Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 SolemnSeraph Mar 15, 2015 17:02:28	Hey folks. I'm getting ready to launch my first 5e campaign with a few friends, and I'm starting on some house rules that need some advice. So we are going to have all combatants specify parts to target with the exception of a wild swing. That's pie. What I want to do is divide armor up into various parts, depending on the design of the suit. Armor can have gauntlets, pauldrons, boots, helms, cowls, breastplates, greaves, and so on. My players will have to buy pieces individually or as a set. But I'm not sure how to divide up the cost or AC for each part. For example, my player wants a suit of plate armor (1,500 gp) a la carte. The suit is divided up into boots, greaves, gauntlets, helm, chestplate, and a sub-layer of chain or padding. Now, it's obvious that the chest is the most expensive, but I need to divise a reliable way to divide up the cost. This suit is 1.500 between five pieces. Some may have more, others less.   Next, I want to give each part it's own HP. Broken pieces don't provide their AC to that part when targeted. The aforementioned plate armor provides an AC of 18. Should I have each piece provide that 18 for that part? For example, the helm provides an AC of 18. This sounds logical to me but I want a second opinion. I also don't know how much HP to assign each part. I'm thinking the armor will take damage when the attack is not enough to deal damage to the character, but high enough to be more than half of the character's AC. For example, an orc strikes at a fighter with an AC of 18. The attack comes out to be a 14. since it's higher than 9 but not 18, it strikes, but only deals damage to the armor, nt the characters HP.   I want my players to have the option to customize their armor, swap out individual parts or leave them out entirely, but at the cost of having to maintain their equipment. I also want them to have to repair and/or sharpen their weapons.   Any thoughts?
#2 EmpactWB Mar 16, 2015 0:08:41	For costs, I'd say 40% for the torso armor and 20% for each other piece. I'm not miscounting, I'm going to point out that you're charging boots and greaves separately but not gauntlets and manica (which actually don't seem to be on either of your lists). Since you need to make sure that your boots and greaves don't interfere with each other when worn (in the same way your gauntlets and manica shouldn't), it might be easier to keep them a set.   And yeah, I agree on AC 18 for each part, especially if you're buying a set.   Overall, it seems rather intuitive. I might suggest that instead of half AC, though, it should be 'if the armor was the difference'. So if the attack roll is less than (10 + Dex mod), nothing happens to the armor since that wouldn't have hit them unarmored either. I think the Shield of Wonder used a similar concept in previous editions. EDIT: On second thought, if the armor caps or eliminates the Dex mod, it will still get hit at some of those numbers. So there's a little more room for variability there that I first realized.
#3 Macv12 Mar 16, 2015 2:04:01	Is this your first time with a tabletop RPG, or with D&D, or just 5e?   This sounds like the kind of management that might be intriguing in an Armored Core game, but impossibly tedious for a pen-and-paper RPG. You're referencing two AC values for every attack roll, each player has to track several HP bars, the DM has to track exponentially more bars, the players have to pay attention to which enemy has what quality of armor in which slot and how damaged it is, or else constantly ask what they should be targeting, etc. This system is likely to make combats much longer and slower-paced.   Assuming you're aware of the above and still want to go ahead with this. I'm still not sure how you're handling some parts of this system. What is the AC of a body part with broken armor? Presumably my breastplate doesn't help protect my forearm. Is there are reason to target different body parts? It seems like my best best is to choose the lowest-AC, lowest-HP part of an enemy's armor and hammer away, as they'll die quickest that way. Can I kill something by targeting its arms repeatedly? Do enemies use this system too? Do the players have to take account of enemy armor and choose where to target? If so, these seems impossibly tedious, as noted above. If not, it just forces the players to spend more money on armor replacements at certain intervals, and you could just as well track "armor HP" as a whole instead of each part to achieve the same effect. How does it interact with magic? If I save against a fireball, does my armor risk taking damage? Or only against attacks targeting AC? I'd suggest some particular reason to target different body parts. For example, if you "kill" a target's arm, it has disadvantage on attacks with a weapon in that arm, and can't hold a shield with it. Kill a leg, it's slowed down; kill both, it can't walk. The creature's "True" HP is unaffected, however; attacking an extremity can never kill something, and never bleeds over into lethal damage. Lethal damage can only be dealt to the head or torso. The head has an AC bonus, but whenever an attack hits your head, it has a chance to daze you (Stun condition, or can't use bonus actions or reactions). Or it has no extra effect, but torso attacks only take half damage, yet are much easier to land. So if you're very accurate, headshots are the most lethal, but otherwise, grinding away at the biggest target (the body) is more reliable.   While you're at it, differentiating between damage types would be meaningful in this un-abstracted system. As one example, each armor piece has an offset of +1/-1 against each damage type. So you can have a breastplate that has +1 AC versus bludgeoning damage, but -1 versus piercing damage. Or -1 to piercing and bludgeoning, but +2 to slashing. I'd let players freely choose how to apply these offsets whenever they buy armor, rather than have them be preset. Then the players can describe what the armor piece is, and why it has those offsets.   Empact's AC idea is basically what I'd go with. An attack roll of 10 or less is a whiff, and 11 or over impacts armor instead of the body part. I'd ignore DEX bonuses, because it's extremely granular in an already-too-detailed system, unless each player wants to track their "would this hit me" value, and the DM wants to do the same for every enemy ever. Doing this, I'd further say that an attack that actually "hit" does damage to HP and armor, rather than just one. It would be hard to swing a battleaxe at someone's chest and manage to harm their body without having scratched their breastplate. You could ignore this depending on your abstraction of what HP means, though.     Here's a brainstormed alternate to this whole system, though: Each armor piece provides a different bonus. This gives you armor customization without fiddling with a million numbers. Chest: AC, penalties to Stealth (and other DEX skills), penalties to speed. If broken, -2 AC. Arms: "+1 to melee finesse weapon attacks"; "resistance to slashing damage", etc. Legs: "can Disengage as a bonus action"; "reduced speed penalty when overencumbered"; "no speed penalty from heavy Chest armor"; etc. Head: "enemies reroll attack if they critically hit"; "enemy criticals are misses"; "+1 AC vs opportunity attacks"; etc. Each piece is tier 1, 2, or 3. Add all tiers together and divide by 4 (or however many pieces there are) to get your overall Armor Tier. Depending on your tier, when you take over X damage from one attack, there's a 50% chance that a random armor piece breaks. Broken armor doesn't provide its bonus anymore (except chest armor). Could use refinement obviously, but I think you'd get much more customize-y milage out of this system than tracking HP for a bunch of armor parts.
#4 Coredump00 Mar 16, 2015 7:42:33	You are missing some armor pieces... Thighs, arms, shoulders, hips, neck...    Is there a penalty for targeting certain body parts?   You need to decide if you want to charge based on game mechanics, or based on difficulty of crafting.   For armor hit points, I would give each armor a DR per hit it can absorb before taking any damage. If you are going this far, you could even adapt it by damage type.
#5 cowleymen Mar 16, 2015 18:29:19	I think this is a great idea, but DND is not the game for it. It will slow down gameplay considerably. I think this would work better in a system that used armor as damage Reduction as well, instead of the much more arbitary system that most d20's are.
#6 MechaPilot Mar 16, 2015 20:39:52	SolemnSeraph wrote: