Why is DEX added to armor anyway, in such systems as DnD (5e or otherwise).? The point of armor is so you can attack without excessive worry of injury. You CANNOT engage an enemy in melee combat and at the same time completely use your DEX to try to avoid being hit. An attack round is ONLY 6 SECONDS. In 6 seconds you cannot attempt to hit someone and acrobatically dodge their return strike at you. Its NOT "Hey! you swing at me and i will see if i can dodge, then i’ll swing at you and you can try to dodge. If anything makes sense, shields should provide the most “defense”, followed by the weapon you use to PARRY. Your armor is only if they happen to slip their weapon by those two. I think Hankerins idea of putting points in Armor is genius. In ICRPG 2e rulebook common armor provides only +1 and a shield +2. This seems about right. If i had good sense i would just go with what he created and make hacks at other rules.
Help with Defense in ICRPG Quickstart
Also the very point of the Defense roll is so the fully armored Dwarves have something to shout about. I think they even say that, Dwarves rejoice or something so you wouldn’t use a DEX save anymore, just defense.
All this Armor breaking, Soak rolls, etc etc talk just because I think pretty much everyone agrees AC = Armor+Shield+Con makes almost every player having AC 20 out of character creation. And that is not good or fun addition to gameplay.
I don’t think there was anything wrong with AC is it was in ICRPG 2E
But yes CON could get more love. I agree.
So what is a solution in my opinion?
- CON to AC , nope. AC 20 at the early game is simply not fun.
- DEFENSE Roll. Why? We already have CON save to resist things, and We have DEX save to dodge blasts.
So what is a solution? Simple one that does not add calculations and slows the game.Its very simple:
CON gives you additional HP. Your HP is Heart+CON ( for each heart ).
I know its pretty straight forward, and does not seem as a lot. But ICRPG is very finely balanced for Danger. And couple of HP can really mean difference from life to death. Its also very consistent to D&D tradition.
As for armor points, soaking, and everything mentioned here. They are all splendid ideas. If you like to add complexity to the game.
From my own experience, the persuit of realism in tabletop rpg rules is a slippery slope that leads to really unsatisfying results.
I practice HEMA (historical european martial arts, sword fighting) irl, and let me tell you, 6 seconds is A LOT of time if you’re engaged in melee, heck, most tournament rounds don’t even last more than that.
Your DEX is added to armor in D&D-style systems because they try to emulate a fast character being able to dodge and parry enemy attacks. In real combat, if you get hit in your armor, you’re pretty much screwed and your armor just saved your potatoes, otherwise you’ll be dead. In D&D, the idea is that, the lower your DEX, the more beneficial is to wear heavy armor because heavy armor strips away your DEX mod anyways, that’s not super “realistic either” but I think it’s a good compromise overall.
Also with the goblin dagger problem, if you think about it realistically, a goblin shouldn’t even be able to do ANY damage to a full-plate wearing dude, it’s like using a pistol against a tank! What you describe about people being killed by daggers doesn’t have anything to do with actual melee combat, rather dudes in full plate where thrown down to the ground by groups of people and THEN killed with daggers ha. Imagine it like a group of soldiers assaulting a tank with hand grenades and small arms, like in rescuing private ryan.
So, realistically talking, you’ll never be satisfied, ever. You have to think more about what’s fun to play and what is actually useful for your table imho 
Let me just argue this small bit: ICRPG is NOT balanced, like, at all. Hankerin have said through out the years that he doesn’t care at all about numerical “balance”, it’s not an implicit or explicit design choice.
To keep it tight with the 
scaling phylosophy. in my Fallout hack you get +1 for each 5 CON (endurance in Fallout) your char has. So a maxed out char (10 CON) would have a total of 3 without any other loot or perks.
Sort of @Deathbare . It’s phrased slightly differently. “A maximum of +10 armor from items is all you can wear. This does NOT include armor gained from your stat.”
This has to do with the QuickStart, which currently has no limit on armor/defense. This is an important distinction, because the QS factors defense slightly differently than Core 2e, as the CON bonus gets added in from the jump. And, if the methodology from the QS gets factored into Master Edition, then this clarification is necessary. It’s a maximum of +10 from any source.
Well it is balanced in a way of : combat is super deadly and you can die instantly, always. 
What you are basically doing is giving +2 HP, per 1 CON. Which is actually pretty good and fair. I might just do that 
Also I have just thought of super cool armor hack. Something that adds armor soak ( points breaking ) similar to Black Hack. But still heeps AC of ICRPG ( D&D ). ANd does this without too much of complex rules and calculations.
So it goes like this:
- Each time you are hit. You can instead choose to lose 1 armor point and negate the damage.
- The lost armor point is reduced from your armor. Making it lose 1 AC per 1 Armor point lost
- Armor can only be repaired in camp, and requires tools and roll for each point lost. If roll is failed that point is lost permanently.
- This will add another very interesting strategic choice, but at great cost ( especially if armor was enchanted or expensive )
I see what you are saying but disagree. Your ability to parry and your footwork and all that Dexy stuff is going to keep you from getting hit in combat.
Also, I would never have a gerblin go solo against an armored combatant anyway.
That’s a GMing thing, not a mechanical issue.
In the specific case of mobs, the gerblins attacking the same target share one roll result. A hit from a gerblin is damage=1d6+n where n=# of gerblins. In other words, 4 gerblins do 1d6+4 damage.
A couple of dozen gerblins can really mess up a party that way.
