Parts of armor? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Parts of armor? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
DX2052
05-16-07, 05:42 PM are there any varient rules out there for haveing armour in seperate parts (eg greaves pauldrons and curiass) rather then one single suit?
Vaalingrade Ashland
05-16-07, 06:20 PM This is the system I built to do this:
http://www.worldofere.com/equipment/armor.htm
Holy_Beholder
05-16-07, 08:02 PM The problem is that this works better for some armors than for others. For instance, you are not buying chainmail in parts, unless those parts happen to be chain shirt and chain pants(fantasy). Its completely ridiculous otherwise, you don't buy chain sleeves. Full plate parts are much more reasonable. What you could do is have a basic suit of either Padded, Leather, Chain Shirt, then increase leather to hide with Leather leggings, and Chain shirt to chain mail with Chain leggings. Then you can add plates on over it.
Or you can make it easy and just have: Upper body, Lower body, Head.
Edymnion
05-16-07, 10:06 PM Honestly, this is when its better to just use the rules as they were intended, aka the often forgotten equivolency rules.

Just find the suit of armor with the stats you want, and just SAY its a stripped down suit of full plate. A breastplate is just a suit of full plate minus most of the arms and legs. You want just a shoulder pauldron? Fine, take Padded Armor, describe it as a pauldron, and boom, you're done.

There's no need to make up new rules when the ones we have work just fine.
Thomar_of_Uointer
05-19-07, 08:23 PM The biggest problem with doing armor in pieces is that armor bonuses don't stack. :P

Now, you can get around this by saying the pieces grant their own bonuses to your armor bonus, in the same way that an amulet of natural armor grants an enhancement bonus to your natural armor bonus.

Anyways, the entire concept is fundamentally unnecessary, the current armor system works just fine.
Onikani
05-19-07, 09:30 PM there were rules for this in (sadly enough) regular old school Dnd.
Not 1.0, not 2.0.
Just plain old dnd.

Anyway, IIRC - They basically involved a system that had percentages to hit certain areas - so if you were right handed you may have a higher chance to get hit on your right arm since its the one that's 'out'.

Anyway, every attack was a percantage roll for the body part, compared to the ac of that body part (as determined by the armor worn there; it had charts for the types of ac for every piece in every body location).

The rules were in a boxed supplement, i own it but will have to dig it out of the 'old school' box i have in my closet. Pm me if you want more specifics...
:)
Metafictional
05-19-07, 09:36 PM I wouldn't say fundamentally unecessary, it's sort of traditional for some character types to have what essentially boils down to a mixed suit of armor, the 2E Fighter's Handbook goes into this in some detail, pointing to the classical "Gladiator" armor, as well as the idea of a mercenary picking up pieces of discarded armor from the battlefield.

In Dragonlance, as I recall, Tika Wayland started collecting weapons and bits and pieces of armor from her fallen enemies to get her "starting gear".

It's a sub-optimal thing to do, but it can make sense in certain campaigns.

Now as far as whether or not you need rules for this, as opposed to just deciding "well, it's equal to [insert armor type] here", as was suggested earlier, is up to you. I like that idea, it's simple, but there's a few factors to consider.

1) There is no such thing as a Masterwork Plate Leg. The workmanship may be excellent, but it's bonuses come from the fact that it's part of a full suit of armor. Wearing an entire suit of mixed Masterwork armor pieces should not a suit of Masterwork armor make. Look at the classic Frankenstein's Golem; each part is perfect, individually, but the whole comes off as being anything but.

1a) of course, the rules do support Masterwork Gauntlets and I believe Masterwork Helms. Go figure.

1b) Magical Armor is an interesting point as well. There is no such thing as a +2 Plate Shoulder. This isn't to say a Masterwork Plate Shoulder can't be a magic item. Any item of Masterwork quality is suitable for enchantment; we've seen Helms of Brilliance, for example.

The idea is, to claim an enhancement bonus to AC, you have to have an entire suit of armor bearing that enchantment. Now you can have other enchantments placed on individual items, subject to the limits of what the DM will allow (I remember a 2E magical relic that was a complete arm of plate mail, where each individual piece was a separate magic item).

Obviously, non-slotted items (magic items that don't take up traditional slots) exist, although they are expensive. This is a grey area of the rules, one could enchant each individual component of an item to have it's own powers. However, the rules are clear that enhancement bonuses and "special feature" enchantments apply to the complete suit of armor.

