"Lesser Armor" Not Just Less Useful?

[dither]

As to soaking damage, make sure it counts against ALL damage. It might not be realistic for it to absorb a metaphysical impact, or take the edge off lightning, but it does help keep armor useful.

+1.

[RobbyPants]

What's your argument/support/reasoning for armor soaking damage per hit as opposed to per round?

I suppose a lot of this game is an abstraction, but something about having it work a bit, then stop for five seconds, then start working again rubs me the wrong way.  I suppose what I said is no different than the armor-to-DR variant with your added crit soaking.

Also, it has to do with the strength of armor as a whole.  If you compare and contrast the standard system to the UA-DR system, you end up with the latter coming out ahead at low levels (when you take many low-damage hits), but by high levels the original system comes out ahead (where you get hit a lot harder).  Basically, as expected damage increases with level, it will out pace the DR you get from armor.  At this point, having a boost to simply not get hit is superior.

So, my point with all of this is if you make armor only work per round instead of per hit, it becomes less useful even faster.

[RobbyPants]

As to soaking damage, make sure it counts against ALL damage. It might not be realistic for it to absorb a metaphysical impact, or take the edge off lightning, but it does help keep armor useful.

Well, it can be a pain to track these thing separately, but you might want to pick and choose per armor type.  I don't see metal armor as protecting you from a lightning bolt much.  I could see non-metal armor doing so, though.  Of course, I'm not sure any player or DM wants to track damage types per armor on some table for a bit of added realism...

[veekie]

As to soaking damage, make sure it counts against ALL damage. It might not be realistic for it to absorb a metaphysical impact, or take the edge off lightning, but it does help keep armor useful.

Well, it can be a pain to track these thing separately, but you might want to pick and choose per armor type.  I don't see metal armor as protecting you from a lightning bolt much.  I could see non-metal armor doing so, though.  Of course, I'm not sure any player or DM wants to track damage types per armor on some table for a bit of added realism...

Well, I do know metal armor does protect you from lightning to some extent, Criss Angel used what was essentially a chainmail suit for his struck by lightning stunt(though he suffered some burns anyway from bad costume design, the suit took the brunt of the shock and grounded it)...

Besides, just give metal armor a save penalty vs electricity, universal damage prevention applies, perhaps, to all magical armors, while mundane armors protect only from mundane damage. Besides, PCs only use ordinary armors during their newbie levels anyway.

[dither]

In the case of "Lightning vs. Metal Armor," I think it makes more sense to make "ignores bonuses from metal armor" a property of the electricity attack than to make "vulnerable to electricity damage" a property of the armor, ne?

[veekie]

Yeah, see Shocking Grasp.

[dither]

Yeah, see Shocking Grasp.

My thoughts exactly.

[RobbyPants]

Makes enough sense.  I actually thought about referencing Shocking Grasp in favor of the concept.  I agree that this would keep the armor side more simple.

[bihlbo]

In my recent efforts to redesign the armor system I approached it as simply getting more AC at the cost of a feat, and treated all the various types of armor as flavor and build options. Cloth, Medium, Heavy, and Plate armors granted a total of +6, +8, +10 and +12 AC respectively, after adding in your Dex bonus. Cloth has no ACP, while of course plate's is high enough that you still won't see many rogues in plate, no matter their proficiencies. Each type of armor has a "+5 Max Dex bonus" and "+2 Max Dex bonus" version, even the plate armor. Spend a feat, get +2 AC. I did the same with shields, making light shield a +2, and heavy shield a +4 shield bonus to AC. This is keeping in line with feats like TWDefense.

Of course, with this a total redesign of automatic armor proficiencies became necessary.

The end result is that if you take an armor proficiency feat, you are gaurenteed to have a better AC bonus (unlike some examples for high-Dex characters) unless your Dex is higher than 23, which I thought was high enough that really, if you're that lithe, you shouldn't need armor.

This concept is by no means as realistic as armor functioning as DR, temporary hit points, or the other ideas presented in this thread. I was going for elegance and simplicity.

Edit: I just wanted to point out, this is the whole thing. There's no arcane spell failure, no speed reduction, no "cheap and crappy" versions of armor in the same tier. Just two versions of each tier of armor, representing a higher ACP and AC bonus than the previous tier.

[Sommunist]

Something one of my DMs did a while back was rolling for defense, as well as attack.  Instead of Armor + Shield + Dex + etc. + 10, you get Armor + Shield + Dex + Etc. + 1d20.  You take a penalty on this roll if you aren't proficient with the armor you're wearing, and max dex bonus applies normally.

If you're using this system, it could be possible to add an Armor Focus feat chain, similar to Weapon Focus, where you select either light, medium heavy, or a specific exotic armor.  However, the bonuses should be greater (keeping with the DnD idea that attack > defense).  Something like:
Armor Focus: +2 bonus on Defense Roll
Armor Specialization: Max Dex bonus on Armor increases by +1, and ACP decreases by -1
Greater Armor Focus: +4 bonus on Defense Roll
Greater Armor Specialization: Max Dex bonus on Armor increases by +2, and ACP decreases by -2

If you decide to do this, consider adding Armor Supremacy and Armor Mastery feats as well.  I don't have the PHB 2 handy, so I can't give approximations right now.

Also, I didn't read the whole topic, so if this has already been suggested, I retract my statement.

[woodenbandman]

A friend whose homebrew system I helped playtest had this thing to do with armor:

Your armor can take a hit for you. It has durability X, and for each point you spend (1/attack), you can reduce 1d6 points of damage. His system worked with much lower damage values than DnD, but it's certainly applicable here.