Hello all,

I am looking for ideas regarding an armour mechanic. This is the system as it stands so far.

* The "to hit" roll is similar to d20, except with a greater focus on accuracy and not on strength. Currently it only works to overcome the defender's dodge/parry.

* Damage is defined by thresholds and wound boxes. A typical human might have 5/10/15/20 for light, medium, serious, and mortal wounds. Scoring a 12 for damage would cause a medium wound (which might become deadly later due to infection) but rolling a 20 could potentially cause lethal kills. Damage is abstracted to include both the power of the attack, and the accuracy, and skill in a weapon can boost damage.

* Rapiers tend to be defined by more randomized rolls. A rapier might be 1d20+4 whereas the same character would use a longsword at 2d10+4. The rapier is more likely to gain that one, lethal hit -- even if he is also more likely to score hits that are decidedly light.

(On that last point, if someone feels that it's untrue, examples of WHY it is untrue would be appreciated. I do not have a significant amount of experience with weapons, so modeling the difference between a rapier and a battleaxe is not my forte. That being said, one reason I LIKE said model is it allows me to apply xDR -- a mechanism which removes one die of damage. A stone gargoyle would laugh at a 1d20 rapier, but find a 2d10 longsword a threat, and a 3d6 warhammer would work particularly well. All of this is secondary to the main point, however.)

The difficulty I am having regards establishing a mechanism for armour -- a shell of armour -- not that is related to internal hardness. Such armour may not be evenly distributed, and it may be made up of different components -- like a breastplate with arms and legs of chain, and no helmet.

In addition, the system needs to handle situations where armour is not effective vs certain attacks, i.e. chain does not work particularly well vs arrows.

Defence vs a single type is NOT sufficent on it's own -- plate, as far as I know, protects MUCH better against rapiers than it does against longbow arrows, however in terms of damage done I don't believe there is that significant a difference. Again, if I've made mistakes in these assumptions I am open to correction.

I'd like to do this in as few steps as possible -- without too many messy tables, however it can be assumed that some look up is required. One thing I do NOT want to have to deal with is hit location -- I'd rather abstract a medium wound to a medium wound. Determining hit location becomes extremely tricky in terms of the direction of the attack, as well as called shots, and I would rather avoid it entirely.

Any thoughts?

Are your weapons grouped in to 'classes' (fencing weapons, long swords, pole arms, ...)? If so you can have xDR's on your armor groups. For Example, you can say that chain mail has an xDR vs. long swords, axes, but not against rapiers or arrows. Is this how it currently works?

kaikatsu wrote: Hello all,

I am looking for ideas regarding an armour mechanic. This is the system as it stands so far.

* The "to hit" roll is similar to d20, except with a greater focus on accuracy and not on strength. Currently it only works to overcome the defender's dodge/parry.

* Damage is defined by thresholds and wound boxes. A typical human might have 5/10/15/20 for light, medium, serious, and mortal wounds. Scoring a 12 for damage would cause a medium wound (which might become deadly later due to infection) but rolling a 20 could potentially cause lethal kills. Damage is abstracted to include both the power of the attack, and the accuracy, and skill in a weapon can boost damage.

I'd like to do this in as few steps as possible -- without too many messy tables, however it can be assumed that some look up is required. One thing I do NOT want to have to deal with is hit location -- I'd rather abstract a medium wound to a medium wound. Determining hit location becomes extremely tricky in terms of the direction of the attack, as well as called shots, and I would rather avoid it entirely.

Any thoughts?

I'll assume you have a good reason to be shooting for such a high level of detail.

Armor acts in three ways to protect its wearer.

First, it deflects. Blows that would otherwise strike solidly glance off. This is more true for armors that are composed of sheets of material (cuir bouilli, scale, breastplate, great helm, plate) than for those that are not (mail, ring, studded leather)

Second, it deforms. Blows expend energy in changing the shape of the armor. Flexible armors (mail, leather) deform easily, without absorbing much energy, but also return to their original shape easily. Rigid armors (cuir bouilli, plate) absorb more energy in deforming, but don't return to their original shape.

Third, it diffuses the force, spreading it over a larger area. This converts impaling and cutting damage to blunt trauma, which is much more survivable. Flexible armors do this reliably, but not to a large extent. Rigid armors are very good at this, until they break. After the weapon has broken through, they don't diffuse much of the force at all.

I'm quite aware the system is deadly. There are other metagame systems in place to negate hits, but this is the rough approximation of a Star Wars character who has no vitality. No matter how much endurance a tank has, there is a practical limit of damage after which he will not be able to soak any more.

Having armour soak fractions of damage does not address issues like multilayered armour. An adamantine breastplate should not provide the same TYPE of protection as a full suit of platemail. Versus a weak barrage of attacks the full plate offers superior protection due to larger coverage, but if the enemy is using an armour penetrating warhammer, the plate may easily be rendered ineffective, though the breastplate offers good opportunities to save.

Of course I may have to abstract that out, as I do not want to deal with locations. However dealing with mixed/matched suits of armour does get, for the most part, somewhat messy.

Sorry Dangerboy, missed your post. To answer, the weapons CAN be roughly grouped in classes. However I am a little worried about using xDR for merely armour. Chain mail does NOT protect the face (as a general rule) and xDR could reduce a weapon to doing zero damage, all the time, every time. This is not what I want.

Somewhat off topic have a slightly related question. Does anyone here know the comparitive damage between a longbow and a rapier? That is, do longbow shots offer significantly higher lethality on an unarmoured target? My primary reason is that I am assuming that rapiers and other pointed weapons are not particularly good at penetrating plate on a thrust, yet offer good lethality vs people. Arrows ARE good at penetrating plate (though not spectacular, they are better than rapiers) yet they fall into the same general damage type as a rapier. Is it right to up the damage values of the arrow as a response, or am I better in determining some kind of special armour piercing damage?

How much damage a weapon does depends on three things; targeting, energy, and striking surface.

The striking surface of an arrow is about the same as a rapier.

Targeting is a factor; someone who is being shot by a longbow from a long way off is less likely to be hit in a vital spot than someone who is striking with a rapier from point-blank range, though if the target is efficiently defending himself, this may not be the case.

As far as energy is concerned, however, there's a huge difference. An arrow can easily penetrate deeply into the body, even after piercing armor; this is because the longbow stores up energy that the bowman puts into it by drawing on it; most of this energy is transferred to the target. The fencer has less time and travel to put energy into the rapier. The rapier masses a little more than the arrow, but this doesn't enter into it. That being said, a rapier thrust against an unarmored target is more than powerful enough to be lethal; the extra energy that an arrow has would mostly be useful for penetrating armor.

I hope that you can see that if you want your combat system to be "realistic" there are many, many different variables you will need to consider, and that as a result your system is likely to become quite complex. Are you prepared to create a highly complicated set of rules for this?

Kaikatsu,

Vaxalon makes some excellent points. It is commonly thought in RPGs that anything with greater force automatically does incrementally more "damage." That's not necessarily true. For example, a .357 caliber gun has been proven to have more "stopping power" (plainly put, chance of stopping a guy who's charging at you) than a .44 caliber gun. The .44 "overpenetrates" - its greater power lets it go through the body more swiftly and without transfering as much kinetic energy into it, which results in less tearing damage, less of a push against the charging body, and more likelihood of the bullet coming back out (with wasted energy). Also, small caliber rounds deform, bounce off bones, and stick around to be a nasty pain to remove.