Of course, even there, people will point out that a suit of Masterwork Full Plate includes boots, a helm, and gauntlets. Yet you're allowed to wear a Helm of Underwater Action, Boots of Speed, and Gauntlets of Ogre Power with your +3 Full Plate with no penalties.

And the rules are silent about what you do with your old helm, gauntlets, and boots that actually came with the armor...wouldn't they be magical?

You could, as a DM, scatter the pieces of a suit of magical armor throughout a dungeon, and force a Fighter to collect it bit by bit, how's that for an interesting idea?

2) Armor Check penalties are based not on the weight of the armor, but how well fitted it is. Magical Armor will adjust to the wearer, but most piecemeal armor will not. So as a DM, feel free to increase the Armor Check Penalty by 1 or 2.

2a) Some armor experts have noted that the Full Plate check penalties seem a bit harsh compared to most Plate armors in medieval times. The classical "giant" armors, or jousting armor, on the other hand, often left the wearer barely able to move. I don't see a reason to adjust these, they were set for game balance concerns, not realism, IMO, plus, if you want to simulate "Field Plate", maybe you should start looking at the stats for Mithril Full Plate?

3) What type the composite armor gets a bit sketchy too. Generally, if the protection is better than any existing suit of Light Armor, it must be Medium, if the protection is better than Medium, it must be Heavy (and if it's better than Heavy, it must be Extreme!).

Closely related to this is Maximum Dexterity Bonus; which, much like the Armor Check, should be penalized a point or two.

Generally, save for specific armors you'd want to make for your game that are piecemeal in origin, assume that there is no such thing as magical piecemeal armor (with the aforementioned exceptions already in the game, Helms, Boots, Bracers, Gauntlets, what have you, but these are, note, not magical armor, but Wondrous Items that happen to incidentally be armor components).

IE = no magical piecemeal suit of Armor of Acid Resistance +2.

You can have a vambrace of Protection, Gauntlets of Ogre Power, a Helm of Brilliance, Winged Boots, and the like all you want.

Apparently the only real items worth mentioning in DnD terms are the breastplate, arms, and legs as to what gives you the Armor Bonus, since a character is not hindered, AC wise, for removing his armor's helm and putting on a Headband of Intellect, which takes up the same slot as a Helm of Underwater Action.

It's a slight rules conundrum, but any good DM can work around it, I think.

Because of this, with the exception of special armors you create, nobody is going to want to truck around in piecemeal for long, since they'd much rather get a suit of Masterwork, or +1 Light Fortification Armor ASAP.

Remember, this isn't WoW, so unless you WANT people running around looking for a good pair of magical pants or Mail Shoulders, it shouldn't happen. Often.
kenicolo
06-18-07, 09:08 PM In a game i ran we use to roll a location for every attack if i remember it was 1D20

Head 1
Torso 2
R.Arm 3-4
R.Hand 5-6
L.Arm 7-8
L.Hand 9-10
Back 11-12
R.Leg 13-14
R.foot 15-16
L.Leg 17-18
L.Foot 19-20

We used armor as damage reduction and could buy armor as pieces. Whe we took a it the armor covering the location was reducing the damage and getting use so eventualy breacking.

When a location was taking damage many effect could happend: ort save or stun fo a head hit, reflex or drop wpn, balance checks, penalities to atk or slow movement.

This was not hard ti trak at all since every location was written on a sheet with the armor covering it. Player could Take aim at some parts by taking a penality on the attack roll..

Special fighting stance could change the probability of hitting certain location and increase other better armoured.
Phalse_One
06-22-07, 06:57 PM Check out the old Dark Sun campaign setting for 2nd edition, they had rules for this sort of thing.

You could either wear the full suit or part of it. You would need to convert from AC value (starting at 10 and dropping to -10), to an armour bonus, but that is easy.

The larger issue, if you choose to use a system like this is arcane spell failure and skill check penalties. Does wearing a full plate helm affect your Move Silently as much as full plate boots? Do boots affect Open Locks at all?

It seem way too much work under the current system, but if you want to dig up the old player's guide to Athas, it's all in there.
CaptKillern
06-22-07, 08:02 PM there were rules for this in (sadly enough) regular old school Dnd.
Not 1.0, not 2.0.
Just plain old dnd.
:)

They had it in Darksun in the camp box set... It fit really well with the setting.
Edymnion
06-22-07, 09:38 PM Basically, just take a lower form of armor and say its just the pieces of a greater suit.

