I have completely removed initiative roll from my game; instead the players themselves can choose how to better optimize an encounter. 

I have also Incorporated an armor reduction system in place of AC. Where a player at 1st level, wearing full Fur Armor will have an armor rating of 16 and have damage reduction of 2. Each set of armor has 8 pieces to it, head, shoulder, chest, hands, wrists, waist, legs, and feet. To calculate a players damage reduction, they would take the armor rating divide by 8 and the resulting answer is their reduction. 

I have also removed ability score roll. Instead all players have a base ability score of 10+race+class. All races and classes have one major stat +2 and one minor stat +1. With this system no player can start with a score below 0 or above 14.

The weapon damage also scales every 4th level. 4th +1 to damage roll, 8th +2 to damage roll, 12th +3 to damage roll, 16th +4 to damage roll, 20th +5 to damage roll. Along with this players must use a weapon to be proficient in them. So if Bob has used a longsword since 1st level and has reached 10th level and decides to switch to a battleaxe, since he is not proficient with the battleaxe, the damage dealt would be 1st level instead of 10th level.

Quote from Generic_Poster >>

I recently used a "breath point" system to track drowning instead of just counting rounds, where 1 breath point equals 1 second of underwater time.  So, for example, a 12 constitution character gets 120 breath points when going underwater.  Breath points are lost in the following ways:

-Time - Every round the character spends underwater uses 6 breath points

-Spell casting with a verbal component - A spell with a casting time of 1 action uses 6 breath points, a bonus action uses 3

-Taking damage - you lose breath points equal to any damage taken 

This worked out pretty well.  It wasn't any more cumbersome than just tracking the number of rounds under water, and took into account things that would make you lose your breath.

 This is a very interesting rule. I'm saving this to try next time my players are in water!

It is an interesting rule. Does the player or the DM track breath points? Does it slow the pace of play to keep track of this during encounters?

Quote from TexasDevin >>

It is an interesting rule. Does the player or the DM track breath points? Does it slow the pace of play to keep track of this during encounters?

I had the players do it, just as they track their own hit points.  It was easier than me keeping track of the number of rounds each player can hold their breath, how many rounds they were underwater, etc.

@genericposter Actually really love the breath point system.
may check to add it to my games.

what i usually did right now, was for some constitution saving throws to hold your breath when getting damaged. been working good.

i think what can be done also could be to calculate rounds based on minutes a player can hold breath and do the same with that instead. same process really, really love this concept.

@Daegroffthevile

How do your monsters optimise their turn then ?
the one thing i hate about team initiatives is how swingy it is. a group of players can just decimate a whole group if they go first and if they just focus fire one after the other. same with monsters if it happens. can you give an exemple of combat from your concept ?

also, the armor system may works for you and your group, but it really isn't for everyone as it is a concept that is, flawed and prooven as such, not to mention it is complicated. the flawed part, why would anyone ever hit anything else then the head ? whats the point of hitting anything else then the head, you just kill way faster that way. that's why the system of reduction and parts itself has always been flawed. exemple of one of my player used to work with such system who said, i swing at his head. rolled with disadvantage even, got a 19 and an 18. still hits the creature. what should i do, just kill outright my creature because the guy wants that to happen. its ludicrous to think that way. and even if you put pressure with hit points still to reduce. its still much faster then fighting the full body. its the same reason why there is no stats diminishing attacks in 5e. because in 3e it was just too easy to hit on constitution instead of hit point. players could just buy poisons for cheap and just hit a dragon constitution. whats 30 consitution compared to 600 hit points.. and in 3e black lotus poison did 3d6 constitution damage. thats a two shot on tiamat right there.

again, i'm curious on how you deal with such flaws. so can you give an exemple of your concept of armor and parts  in combat ?

