I have an idea. I would like your thoughts on it

#1

Instead of armor is what you need to be hit a person. And whatever damage comes your way is that full amount. I want to change it to room target plus Dex decides if you get hit. And what I would like to use WarpShell Tanks milestone “Force Shield Module.” But instead, if you have 3 points into armor that is what you ignore or less in damage. And if there is anything left you take in damage. The last episode I saw of the Mandalorian, & from the Tank in warpshell inspired the idea.

#2

Not that I am one to talk, but your Explanation has me confused.

Room target is for the PCs to hit or successfully affect anything in a room for effort.

If I read it correctly; You are describing TN + dex to be hit?..doubling the value of dex. And making the PCs harder to hit as the GM increases TN.

It’s doable, but you are breaking a few gauges in the core mechanics, resulting in hard fixes, or unforeseen results.

Treating armor as “threshold armor” is fairly easy to do as well, but the shield class will almost never take damage. (Assuming they have 6~7 armor starting…but if min/maxed can be 10 or 12) so for a shield to take damage, the enemy is doing enough damage to One shot any other character.

There are many methods to do this, but you need to take more into account. Then adding Dex to TN.

Armor can be 1 for light, 3 for medium, 4 for heavy. Maxed. And the user needs an Str of that bonus to use.

Or you can add a derived stat called To Hit. And that is what the GM needs to roll to hit that PC. TH can be derived from dex/2, really small size, shield.

Again there are a million ways to do it. But using TN derived when I want 18 for my ethereal demons. My ethereal demons will never hit the archer, cause the archer has a dex of 5 and TN +5 is 23.

#3

I agree with @Paxx that using tn+dex is a poor fit for most cases.

I use armour as “damage reduction” and a separate value for “difficulty to hit”. This works for my campaign but like paxx says, creates problems for damage output levels that I balance through other rules. So it’s very doable, but has consequences for other rules as well.

#4

I think the OP is saying make a saving throw with your DEX stat against the room target. If you are hit (fail to save) you ignore damage equal to your armor bonus.

I mean, sure. You can do that. You just have to know what you are giving up in exchange for what you are gaining. As I have explained several times here, I don’t like saving throws all the time and confining myself to only one tool; I use a mix of enemies rolling and saving throws to challenge players, depending on what I am trying to accomplish. But, play your own way.

As for ignoring damage, you can easily do that without a Dex save. As an alternative, you can have the enemies roll against the room target too and then employ the damage ignoring idea you came up with. Again, just know what you are giving up by switching to this method.

#5

Your almost 100% correct. The target plus Dex is the number that is needed to get hit for the heroes. Because we are just a little bite better then everybody else. What the points you put into armor does is soak up what damage you would have taken. For an example you have have 4 points in armor. They role dame and get a 5. That would mean you would take 1 point of damage.

#6

Wait. The DM has to meet or beat the room target plus the character’s Dex bonus to hit a character? That’s crazy talk. Lol.

But, as I said, play that way if you want. Just know that you’re going to have a harder time challenging players as a DM. The monsters will miss. A lot. So, as long as you’re cool with giving that up, rock on.

#7

So you come upto a giant and the target is 16.
Suddenly because the giant is deadly and difficult the player character are harder to kill. The giant might need 16+3 as an example to hit a character and does magic damage for 7hp, but because the character has heaps of armour he does 2 hp.

That doesn’t make much sense.
What would make slighlt more sense is that
Monsters need to match or exceed 10+dex that way heroes don’t magically get stronger when a difficult situation arises.

#8

So, if I am an evil mastermind bent on destroying your party, and have studied the abilities of each member, it would be…nuke the site from orbit.

Or overwhelm with really easy enemies, and really powerful weapons.
Room=TN 5
Enemies have 10 hp, and explosive vests for 9d6 damage when hit in melee or whenever they decide.

Or send in the imperial courtiers Embarrassing them to death…save vs charisma or take d4+19…

You are taking away the GMs flexibility to create challenges through combat as described. Falling or rolling 1s is more dangerous than elite strike forces.

