I have an idea for armor breakage rules and I need some help! - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

I have an idea for armor breakage rules and I need some help!

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
bengeldorn
Jan 31, 2006 17:31:14 Previous history: I was thinking what the number for Total-AC means and wonder if I could use configuation of the Total-AC to describe the combat. Hence, I had following ideas:

The AC has following body:
1. Base + Size Mod.
2. Dex-Mod. + Dodge bonus + Insight Bonus
3. Shield Bonus + enhancement bonus (to shield)
4. Armor Bonus + enhancement bonus (to armor)
5. Natural Armor Bonus + enhacement bonus (to natural armor)
6. Deflection Bonus
7. Bonus by Cover (by obstacle or creature)

So what happens if some attacks a creature?
to 1. The attack was so badly done that the defender didn't even need to dodge the attack. The attack missed the defender.
to 2. The attack would have hit the defender, but the defender was able to dodge the attack. The attack missed the defender.
to 3. The attack would have hit the defender, but the defender was able to parry the attack with his shield or weapon. The attack hits the shield or weapon of the defender.
to 4. The attack hits the defender, but it was not good enough to overcome the armor of the defender. The attack hits the armor of the defender.
to 5. The attack hits the defender. It even overcomes the armor of the defender, but the defender's natural armor is to thick to take any damage. The attack hits the defender's skin.
to 6. The attack was good and hard, but a "magical or psionic aura" stopps the strike to deal any damage. The attack is absorbed by the defender's "magical or psionical aura".
to 7. The attack would have hit the defender, if the wouldn't be covered. The attack hits the cover. (Note: This is on position 7, because of the given rules. I would place it between position 2. and 3.)

Based on this, I thought about when an armor could actually break? First I thought of the obvious critical hit possibillity, but this didn't make sense to me. IMO a critical hit means that a hit was so well done, that it hit an unprotected area and/or a very leather spot. So I came to the conclusion, that an armor could break. when it is hit directly, wich mean it is hit when the attack roll was between number 4. It is not to hard to calculate when an attack the armor:
Between 1. + 2. + 3. and 1. + 2. + 3. + 4.!
In addition this gives the opportunity to calculate a hit on the shield or parrying weapon:
Between 1. + 2. and 1. + 2. + 3. !

So the question was, when DOES an armor or a shield break?
My conclusion was, that it obviously has something to do with the material of the armor or shield, so it would be obvious to use the hardness and hit points. And here come my problem:
What hardness and hit points do armor and shield have?
For some matierals hardness and hit points are given by the PHB and the DS3-doc., but for others they aren't. In addition I have big problems to assign a hit point value for full suit armors, IMHO it shouldn't be to low, so an armor could take many hits before it actually breaks. So here is my request to the community:
What hardness and hit points do these armors have?
Padded Armor
Leather Armor
Studded Leather Armor
Chain Shirt
Hide
Scale Mail
Chainmail
Breastplate
Splint Armor
Banded Mail
Half-Plate
Full-Plate
Bone
Wood
Bark
Cord
Shell
Chitin

Once I know the hardness and hit points of the armors, I could design a system for armor breakage rules (which could be combined with a weapon breakage rule). My idea is to split the damage on armor and weapon, but I'm not quite sure if bot armor and weapon should take half damage or fourth damage each. In addition, if I know the hardnes and hit points for full armors I could complete the system for the partial armor rule, I designed.

So, what are your thoughts?
#2
megatherion
Feb 01, 2006 0:54:03 Simple. You can't do it in that fashion.

I meself use a table mad efor sritical hist that has three columns: one for slashing, one for piercing, and one for blunt weaponts. If one scores a critical, he rolls d% and the table shows what happened. If he rolls low, it's a normal critical, if a bit higher, normal critical that breaks one's shield, next come the increased multiplier criticals, and finally the elite critical hist (70%-100%) which are divided by the body part: chest - break armor/pierce heart/crush ribs, are only a some of the possibilities, as for legs and arms - break armor/remove arm ar wrist, elbow or shoulder, etc etc, a lot of interesting posibilities.

I suggest you create your own table or implement a rule:

1. If one hits between 10 and touch ac, it was dodged easily.
2. If one hits one's between touch ac and flatfooted ac it means it was beyond dodging ablility. The hit crashed into shield or was parried.
3. If one hits one's between flatfooted ac and ac then only dodging and armor itself saved the day, meaning it crashed into armor.