I will admit that the armor reduction system, as of right now is still being fine tuned and play tested; it was something the players requested, they wanted the armor to mean something more than simply a chance to hit. As of right now I have reduced the number of armor slots to six instead of 8. How this works in battle, at least for now is like so; Say a player is wearing a full set of leather armor which has an armor rating of 12 to it, this 12 is representative of the armors health. The reduction of fur armor at would reduce 2 points. Now lets assume that a monster deals 10 damage to the player. Instead of him taking full 10 damage that player would take only 2 damage to self, but his armor just took 8 dmg. Now since his armor as taking so much damage and is now reduced to only 4 armor rating, his armor now only reduces 1 damage. So lets say he is attacked once again, this time for 8 dmg. He would take 3 dmg to self and his armor would be destroyed completely because it just took 5 dmg to its 4 AR. Monsters have the same system to them, and while it does drag the battles out a little more, it is something everyone wanted. So for now I am simply trying to make this system work properly for both PC's and monsters.

As for the monsters turn in combat. We have actually added 2 additional ability scores to our game. Speed, which deals with how fast a player moves, attacks ect. And agility which dictates that characters ability to dodge an attack. So even if it is the players turn and one of the monsters they are fighting has a better speed modifier they can counter the attack with one of their own, and vice versa. So lets assume that the fighter wishes to attack the goblin. So the fighter would roll D20 + Proficiency+ Speed Modifier and the goblin would do the same aswell. So assuming the fighter gets a 18 and the goblin gets a 16, the fighter was quick enough to land a successful hit on the goblin. Now if it were reversed the goblin would have counter the attack. Now if they both rolled the same their weapons would clash in some fashion or another. Now lets assume that a creature is facing away from an attacker. They will then roll a d20+perception+agility modifier. If they fail they are struck, if they match they barely escape, and if they succeed they turn to block, or parry the attack. So even if it is the players turn, does not always denote that it is the players who will actually get a hit in. The monsters may have enough speed and or agility to counter their attacks with one of their own. My thought for doing this was simple. I don't care who you are, no one is just going to stand their and allow someone to swing at them with a weapon, you are going to do all you can to stop that attack.  I know both of these systems are still a work in progress and as of right now they are both being fine tuned and play tested to better optimize them.

After testing it a bit further I can see why the damage reduction system does not work and why it is flawed. Even if the monsters were hitting me for a ton of damage each hit, until my armor was damaged or broken I would not be taking much damage to my hit points. So now I need to figure out, how I can still allow or the players to different armor types. Because that is one thing they all wanted, the ability to craft their own armor and be able to wear multiple types of armor, to better personalize their character. So if I take it back to the base system 5e has for armor I will need to now utilize a proper way to give the players a good AC for their characters. 

Lol, this is my first time DMing or even homebrewing a game to this extent. so it has all be trial and error, but that is the fun part of it I suppose.

If any of you have a suggesting about how I can utilize this, it would be greatly appreciated 

Quote from Daegroffthevile >>

After testing it a bit further I can see why the damage reduction system does not work and why it is flawed. Even if the monsters were hitting me for a ton of damage each hit, until my armor was damaged or broken I would not be taking much damage to my hit points. So now I need to figure out, how I can still allow or the players to different armor types. Because that is one thing they all wanted, the ability to craft their own armor and be able to wear multiple types of armor, to better personalize their character. So if I take it back to the base system 5e has for armor I will need to now utilize a proper way to give the players a good AC for their characters. 

Lol, this is my first time DMing or even homebrewing a game to this extent. so it has all be trial and error, but that is the fun part of it I suppose.

If any of you have a suggesting about how I can utilize this, it would be greatly appreciated 

My "Fifth Edition Options" book is at work, but I swear there is a system there for armor and damage reduction. 

Quote from Daegroffthevile >>

 

If any of you have a suggesting about how I can utilize this, it would be greatly appreciated 

I'd honestly forget about anything that involves tracking separate pieces of armor, armor HP, or damage reductions.

There's no called shots in 5e so having individual armor pieces if pointless minutiae and not a great fit for a pen and paper game where you have to write your inventory down.

