5e Variant: Armor as Temp HP (no longer flat reduction)

[Grod_The_Giant]

In regards to easy-to-slot-in changes, if heavier armors need just a little bit of a boost, we could crib from things like 40k and have some sort of armor save against being brought to 0 hp. Perhaps something along the lines of

It's not really a case of needing the boost, but that's a cool idea.

I really like the AP idea so far but its still got the weirdness of armour stopping providing protection halfway through a long fight.

So what about AP/turn, but a maximum of half the damage can be blocked from any one attack.

That's sorta what I wound up at. (Sorry; I should probably update the OP). Your armor can soak so much damage per turn; anything beyond that gets through full force. It makes (I think) lighter armor more useful against a single powerful enemy who'll easily smash through your soak, but leaves heavier armor faring better against lots of smaller foes who'll have trouble penetrating.

[AdAstra]

It's not really a case of needing the boost, but that's a cool idea.


That's sorta what I wound up at. (Sorry; I should probably update the OP). Your armor can soak so much damage per turn; anything beyond that gets through full force. It makes (I think) lighter armor more useful against a single powerful enemy who'll easily smash through your soak, but leaves heavier armor faring better against lots of smaller foes who'll have trouble penetrating.

I really like the idea of AP that regenerates at the beginning of your turn or something like that. Could create an added layer of tactics, trying to tank just[ enough damage to maximize the effectiveness of your armor and protect other PCs while not taking unnecessary HP damage.

How would you best solve the AC scaling issue, though? It almost seems more important in a lot of ways. As you get higher in level and encounter higher and higher to-hit bonuses, the level your AC needs to be to not be completely useless gets higher as well.

If you don't fix that, you'll likely fail in the design goal of making high-AC characters better than high-soak ones. As soon as you start to face off against attack bonuses of at least +8, you start progressively inching up the list of ACs that are no more effective than just dumping it entirely.
Using the Roc example I mentioned earlier, an AC 15 character will get hit just as often as an AC character (only nat 1s). AC 18 (Max Dex with a shield and Defense FS in your system) characters will only suffer marginally less (>25%).
At that point I'd rather just take the soak and boost HP to increase the time I can survive the hits I know I will take. As long as the per-round soak's greater than 15 or so, I should be getting a significantly greater damage reduction than 18 AC gives.

[Grod_The_Giant]

That's the idea-- if I did the math right, the amount of soak you get per round should roughly equal the amount of damage AC 16-18 would have prevented.

[AdAstra]

That's the idea-- if I did the math right, the amount of soak you get per round should roughly equal the amount of damage AC 16-18 would have prevented.

Does that include the AC range from 10-15, though? Because the "no amount of armor helps" thing is significantly more impactful for them. If I understand the math right, this'll include most or all non-dex shield users, medium armor users (with or without shields), characters that don't use armor or only have light (most casters and rogues). For medium armor you can take that into account, but with light, making it too absorbent risks light-shield-defense characters being too tanky, while making it not enough so makes characters without as much AC in a bad spot. I could see rogues especially being weird, especially since they're one of the characters meant most to embody the idea of dodging everything, yet their AC will be 15 at most, insignificant against increasingly more creatures as you go up in CR (though not nearly as many as I initially thought, luckily enough, glad to know the super-high to-hit mods aren't too common overall)

[Kyutaru]

Perhaps then the Warhammer approach is indeed warranted and attack rolls should not even be much of a thing. Rather than stronger creatures getting progressively more difficult to even strike, let their scales become progressively more difficult to penetrate. Modifiers to attack should simply apply to damage and particularly magic armor can improve its class. Armor passively negates damage while encumbrance dictates how mobile the target is.

New attack roll: d6 - Encumbrance based

Critical Threat - rolled a 6
No Armor - 5+ to hit
Light Armor - 4+ to hit
Medium Armor - 3+ to hit
Heavy Armor - 2+ to hit
Blatant Failure - rolled a 1

Combined with some form of damage reduction that thickens Dragon scales, even on a per round basis such as striking the weak points you've already cracked, combat becomes more about being able to damage the enemy at all rather than a game of Dodgeball.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Does that include the AC range from 10-15, though?

