What if...armor granted HP?

[ckafrica]

ck,

I think the problem is that a chart is needed at all.

I don't want charts in my games if at all possible. I want my games to have rules that are instantly understood, not have the game delayed by a new rule.

That's why the Tome stuff worked guys; it wasn't stuff that needed to be referred to all the time. The game's rules should make play easy, not delay it.

I can 1/2, 1/4, 1/5, 1/8, 1/10 calculations in my head so no its not needed just as having your possible damage situations isn't needed. But it does make the game run faster.

Having to do adding and subtracting and multiplying is challenging for some (well one) of the guys I play with even before they've had a few beers. We needed to print out reference sheets so he knew what were full/standard/move and free actions and work out what all his attack iterations were so they had it there in front of him.

This chart is about as simple as charts get for reading. How much difficulty is
DM: You take 27 damage
PC: OK so with my DR of 1/4 that is (scrolls finger down to 28 damage and over to 1/4 DR) down to 20.
DM: cool

Compared to

PC: I hit with a critical on my sneak attack with a scythe! So my damage is (2d4 + (3*1.5)) x4 + 3d6 sneak + 1d6 cold ... wait is cold before or after the multiplier?

Sure I don't want every action taken to require its own separate table but having a simple flow chart to calculate the damage of DR for you is hardly a complicating factor for the game.

I mean we're not talking about rolemaster "you need a separate chart for each weapon" kind of thing. It's giving your player who can't be bothered to do math in his head a calculator...only faster

[Grek]

So one would run two hp pools (or 3, if one has replacement armor)? Sounds a bit complicated for my taste. What about bypassing armor? or elemental damage?

Yeah, 2 hp pools. I don't think it's too complicated. You just subtract damage from armor, then subtract anything leftover from health. With armour bypassing attacks, subtract directly from health, ignore armour. It only adds one line for your armor pool and maybe one line to your equipment saying "1 spare armor, 20/20" If you have armour get repaired after battles or add in the armor version of a wand of cure light wounds, you don't even need that.

[cthulhu]

Why not have armor add temp hitpoints starting at 0 that is restored by 1 hours resting. Or between scenes. or whatever?

That enables 1 hp pool, prevents the 'wardrobe' problem, and gives warriors a big boost.

[Grek]

That works fine too, if you don't want any armour ignoring attacks.