A breastplate is obviously just the bits and pieces from a suit of full or half plate, for example. I have a sorcerer that, from a description standpoint, wears a steel pauldron on his left shoulder. From a mechanical standpoint, he's wearing padded armor.

Just change the flavor of the lighter armor to make it sound like piecemeal.
Neutronium_Dragon
06-23-07, 12:09 AM One of the developers wrote a rant about the idea of partial armor and called shots/specifically hitting the unarmored parts of a partially-armored character and why it's a bad idea: http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/rants/calledshots.html

In other words, do what has been suggested above: Pick an armor type which seems like a reasonable composite or downgrade and just treat the mismatched suit as that.
Xeviat-DM
06-23-07, 05:03 PM One of the big problems of this is enhancement. When you enhance a suit of armor, it's going to be the entire suit. But then what happens if you break the suit up again?
Ryusage
06-23-07, 05:40 PM One of the big problems of this is enhancement. When you enhance a suit of armor, it's going to be the entire suit. But then what happens if you break the suit up again?

then you've got yourself such marvels as +1/8 (yes, plus one eigth) gauntlets.
Phalse_One
06-23-07, 09:06 PM The easiest way to handle that would be to make one specific part of the armour magical (I would assume the breastplate, since other parts are already covered by other magical items, such as guantlets, boots, or helms). If you remove the breastplate (or equivante torso section) from a suit of magic armour and wear it, you gain the full magical benefit, while only gaining part of the AC bonus. As a consequence the other pieces worn without the torso piece would not be magical.
You might want to rule that when worn with a magical torso piece, the other pieces of armour (whether made as part of the same suit or not) gain the enhancement bonus for purposes of saving throws, hardness, etc.
Rhialto
06-24-07, 01:42 AM My approach is that a suit of armour's magic bonus will only function if the majority of the armour's components are present. So, you could remove the helm and gauntlets from a magical suit, but anything more, and the magic aura ceases to provide any benefit. It'l still detect as magical, but won't provide any benefit beyond mundane armour.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
DX2052 05-16-07, 05:42 PM	are there any varient rules out there for haveing armour in seperate parts (eg greaves pauldrons and curiass) rather then one single suit?
Vaalingrade Ashland 05-16-07, 06:20 PM	This is the system I built to do this: http://www.worldofere.com/equipment/armor.htm
Holy_Beholder 05-16-07, 08:02 PM	The problem is that this works better for some armors than for others. For instance, you are not buying chainmail in parts, unless those parts happen to be chain shirt and chain pants(fantasy). Its completely ridiculous otherwise, you don't buy chain sleeves. Full plate parts are much more reasonable. What you could do is have a basic suit of either Padded, Leather, Chain Shirt, then increase leather to hide with Leather leggings, and Chain shirt to chain mail with Chain leggings. Then you can add plates on over it. Or you can make it easy and just have: Upper body, Lower body, Head.
Edymnion 05-16-07, 10:06 PM	Honestly, this is when its better to just use the rules as they were intended, aka the often forgotten equivolency rules. Just find the suit of armor with the stats you want, and just SAY its a stripped down suit of full plate. A breastplate is just a suit of full plate minus most of the arms and legs. You want just a shoulder pauldron? Fine, take Padded Armor, describe it as a pauldron, and boom, you're done. There's no need to make up new rules when the ones we have work just fine.
Thomar_of_Uointer 05-19-07, 08:23 PM	The biggest problem with doing armor in pieces is that armor bonuses don't stack. :P Now, you can get around this by saying the pieces grant their own bonuses to your armor bonus, in the same way that an amulet of natural armor grants an enhancement bonus to your natural armor bonus. Anyways, the entire concept is fundamentally unnecessary, the current armor system works just fine.
Onikani 05-19-07, 09:30 PM	there were rules for this in (sadly enough) regular old school Dnd. Not 1.0, not 2.0. Just plain old dnd. Anyway, IIRC - They basically involved a system that had percentages to hit certain areas - so if you were right handed you may have a higher chance to get hit on your right arm since its the one that's 'out'. Anyway, every attack was a percantage roll for the body part, compared to the ac of that body part (as determined by the armor worn there; it had charts for the types of ac for every piece in every body location). The rules were in a boxed supplement, i own it but will have to dig it out of the 'old school' box i have in my closet. Pm me if you want more specifics... :)