... It should, but I'm realizing I might not have done it quite right. I based the calculations on how much damage each point of AC above 10 would prevent-- so AC 12 for light, 14 for medium, and 16/18 for heavy/plate-- figuring that Dex bonuses wouldn't matter because they're the same either way. But it occurs to me that might not be quite accurate, because I think "AC 10->12" and "AC 13-15" probably aren't equal...

[Kyutaru]

Come to think of it, why not use Attack as an armor pen roll? Tremendously strong creatures or agile attackers can easily shred or bypass armor while ghostly beings face your touch AC anyway. The higher you roll the more armor you ignore. So it literally increases your damage to roll well while not being entirely mandatory to do so and placing an artificial cap on attack bonuses since +66 attack modifier penetrates your 10 light armor protection just as effectively as a wizard's dagger attack. Excess attack is lost just as the accuracy system yet damage still goes through without relying on blind luck. Miss chance replaces the evasiveness of dexterity or lighter armors and plate becomes your go-to for minions while standing toe to toe with a dragon instead prefers the monk/rogue who ignores fire breath and dodges.

[Segev]

Come to think of it, why not use Attack as an armor pen roll? Tremendously strong creatures or agile attackers can easily shred or bypass armor while ghostly beings face your touch AC anyway. The higher you roll the more armor you ignore. So it literally increases your damage to roll well while not being entirely mandatory to do so and placing an artificial cap on attack bonuses since +66 attack modifier penetrates your 10 light armor protection just as effectively as a wizard's dagger attack. Excess attack is lost just as the accuracy system yet damage still goes through without relying on blind luck. Miss chance replaces the evasiveness of dexterity or lighter armors and plate becomes your go-to for minions while standing toe to toe with a dragon instead prefers the monk/rogue who ignores fire breath and dodges.

Isn't this essentially reinventing the current system, where armor class is pitted against attack roll?

[Kyutaru]

Isn't this essentially reinventing the current system, where armor class is pitted against attack roll?

Swapping out rocket tag for attrition, yes. Much like the war games the entire system was originally based on.

[AdAstra]

Swapping out rocket tag for attrition, yes. Much like the war games the entire system was originally based on.

I mean, while Chainmail might have more "health" per side, any individual soldier, which formed the basis for the character in early TTRPG, was extremely squishy. You get hit, you died. Only the unit as a whole had staying power. And I'd also hardly consider 5e to have rocket tag gameplay except at very low levels and against other PCs, and maybe facing off against the most powerful threats, which I feel is more of a symptom of most of those going up to CR 30, and PC magic items, which they'll usually need, more often provide damage or utility rather than defense.

[Grod_The_Giant]

... It should, but I'm realizing I might not have done it quite right. I based the calculations on how much damage each point of AC above 10 would prevent-- so AC 12 for light, 14 for medium, and 16/18 for heavy/plate-- figuring that Dex bonuses wouldn't matter because they're the same either way. But it occurs to me that might not be quite accurate, because I think "AC 10->12" and "AC 13-15" probably aren't equal...

Update: I ran the revised math and updated the OP with the latest version.

[Bjarkmundur]

Update: I ran the revised math and updated the OP with the latest version.

I like it! Well done ^^
I don't quite get the monster rules, but I love the fact that you matched this problem so hard that you even got a formula for monsters as well.

[AdAstra]

Update: I ran the revised math and updated the OP with the latest version.

This is interesting, but a some of the wording isn't really explained. How exactly does magic armor boost soak? Does it just add a +1, +1 per level, +0.5 per? How do barbarians apply their soak, do they just count as having medium armor with no Dex limit? Since calculating monster soak acts like magic armor, knowing how the magic armor bonus actually affects soak is critical. Also, it's not quite clear whether soak is a damage reduction or damage threshold. I will assume the former for this analysis. I will also assume that Armor Soak applies to all attack damage because of the wording.