Soooo…why roll to hit as the GM?

#9

Right. But if you’re playing that way, you might as well just use the Armor bonus.

From there, another option is to play like Blood and Snow. Monsters roll against the room target and Armor soaks damage. That might give the effect the OP is seeking without making the game get weird.

#10

I agree with the other responses in this post. You may have some unintended balance issues by pursuing this structural change. I think one of the most significant issues would be making the characters way too powerful and ultimately would make the game feel unchallenging and boring. Dexterity would suddenly be one of the most significant stats, I think you may find players building character’s around DEX. With a 6 point build why not dump all points into DEX giving a +6 armor bonus? With a room target of an easy 10 you are still at 16 to be hit not including LOOT, ramp up the room target to 13-14 and you have a ridiculously hard to hit a character. Adding armor value that negates damage on top of increased “to hit” would cause a character to very likely survive massive attacks straight out of the gates. A change like this may force the ramping up of the strengths of adversaries to balance things out, that in turn would lengthen combat time considerably.

I think it’s good to work through ideas and try new things, I totally support and encourage finding new tweaks. However, I think a question needs to be asked about what outcome are you after if you were to make this change.

#11

For sure. It’s already good for sneaking, hiding, saving throws, and ranged attacks.

#12

I thank you for you impute it helped a lot. And it made me think about it a lot. You are awesome for helping me have things to think about. And you have somewhat changed my way of thinking. This was very helpful.

#13

I think you are 100% spot on, but I would change emphasis. Or break It down into manageable bites.

  1. What outcome are you after?

  2. Will this change create that outcome?

  3. What other changes does this change cause? Do the changes fit with #1, if not is there another corrective action?

Repeat as needed until everything fits with the original #1 and try to calculate if it is worth writing up, and getting used to?

#14

What I am now think what would best work is to keep what it take to get hit that same way. So if you put 3 points into armor. They need a 13 to hit you. But that I think would work is. That after you get hit. Those 3 points act as soak and deduce the damage by 3.

#15
  1. What outcome are you after?

To make having armor worth more then an AC to hit.

  1. Will this change create that outcome?

It will help to make the survivability of the heroes to be longer.

  1. What other changes does this change cause? Do the changes fit with #1, if not is there another corrective action

One change I could see is more people are thinking more of where they put there points then in just a few areas

#16

You may find that using armor points to soak damage may negate more damage than anticipated and may be overpowered, especially when considering the D6 used for most standard weapons. This will take some testing I think, and perhaps some capping of the armor stat allocation. I know this is an extreme case but with a 6 point build I can throw 6 points into armor for a +6 giving me a 16 armor and soaking enough damage to never take damage from a normal weapon (or fists using D4), even energy weapons or magic would be hard pressed to do any damage at all (only doing 1-2 damage with a roll of 7-8).

Just a thought here but what about using the allocated armor stat as a commodity. You can spend amor points to negate a hit or soak damage but once they are spent they are lost (until more armor is acquired). I have no idea if this is a good idea or if it would even work but it just popped into my head.

You had mentioned increasing the survivability of the characters, perhaps this can be done without changing the AC structure. A few random ideas:

  1. Reduce the adversaries effort rolls by one step (weapons do 1D4, etc.)

  2. Give starting characters two hearts instead of one

  3. Make the starting armor value higher than ten (perhaps 12-13?)

  4. Reduce adversary HP/hearts

  5. Make recovery of HP slightly easier during combat (maybe a HARD roll vs room target number?)

  6. Pull your punches when doing damage to characters (HP reduction on the fly by DM)

  7. Use set damage values when adversaries do damage (ie instead of rolling they simply do 2 HP damage)

#17

Well I do not see any major problems. the next step is to play test it. See what the results are. maybe we might give a stun where the hero can not ask for a round, or is knocked down. So instead of acting the next round he has to spend it getting up.

#18

Well, good luck with the testing, let us know how it works out!