Metafictional 05-19-07, 09:36 PM	I wouldn't say fundamentally unecessary, it's sort of traditional for some character types to have what essentially boils down to a mixed suit of armor, the 2E Fighter's Handbook goes into this in some detail, pointing to the classical "Gladiator" armor, as well as the idea of a mercenary picking up pieces of discarded armor from the battlefield. In Dragonlance, as I recall, Tika Wayland started collecting weapons and bits and pieces of armor from her fallen enemies to get her "starting gear". It's a sub-optimal thing to do, but it can make sense in certain campaigns. Now as far as whether or not you need rules for this, as opposed to just deciding "well, it's equal to [insert armor type] here", as was suggested earlier, is up to you. I like that idea, it's simple, but there's a few factors to consider. 1) There is no such thing as a Masterwork Plate Leg. The workmanship may be excellent, but it's bonuses come from the fact that it's part of a full suit of armor. Wearing an entire suit of mixed Masterwork armor pieces should not a suit of Masterwork armor make. Look at the classic Frankenstein's Golem; each part is perfect, individually, but the whole comes off as being anything but. 1a) of course, the rules do support Masterwork Gauntlets and I believe Masterwork Helms. Go figure. 1b) Magical Armor is an interesting point as well. There is no such thing as a +2 Plate Shoulder. This isn't to say a Masterwork Plate Shoulder can't be a magic item. Any item of Masterwork quality is suitable for enchantment; we've seen Helms of Brilliance, for example. The idea is, to claim an enhancement bonus to AC, you have to have an entire suit of armor bearing that enchantment. Now you can have other enchantments placed on individual items, subject to the limits of what the DM will allow (I remember a 2E magical relic that was a complete arm of plate mail, where each individual piece was a separate magic item). Obviously, non-slotted items (magic items that don't take up traditional slots) exist, although they are expensive. This is a grey area of the rules, one could enchant each individual component of an item to have it's own powers. However, the rules are clear that enhancement bonuses and "special feature" enchantments apply to the complete suit of armor. Of course, even there, people will point out that a suit of Masterwork Full Plate includes boots, a helm, and gauntlets. Yet you're allowed to wear a Helm of Underwater Action, Boots of Speed, and Gauntlets of Ogre Power with your +3 Full Plate with no penalties. And the rules are silent about what you do with your old helm, gauntlets, and boots that actually came with the armor...wouldn't they be magical? You could, as a DM, scatter the pieces of a suit of magical armor throughout a dungeon, and force a Fighter to collect it bit by bit, how's that for an interesting idea? 2) Armor Check penalties are based not on the weight of the armor, but how well fitted it is. Magical Armor will adjust to the wearer, but most piecemeal armor will not. So as a DM, feel free to increase the Armor Check Penalty by 1 or 2. 2a) Some armor experts have noted that the Full Plate check penalties seem a bit harsh compared to most Plate armors in medieval times. The classical "giant" armors, or jousting armor, on the other hand, often left the wearer barely able to move. I don't see a reason to adjust these, they were set for game balance concerns, not realism, IMO, plus, if you want to simulate "Field Plate", maybe you should start looking at the stats for Mithril Full Plate? 3) What type the composite armor gets a bit sketchy too. Generally, if the protection is better than any existing suit of Light Armor, it must be Medium, if the protection is better than Medium, it must be Heavy (and if it's better than Heavy, it must be Extreme!). Closely related to this is Maximum Dexterity Bonus; which, much like the Armor Check, should be penalized a point or two. Generally, save for specific armors you'd want to make for your game that are piecemeal in origin, assume that there is no such thing as magical piecemeal armor (with the aforementioned exceptions already in the game, Helms, Boots, Bracers, Gauntlets, what have you, but these are, note, not magical armor, but Wondrous Items that happen to incidentally be armor components). IE = no magical piecemeal suit of Armor of Acid Resistance +2. You can have a vambrace of Protection, Gauntlets of Ogre Power, a Helm of Brilliance, Winged Boots, and the like all you want. Apparently the only real items worth mentioning in DnD terms are the breastplate, arms, and legs as to what gives you the Armor Bonus, since a character is not hindered, AC wise, for removing his armor's helm and putting on a Headband of Intellect, which takes up the same slot as a Helm of Underwater Action. It's a slight rules conundrum, but any good DM can work around it, I think. Because of this, with the exception of special armors you create, nobody is going to want to truck around in piecemeal for long, since they'd much rather get a suit of Masterwork, or +1 Light Fortification Armor ASAP. Remember, this isn't WoW, so unless you WANT people running around looking for a good pair of magical pants or Mail Shoulders, it shouldn't happen. Often.