Now. Every hit into armor or shield doeals normal damage to them, keeping in mind hardiness and hp of enchanted items. weapon-to-weapon doesn't deal damage if they're od the same material, otherwise they do. (kinda makes the sunder attack redundant).

edit: forgot the natural and deflection ones. Bah, just add them in somewhere. Natural would go between touch and flatfooted, deflection beetween dodge and natural i think.

one dodges ac 11 (only dex)
if can't, deflection saves him ac 13 (dex + delfect, touch ac)
if can't he uses shield ac 15 (touch + shield)
if can't he has to parry ac 15 ( flatfooted, armor only, can be anywhere)
ic can't he uses natural armor ac 19 (natural + touch +shield)
if can't he uses armor ac 26 (natural + touch + shield + armor)
if can't he's hit.
#3
dirk00001
Feb 01, 2006 9:53:05 Unearthed Arcana (I think) has an optional rule for converting part of the armor AC bonus into a damage reduction value instead; I don't have the book but my friend was telling me about it, I think it's 1/4th of the AC bonus becomes DR instead (so full plate ends up as +6 AC, DR 2/-). Anyway, if you used a system like this (which is kinda neat, IMO), you could say that any attack that hits due to the difference between the "true" AC and the "DR-reduced" AC constitutes a hit that is actually cutting through the armor, and so counts as a sunder attack in addition to causing damage to the character (albeit at the reduced, DR-affected rate). You don't necessarily even need to involve the UA rules for this, you could do it using any fraction of the armor's AC bonus (I think the 1/4th or 1/3rd is probably a good figure, though).

When it comes to shields, if you're tracking damage they should probably be considered to be subject to a sunder attack any time an attack is blocked due to their AC.

...I just realized that none of the above had anything to do with your question. Ah well.

When it comes to "breaking" armor, I personally think that you're going to find that there really isn't any definitive point - metal armor can be slashed, crushed and pierced many, many times without breaking, and other materials can as well (to a lesser extent), although it'll definitely start deteriorating as far as protection is concerned.
Since the PHB gives hardness and HP/inch for most materials (and you can use the "Inferior Material Hardness and Hitpoints" table from the athas.org DS3 to determine the hardness/HP for the other materials by comparing those values to the weapon HPs listed in the PHB), I'd suggest doing something like this - every time armor suffers damage, it loses 1 point of AC bonus whenever damage equal to it's HP/inch is suffered. So, for something that's fairly easily cut up like a suit of leather armor, 10 points of total damage (counting it's 2 Hardness, of course) would render it useless. For a suit of plate, however, you're going to have to do over 200 damage...which is probably never going to happen, given it's 10 Hardness, although someone with an adamantine greatsword and/or feats/spells (I think there are some that reduce/negate hardness) could still dismantle the thing. However, even in the case of plate or other metal armor, once it suffers 30 points of damage it'd lose 1 point from it's armor value - so that full plate, although still effective, is now starting to show signs of it's damage (chinks in the breastplate, etc.) and so becomes less effective overall. Also, bare in mind that if you used a system like this energy spells would also be (potentially) doing damage to the armor, especially area-of-effect ones. Suddenly those Sonic spells rise in value.
#4
zombiegleemax
Feb 01, 2006 11:23:32 I suggest just using Sunder
#5
bengeldorn
Feb 01, 2006 17:35:06
When it comes to "breaking" armor, I personally think that you're going to find that there really isn't any definitive point - metal armor can be slashed, crushed and pierced many, many times without breaking, and other materials can as well (to a lesser extent), although it'll definitely start deteriorating as far as protection is concerned.
Since the PHB gives hardness and HP/inch for most materials (and you can use the "Inferior Material Hardness and Hitpoints" table from the athas.org DS3 to determine the hardness/HP for the other materials by comparing those values to the weapon HPs listed in the PHB), I'd suggest doing something like this - every time armor suffers damage, it loses 1 point of AC bonus whenever damage equal to it's HP/inch is suffered. So, for something that's fairly easily cut up like a suit of leather armor, 10 points of total damage (counting it's 2 Hardness, of course) would render it useless. For a suit of plate, however, you're going to have to do over 200 damage...which is probably never going to happen, given it's 10 Hardness, although someone with an adamantine greatsword and/or feats/spells (I think there are some that reduce/negate hardness) could still dismantle the thing. However, even in the case of plate or other metal armor, once it suffers 30 points of damage it'd lose 1 point from it's armor value - so that full plate, although still effective, is now starting to show signs of it's damage (chinks in the breastplate, etc.) and so becomes less effective overall. Also, bare in mind that if you used a system like this energy spells would also be (potentially) doing damage to the armor, especially area-of-effect ones. Suddenly those Sonic spells rise in value.