So, Vaxalon is right in that the main issue of penetration (with a piercing weapon) is whether the weapon can get through your armor (and ribs, maybe) to get deep enough to damage internal organs, major blood vessels, etc. Anything beyond that, with a piercing weapon, is usually wasted. Also, if your arrow happens to have barbs, those will pose another lethal risk when trying to get the arrow out, so there are additional factors coming up.

Blunt weapons have less ability to reach those vital points, as their force is spread out and does not directly penetrate (usually), but more kinetic energy is directly transferred to the target, resulting in trauma, knockdowns, and fractures. That doesn't mean these weapons are always less effective; there's quite a difference between a rapier stabbing at your face and a club smashing your skull (besides the fact that the club will have an easier time connecting).

Heavy edged weapons (swords, axes) are the best of both worlds. They can cut and cause bleeding and reach internal spots, and if there's chainmail in the way, the force can still be strong enough to cause fractures and sink the mail into your flesh. But as you point out, against a platemail opponent, you'll want a lot of force focused on a small point. Axes don't work so badly there, actually, but a warhammer is naturally superior in penetrating armor (I've seen a few live demonstrations of that).

So, taking all that into account, without messy tables or hit locations, is going to be a challenge.

Now that I think of it... someone should classify wounds completely differently for a change. Instead of just sorting them by severity, they should be classified by depth of penetration and then how much they damage there. That means that rapier and arrow reach the same "level" on an unarmored opponent, but not an armored one. Similarly, a blunt strike against an unarmored target will reach the bones, whereas padding may spread out the kinetic force over the surface.

Hmm. Maybe I'll work on that idea when I find some time.

First, if you're trying to add some authenticity to your system, I think you'll want to spend some time reading some actual texts on historical weaponry and searching the web for some of the actual studies that have been done (not the marketing blurbs on weapon maker sites either). Certain assumptions you're making aren't really all that accurate and it would be a shame to put a lot of effort into creating a detailed system that doesn't really give any better results than D&D armor class.

First you need to understand that armor and weapons were engaged in an arms race for millenia. There's never been a situation in history where the old 2nd edition D&D weapon list is accurate. That many different types of weapons and different types of armor simply did not co-exist side by side...ever. The enemy had a weapon. Armor was designed to protect from that weapon. The enemy comes up with a new weapon designed to take advantage of weakness in that armor. The armor is redesigned to account for the new weapon...and so on...in a process highly linked to metallurgy (both being limited by and being a driving force of) over the course of generations.

So there is no simple continuum where you can put every sort of armor ever designed on an armor list and every single weapon ever designed on a weapon list and then come up with a rules set that will give historical results...its an a-historical situation to begin with.

For instance, you repeated a couple of times that "arrows are good against plate". That statement by itself just isn't true. There are as many different kinds of bows designed throughout history as there were different kinds of swords. Most of them had trouble penetrating a hide and wood shield let alone metal plate. There are also many different kinds of "plate mail". You have to get pretty late in the middle ages before you see plate mail of the sort featured in "Excalibur". The age of the plated knight was extremely short and largely had more to do with the tournament circuit than the battle field. There are examples of the English Longbow penetrating armor, but there are also plenty more examples of platemail stopping bullets. Vax is quite right when he points out that one of the biggest things armor did was deflect a blow. Even if an arrow had the capability to penetrate a plate of steel (which modern tests suggest isn't very likely once decent quality steel was invented) armor was designed to be sloped, angular, and have glancing surfaces. The most likely result of being hit with an arrow (or a lance for that matter) was that it would simply be deflected. Shoot a thousand arrows in the air 3 times a minute for 10 minutes and maybe a few of them will hit just right and "penetrate the plate" but give one guy a bow and have him take aim, and the platemail guy will laugh at him while running him over.

The point here is that you have to consider the fashion in which weapons were meant to be used. A 16 foot pike is a very different animal if you're talking about 1 man defending himself vs 1000 men in close order formation.


At any rate all of the above is simply to lead into my real point which is this:

What purpose do you see these rules serving in your game? What is their value added? How will this issue play out in your game and why?

The reason I ask is simply this. If your answer to the above is because you value realism, historical accuracy, and a sense of "getting it right" then I think you're not going to have much luck accomplishing that quickly and easily and without a scholars understanding of the actual issues (some of which I highlighted above).

On the other hand, if the goal is to provide an interesting system in which making the "right" choice of weapon to wield and the "right" choice of armor to wear is the mark of a skillful player (because its fun to evaluate all of the pros and cons and tradeoffs)...then you have an entirely different situation. You have one where it is vastly more important for the mechanics of the system to "work" from an entertainment, strategic options, and math perspective than it is for them to be "realistic".

Many many many crappy weapons and armor systems have evolved because the designers confounded those two goals. If your goal is the second (and I suspect it probably is) then put aside any notions you have of how a rapier stacks up to an arrow vs plate. Why? Because chances are you're wrong anyway, and more importantly it doesn't matter. What matters is that the system be fun, playable, internally consistant and offer players the ability to make interesting choices. In the end it doesn't matter whether the weapon is a rapier or a barglemarsh as long as the system works and players can flex their skill at mastering the rules.

In other words. Don't hinder the mechanical effectiveness of your system by worrying about "real weapons" unless historical authenticity is your primary goal...in which case you have a long way to go.

Doing a "kinda sorta historical" thing based on your current thoughts isn't better than nothing. Its worse. You'll piss off all of the actual scholars who know more than you. You'll piss off all of the non scholars who also have "kinda sorta historical" ideas that happen to be different from yours, and you'll piss off the people who just wanted a cool system because you'll have broken your system in order to match your "kinda sorta historical" perceptions. The only people who will like what you come up with are those who have the exact same "kinda sorta" perceptions as you. They'll love it. But for everyone else it will be a waste of time.

So either go full bore 100% authentic (lots of research and ugliness) or go full bore 100% cool game mechanic. But don't try to mix cool game mechanic with "kinda sorta" authentic. That's been done a million times already and they all suck.

Thanks Ralph. Very eloquently stated.

I was trying to get him to realize that on his own, but you put it well and I think you really nailed it.

One little point I might add to Ralph's excellent statement is that of course you actually do want a little "kinda sorta" authenticity, but a small enough amount that everyone realizes it's just color (for example, calling weapon A a sword and weapon B is a "very kinda sorta" level of realism, calling the sword a falchion is a step better, and may be ok in some cases [for example in Cold Iron weapons are sized for different strengths, and rather than call weapon A a STR 16 2-Handed Sword I call it a falchion, but the arrangement of weapon names in the weapon list should quickly convince someone that all they are is color and not an actual attempt to model a real world weapon that might have been called a falchion]).

Of course also realize that no mater what level of "realism" you choose, someone will engage you in debate about how wrong you are...

So what you need to do when designing the system is decide what results you want, and then develop a system that produces those results.

In Cold Iron there exist some mechanics (so of which are my additions) that address some of the things you've been talking about. I'd be happy to share them with you if you think they would be of interest, but consider Ralph's post first and decide for yourself what your goal is.

Frank

kaikatsu wrote: Sorry Dangerboy, missed your post. To answer, the weapons CAN be roughly grouped in classes. However I am a little worried about using xDR for merely armour. Chain mail does NOT protect the face (as a general rule) and xDR could reduce a weapon to doing zero damage, all the time, every time. This is not what I want.

In my RPG I differentiate between Pain and Damage. A pinch to your skin can hurt alot more than a stab to the chest immediately, but its obvious over time what will be a more deciding factor. You may want to include that in your format.

Maybe you should have a chart for Blunt, Piercing, Slicing, Stabbing, etc classed weapons instead of just the names. That way you can have an armor thats like Piercing specialzed, etc etc. Thats a bit tiresome when you have to draw out the tables though.