Okay now on to the actual critique. If the soak is per turn, that would seem to make smaller monsters functionally useless against even moderately high-soak creatures. At lvl. 10, a fighter in plate has 17 soak per turn, meaning against pretty much everything CR 2 and below they're immune to most damage, barring crits and similar high-damage effects, and even those will do scratch damage. At lvl 20, you'll probably have greater than 32 soak (from magic armor) per turn. That's enough to tank nearly half the damage output of an Ancient Red Dragon, which seems a lot more than even magic plate would normally prevent. A T-Rex bite will do 1 damage to you on average, even without magic armor. Also, per-turn soak makes a lot of legendary action attacks, which will take place at the end of other player's turns, kinda useless, since they have to get through a player's presumably unblemished soak. A raging lvl 20 Bearbarian can get as much as 17 AC, 21 soak, and resistance to all non-psychic damage.
The per-turn soak seems like it would kinda throw bounded accuracy out the window, making even swarms of lower-CR creatures irrelevant to high-soak characters, unless the DM has them take the Ready action to make all their attacks in one turn, which seems a little cheesy (a Lvl. 11 fighter in plate could literally fall asleep while being mauled by an infinite number of wolves, who even on a max damage crit can only do 18, one less than the 19 soak the fighter has, so long as they all take their own turns). If the DM does have weaker creatures use their ready action to all attack at once, they can bypass a lot of the soak entirely, which I guess uses their reaction and doesn't work with multiattack, but that arguably just incentivises using the creatures that lack it? It seems like it would cut out a lot of complication by just making soak recharge at the beginning of your turn, rather than on everyone's turn, to at least avoid weirdness like that

[Bjarkmundur]

Oooo, you're right, since it's per-turn :/

I do like to take 4 of medium-sized low-CR creatures and bunching them into a single throng/swarm/group. I think there are rules regarding this somewhere. It really speeds up fights against low CR threats.

If I take 4 medium sized CR 2 creatures, and give them a 2x2 token on a battlemat, I can place 4 tokens on the field and get a Hard encounter for a level 18 group.

Personally, if my level 18 group were to fight less than twelve CR 2s i'd probably just say "you proceed to kick their asses. Roll for me a dexterity saving throw, a constitution saving throw, and spellcasters roll a spellcasting ability check". With those rolls I'd give a quick narration of the fight, and distribute effects and lost spell slots based on the rolls. Alternatively, not every fight has to be turn-by-turn with full encounter rules. Sometimes you can just do it as collective storytelling spanning a couple of rounds, and then finish it up with "and you proceed to murder the **** out of them".

[Grod_The_Giant]

AdAstra: Yeah... you're right; per-round soak is a lot more feasible then per-turn. There will still be some bounded accuracy blunting, but it shouldn't be that bad. Especially if you combine it with a gritty realism or vitality-and-wound-point system...

Also, a thought: what if beating the target AC by 10 lets you deal an extra die of weapon damage? Helps keep high attack bonuses from being meaningless. Not sure what the effect on dpr would be though.

[Moxxmix]

It depends on whether a swarm are all acting on the same initiative, or if they have individual initiatives. If they have the same initiative, then soak-per-turn quickly gets overwhelmed compared to normal AC calculations. If they have different initiatives, then soak-per-turn becomes seriously overpowered compared to standard AC.

Soak-per-round balances things against swarms if they attack together, but further overpowers things against non-swarm fights.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Given that I calibrated it against non-swarm encounters, it should work out alright. A level 5 fighter in plate might be soaking 14 damage, but the troll they're fighting is landing every hit and dishing out 29 damage. So he takes a net 15. Meanwhile, the Monk with 18 AC is taking, on average, 17. Different methods, different feel, comperable result.

[Bjarkmundur]

Wait, now I'm confused. Did you decide on whether soak should refresh at the start of each turn, or at the start /end of your turn?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Wait, now I'm confused. Did you decide on whether soak should refresh at the start of each turn, or at the start /end of your turn?