Armor is designed to get hit, and it'll still provide protection even if an attack gets through it unless you're literally hit in the exact same spot, so it's silly to have it break.

The game's damage values assume there's no damage reduction, so trying to balance that is going to be tricky. The only thing in the game that works like that is heavy armor master and that only has a DR of 3 for heavy armor.

I'm not sure what exactly you're looking for, but in general I recommend something that won't involve much bookkeeping or math mid-combat. An easy way to add more depth to armor without bogging things down is having separate AC values for different damage types. For example, you could lower the AC of chainmail vs piercing and bludgeoning, or increase the AC of padded armor vs slashing.

@InquisitiveCoder

Thank you for that. I never really thought about changing the AC value for different armor sets and the like. I will have to try that out and see how it works out for the game. I know they want different armor types, and I would like to do that for them, so I guess I can make it cosmetic.

I have a question about the breath points. Did you translate 12 CON to 120 seconds by multiplying it by 10? Or did you stick with the standard 1 + CON modifier in minutes (which you then translated to seconds)? It works out the same for 12 CON, but 13 or 17 might be different depending on how you figure it.

Quote from TexasDevin >>

I have a question about the breath points. Did you translate 12 CON to 120 seconds by multiplying it by 10? Or did you stick with the standard 1 + CON modifier in minutes (which you then translated to seconds)? It works out the same for 12 CON, but 13 or 17 might be different depending on how you figure it.

 I stuck with the standard 1 + con modifier in minutes, which I then translated to seconds, with the number of seconds being equal to the number of breath points.

I use 3 levels of Cover, instead of the default 2. Total cover is unchanged.

• Partial +4 AC/Dex saves (About half blocked or so, standing behind a short stone wall, through sparse trees.)
• Major +7 AC/Dex saves (Well over half blocked, such as archer firing from a battlement )
• Full +10 AC/Dex saves (You can see the smallest bit of them, hitting this target takes both skill and luck)

And this ties into the another change, armor as damage reduction. The damage reduction is based on how the armor is made and what of. Steel Plate would offer 10 DR, but padded armor only a 2 DR etc.

Trick is, though, with armor as DR, it only really makes sense if 3 outcomes are possible.

1. You hit the target directly and avoid their armor.
2. You hit their armor, apply DR.
3. You miss them entirely.

SO I combine both of these... armor also provides you cover. Mobile, always there... cover. Light armor is Partial cover, Medium Armor is Major cover, and Heavy armor is Full cover. This AC now represents how much harder it is to hit the target in a spot that their armor isn't covering. But how to represent hitting them where their armor is covering, and applying the armor's DR? Well, for that I use the natural d20 roll. If the natural d20 attack roll was the target's Cover AC or below, it hit the armor. Eg Full Plate gives Full Cover (+10 AC) so if they roll a natural 10 or below on the d20 it hits the armor and you apply DR to the damage.

This also allows for 1s rolled against an armored target to face some smashing-delicate-blade-into-steel related mishaps. Sure your spiked hammer did some damage thru the enemy's full plate, but now it is fully wedge in there, etc.

There is more, related to damage types having special interactions... but the 3 Levels of Cover and Armor as DR are a package unit that works well together.

Edit: Oh and yeah, using these rules allows you to determine the result of multiple covers, their ACs don't stack of course, just the highest one is applied to total AC, as is normal for multiple cover. But if a guy in full plate is behind a short wall, for example, you can determine quickly that he has full cover from armor and partial cover from the wall, so if the d20 was a 4 or below it hit the wall, between 5 and 10 hit the armor. In cases of a storm giant throwing spears... if the damage of the attack can completely destroy the wall, treat the walls HP as DR and then have the spear blast thru to hit the armor and apply the armor's DR too, if it still goes thru that then the target takes the remaining damage... and should reconsider who he is making enemies with.