Maybe you should actually have multiple roles to decide different factors. My RPG, Speed and Sprit, is pretty tactic intensive, so, per attack there is anywhere from 2 sets of rolls, to 7 sets of rolls (Each set pretty much has more than one die). With alot of non random factors involved to alter those effects more. (An ugly by product is a nasty accuracy calculation that ends up being a 42x94 square table. Luckily, I made the sysem due able purely in my head (or my players if they've mastered the game) and in game play we can pretty much spew the results without checking the huge ass table).


All the ideas are really interesting, and It'd be awesome after you've come up with a complete way if you posted us your rules (In this area of the game atleast) because, you know, a good system can help make other systems better.

I'll post more after reading more/being more inspired.

A lot of good comments here, and I'll add one that hopefully qualifies. Your main damage roll represents the deadliness of the weapon, generally to an unarmored person, the 1d20+4 being more lethal in general than a 2d10+4, given your current system.

How about simply saying the "NdX" part of damage is automatically stopped by armor, -unless the "+Y" part- exceeds the armor.

For instance, a 1d10+6 weapon would penetrate a 5 point armor, and do 1d10+1 damage, while a 1d20+4 weapon would completely bounce off that same armor. This gives you the "ouchy" part of the damage, without directly linking it to the penetrating ability of the weapon or its size.

Greg Porter
BTRC guy

I got a LOT of responses... and a lot of them were really good. Thanks to everyone that took the time to share.

First of all, to answer a few ideas, in no particular order.

The arrow vs plate I was talking about dealt with a fairly heavy draw weight on a longbow. I've seen (at least on PBS) longbow arrows punch right through milled steel of good quality, as well as breastplates, albiet from fairly close ranges. I'm also aware that plate does not slow a man down as much as one might think -- the major problem being cost. (Spiraling economics is always a problem in RPGs, but that's another issue.)

On an aside note, I did the mathematics for the kenetic energy and momentum of an arrow in flight, from a 100 kg draw longbow over a .8 meter draw, assuming 50% efficent transfer of stored potential energy to the arrow. (If anyone can correct me on any of this math, feel free.) The kenetic energy AND momentum of the blow surpassed that of a rapier thrust, so I'm now certain that arrows should, on average, penetrate better given identical hit locations.

To be honest, I'm aiming for something CLOSER to the "cool mechanic" than total historical accuracy. I know there are a LOT of weapons out there, and that you'd never see them all at once, and that a historical game would be able to narrow down the armour system a LOT.

Truth be told, the olde world mechanics was a bit of a red herring. I'm doing this for a sci fi RPG. However since I'm a fan of reasonable universality in a game system, AND because there's more hard data on the dynamics of 4-in-1 chain armour than, say, carbon nanotubes -- I'm toying with the base mechanics of old armour first.

And preferably do it with minimum kludge.

By the way, BTRC, that idea is an excellent one for full body armour and I was thinking about it a lot! It works well in many cases, however it doesn't handle partial armour well. A breastplate should not negate ALL of the damage dealt to it, since I am not dealing with locational damage. I'd rather link the ability to defeat armour to a random variable, esp given when armour is not homogenius.

Anyway, even if I can't get total realism, there needs to be some degree of stopping a "wait, that makes no sense". In DnD my primary annoyance was that an arrow did not have better effectiveness against chain. The upgrade from chain to scale should have been, in my opinion, a bit more dramatic vs penetrating weapons.

I was thinking about this idea in my algorithms class, and the notion of the difference between the depth of the penetration and the severity of the wounding got the wheels turning. Here is what I am thinking of running with so far.

* The to-hit roll is just that. To hit. A touch attack pretty much. The mechanics here are mostly settled, so I'll leave them be.

* There are two rolls. One is for "damage" -- the other is for number of wounds. In effect, one deals with severity of penetration, one deals with area of effect.

* The damage needs to, as before, surpass certain thresholds. For the sake of argument, I'll work with 5/10/15/20 as light, medium, serious, and critical. (As opposed to the name lethal, which implies an instant kill.) Stacking rules of wounds work as before. Stuns may fill the damage boxes in a manner similar to wounds.

* The "damage" roll defines the "quality" of the damage, not just the force. That is to say WHERE the attack hits is just as important as how hard. Skill does bonus damage to some extent. A breastplate lowers damage by virtue of the fact that attacks that do NOT hit the breastplate will often be hitting limbs, which are (for the most part) not quite as severe as a hole in the lung.

* Armour reduces the damage roll, albiet not the number of wounds. In this respect, the arrow might not be superior to the axe -- in that it has great penetration power, allowing it to score a serious wound more likely, however it will get one wound or so. On the other hand a hunting arrow might have less damage, but score more wounds. That is, one serious vs two mediums.

* Long term lethality is made more effective by wounds of a more serious caliber. "saving throw vs infection" so to speak vs serious wounds is much higher than it is for medium, even if multiple rolls need tobe made for the mediums. On the other hand "stopping power" -- that is putting the other person out of the fight, is based on number of wounds only, not their severity.

* The end result of the above is that two rapier fighters can impale one another a few times, with potentially moral blows, and still keep on fighting. While it is POSSIBLE for the new holes in their body to cause them to drop/pass out, it is not as likely as a heavy mace slammed across the chest. Even though the mace may not create wounds as deep (it can, due to broken ribs, but it might not) it will definitely have a MUCH higher shock value -- six medium wounds can add up and put someone out of commission even more effectively than one critical one.

* The addition of armour changes the dynamics of damage dramatically. Armour acts as reduction vs the damage, not the number of wounds, which means that clubs have a much harder time getting through plate than arrows do. Arrows from 100 kilogram draw longbows (a very high number I realize) do a more damage than rapiers on unarmoured targets, but are MUCH more effective on armoured ones!

* Armour needs to be typed. Defence vs blunt definitely needs a different type than defence vs piercing. Only way to handle chain as best I can tell. And terrible defence vs ballistic, should such a situation come up, SHOULD convince people not to take their plate mail vs modern firearms.

* Lasty, some common sense limiters need to be applied for the defence modifier. A steel breastplate is good, but without helmet and/or limb armour, an adamantine breastplate will only be marginally better. There reaches a point where protecting other areas of the body is far superior than hardening the armour on one point. Likewise, adamantine gauntlets but no torso armour shouldn't provide a significant bonus. (To throw out some theoretical numbers, the difference between a steel breastplate and adamantine breastplate should be +4 vs +5, but FULL steel and FULL adamantine plate should be +8 vs +16.)

* The typing of damage reduction should help limit cross-period sillyness. In the event of some insane player, the steel plate defence vs ballistic ammo should be low enough to convince people it's a very bad idea, never minding the high power overall of a shotgun slug.

* "stone gargoyle" style damage reduction is accomplished by reducing the number of wounds (as well as damage quality). This means that hammer, dealing 4-5 medium wounds a hit, is suddenly very valuable, whereas that rapier, dealing 1-2 wounds a hit, is suddenly not so hot. Incidently, humans get to soak the first wound of stun damage. (Needless to say, unarmed strikes usually deal more than that.)

* The major problem comes from situations where the damage reduction is so high as to make scoring even a light wound difficult. For this I think I will let players arbitrarily decide the attack is a stunning blow. In this case the quailty of the wound is typed as if there were no armour (vs the normal 5/10/15/20) but it is considered stun damage. Again, in this case a mace is MUCH better for jarring someone inside their armour than a rapier is.

