one, so he'll deal 2 for that.
Now for his force. say Fred rolls a four, a two and a one. The four is enough force to pass through, but the two and one are stopped.
As for the Effect damage, the chain mail ain't gonna stop bone crushing. Fred is pleased with his 6.
Total of 12 damage, not too bad for Freddy.

Now lets say Scott the Shot shoots an arrow at Paulie.
He rolls his 20, and the chain mail screw Scott out of a really nice hit, which would have landed right on Scott's heart but just clinked off a chain or something.
Force roll, lets say scott has a +2 force mod, so, only +1. rolls a 1, damned. Rolls a one effect, damned again. Scott feels cheated.

CONS:
Ok, so some of it is pretty unrealistic in my example, cuz of my laziness in making chainmail make sense. You SHOULD tweak the values so they are fair. Also, the fact that its based off of rolled numbers rather than the sum is kind of abstract, not too realistic.

PROS: You can have gloves reduce one one on area hit, boots reduce a one on area hit, and thus have 2 ones nullified. That solves stacking issues. The rolls are simple and quick, you could infact roll them all at the same time if you color cordinated Area, Force, and Effect. It can be realistic if you make the numbers make sense. The strategic options for characters in weapon choice and character creation is simply awesome. And it seems like it would be fast pace and a lot of fun to play.


I hope you like the idea :D. Or maybe atleast take some the ideas.
Sometimes, I hate posting these things because I find the ideas cool enough to make an RPG based on them hehe. :D