My biggest concern about armor reduction... is that it do not fit against things like magic or characters with awesome dexterity.
exemple... how is that fighter faring against say an opponent that i sa monk with higher armor class without an actual armor ?

i guess my question is... wouldn't those rduction make armor meaningless when you consider the monks, barbarians and wizard mage armor in the context ?

making it reduce damage is a great way to make them better, but it still doesn't make it better for anybody else. on the contrary i think you are making armor too good and in the end undermine other classes and making them seem less good ! so it makes me wonder how you deal with barbarians, monks, wizards, sorcerers and Warlocks.

Idk if armor damage reduction makes it too good, in fact, it is objectively worse against large clumps of damage. Having armor add to AC is already the standard, so having some misses potentially still do damage means armor in a damage reduction variant system is... well, less effective than normal.

Basically it makes it so misses could potentially still deal damage. Not sure why that'd be "armor is too good". The reason you'd weight the AC bonuses even higher than standard rules is to help counterbalance the loss of effectiveness that armor provides in a damage reduction system.

Think about it like this. In standard rules Full Plate gives you an AC of 18 even if your unarmored AC is 10, it is now 18 while wearing full plate. That means an attack of 10 thru 17 is getting 100% damage reduction 100% of the time. That is eight of twenty possible results on the d20 that gives the armor wearer 100% DR.

Compared to a system that gives the armor wearer ten of twenty d20 results that give 10 DR, and you'll notice that overall power doesn't change a whole lot, it just prevents the wearer from suffering a few extra small damage hits but makes them very susceptible to attacks that deal huge damage totals.

That really is the only tradeoff with implementing a armor DR system. Armor protects better against smaller minor attacks and provides less protection against massive damaging hits. But that actually makes sense if your goal is more realistic combat. A regular commoner would have a really, really hard time even injuring a guy in full plate but a giant swinging around a massive oak tree-club could crush a guy in full plate pretty reliably.

@ravnodaus Let's give an exemple... a warrior in full plate has an AC of 18. mechanically anything below 18 do not do damage. sure that seems abusive. but considering the system do not really go high on those unless you start having magic items to compensate, the system is designed so that armor becomes less something as the game goes. so a tarrasque hitting a warrior in full plate and shield has an ac of 20 and the tarrasque as a to hit of 17. so it basically requires a 5 or more to hit. now a fighter with the full plate armor and a DR of say 3. will simply always reduce damage by 3. meaning anything even the tarrasque gigantic attack will do less damage. the problem comes around with constants compared to randomness. the AC system is random. the DR system is constant. the constant is always better because reguardless of outcome, it will do its job. that has been prooven a lot of time with battlemaster fighter compared to champions mix of fighter and barbarian. aka barbarian crit builds. crit builds does a lot of damage, but aren't constant damage. they are random, while battlemaster fighter arer constant damage and thus better as their job is always the same.

the problem in your statement is that a full plate is useless against any hammer kind. because hammers do bludgeoning damage which pass through the armor as if it wasn't there. while piercing damage is uselss against them. that was the goal of full plate to begin with in reality. we wanted to stop swords and arrows from hitting the person and doing harm. but hammers would go through as the impact would go through and still crush the internal organs. you also have to realise that full plates have paddings to help alleviate the comfortability of the fighter inside. meaning full plate isn't as clunky as you think it is. so in all matter of seriousness. if you want armor to be something... your system would look like this...