This rule set will require a NUMBER of tweaks to support it. For one -- precalculated armour systems "This is a normal suit of full plate" -- will be a must for the less mathematically inclined that use the system. However players that want to try mixing that elven chain with that dwarven steel and thow on a cold iron helmet to boot should be able to go nuts and arrive at a figure that's not TOO rediculous.

The system IS fast. One roll to hit, two damage rolls that happen similtaniously, and a declaration of the kind of blow. I expect a certian degree of metagaming with this rule, a player who realizes the blow would bounce due to DR will naturally declare it a stun hit instead. That is fine. Stun hits are not particularly effective, but if you want to wail on someone in full plate until they go down, at least you have the feel of being able to do SOMETHING.

As an aside, for those noticing the lethality of the system, that is in part why I am so willing to allow for a bit more detail. As a general rule two or three hits will end the fight. After seeing the to-hit and damage, though, players can put metagame factors can come into play -- hero points/action points/whatever you like to allow a player to say "Well that WOULD have hit me.... but it didn't." This lowers actual lethality by retroactively causing a lot of misses, which is closer to what heroic games SHOULD be like. Just for those who were wondering if I intended players to get killed that fast...

As best I can tell, it handles the difference between the stopping power of hollow point, and the effectiveness of AP rounds rather nicely as well. (Or the modern equivilant.)

If anyone can see some breaks in my logic, or blatent HOLES in the reasoning, by all means, post it up. I realize this isn't perfectly realistic -- I don't expect perfect realism. For one, even from the papers I've read of actual research, there is very little consensus on how effective certain armour was. I also don't want to get too detailed. "Within a certain approximation of reality" is fine, provided nothing happens that makes a player pause and go "wait... what the hell?"

If you can see any of those "what the hell" moments in what I've posted, please, pop up a reply. I'd be very interested in hearing what you have to say. Thank you for the comments so far, it's given a good deal to work with.

I think you should test play with some devilish players. Thats how I cure my system.

My players will find holes and exploit them. Then you know what to fix and how to fix it.

You don't need too much technical detail in order to create an authentic feel to your combat. Provided you are willing to keep your system bloody and fast. The one point where so many (especially fantasy) games fail is that they do not capture the shit-your-pants intensity of real combat. Remember that unskilled people regularily kill one another in unarmed fistfights.... Any combat system that allows a charachter to take 2-4 penetrating arrows and keep on fighting is fundamentally goofy no matter how well researched it's historical data is. So, your armor mechanic can be pseudo-realistic if you keep the following in mind:

1) Most of the time, the weapons and armor available in a certain setting should be close to evenly matched and the result should be that only a few narrow choices of weapon or armor can be effective against what oponents will likely be wearing/weilding.

2) Where either a weapon or an armor type is significantly advanced, it should offer an almost insurmountable advantage to it's user, regardless of skill (except for weapons such as the longbow or defenses such as full-plate-and-barded-warhorse where the weapon or defense demands a lifetime of training to employ competently).

3) When (in almost all cases) weapon and armor are closely matched, armor will negate the vast majority (like 75%) of all hits that land, but when a hit does penetrate, it should almost always be immediately incapacitating. Most fights are one-hit fights.

4) Remember: when being an "ace" meant defeating five enemies in one-on-one combat, only one in thirty-two could become an "ace". Face-to-face single combat should be deadly enough that players will try to avoid it: Surprise, superior numbers, subterfuge, high ground, mobility, and fortification have always been far more important to warriors than the differance between "steel" and "adamantine" plate armor.

If you keep these things in mind, you shouldn't have to fret about historical details of armor, since your players will soon learn that nifty equipment isn't where it's at. I think you could then have the "authentic feeling" without migraine levels of research and historical detail.

By the way, BTRC, that idea is an excellent one for full body armour and I was thinking about it a lot! It works well in many cases, however it doesn't handle partial armour well. A breastplate should not negate ALL of the damage dealt to it, since I am not dealing with locational damage. I'd rather link the ability to defeat armour to a random variable, esp given when armour is not homogenius.

BTRC, thanks for the links. That's definitely going to be good reading material. The mechanics you posted from EABA ended up getting considered, but I ran into some situations where I didn't like them as much. In order to have an effective spread of armour, weapons need to do multiple dice of damage -- armour should be at LEAST from +1 to +3, and that means I need weapons dealing 4d or 5d damage. Multiple dice tend to produce less randomized results, and I'm not so keen on that...

HereticalFaction, you raise some good points...

It's actually quite possible to get killed in hand to hand combat, though not AS likely. Getting shot with an arrow has, depending on toughness, somewhere in the 30-50% lethality ratio -- and that's from random fire, not a targeted shot.

Gunfights are even more of an issue. In the end, "two shots, centre of mass" offers good stopping power, and pretty good lethality.

That being said, there are two issues I need to address. The first is that even with a high lethality index, some things need to make sense. Running into a knight with full plate SHOULD be a "well CRAP" moment, because of the effectiveness of the armour. Just like infantry running into an M1A4 tank should immediately cause a major tactical change and a switch to LAW rockets.

Second of all, the high lethality index sometimes NEEDS to be metagamed out. The winner gets to tell the story, so to speak, but an RPG is a story made up as you go along. For -certain- games the hero needs to be able to walk into a fight and come on a victor just because he IS the hero. I mean, if you're reading a book, and the climax of this book is when the hero enters a tournament, you don't expect him to die the first fight. RPG systems need to have some forgiveness to them depending on how much players should be able to get away with.

Hit Points are generally the wrong way to go about this, if I might say so, because with Hit Points, there is a definite mixing of the game and metagame. If I take 6 damage, how much of that is bleeding, and how much of that is luck negating the hit? There's no real seperation of the two, the only thing that is clear is when I finally go down.

On the other hand with a Hero point, players can negate one hit -- regardless of damage. This means there's a strong incentive to "take a flesh wound" if damage is rolled low enough, but that one hit kill always narrowly misses. And it's a strong reminder to the players that they CAN get killed rather easily, and it's ONLY the metagame that keeps them alive.

If someone wanted to simulate the realistic fear of combat, simply remove the hero points. They are assigned on a completely seperate scale from gameworld mechanics -- your typical untrained youth might have far, far more of them than your hardened vetern. If you want to play without them, best of luck, but it will make dungon crawling a nightmare. If that's what you're going for, awsome. If not, the option is there.

FzGhouL, I usually do have a "break the system" day, where all the people at my club are given the rules, and told to make the most broken character EVER. EV4R even. It doesn't matter HOW, just that the character is clearly broken. Then I run them through the mill.

I expect the major breaking point of this system will be that some armours will just be plain better than others. Plate mail distributes the weight over the body even better than chain, and, if you have a certain level of rediculous strength (possible) and some training (assumed to be, as we're playing competent characters) you can do a cartwheel in plate. As counterintuitive as that might be. End result, guess what EVERY player taking the tank route is going to want to own?

Needless to say it will be my job to ensure that dungon economics (oh look, ANOTHER 400 gold pieces) don't happen. But THAT is a post for another thread.

HereticalFaction wrote: The one point where so many (especially fantasy) games fail is that they do not capture the shit-your-pants intensity of real combat.

I've more or less figured out what I plan to do unless someone points out a failure, so more reading material is a welcome derailment.

BTRC, thanks for the links. That's definitely going to be good reading material. The mechanics you posted from EABA ended up getting considered, but I ran into some situations where I didn't like them as much. In order to have an effective spread of armour, weapons need to do multiple dice of damage -- armour should be at LEAST from +1 to +3, and that means I need weapons dealing 4d or 5d damage. Multiple dice tend to produce less randomized results, and I'm not so keen on that...