I switched it to the start of your turn.

Speaking of, which nomenclature do you guys think works better? Soak or Armor Points (AP)?

[Kyutaru]

I switched it to the start of your turn.

Speaking of, which nomenclature do you guys think works better? Soak or Armor Points (AP)?

Soak for consistency between other games as it's used in Vampire and AP tends to mean armor penetration.

[Bjarkmundur]

Soak for consistency between other games as it's used in Vampire and AP tends to mean armor penetration.

agreed, since resistance, resilience, toughness and all the other basic ones are already taken.

[AdAstra]

AP definitely has a lot of connotations from other games, yeah. Soak's probably better, but if you're looking for alternative names you could also call it Protection or Protection Points.

EDIT: Just realized Protection is a fighting style. Then again, how many people actually take it in the first place? You could also call it Fortification or Fortification Points

[Bjarkmundur]

AP definitely has a lot of connotations from other games, yeah. Soak's probably better, but if you're looking for alternative names you could also call it Protection or Protection Points.

EDIT: Just realized Protection is a fighting style. Then again, how many people actually take it in the first place? You could also call it Fortification or Fortification Points

I'm still very excited about rolling dice, if I were to implement this. I'd call them Defense Dice *queue theme song and epic guitar*

[AdAstra]

AdAstra: Yeah... you're right; per-round soak is a lot more feasible then per-turn. There will still be some bounded accuracy blunting, but it shouldn't be that bad. Especially if you combine it with a gritty realism or vitality-and-wound-point system...

Also, a thought: what if beating the target AC by 10 lets you deal an extra die of weapon damage? Helps keep high attack bonuses from being meaningless. Not sure what the effect on dpr would be though.

Crap, forgot to mention this earlier. Wouldn't the math have to be changed to account for the fact that soak now recharges slower? Or did you calibrate it on the assumption of one opponent, in which case it shouldn't need to be any different? I would assume if you built it on the basis of anything else, you'd have to increase the soak since not every enemy has to get through the character's total.

The "more damage for higher attack rolls" idea is good, but basing it off weapon damage dice seems problematic. Different enemies use different dice and combinations of dice, so the effect's not really consistent between monsters. Big monsters, which usually use larger numbers of dice, would probably benefit proportionally less, though that's probably a good thing. As good as it is, I think it might change the math too unpredictably to be worth it as a modification to an existing system. Monsters would probably have to be built on that assumption.

I'm still kinda worried that the modified AC range may hurt your design goals. With the bonkers to-hit mods some monsters get, in most cases I'd rather reliably prevent some damage rather than take a slim chance of preventing all of it. AC offers dramatically better returns for being way higher than to-hit, which means high-AC characters are most likely going to be better against weaker enemies, if anything. That really conflicts with the idea of dodging characters being good against powerful monsters and heavy armor characters being better against swarms

As much as I've been kinda trying to tear this idea apart, I want to clarify it's great, and I'm sorry if I come across as harsh! You're on the right track here, and I'm glad to do anything I can to help you refine it.

[Grod_The_Giant]

The math was calculated using a single equal-CR opponent, so it should still be about right?

For the high-attack-bonus-damage... maybe +Proficiency? Half your Level/CR?

As for soak being better against monsters with bonkers to-hit...I guess? The game in general feels like it's saying heavy armor is better than medium is better than light; I'm not too upset if that's the case here as well.

[AdAstra]

The math was calculated using a single equal-CR opponent, so it should still be about right?

For the high-attack-bonus-damage... maybe +Proficiency? Half your Level/CR?

As for soak being better against monsters with bonkers to-hit...I guess? The game in general feels like it's saying heavy armor is better than medium is better than light; I'm not too upset if that's the case here as well.

Ok good to know. Can’t see any problems with changing it if that’s how it was originally calculated.