Full plate = DR 10 versus piercing damage, DR 10 versus Slashing damage, DR 1 versus bludgeoning damage.

now the biggest hurdle you get to is magic. now do you consider force damage like bludgening damage or sare you considering it has its own type ? if it is the later like the real magic system then you must start defining each damage type as their own DR. fire would boil the person down inside because metallic. heat and cold always had adverse effects on a full plate. thus you should start thinking of how they would be affected. cold usually makes the full plate joints works less and thus reduce mobility of the creature. something akin to giving it disadvantage on everything. heat has always caused trouble for the full plate wearer has the full plate is already putting a lot of stress on the body because its a really hot plate after a while. so heat makes them vulnerable to heat stroke. and the less you go in armor types, the less resistance you get overall.

so basing ourself ont he system you really want.... just giivng DR to an armor makes it way too strong compared to real life and in D&D makes it way too strong cause it simply constantly reduce damage with no drawbacks. and you still didn't balance it against those without armor yet. my question hasn't been answered either. how do you compare the fighter full plate versus the barbarian no armor endurance ?

and if you want a real life, as in our history of full plate system.... you have to start giving each and every damage type their own DR and effects. which makes the system a hell of a lot more complex.

I know there is a system out their for DR in 5e, I was reading it earlier. It looked interesting but I am unsure of whether or not it is balanced or anything like that. Basically how the system read was as such. Light armor reduced damage by d4 Medium armor reduced it by d6 and Heavy armor reduced it by d8. This alleviates the constant to DR, but at the same time it is un-realistic. The system is saying that a person wearing say fur armor will have the same chance of reduction as a person wearing leather armor. And that a person wearing chain mail will have the same reduction chance of full plate armor. That to me is greatly under-balanced. No matter what rpg mmorpg or the like there is, there is always a constant. The tank classes, Knight, Warrior do less damage and can take more damage. The DPS classes, Rogue, Fighter do more damage and can take less damage. Caster classes, Cleric, Wizard can do some damage depending on build, but usually can take very little damage. So there is no real balance to a damage reduction system. The tank class will always have higher defense then the DPS or caster classes, and these two will always have a higher damage/healing compared to the tank class.

So my question now is this. Instead of giving the Knights or Warriors a higher strength for melee damage, do we instead give them a higher AC? But that will not work, because AC as of right now is based on what? How hard it is to hit your character? So do we unbalance the system and give the tanks a constant DR and give the other two types higher AC's?

As for magic reduction to a system. Can you not simple add in an enchanting craft or something of the sort? Something that at later levels will grant the player the ability to give their character say a -3 to fire damage or full resistance to fire damage? To me it just seems like there are far to many variables to consider when crafting a home made armor system for the game. In all honesty, you would basically have to re-work everything in the game and play test it all. There are far to many variables to consider when you are doing something as such. I have been working on a system with DR for over 2 years now, and I have realized that using the 5e system with the addition of DR does not work. I have to consider magic resistance, damage types, what armor is vulnerable/resistant to what. In my experience with this it is either leave the system as is or completely scrap the 5e system and make your own. Because 5e as is does not work for damage reduction. 

Quote from DnDPaladin>>

@ravnodaus Let's give an exemple... a warrior in full plate has an AC of 18. mechanically anything below 18 do not do damage. sure that seems abusive. but considering the system do not really go high on those unless you start having magic items to compensate, the system is designed so that armor becomes less something as the game goes. so a tarrasque hitting a warrior in full plate and shield has an ac of 20 and the tarrasque as a to hit of 17. so it basically requires a 5 or more to hit. now a fighter with the full plate armor and a DR of say 3. will simply always reduce damage by 3. meaning anything even the tarrasque gigantic attack will do less damage. the problem comes around with constants compared to randomness. the AC system is random. the DR system is constant. the constant is always better because reguardless of outcome, it will do its job. that has been prooven a lot of time with battlemaster fighter compared to champions mix of fighter and barbarian. aka barbarian crit builds. crit builds does a lot of damage, but aren't constant damage. they are random, while battlemaster fighter arer constant damage and thus better as their job is always the same.

the problem in your statement is that a full plate is useless against any hammer kind. because hammers do bludgeoning damage which pass through the armor as if it wasn't there. while piercing damage is uselss against them. that was the goal of full plate to begin with in reality. we wanted to stop swords and arrows from hitting the person and doing harm. but hammers would go through as the impact would go through and still crush the internal organs. you also have to realise that full plates have paddings to help alleviate the comfortability of the fighter inside. meaning full plate isn't as clunky as you think it is. so in all matter of seriousness. if you want armor to be something... your system would look like this...