That sounds an awful lot like the GURPS system.

And yeah, it's really klunkly.

That sounds an awful lot like the GURPS system.

And yeah, it's really klunkly.

Well, I did some tests for klunkyness. Here is what I've found.

#1 -- combat moves surprisingly quickly. Each attack does not move as fast as d20, but combat DOES move faster as a whole. This is mostly because of the lethality of the combat -- one or two hits and it is game over for the combatants.

#2 -- PRE combat calculation still takes a while, especially if using custom armour. This is considered acceptable. Kludge in the "setup" is not an issue at all.

#3 -- combat needs to almost -stop- when running into an unforseen damage type. This is considered acceptable, as it is a rare event.

#4 -- there is a bit more calculation on the end of the attacker, but defenders actually have very FEW calculations. Because I use damage thresholds and wound numbers, the concept of "DR subtracting damage" doesn't so much show up as "thresholds going up." In fact, the lookup time was easy to memorize.

#5 -- A character sheet is essential. It's nearly impossible to do without the character sheet layed out in front to track the wounds. There are too many dimentions to track without a bit of paper. However a small (2x3 inch layout with good size text) bit of information on a character sheet makes it work rather quickly.

The kludge is not my primary concern. It COULD be faster, I have no doubt about this. A sweeping statement like "any time you seperate penetration from damage done, then you just doubled the number of things to keep track of" is true -- but is acceptable if the steps can be done in parallel. I'm not just using that range of elements for the purposes of armour, I'm ALSO using it to factor in the stopping power of weapons, as well as the long term lethality of a deep cut that causes internal bleeding, even if it -doesn't- instantly kill.

One thing I want to make clear is that there are NOT location modifiers for damage. When establishing the quality of the armour, the location of the armour matters, but when actually -dealing out damage-, where the hit lands is NOT considered. I have used sectional damage before and, quite frankly, I don't care for it. There are a lot of reasons for it, and if you want I'll start a thread called "Why I dislike sectional damage" -- but that's a whole other story.

As another note, the importance of bell curves on a weapon by weapon basis will likely become less important at rate I am going -- most weapons will be reduced to one, or at most two dice. That doesn't mean I'm not going to think about them, however. For "high scale damage" of tanks and whatnot -- 1d8x10 is a much different beast than, say, 10d8, and the former is easier to roll. Relatively constant damage tends to be extremely boring, or so I found in early trials.

My primary concern is to avoid the "wait WTF?" moments that tend to happen in RPGs. You can spend all your time arguing about the effectiveness of a Germanic knight's plate vs a warhammer, as compared to how it would stand up against a musket, but if there is POTENTIAL for these values to be different, than this should be taken into account.

Few people would doubt that a shotgun loaded with 00 shot has good stopping power, but when a shotgun's high damage makes it a better riot-armour penetrator at range, well at that point a "wait WTF?" moment has happened. A system needs to be JUST complicated enough that WTF moments are factored out. Arguments about the ACTUAL effectiveness can be obtained by changing the numbers, IF you have enough degrees of freedom.

For example, if someone wanted to take issue with the notion that a shotgun DID, in fact, work well at penetrating riot armour -- this could easily be settled by altering the numbers, in a manner that would allow for shotguns with good armour penetration. Someone that would argue that the kenetic energy of a shotgun blast, even without penetration, would cause enough pain and shock to down someone would find the optional stun damage rule there to sate them, and could apply it vs something else. (I think it's a fairly reasonable assumption myself...)

And yet none of these rule tweeks would screw up the difference between an explosive round (not HEAT) vs a SABOT. The long rod penetrators will still have amazing penetration -- in a single roll no less -- and the explosive round will be far better at causing massive damage to soft targets.

Greg, your example of chain mail over hay is decidedly true. I might not have made that clear, but that is INDEED what I am going for. Understand, homogenius armour is NOT a major issue -- the protection of chain vs arrow is generally fixed.

But what happens when you have plate over HALF the body, and chain on the other half? And the plate is far superior at stopping arrows? And, as I mentioned earlier, I do NOT want to resolve the hit location of EACH and EVERY shot.

Obviously, approximations are the best I can get in a situation like this. However the approximations should approximate with reason. Upgrading a breastplate from leather to steel should provide some advantages, but as long as your head is exposed, you can have all the dragon hide of invulnerability in the world, arrows will not consistantly bounce all the time because your head is STILL EXPOSED.

It is this kind of logical disconnect I need to address. And I did address, with a mechanism for calculating the total damage reduction of a set of armour, with "damage" seen as a function of the accuracy of the blow as well as it's penetration power. (I can go into the details if you'd like.)

I'm getting a sense from some of the replies that I haven't explained things well enough, so I'm going to have to make sure to post the official writeups when I get done.

That's enough text for now.

Whew, a lot of reply/comments.

I gather that you want armor to be a general number that can be created by addition of sectional pieces. No hit locations, but "cuirass + helm" gives a better armor value than "cuirass alone". I got no problems with that.

I brought up location specific effects because you had early on differentiated incapacitation on a single hit from a longsword and a rapier, the rapier being judged more likely to perforate something vital, as I recall. I was bringing up the counter example that if you hit an extremity, the rapier is likely going to be -less- incapacitating.

So, if you -don't- have location specific effects, you end up with the factors canceling each other, and you can just go back to a single number for the weapon, or at the very least drop a level of complexity somewhere.

The kludge is not my primary concern. It COULD be faster, I have no doubt about this. A sweeping statement like "any time you seperate penetration from damage done, then you just doubled the number of things to keep track of" is true -- but is acceptable if the steps can be done in parallel.

You're right in that armour is a general number created by the addition of section pieces. Let's call that the armour rating, which is a combination of material strength and coverage. However, three things need to be true.

* Maximum coverage is obviously a limiter. This one is a no brainer. After you've covered your entire body in soft leather, the only possible upgrade route is to go to better materials.

* Likewise, disparate material strength is not as effective. Let us assume a completely indestructable material, which ALSO absorbs shock damage and so on, we shall call it protectium. A full plate suit of protectium would be well near invulnerable. The armour bonuses would be insane. Any GM who gave a PC one of these needs to have their head examined -- either that or a plot device that makes it fall apart in the middle of the third act.

* On the other hand a single breastplate of indestructium should not provide nearly the same armour bonuses. Not even close. If you say it covers 50% of the body, it should not provide a half bonus. Because the limbs are still valid targets. One can assume that you are aiming to do maximum damage with each hit -- the fact that you're aiming elsewhere on the body other than a target like the heart has some form of "damage reduction" -- but nothing near as good as the combination of head and body armour could be, and at least an order of magnitude below full body armour. That was another challenge for the mechanism, though I didn't vocalize it as well during my first post.

You're absolutely right about the rapier being less effective than the longsword when smacking less vital areas. In this respect, however, I do not think the two elements "cancel out." I think that rapier wounds are, on the whole, less likely to drop someone -- regardless of if they hit a lethal zone or not. Even a piercing blow through the heart can give a person fifteen seconds of full thought and movement before death, though I'll freely admit few would be able to maintain this kind of power before dropping.

On the other hand, even a blow to the leg can have long term lethality problems, if it hits the right artery, or causes an infection -- and this is where deep puncture wounds excel, as they are so hard to clean. So in this area, I think the difference between the penetration and magnitude of the wound are different.

The end result being that rapier duels are actually more deadly to either combatant, because you can keep fighting even after you've hurt yourself enough that you REALLY SHOULD STOP. On the other hand a good, clubbing blow from a longsword ends the match. There ARE extremities on either side of the table, there's no reason you can't just get barely nicked by either blade, but this is the kind of endgame the system should gravitate towards.