Yeah I have no idea how one would calculate that to make it match up with existing math. Maybe rather than exceeding AC by ten, you deal bonus damage if you hit double the AC? makes it significantly less likely for higher-AC characters, since each point of AC pushes the threshold up by 2 rather than one. Maybe damage equal to the attack bonus? Would definitely need to recalculate the soak values if you did anything like that though.

I see no issues with heavy armor being better, I just brought it up because I think you (or maybe someone else) wanted to have dodging be better against big creatures and armor better against swarms. If that’s not a major goal then go right ahead.

[Yunru]

I've read through, but I see no mention of an answer:
What happens regarding features like the Monk's Unarmoured Defence (which feels like it shouldn't add soak), the Barbarian's Unarmoured Defence (which feels like it should add soak), and the Dragon Sorcerer's scales (who the hell knows)?

Also doesn't this make having different armours pointless?
Why would a character wear plate when ring is just as effective?

EDIT: By my calculations, the soak is roughly (as in, just over) 1.3 damage per round per AC lost on average. So 0.13 per round per AC lost per level.
(Based off of medium encounters of 4 monsters versus a party of 4 (so 1 monster per player).)

Thing is, these numbers are slightly under half of what you'd get by your formula for heavy armour.

[AdAstra]

I've read through, but I see no mention of an answer:
What happens regarding features like the Monk's Unarmoured Defence (which feels like it shouldn't add soak), the Barbarian's Unarmoured Defence (which feels like it should add soak), and the Dragon Sorcerer's scales (who the hell knows)?

Also doesn't this make having different armours pointless?
Why would a character wear plate when ring is just as effective?

EDIT: By my calculations, the soak is roughly (as in, just over) 1.3 damage per round per AC lost on average. So 0.13 per round per AC lost per level.
(Based off of medium encounters of 4 monsters versus a party of 4 (so 1 monster per player).)

Thing is, these numbers are slightly under half of what you'd get by your formula for heavy armour.

At least for the bolded part, I don't think it's a huge problem if players have more freedom to describe their armor however they see fit. While it removes some of the "gear-progression" part of the game, that really only applied to medium and heavy armor users anyway, which always seemed like an odd bit of asymmetry. And hey, it allows the guy who really wants his knight to wear chainmail and doesn't like refluffing armor to not feel suboptimal. I find it a pretty neutral change.

That math does seem a lot more concerning though. I guess we'll see whether Grod responds.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I've read through, but I see no mention of an answer:
What happens regarding features like the Monk's Unarmoured Defence (which feels like it shouldn't add soak), the Barbarian's Unarmoured Defence (which feels like it should add soak), and the Dragon Sorcerer's scales (who the hell knows)?

Huh, I thought I addressed that... the Monk should work normally, the Barbarian should always count as wearing medium armor, and the Dragon Sorcerer as having... I guess +1 light armor.

Also doesn't this make having different armours pointless?
Why would a character wear plate when ring is just as effective?

Yeah, but it's effectively already pointless-- apart from money, there's no reason to ever wear, say, Leather instead of Studded Leather, or Splint Mail instead of Plate. I'm really not concerned by it.

EDIT: By my calculations, the soak is roughly (as in, just over) 1.3 damage per round per AC lost on average. So 0.13 per round per AC lost per level.
(Based off of medium encounters of 4 monsters versus a party of 4 (so 1 monster per player).)

Thing is, these numbers are slightly under half of what you'd get by your formula for heavy armour.

Hmm. I... think I see what I did. I used the DPR of a single CR-equal-to-level monster as a rough stand-in for "DPR of a medium encounter overall"... but I didn't look at how that gets spread out over the party. The question is whether or not that's right. On the one hand, you shouldn't expect a single character to take all the damage from an encounter. On the other hand, it's damage per round; how much you should expect on each round when you get smacked around.

I dunno

[Yunru]

Yeah, my numbers are definitely the lower bound, your's are probably the higher.

Definitely needs playtesting, but as a stray though ~0.2/AC/Level sounds a good median (if nothing else, for being easy to work with :P)