Full plate = DR 10 versus piercing damage, DR 10 versus Slashing damage, DR 1 versus bludgeoning damage.

now the biggest hurdle you get to is magic. now do you consider force damage like bludgening damage or sare you considering it has its own type ? if it is the later like the real magic system then you must start defining each damage type as their own DR. fire would boil the person down inside because metallic. heat and cold always had adverse effects on a full plate. thus you should start thinking of how they would be affected. cold usually makes the full plate joints works less and thus reduce mobility of the creature. something akin to giving it disadvantage on everything. heat has always caused trouble for the full plate wearer has the full plate is already putting a lot of stress on the body because its a really hot plate after a while. so heat makes them vulnerable to heat stroke. and the less you go in armor types, the less resistance you get overall.

so basing ourself ont he system you really want.... just giivng DR to an armor makes it way too strong compared to real life and in D&D makes it way too strong cause it simply constantly reduce damage with no drawbacks. and you still didn't balance it against those without armor yet. my question hasn't been answered either. how do you compare the fighter full plate versus the barbarian no armor endurance ?

 You're repeating this idea you have that armor having DR makes it too strong but still ignoring how it'd work and that it actually makes armor less strong. Even in your own example...

Normal rules: The Tarrasque would hit with a 4+ or miss entirely 1-3. That's 85% hit chance.

Armor w/ DR (And my altered AC values): The Tarrasque would hit with a 6+ or hit minus DR 1-5. That's 100% hit chance, 25% of which get 10 DR.

The Tarrasque's average damage per hit is ~30, and he attacks 5 times.

So against a normal rules Fullplate/shield bro he does 127 damage per round.

Against a DR rules Fullplate/shield bro he does 137 damage per round.

As I said, the DR armor rules shift the balance so that massive hitting creatures are better against armor wearers but smaller grazing hits are less effective. In the case of the Tarrasque, the normal rules guy is taking 10 damage per round less than the DR armor rules guy.

and if you want a real life, as in our history of full plate system.... you have to start giving each and every damage type their own DR and effects. which makes the system a hell of a lot more complex.

I do have something that I use for damage types, like I said in my first post... but it isn't strictly required for the armor as DR rules to work, else I would have posted those too. It does add more complexity. But again, isn't required to make armor as DR work.

So again... armor as DR, done right, just makes it so some of the misses in the normal rules are actually not misses, they're hits, but they're hits to the armor, and so have DR. Nothing about that makes armor as DR stronger.

Ok when you start looking at professional weapon masters versus full plates on the net... Youll get what i mean...

But for the record...

A helmet wouldnt stop your concussion... I do agree it stops a bit of it. But bludgeoning damage is and as always been better.

Why.... Piercing and slashing damage have to pass by surface tension. Bludgeoning do not. It is more like a wave that goes through. When you get what surface tension is. You realise what im talking about.

If i slash you with a sword and then smash you with a hammer... Youll feel the hammer. The sword much less.

As for your system... So basically you are getting hit regardless and you either take damage or not. Which is ridiculous still... If you want to be precise then you have to calculate not just armor then...

Just like d&d does it from the get go...

10 and lower is him missing you because of skills.

10 to armor bonus. Is your armor taking it.

Armor bonus to dex bonus is you dodging it.

Shield bonus is you putting a shield in front.

Say a fighter in medium armor with shield and a dex of 14...

10 (base) + 4 (armor) + 2 (dex) + 2 (shield) = 18 ac

On a hit of 10 and lower.... Completely misses.

13 would hit the armor.

15 would be you dodging or parrying or blocking because of reflexes.

A hit of 17 would hit the shield.

And anything above 18 would just hit you.

So basically you are doing a system only for that armor section.

Honestly its way too complicated for no reasons.