Any other potential theoretical absurdities you think might exist?

The end result being that rapier duels are actually more deadly to either combatant, because you can keep fighting even after you've hurt yourself enough that you REALLY SHOULD STOP. On the other hand a good, clubbing blow from a longsword ends the match. There ARE extremities on either side of the table, there's no reason you can't just get barely nicked by either blade, but this is the kind of endgame the system should gravitate towards.

Any other potential theoretical absurdities you think might exist?

I think I might have mis-stated, or at the very least been misunderstood.

I'm not talking about a single value for damage/penetration. No -- that will most assuredly stay as two seperate calculations. Initial playtesting has proven to me that it doesn't have a serious slowdown on gameplay, since they can be done in almost parallel.

However yes -- a LOT of the complexity is deferred. Things like the DR tables of armour, or the "I got wounded in battle, even though we won -- am I going to die from this?" calculations are fine too. Sometimes you don't even realize how wounded you are... until you take the time to sit down and work it out...

It's post combat calculations. They can be reasonably complex. Anything outside the moments between initial attack and final victory/retreat can be reasonably complex. It's those tense, two or three minutes of fighting (Game time) which needs to be resolved in under a half hour (real time) that demands a simple system.

The suggestion that you made is actually implimented. You heal wounds "one at a time" so to speak. Once a wound has been determined to be non life threatening, a puncture wound heals up faster than a heavy blow across the chest, exactly as you intended. Good eye for catching that though, as I had not explained it.


Regarding armour -- I might have misunderstood you, but let me present a possible WTF effect with what you just said. I can have a torso plate with AV10, and a +5 modifier for material. I add a leather helmet, AV 3, with material +1. My armour mod just DROPPED to 14. *ahem* WTF?

Reading below, I'm having a harder time following you on some of the other issues -- the "armour vaue added for any sectional piece of armour should work out as +1 for the minimum armour material." On that note, you lost me, which is probably why I got confused.

Also, any idea how this mechanic would handle vital armour (like a chest plate) vs non vital (like gauntlets?)

Regarding armour -- I might have misunderstood you, but let me present a possible WTF effect with what you just said. I can have a torso plate with AV10, and a +5 modifier for material. I add a leather helmet, AV 3, with material +1. My armour mod just DROPPED to 14. *ahem* WTF?

Reading below, I'm having a harder time following you on some of the other issues -- the "armour vaue added for any sectional piece of armour should work out as +1 for the minimum armour material." On that note, you lost me, which is probably why I got confused.

See above.

Also, any idea how this mechanic would handle vital armour (like a chest plate) vs non vital (like gauntlets?)

I think I would define "armor" as vital. That is, the torso protection is the default. If I have no torso armor, and a helm that gives me +2, then I have an AV2 (or whatever).

Since you don't have hit locations or location specific effects, in combat there is no difference between a guy with a breastplate and nothing else, and a guy with his arms, legs and head armored, with his chest unprotected. You simply have a certain fraction of his body protected, and the numbers give the total armor value.

If it were my design, I would slant those numbers so that for a given material and percentage of area covered, the torso had a higher armor value than anywhere else, since it is a center of mass aim point and more hits will likely strike there as a matter of statistics.

But at this point, to see if it works, you have to start plugging in numbers and tweaking them.

Greg

<quote>Since you don't have hit locations or location specific effects, in combat there is no difference between a guy with a breastplate and nothing else, and a guy with his arms, legs and head armored, with his chest unprotected. You simply have a certain fraction of his body protected, and the numbers give the total armor value.</quote>

In this case I am forced to disagree. Armour which protects vital areas should provide better defence. Even though I do not have hit LOCATIONS, the ability to hit a vital spot does increase damage. Heavy armour on the chest forces a blow to either go through, or to redirect to non vital areas. Heavy armour on the arms might allow for the occasional plink vs what could have been a light wound, but since most -deadly- blows are targeting the center of mass, it's going to be largely ineffective.

The major weakness I can see in the approach is the rule that there is a bonus for the weakest material armour. Since anything other than full body armour has some exposed zones, in theory there should be some +0 bonus somewhere. At least that's how I'm seeing it.

So far, I think I'd rather have the bonuses come from the material values itself, but be modified by location, coverage, and limited by what other areas are protected. It means more steps, overall, but I ran some numbers on it and it turned out ok...

I'll definitely think about your idea though. I may yet see something in it I can't see now.

One thing is for certain, I'm going to provide a nice big table of pre-existing armour layouts. 99% of armour usage will follow those lines ANYWAY.

Just chipping in....... (bound to upset some - so ....)

OK, combat is really unruly, chaotic and likely to be highly confusing.... unless you are duelling with very calm and skilled opponents! if it' sjust two guys swiping at each other with you know what weapons come to hand... then it's different!

Armour makes a large difference for many reasons- yet was generally there to protect against wild attacks. If there is an opponening, and the right attack.... no armour will save you!

Location is important - whether armoured or not - I'm not likely to die due to being stabbed/smashed/shot/lashed in the foot - UNLESS it hits a vital nerve core or severs important blood vessels - in which I'm stuffed!

The type of armou Vs. type of weapon is a considerable factor - ignoring cultural differences - most arms and armour where generated to out do each other! Just look at modern firearms and armour - kevlar stop high velocity projectiles - sucks against a knife! make sense?


So, depending upon the level of realism / speed / accuracy / enjoyment.... you need to consider the following things and decide whether they are included, and at what priority!

* Attack/defence ratings
* Damage levels
* Negating/Absorbing/Permitting damage
* Strengths & weakness Vs. Attack types (Solid, plated, linked vs. pointy, blunt etc.)
* Accuracy of attacks (glancing, solid, perfect attacks)
* Locations of hits
* Level of detail (Location of armour, compisite form, location of parts, affects against different types of attack, movement, flexibility etc.)


For fun, freedom and saying bugger it to most.... you could have a sinmple attack roll that dictates whether you hit or not, if so, the difference between what was needed and what was rolled dictactes the location. Compare against armour, depending on the score tto the damage absorbed, ( if used), and depending on the locations listed to the values of damage to set location. The location and the implement used dictactates the severity of the damage....

EG>

ATTACK - Rolls a 14
DEFENDER - Has a score of 10
= + 4
This means the resulting attack has struck a leg (LEFT).
The armour is studded leather, thus offers a small amount of protect, so it soaks 1 damage.
The Attack was made with a Hammer, and results in 4 damage, less the 1 = 3. 3 damage on the upper leg results in a fracture (where as on the lower it would have caused a break!


MAKE SENSE?

Have fun!

(Oh, and those that disagree - that is my OPINION! Nothing more or less!)

In this case I am forced to disagree. Armour which protects vital areas should provide better defence. Even though I do not have hit LOCATIONS, the ability to hit a vital spot does increase damage. Heavy armour on the chest forces a blow to either go through, or to redirect to non vital areas. Heavy armour on the arms might allow for the occasional plink vs what could have been a light wound, but since most -deadly- blows are targeting the center of mass, it's going to be largely ineffective.

If it were my design, I would slant those numbers so that for a given material and percentage of area covered, the torso had a higher armor value than anywhere else, since it is a center of mass aim point and more hits will likely strike there as a matter of statistics.

Another option is to reverse the paradigm. Most combat system assign a random range for the weapon and a fixed protection for the armor. That leads to all kinds of extra rules to deal with hit location and partial armor since what fixed protection you get depends on where you hit.

