Alternative Armor System

One of the design goals of the revised D20 rules set I’m working on is to end with a more gritty combat system.  I want the system to reflect the fact that more experienced PCs are still mortal.  So I have elected to highly curb the proliferation of hit points gained at higher levels.  Martial classes each gain 1 hit point per level.  Other classes progress even slower.

Another change I made was to alter the way that armor functions.  Rather than adding a bonus to the character’s ability to avoid being hit (e.g. their Armor Class) it will instead absorb a certain amount of damage resulting from a successful attack. Shields however will continue to offer the character a bonus to avoid being hit, and in fact a larger bonus than was assigned in the D&D third edition rules.

This alteration has the advantage of cohering nicely with an addition I would like to make to the combat system, viz, a way of accounting for equipment wear and tear.  Realistically if one is regularly engaged in combat one’s armor will degrade over time.  Assigning hit points to a suit of armor is an easy way of representing this.  Once the armor absorbs enough damage to reduce it’s base HP value below the halfway mark it become broken, decreasing its ability to absorb damage (damage reduction) by 1.  Some types of armor (such as plate) will require the services of a forge to mend.  Other types, such as leather and chain, can be mended with materials that come as part of a ‘mending’ kit.  Here is a table I’ve assembled that shows the defensive values of armor on this alternative system:

Table: Armor & Shields

Light	Cost	Hp	Damage Reduction	Stones
Padded	2 sp	25	1/—	2
Leather	5sp	40	1/—	3
Studded Leather	8 sp	75	2/—	4
Chain Shirt	45 sp	80	3/—	5

Medium	Cost	HP	Damage Reduction	Stones
Hide	15 sp	65	3/—	5
Scale Mail	35 sp	100	4/—	6
Chainmail	100 sp	100	5/—	8
Breastplate	125 sp	110	5/—	6

Heavy	Cost	HP	Damage Reduction	Stones
Splint Mail	135 sp	120	6/—	9
Banded Mail	150 sp	120	6/—	7
Half-Plate	200 sp	150	7/—	10
Full Plate	400 sp	200	8/—	10

Shields	Cost	HP	Deflection Bonus	Stones
Buckler	5 cp	5	+2	1
Shield, Light Wood	1 sp	7	+3	1
Shield, Light Steel	3 sp	10	+3	1
Shield Heavy Wood	2 sp	15	+4	2
Shield Heavy Steel	7 sp	20	+4	3
Shield Tower	10 sp	20	+5	9

I’ve been play-testing this alternative system with my regular gaming group for the past year or so.  So far the system has functioned as expected.  Having a decent set of armor definitely improves the likelihood of surviving a combat encounter.  Combat encounters involving unarmored foes tend to be quicker, while encounters with armored foes take a bit longer.  Weaker characters may have difficulty damaging a heavily armored target since the armor absorbs much of the impact.

One way of offering Thieves and other finesse based classes or character builds a way to offset this last implication is to allow for a mechanism for penetrating armor.  The rule I’ve come up with is to create a specialized “penetrating attack” which allows the PC to bypass 1/2 of their target’s damage reduction at the cost of a -5 to hit penalty (Thieves only suffer a -2 penalty to this attack).  The idea here is that the character is looking for weak spots in the target’s armor, or is using an impaling thrust or some such that requires more attention.  You could of course get more technical than this.  If you wanted to a system that reflected the fact that various forms of armor were more vulnerable to specific forms of attack you could allow specific weapon types automatic penetration against specified armor types.  I chose to trade a bit of realism here for ease of play.

If anyone else is using a similar method I’d be curious to here your thoughts.