Well, that is kind of the idea I was thinking about. My problem is that I still don't know how much hit points full suit armors have and for some I still have no hardness. As far I understand your idea, I should take following calculation:
[b]hit points/inch of thickness
#6
dirk00001
Feb 01, 2006 22:03:54
[b]hit points/inch of thickness

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 bengeldorn Jan 31, 2006 17:31:14	Previous history: I was thinking what the number for Total-AC means and wonder if I could use configuation of the Total-AC to describe the combat. Hence, I had following ideas: The AC has following body: 1. Base + Size Mod. 2. Dex-Mod. + Dodge bonus + Insight Bonus 3. Shield Bonus + enhancement bonus (to shield) 4. Armor Bonus + enhancement bonus (to armor) 5. Natural Armor Bonus + enhacement bonus (to natural armor) 6. Deflection Bonus 7. Bonus by Cover (by obstacle or creature) So what happens if some attacks a creature? to 1. The attack was so badly done that the defender didn't even need to dodge the attack. The attack missed the defender. to 2. The attack would have hit the defender, but the defender was able to dodge the attack. The attack missed the defender. to 3. The attack would have hit the defender, but the defender was able to parry the attack with his shield or weapon. The attack hits the shield or weapon of the defender. to 4. The attack hits the defender, but it was not good enough to overcome the armor of the defender. The attack hits the armor of the defender. to 5. The attack hits the defender. It even overcomes the armor of the defender, but the defender's natural armor is to thick to take any damage. The attack hits the defender's skin. to 6. The attack was good and hard, but a "magical or psionic aura" stopps the strike to deal any damage. The attack is absorbed by the defender's "magical or psionical aura". to 7. The attack would have hit the defender, if the wouldn't be covered. The attack hits the cover. (Note: This is on position 7, because of the given rules. I would place it between position 2. and 3.) Based on this, I thought about when an armor could actually break? First I thought of the obvious critical hit possibillity, but this didn't make sense to me. IMO a critical hit means that a hit was so well done, that it hit an unprotected area and/or a very leather spot. So I came to the conclusion, that an armor could break. when it is hit directly, wich mean it is hit when the attack roll was between number 4. It is not to hard to calculate when an attack the armor: Between 1. + 2. + 3. and 1. + 2. + 3. + 4.! In addition this gives the opportunity to calculate a hit on the shield or parrying weapon: Between 1. + 2. and 1. + 2. + 3. ! So the question was, when DOES an armor or a shield break? My conclusion was, that it obviously has something to do with the material of the armor or shield, so it would be obvious to use the hardness and hit points. And here come my problem: What hardness and hit points do armor and shield have? For some matierals hardness and hit points are given by the PHB and the DS3-doc., but for others they aren't. In addition I have big problems to assign a hit point value for full suit armors, IMHO it shouldn't be to low, so an armor could take many hits before it actually breaks. So here is my request to the community: What hardness and hit points do these armors have? Padded Armor Leather Armor Studded Leather Armor Chain Shirt Hide Scale Mail Chainmail Breastplate Splint Armor Banded Mail Half-Plate Full-Plate Bone Wood Bark Cord Shell Chitin Once I know the hardness and hit points of the armors, I could design a system for armor breakage rules (which could be combined with a weapon breakage rule). My idea is to split the damage on armor and weapon, but I'm not quite sure if bot armor and weapon should take half damage or fourth damage each. In addition, if I know the hardnes and hit points for full armors I could complete the system for the partial armor rule, I designed. So, what are your thoughts?
#2 megatherion Feb 01, 2006 0:54:03	Simple. You can't do it in that fashion. I meself use a table mad efor sritical hist that has three columns: one for slashing, one for piercing, and one for blunt weaponts. If one scores a critical, he rolls d% and the table shows what happened. If he rolls low, it's a normal critical, if a bit higher, normal critical that breaks one's shield, next come the increased multiplier criticals, and finally the elite critical hist (70%-100%) which are divided by the body part: chest - break armor/pierce heart/crush ribs, are only a some of the possibilities, as for legs and arms - break armor/remove arm ar wrist, elbow or shoulder, etc etc, a lot of interesting posibilities. I suggest you create your own table or implement a rule: 1. If one hits between 10 and touch ac, it was dodged easily. 2. If one hits one's between touch ac and flatfooted ac it means it was beyond dodging ablility. The hit crashed into shield or was parried. 3. If one hits one's between flatfooted ac and ac then only dodging and armor itself saved the day, meaning it crashed into armor. Now. Every hit into armor or shield doeals normal damage to them, keeping in mind hardiness and hp of enchanted items. weapon-to-weapon doesn't deal damage if they're od the same material, otherwise they do. (kinda makes the sunder attack redundant). edit: forgot the natural and deflection ones. Bah, just add them in somewhere. Natural would go between touch and flatfooted, deflection beetween dodge and natural i think. one dodges ac 11 (only dex) if can't, deflection saves him ac 13 (dex + delfect, touch ac) if can't he uses shield ac 15 (touch + shield) if can't he has to parry ac 15 ( flatfooted, armor only, can be anywhere) ic can't he uses natural armor ac 19 (natural + touch +shield) if can't he uses armor ac 26 (natural + touch + shield + armor) if can't he's hit.