However, why not the reverse. Assign the weapon a fixed damage and randomize the armor. You still have the random range of damage that was desired, and now you have the ability to do away with hit locations entirely. If the armor "save" rolled well then the blow was obviously to a well armored location. If it rolled poorly than the blow was to a less armored location. You can then reflect coverage by rolling more dice and keeping the best roll.

For instance, determine how much damage will kill an average person. Say 10 points is a mortal wound. Fine. Define a successful hit roll, not as "did my weapon connect with the target, yes or no" but rather "did I land a killing blow, yes or no". That way, each and every successful hit will kill the opponent (10 points of damage).

Then assign each weapon a lethality rating in the form of "lose X damage for every point missed by on the to-hit roll". For a weapon you want to be particularly deadly, perhaps you lose 1 point of damage for every 2 points you miss by. Say you needed an 18 to score a killing blow but only rolled a 14. You missed by 4 points so your blow loses 2 damage. Its a "failure" because you didn't kill in one blow. That lesser blow, however, still does 8 damage.

Some weapons will be less lethal. Its certainly possible to kill a person with a single stab with a knife. But you have to hit just the right spot with just the right timing...much more difficult. So the lethality of the knife might be to lose 2 damage for every point missed by. Using the above numbers, rolling an 18 means you actually did it. You killed the guy in one stab with your knife. However, if you only roll a 14 you missed by 4 points so your blow loses 8 damage and your down to a fairly weak 2 point hit.

Now you apply the effects of armor. Start with a select number of Hit locations. 12 is often a good number (head, right torso, left torso, abdomen, right and left arm, right and left hand/lower arm, right and left leg, right and left foot/lower leg). For me, I'd probably cut that down to 6 (head, torso, 2 arms, 2 legs) but whatever. You have however many distinct locations you like.

Each type of armor gets assigned a die type. Plate mail might get a d12, Chain a d10, light chain a d8 and so on down to d4 (or even d2s if you like). One could limit the armor to d6s or better and use d4s and d2s for natural human toughness if desired. Then simply roll 1 die of the appropriate type for each armored location (which is why I'd cut the locations down to a manageable number), and keep the highest result.

A person wearing only a d12 breast plate would get to roll a d12 against against the weapon damage. For the first weapon, a roll of 8-12 would completely block the blow. Anything less doesn't. Having more locations covered makes it more likely that one of the dice will roll high enough to stop the attack.

Of course you fiddle with the numbers until it gives fun results in play and then just assign weapons and armor to the appropriate ratios and die sizes to make it work.


Point being, there are about a billion ways to skin the weapon / armor / injury cat.

The most important thing, however, is to determine what sort of OUTPUT you want the system to give you, and then design the system specifically to yield that output. Don't design a system that "seems to make sense" and then accept whatever output it gives. And don't make the mistake of thinking you have to account for every possible piece of data that could ever be output from reality.

Alls you need is an internally consistent system that gives you the results you want.

For example: In Savage Worlds there are only 3 forms of output that Shane wanted: Dead, Shaken, or No Effect. That's all the Savage Worlds damage system delivers for most characters. Whether the blow hit armor and penetrated, or hit an armored location, or whatever doesn't matter. Skip to the good stuff. Is the enemy down, hesitating, or still coming. That's all that mattered to the game so that's all the system was designed to deliver.

So figure out what Output you absolutely need to have and design a system that does that and that alone.

The most important thing, however, is to determine what sort of OUTPUT you want the system to give you, and then design the system specifically to yield that output.

Alls you need is an internally consistent system that gives you the results you want.

I am getting the impression some of the things I have said seem to be contradictory. I might need to revisit them. So, here we go...

As I have generally stated, but perhaps understated, I find hit location determined -in- combat is kludgy. There are a lot of reasons I don't like hit locations. These are including, but not limited to the fact that partial cover can screw up the tables, that called shots need a default hit zone, and that there needs to be a seperate def value for each and every form of armour. I have used them before -- and I don't like them.

That being said, armour DEPENDS on where it is placed on the body. Armour that covers vital areas is fundamentally BETTER than armour that does not cover vital areas. This is why people wear kevlar -vests-, as opposed to kevlar leggings. Not only is the chest a big target, but it is a place where, if one gets shot, the odds of the effects being lethal are much -- MUCH higher.

Also, DO consider that part of the damage roll is the accuracy of the hit. Damage goes up not only because of more force, but because of more skill.

Therefore, the value of the damage reduction should depend on BOTH the material hardness vs damage type, and the material location. Even though the hit location is abstractified -- even though the GM can call out hit locations off the top of his head as -flavour text-, wearing a chest plate and helmet is the logical way to start armouring one's self.

To touch on some quotes...

"If there is an opening and the right attack," armour can indeed still save. Armour lowers the possibility of GETTING the right attack, at least when the armour is able to defeat the weapon. While -- generally -- armour will not make one invulnerable, it is worthwhile to note that M1 tanks could -regularly- defeat Iraqi HEAT rounds with effectively no damage. These are direct hits! Likewise, for a certain value of damage/strength, plate mail will regularly defeat it. Sometimes there's a fairly random chance of the shot bouncing/breaking up, sometimes not. Sometimes penetration is almost guaranteed. But the "opening and right attack" assumes, first and formost, the right WEAPON. Full plate, reasonable mobility, and a not-particularly-well-armed opponent turns a man into a tank on the battlefield.

Autocrat, you make good points, dealing with elements like firearms and kevlar for example, but as I had noted this is handled with the use of typed damage.

Regarding your concept that an attack roll lists hit location -- how would that allow an attacker to favour blows to the right side vs the left? As soon as you have armour which is stronger on one side than another, and you start naming hit locations, the player will want to -- and rightfully so -- focus on the unarmoured locations! A system that allows both a player focus, AND allows randomization, is going to be kludgy. If you can proove me wrong, I'd be interested to see it! I'd gladly eat my words for an elegant system that would let me do that. However, as I've yet to see something that accomplishes that goal, I've opted for a system that determines the RESULTS first -- and allows the GM to fill in flavour text along the way.

The result oriented system MEANS that it is logical to not name off hit locations -- where the blow was that hit you is flavour text as far as I am concerned, as long as the effect (Instantly lethal? Dropped? Potential long term lethalty) is the same.

On the other hand a result orented system still, STILL, needs to take into account the rough effect of armour, and armour which is asymetrically laid out so as not to protect the vital areas is not going to be effective.

To answer your secondary question re: skill, Greg, yes! Being skilled, and wearing great gauntlets, means good chances to active parry! Same with shields. The more "stuff" you have in the way, the better chance you have to negate an incoming attack.

On the other hand being skilled doesn't do much to make you "use chest armour more effectively," armour is MOST effective when it NEVER gets hit. It's more like insurance.

Anyway, Greg, I definitely agree that a wider SPREAD of armour is better. However there needs to be -- I suppose the word would be synergy -- with having a full set of armour as opposed to an asymetric layout.

Valamir, I spent a good ling time thinking about reversing the paradigm. There are advantages to an armour save -- lots of them really -- and you mentioned most that I can think of. That being said, I find that when it comes to the ability to deal out damage, weapons tend to determine the randomness. A wide burst of 00 shot should, for the most part, deal a fairly consistant level of damage. An AP round could be potentially very lethal, passing through a vital point, or very not, causing a flesh wound.

In short, the randomness of the damage really SHOULD be determined at the weapon level. Reversing the mechanism isn't bad, but I'm not so keen on it.

Anyway, Greg, you've tossed out a lot of good ideas, but I find what I have is working so far. What I'm more interested now in is finding a flaw WITH the idea I have. Logical inconsitances, if you can find them. As it stands I have it down to...