kenicolo 06-18-07, 09:08 PM	In a game i ran we use to roll a location for every attack if i remember it was 1D20 Head 1 Torso 2 R.Arm 3-4 R.Hand 5-6 L.Arm 7-8 L.Hand 9-10 Back 11-12 R.Leg 13-14 R.foot 15-16 L.Leg 17-18 L.Foot 19-20 We used armor as damage reduction and could buy armor as pieces. Whe we took a it the armor covering the location was reducing the damage and getting use so eventualy breacking. When a location was taking damage many effect could happend: ort save or stun fo a head hit, reflex or drop wpn, balance checks, penalities to atk or slow movement. This was not hard ti trak at all since every location was written on a sheet with the armor covering it. Player could Take aim at some parts by taking a penality on the attack roll.. Special fighting stance could change the probability of hitting certain location and increase other better armoured.
Phalse_One 06-22-07, 06:57 PM	Check out the old Dark Sun campaign setting for 2nd edition, they had rules for this sort of thing. You could either wear the full suit or part of it. You would need to convert from AC value (starting at 10 and dropping to -10), to an armour bonus, but that is easy. The larger issue, if you choose to use a system like this is arcane spell failure and skill check penalties. Does wearing a full plate helm affect your Move Silently as much as full plate boots? Do boots affect Open Locks at all? It seem way too much work under the current system, but if you want to dig up the old player's guide to Athas, it's all in there.
CaptKillern 06-22-07, 08:02 PM	there were rules for this in (sadly enough) regular old school Dnd. Not 1.0, not 2.0. Just plain old dnd. :) They had it in Darksun in the camp box set... It fit really well with the setting.
Edymnion 06-22-07, 09:38 PM	Basically, just take a lower form of armor and say its just the pieces of a greater suit. A breastplate is obviously just the bits and pieces from a suit of full or half plate, for example. I have a sorcerer that, from a description standpoint, wears a steel pauldron on his left shoulder. From a mechanical standpoint, he's wearing padded armor. Just change the flavor of the lighter armor to make it sound like piecemeal.
Neutronium_Dragon 06-23-07, 12:09 AM	One of the developers wrote a rant about the idea of partial armor and called shots/specifically hitting the unarmored parts of a partially-armored character and why it's a bad idea: http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/rants/calledshots.html In other words, do what has been suggested above: Pick an armor type which seems like a reasonable composite or downgrade and just treat the mismatched suit as that.
Xeviat-DM 06-23-07, 05:03 PM	One of the big problems of this is enhancement. When you enhance a suit of armor, it's going to be the entire suit. But then what happens if you break the suit up again?
Ryusage 06-23-07, 05:40 PM	One of the big problems of this is enhancement. When you enhance a suit of armor, it's going to be the entire suit. But then what happens if you break the suit up again? then you've got yourself such marvels as +1/8 (yes, plus one eigth) gauntlets.
Phalse_One 06-23-07, 09:06 PM	The easiest way to handle that would be to make one specific part of the armour magical (I would assume the breastplate, since other parts are already covered by other magical items, such as guantlets, boots, or helms). If you remove the breastplate (or equivante torso section) from a suit of magic armour and wear it, you gain the full magical benefit, while only gaining part of the AC bonus. As a consequence the other pieces worn without the torso piece would not be magical. You might want to rule that when worn with a magical torso piece, the other pieces of armour (whether made as part of the same suit or not) gain the enhancement bonus for purposes of saving throws, hardness, etc.
Rhialto 06-24-07, 01:42 AM	My approach is that a suit of armour's magic bonus will only function if the majority of the armour's components are present. So, you could remove the helm and gauntlets from a magical suit, but anything more, and the magic aura ceases to provide any benefit. It'l still detect as magical, but won't provide any benefit beyond mundane armour.