That’s nice! Armor works like a resource and I totally dig that! You’re basically extending that “break shield negate damage” mechanic for all armor and I dig it, specially since it lets players strategize about it.
Like I said before, I’m not currently using monsters to-hit rolls (so AC makes little sense in my games) BUT I’ll try to test this somehow because I just liked it a lot haha.
Hehe. If we keep up coming with these cooperative thinking ideas, we may just accidentally design pretty awesome RPG system
I am enjoying this “banter”? “mental sparing”? whatever you want to call it. I love to see other peoples interpretations and hacks of rules.
I do want to make a clarification or two. It seems many comments i made were not completely understood, but thats ok.
I will say this… Tabletop RPGs are on a spectrum… On the right you have “extreme realism” (this is not good because to achieve it you sacrifice a lot. The game bogs down and is overly complex) and on the left, the other extreme, is “cartoonish unrealism” . Most gaming systems are in the middle. I am not sure what everyone else’s motivation for making hacks is, but mine is to move the bar closer to the right but not too far. I want the game to NOT have situations that seem obviously ridiculous.
example - If i had a weapon (lets say a club) and i attacked a 17th century samurai who has a katana and only wearing a silk kimono, what are my chances to hit him? answer: probably zero. According to DND he has a AC of 10 (or slightly better with DEX). So… why is it unlikely for me to hit him? His weapon skill, training and experience. To get even even close would probably be instant death for me. This is why i like ICRPG 2e idea of putting points into Defense. This could account for skill in footwork and parrying. Hankerin’s idea can aleviate some of this but i just think it needs more. True fighters don’t get enough respect in DnD and ironically it is the only class that Gary Gygax even liked.
Of course, this is all in how i see things, my opinion, and we all know what they say about opinions…
And finally, all discussion/debate of rules and hacks need to be tempered by the most important truth …If everyone at your gaming table is treated fairly and all are having a good time…the rules are good as is.
That’s great to hear. I have house ruled it, but sometimes it’s nice to have something to point to when making the case.
That’s a really great point I keep forgetting to use. In the classroom we have one kid who’s a textbook example of a min/maxer, I will be using this from now on. Thanks for the reminder.
Blood Snow armor, is basically version Black Hack armor. But in Black Hack player rolls defense ( what would be translated to ICRPG rolling dex or con vs target ), which makes more sense than enemy rolling vs its own target.
Anyway. My idea combines best of two worlds. You get to keep AC, and armor soaks damage.
I agree with you. You can have AC and Armor Soak as long as either or both are not to the extreme.
If an opponent cannot hit you, there is no danger and thus no fun. If a target can hit you and hardly ever do damage, there is no danger and thus no fun.
If you are not careful you can implement rule hacks that create this…
example stuff from above. Nimlouth talks about armor soak from 0 to 10-- using armored dwarf as a 8. RPG geek talks about gerblins attacking as a mob with an equation of 1d6 = n with n being the number of gerblins. ( 4 gerblins attacking as one = damage of 1d6 + 4.)
If you had both these rules, the 4 gerblins could be swarmed all over the dwarf stabbing like wild animals at any crease in the armor they could find… and if they hit ( and IF ONLY ), assume the gerblins rolled a 6 (max damage resulting in 10 damage). This is the only roll that would result in more than 1 hp of damage, and only 2 at that)
this feels like some kind of video game “god mode or cheat code” or something. If that’s you thing, ok. Its just doesnt feel right to me.
I like the spectrum thingie, but I kinda see it more like the old GNS triangle theory. ICRPG CORE for example sits really comfy on the far side of the Gamist spectrum, while games like Rune Quest are almost purely Simulationist and PbtA games are a blend of Gamist and Narrativist.
I would, just for the sake of discussion on this, give that 17th century samurai a Kensai Monk class with some levels to acomodate for the fact that it’s supposed to be a “trained fighter” and not a peasant with a sword (So his AC would certainly go up to something similar to a person wearing chainmail). BUT, that’s the old trap discussion of “which D&D class is gandalf!? 
” xD
the 4 gerblins could be swarmed all over the dwarf stabbing like wild animals at any crease in the armor they could find… this feels like some kind of video game “god mode or cheat code” or something. If that’s you thing, ok. Its just doesnt feel right to me.
Again, picture a bunch of soldiers shooting a tank with small arms, now replace the tank with an iron-clad dwarf and then a bunch of soldiers with a bunch of green little bugers ha.
Like I said before, if we try to pursue our house rule design with a simulationist mindset, we’ll never be happy with it. I think it’s way more important to design a rule to be “fun” or even “fast/easy” rather than “realistic”, at least in an ICRPG hacking context.
Also, another thing I kinda said before, I imagine a bunch of gerblins swarming a dwarf not only engaging in melee waiting for the hammer to crush them, bur rather trying to shove him down and pull his helm off, blowing dust on his eyes, entangling him with a rope, etc. There are a lot more fictional possibilities in combat than just simply attack rolls!
Dang it! sorry if I’m just repeating myself here…
Holy Crap Nimlouth, did i just agree with MOST of what you said?
but…your Kensai example above. I am going to insist that a trained fighter (and a samurai would be one) is at least partially protected by virtue of his weapon and training, aside from armor and any “nimbleness” he may have. This is why i like Hankerin’s point system where you can put points in Defense.
Of course the very fact that you have an AC of 10 with just clothes on probably implies all that i am suggesting to begin with.
Dang these elusive DnD terms!