Pre Game Calc: Work out generic armour reduction value vs each type of common damage. Add this into the thresholds for damage. This will require a lot of referencing, and take a while -- on the other hand the GM won't need to

In Game Attack: Roll a to-hit roll, a single addition. If successful, roll both damage (small number addition) and wound numbers (small number, probably single die roll. Declare damage.)

Assuming the enemy takes the blow, he only needs to do a comparison to determine the wound type, and then mark off the number of wounds taken. This is a relatively "simple" form of math, there is no subtraction from damage reduction (that's factored into the thresholds) nor does one need to do anything too complex with wound numbers. And that's the end of the attack.

Post Combat: Now check the wounds to see the long term effect. This WILL take a while, as there might be a number of tables. But again, this is downtime kludge, as opposed to midcombat kludge.

It's not TOO kludgy, a little slower than d20, but due to heightened lethality that's acceptable. I tested it, it works... the real question is can I find a "breaking case" -- a situation where some example produces contradictory results...

At this point, that's more important to me than alternating the mechanism entirely based on what seems like a good idea, or what is more effective.

Having narrowed the field down a bit, any questions/breakers?

Having narrowed the field down a bit, any questions/breakers?

That's an excellent point. Needless to say, the MAXIMUM material strength will be defined by tables. No one is going to be able to give themselves +20 impervium armour unless there's a weapon out there that scales more or less effective damage.

The deal with stacking armour thicker and thicker needs to be addressed. I plan on using a logarithmic approach to armour -- doubling the mass of the armour won't nearly double the protection.

That being said, gamebreaking items might exist in a fantasy realm. A mythril shirt could certanly offer superb defence against attacks, if it existed, but handing one a mythril shirt would not be near as scary as handing, say, the full plate version of same.

In the end though, that's a ballance issues of the WORLD. Just because the mechanism CAN model near impervious armour doesn't mean the GM is obligated to make those options available to players!

On an aside -- the armoured space suit bit is handled a TOUCH differently. For the sci fi universe I'm toying with -- the combat armour is considered a seperate entity, that absorbs a GOODLY amount damage before letting it through. You'd be impervious to small arms fire, naturally. However, in the event such a weapon existed, the universe would naturally have the heavy beam cannons / rail guns to punch it wide open, most likely mounted on a similar suit of armour.

The simplest form of game balance is ensuring that the enemy gets the same weapons the players do. Most of the settings I create are, indeed, based on that assumption.

hmmm... to make a quick and simple answer.... modify the attack roll for location? Have a simple table that lists the results?

basically, most things in games are flavour! No real difference between having a roll result table or a list of damage and locations. depends on priority!

What your suggesting seems fine... I suppose it's a matter of prefence.... but so long as it is sensible. (not logical - thats optional! LOL), then theres no problem!

Generally hit locations are anything BUT quick and simple. Any time there is an in-game effect for hitting certain locations, people WILL aim for those locations. And that leads to a whole host of questions...

* Does a shot that "missed" the head hit the body? It COULD, are there rules for it?
* Do hands get the DEX bonus to defence when a person is moving their hands, but is otherwise still.
* Is it possible to place one body part in front of another (leading with the left side, for example) to make other parts harder to hit?

And this doesn't even take into account partial cover...

End result, I've just not had a lot of luck with sectional damage, so I generally prefer to abstract it out as flavour -- even if the armour itself needs to take body placement into account.

I had idea for an armor system that relates directly to how the damage system was explained in the first place.

Since it seems you want all your weapons to be deadly with the highest rolls, you can make armor stop specific results, or dice pips. Turning those pip results into 0s on all the dice rolled.

Light armor might only stop results of 3 or 4 on the damage dice. Think of leather armor vs a 1d20 weapon, allmost no effect against say a longbow arrow. But against a 3d6 mace or 4d4 club it would be quite effective.

Chainmail might stop damage results of 7 to 12, cutting the middle damage potential out of the 1d20 arrow and severly effecting the 2d10 sword but being totally innefective against the 3d6 mace.

Heavy plate armor might stop results from 3 to 15, making the wearer immune to all but the most powerfull attacks, and those few lucky little blows that leak.

With this system you could tailor the weapons and armor into quite an elegant balance, without requireing more rolls.

That's a very interesting idea. I like it, for a LOT of reasons, however I'll have to spend some more time contemplating the idea to see if I can find any flaws with it...

For purposes of stopping power I still need a roll for number of wounds, but it does provide an interesting way to develop a weapon that can be rendered ineffective vs armour MOST, but not ALL, of the time.

It conflicts with a few other ideas I had unfortunately -- but it's worth mulling over. Let me get back to you on that one.

I allready noticed a hole that my sleep-deprived brain didn't catch last night.

Probably can't make it a range of numbers that armor stops because that negates the best results of many weapons. Stopping range 7-12 vs a 2d10 sword would effectively make rolls of 7-10 ineffective when they should be the most effective.

Rather than make the armor stopping ranges chunky like 7-9 and 11-12 I would make an overall rule that if you max out on your damage dice then it gets through even if the number falls in the stopping range of the armor. So if you rolled a 6 and a 10 on the 2d10's you'd get a result of 16 rather than 6.

You could further tailor the weapons by making thier "auto effect range" differnt. Like a short sword might be 2d10 with 10s allways effective and a longsword 2d10 with 9s and 10s effective.

This system would really need allot of tweeking to make it work. But it I think the results might be worth it.

Kaikatsu,
I just got a contract to do some work for Albedo (Sanguine Productions), and it totally slipped my mental gears that its system may have some brainstorming ideas for you. Damage in Albedo is X+Y, with an additional Penetration die, which in Albedo's case is always d20. And, you can in some circumstances get more than one Penetration die. For instance, if a target is helpless, you get +1d20 Penetration. You always get the base damage (X), and for each roll of the Penetration die that exceeds armor, you get the extra value (Y).

Example: I have an 8+7 weapon and am shooting at a helpless target whose armor has a Deflection of 10. I roll 2d20 and get 11 and 13, so I get the base damage (X) and 2 penetrations (Y).

I thought it was kind of clunky at first. It reminds me of your original post, whose system I thought was over complex. But, Albedo does a good job and it has certain useful aspects. For instance, explosions get 5d20, and lose d20 with range, so you get a natural dropoff. Critical hits get an extra d20, and so on.

Albedo uses a system that allows for no effect from taking damage, based on your Body stat, so nothing ever "bounces" off armor, which I don't like, but the concept has legs. Especially since you are using different polyhedral types, you can give a lethal but low penetration weapon (rapier) a low Penetration die type and a high Y value, while a longsword might have average values.

Greg Porter
BTRC

I have a question: Is this game going to involve firearms combat? You use the example of kevlar leggings, and as far as firearms go, that's the case. Most hits land in center body mass in firearms combat.
But look at melee combat. If you attack someone with a knife, I'll guarentee you'll hit them in the hands and arms at least a couple of times before you get in on a vital area. In a knife fight, having protected hands and forearms would give you a huge advantage, above and beyond deflecting the occaisonal inconsequential wound. Most hits in melee combat with lethal weapons do not land center body mass, if both people care to defend themselves. I would go so far as to say that someone with hand/arm protection is better off than someone with a breastplate in a knife fight. At the very least, one is not obviously and decidedly better than the other.

If partial armor is going to be a big factor in your game, you may want to have it give a bonus to some defensive skill that indicates the characters ability to deflect a blow, in addition to or even instead of subtracting from damage directly.

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.

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.

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