Armour in D&D

I have definitely talked about this before. I'd link it if I was smart.

Anyway, we're talking old D&D 'cos 5th is fussy and I don't know it. I'll assume it's identical.

Things that guys in plate are scared of: Poleaxes, cannon balls, being hit with a club A LOT, loads and loads of arrows, getting pinned down and jabbed in the eye or armpits with a dagger.

Other armours do different things. We could make them all do a unique thing, but this requires knowledge and controversial assumptions (more so than usual). So what kind of common thread does, say, chain have with plate?

Assuming full and unrealistic coverage of the body, they're relatively similar. Swords are bad at both. Both are hoping pointy things don't get lucky. Both don't like getting whacked with large blunt objects very much.



Verisimilitude is a better word than realism. Realism can go do one, I wanna feel it. Feel and real are far apart.

Armour either works or it doesn't.

What if it has a defence profile? Melee weapons are only doing 1-12 damage, baring super strong people.

When you take damage you look at the table. / means no damage. It stops at 12 'cos that's the human peak. When the dragon bites you in half it ignores your tin hat.

Plate
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12


/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/


Chain
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
///
/
//

Breastplate
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
/
/
/////

And so on

3 comments:

  1. The premise is that all armor stops all damage on some rolls and allows all damage on other rolls?

    What’s all this about clubs?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes basically. Clubs are difficult. Their benefit is they stagger and tire a guy in armour but there's no simple way to do that. Unless maybe they always do 1 damage on a blocked hit? Hm. Maybe

      Delete
  2. It made things too slow in the end. Much easier to have a static number against a dynamic one. Basically the same result with half the fuss

    ReplyDelete