These seem to be the most popular ways of doing armor in games. Which do you prefer and why? What are good alternatives you've seen?
Damage reduction, full plate should make you nigh invincible against most human-sized opponents but not do much good when a 60 foot giant swings a hammer at you.
Attacker successes - defender successes = damage.
>>96515791I always hate hide is depicted as a patch work and not just cloaking yourself in a bear skin
>>96515791Damage reduction, the worst of both worlds is a combination of both like that variant rule for 3.5
The problem with Defense Value is that evasion is also mostly treated as Defense Value. So a character that dons full plate and a dodgy lightly-armored character ultimately feel the same when being on the defense.Yes, the games will differentiate between these bonuses to defense, sometimes one of them doesn't matter or gets disabled etc by certain actions, abilities, spells. But mostly, they result in characters feeling samey.With Damage Reduction, you have a mechanical difference between characters while playing them. The tanky character will brush off hits. The dodgy character will actively avoid them. This can result in very different approaches to defense and is therefore more meaningful.
>>96515908Don't result in characters feeling samey. A single defense trait tells you almost nothing about a character.
>>96515908Sex with Flayne.
>>96515953I would prefer sex with Lucien.
>>96515847Based.
>>96515935The point went so much over your head, it's heading for Mars.
>>96515935>super fast ninja type: AC 18>armored giganigga knight: AC 18>not samey!
>>96515847What, something like Shadowrun damage soak? Disgusting system.
>>96515791Choosing just one, I prefer the binary defense of the conventional AC. I've considered trying to mix them through hit-locations, where armor has a Coverage rating for where it covers and how well then a Blugeoning/Slashing/Piercing rating split between the minimum for noteworthy damage, how much it reduces beyond that, and how much causes it to fail. With layered piecemeal construction, of course, because if it's getting this autistic then it's going FULL autism.
>>96516055No, nothing like that at all.
>>96515791Everything about this image makes me see with armor autism. I legitimately, honestly, and without hyperbole want to see the illustrator beaten to death in the street, With his family forced to watch. Also to answer your question, damage reduction.
realism is ass btw
>>96516289Let go of that rage before you type next time and catch your typos, autist. Artists just draw what they think is cool and get paid to do it, which is cool, you rage about trivialities on 4chan, which is not cool.
>>96515908My homebrew adds an Armor Save, where more armor means a better save. If you take damage above a certain threshold, you must pass a save or suffer additional consequences. This has a couple of effects:>Armored characters feel more reliably tanky>Characters with less armor feel like they're getting away with something when they pass their save>There's a textural difference between a flurry of light attacks, and one big heavy attack
>>96515791>Which do you prefer and why?Defense Value. Its simple, easy to understand, pisses off armor and realism autists, and is quick to resolve. When youre in a fight with a dozen enemies and players, a simple quick number value you check against is preferred. Then, if it hits a simple minus to HP is both quicker and simpler. I don't want to have to resolve two HP values (DR is a type of HP that resets on every attack) on the same turn doing even more math than is necessary.I know this because I have run both ways of doing this, me and my players have always spent a longer time resolving turns with DR. It was also just unsatisfying, neither I nor my players can explain why though. DR as class feature is also kind of annoying, but tolerable as a one off for a specific player or specific creatures. It being common just sucks ass when playing or DMing.
Damage reduction (with resistances to specific damage types) is the best way. Armor Class as the sole determining factor of taking damage or not works fine for two people going at it with longswords and full plate armor in a 20x20 room with no features, but it doesn't have the nuance to satisfyingly simulate a world where fire, pits full of spikes, and blunt force trauma exist.
>>96516289I have more for you.
>>96515791Defence value. Damage reduction forces you to do that nonsense with ever escalating damage health and AC values >>96516303>proofreads his posts on 4channel.org>calls someone else autistic
>>96516764...you think that's in anywhere near as bad as OP's image? Mid and left clearly shows that the illustrator knows quite a bit about late medieval/early Renaissance arms and armour (and fashion), which is then intentionally fudged for the adventurer (it still shines through a bit though, such as the pauldron which'd actually allow your arm to move, not something you can take for given with fantasy armour designs). As opposed to OP's picture, where ignorance rules unopposed.
Damage reduction is just clumsy. Avoidance is fine. The best would probably be a wound system where armor moves the thresholds for minor and major wounds.
>>96517239>Evasion/dodgetanking can be as effective at avoidance as wearing heavy armour for particuarly agile characters>The tradeoff for the lack of carry weight and material cost is the increased risk of serious injury if you are hitI kinda dig it.
>>96516013No, you were just wrong. It doesn't result in characters feeling samey.
>>96516049Super fast ninja type : Agility 4d, Evasion 10d.Gigaknight : Toughness 4d, Armor 10d.Equally competent at defense, not samey.
>>96517706The topic of the thread is about defenses. The post was about defenses. Characters ON DEFENSE will feel the same if they have the same defense value, even though one might wear heavy armor and the other one will have a dodge bonus.
>>96517771No, they won't. See above.
Oh boy, time for 300 posts of 'smug asshole refuses to explain themselves'
It's been explained quite clearly. Try reading.
>>96517971Yep, if people are stupid enough to feed the troll then endless trolling they'll get.
Yep, you're trolling.
>>96517721Whatever irrelevant system that is
I accept your concession.
>>96515791Dr is obviously superior, and works better when separating active and passive defenses.
Hardly.
>>96515908Wait, wasn't that girl a bunny or am I confusing something?
>>96515847unironically the best