#3 dirk00001 Feb 01, 2006 9:53:05	Unearthed Arcana (I think) has an optional rule for converting part of the armor AC bonus into a damage reduction value instead; I don't have the book but my friend was telling me about it, I think it's 1/4th of the AC bonus becomes DR instead (so full plate ends up as +6 AC, DR 2/-). Anyway, if you used a system like this (which is kinda neat, IMO), you could say that any attack that hits due to the difference between the "true" AC and the "DR-reduced" AC constitutes a hit that is actually cutting through the armor, and so counts as a sunder attack in addition to causing damage to the character (albeit at the reduced, DR-affected rate). You don't necessarily even need to involve the UA rules for this, you could do it using any fraction of the armor's AC bonus (I think the 1/4th or 1/3rd is probably a good figure, though). When it comes to shields, if you're tracking damage they should probably be considered to be subject to a sunder attack any time an attack is blocked due to their AC. ...I just realized that none of the above had anything to do with your question. Ah well. When it comes to "breaking" armor, I personally think that you're going to find that there really isn't any definitive point - metal armor can be slashed, crushed and pierced many, many times without breaking, and other materials can as well (to a lesser extent), although it'll definitely start deteriorating as far as protection is concerned. Since the PHB gives hardness and HP/inch for most materials (and you can use the "Inferior Material Hardness and Hitpoints" table from the athas.org DS3 to determine the hardness/HP for the other materials by comparing those values to the weapon HPs listed in the PHB), I'd suggest doing something like this - every time armor suffers damage, it loses 1 point of AC bonus whenever damage equal to it's HP/inch is suffered. So, for something that's fairly easily cut up like a suit of leather armor, 10 points of total damage (counting it's 2 Hardness, of course) would render it useless. For a suit of plate, however, you're going to have to do over 200 damage...which is probably never going to happen, given it's 10 Hardness, although someone with an adamantine greatsword and/or feats/spells (I think there are some that reduce/negate hardness) could still dismantle the thing. However, even in the case of plate or other metal armor, once it suffers 30 points of damage it'd lose 1 point from it's armor value - so that full plate, although still effective, is now starting to show signs of it's damage (chinks in the breastplate, etc.) and so becomes less effective overall. Also, bare in mind that if you used a system like this energy spells would also be (potentially) doing damage to the armor, especially area-of-effect ones. Suddenly those Sonic spells rise in value.
#4 zombiegleemax Feb 01, 2006 11:23:32	I suggest just using Sunder
#5 bengeldorn Feb 01, 2006 17:35:06	When it comes to "breaking" armor, I personally think that you're going to find that there really isn't any definitive point - metal armor can be slashed, crushed and pierced many, many times without breaking, and other materials can as well (to a lesser extent), although it'll definitely start deteriorating as far as protection is concerned. Since the PHB gives hardness and HP/inch for most materials (and you can use the "Inferior Material Hardness and Hitpoints" table from the athas.org DS3 to determine the hardness/HP for the other materials by comparing those values to the weapon HPs listed in the PHB), I'd suggest doing something like this - every time armor suffers damage, it loses 1 point of AC bonus whenever damage equal to it's HP/inch is suffered. So, for something that's fairly easily cut up like a suit of leather armor, 10 points of total damage (counting it's 2 Hardness, of course) would render it useless. For a suit of plate, however, you're going to have to do over 200 damage...which is probably never going to happen, given it's 10 Hardness, although someone with an adamantine greatsword and/or feats/spells (I think there are some that reduce/negate hardness) could still dismantle the thing. However, even in the case of plate or other metal armor, once it suffers 30 points of damage it'd lose 1 point from it's armor value - so that full plate, although still effective, is now starting to show signs of it's damage (chinks in the breastplate, etc.) and so becomes less effective overall. Also, bare in mind that if you used a system like this energy spells would also be (potentially) doing damage to the armor, especially area-of-effect ones. Suddenly those Sonic spells rise in value. Well, that is kind of the idea I was thinking about. My problem is that I still don't know how much hit points full suit armors have and for some I still have no hardness. As far I understand your idea, I should take following calculation: [b]hit points/inch of thickness
#6 dirk00001 Feb 01, 2006 22:03:54	[b]hit points/inch of thickness