Quote from Third_Sundering >>

I think it's just easiest to assume that a Helmet is a part of any set of Heavy or Medium Armor. If you take it off as an action, that's a -1 to the AC that the armor provides. 

 Even light armor likely includes at leasr a coif and skullcap.

Quote from IamSposta >>

Quote from Third_Sundering >>

I think it's just easiest to assume that a Helmet is a part of any set of Heavy or Medium Armor. If you take it off as an action, that's a -1 to the AC that the armor provides. 

 Even light armor likely includes at least a coif and skullcap.

I think they're common, but probably wouldn't require a player to use one. The same rule could apply, though. 

Quote from IamSposta >>

 Even light armor likely includes at leasr a coif and skullcap.

 alls my gnome druid got with his leather armor was a beanie.

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

I think a lot of the problem here is not so much the fact that the D&D 5e armor system sucks (it does, a lot, but that's not the problem here), but rather the fact that D&D traditionally handles very low-level gameplay EXTREMELY poorly.

A first-level wizard is not likely to avoid a simple goblin striking once.  Wizards don't wear armor and generally have middling-at-best Dexterity - there aren't many attack rolls that don't hit a first-level wizard.  A single goblin can have a comfortable 80+% chance to strike a first-level wizard in combat, and if that goblin does make that hit?  There's a very good chance the wizard goes down from that one, single hit.  One goblin hits the wizard one single time, which the goblin is almost guaranteed to do?  And boom - wizard down, wizard dead next turn, roll new character time.

The fragility of first-level PCs, especially lightly armored ones, is infamous, legendary, and has spawned countless terrible memes.  A first-level fighter in scale armor takes gobbo hits less often...but he still only takes maybe two hits tops before he's also on the ground and dead next turn.  Some stories love that, the idea that your character is nothing special and can be extinguished by a single errant blade stroke without any chance to do anything about it just like the helpless villagers you're striving so hard and so pointlessly to protect.  Some stories...don't.  But in either case, armor is a finicky and unreliable defense that doesn't really protect you for snot.  The way D&D characters gain resilience is not by becoming difficult to harm, it's by becoming able to absorb a ludicrous amount of harm without...well, harm.  And that requires you to gain a ****billion HP, which you only do by leveling up.

The whole system feels weird and unnatural when you really think about it, and it means that first and second-level gameplay just doesn't really work.  The DM has to either handwave it or fudge pretty much every roll they make to ensure their party actually lives to level 3, where the game starts making some faint degree of sense again.

 So true. And, because I CAN'T fudge dice in PBP, as far as I know, I'm kind of stuck making homebrew rules to assist player survival without making it seem like I'm giving them training wheels even though frankly, it's pure luck if most players actually reach level 3 unless they're XCOMing it and crawling along as a little turtle group luring in enemies one at a time to then circle kick to death.

It really does depend on what your players think is fun, I suppose, but I think most people would rather largely play by the rules and not KNOW each and every monster they face has been watered down by the DM from their base rule form, and the dice roller kind of exposes that, so the only other solution is to homebrew safeguards for low-level players that at least give them a chance at living through their first encounters unless you want to just insult them by having them fight rats and bugs and other CR 0 monsters until level 2. Yeah, that totally doesn't encourage murderhoboing.

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

A first-level wizard is not likely to avoid a simple goblin striking once.  Wizards don't wear armor and generally have middling-at-best Dexterity - there aren't many attack rolls that don't hit a first-level wizard.  A single goblin can ...

 No joke. First combat die roll in the campaign and I roll a crit on the wizard, max damage, dead wizard. 

But it was his first time playing so I just said he was unconscious.

Quote from KinaJardine >>

In fact, let me show you just how brutal dice-as-is can be when the DM doesn't have the option to fudge rolls in the player's favor:

Simulation (round 1):

I never fudge rolls at my table. How it is, is how it is. I've done this since forever and have never had a problem with it. I changed the end result once (shown above) because doing otherwise would have been a dick move.

Your situations are incorrect the PC had two 15s and you called them as miss.

In addition 2 goblins against a lvl 1 Fighter is not a fair fight.

Oh whoops. Still, it probably wouldn't have mattered. That fighter likely would have still died in the first simulation by not doing enough damage to kill in one hit regardless except for the crit. The point still stands: too many monsters have way overblown attack modifiers.

I remember a time when 2 goblins would be a simple matter because back then, goblins would need to roll at least 15 on an average level 1 thief with leather armour to land a single hit that would do 1D4 damage only and only HAD 1-4 HP. I mean, why the HELL does a friggin BADGER get +2 to hit?? WHY? IT HAS 4 STR. WHY IS IT EVEN WORTH ANY XP? I mean, yeah, there's a balance to strike between feeling like heroes and having to roll dice over and over because the basic *****es are TOO basic and to create challenge, you have to send an entire schoolbus of them at the players.

So then there's 5e and it's right there in the description for the little bastards. They are -small- and -weak-. So MAKE THEM SMALL AND WEAK, but nah, 5e doesn't want people thinking about 4e in fact it never happened SHUT UP IT WENT 2nd, 3.5, PATHFINDER AND 5th! NOTHING HAPPENED INBETWEEN!

But, they have almost ALL the basic *****es hitting like they have 18 STR, for crying out loud. Certainly if someone PLAYS a goblin, THEY don't start out with such advantages, so I call BS, especially when you see their stats. It makes the players feel weak and useless and certainly the ones I've had don't enjoy feeling like they're fragile little waifs able to be toppled by the faintest breeze... and this isn't even speaking as someone who gets to be a player very often. The dice are so often brutal and the odds favor the monsters unless you feed single enemies to the party to be swarmed and stomped and it's not a good feeling for anyone.

I'm just trying to strike a balance for my players between being fair AND keeping up tension without turning them into circle booters. It's just not a good look.

The answer is to stop starting a D&D campaign at level 1.

Level 1 makes no damn sense.  Level 2 is hardly better.  Level 3 is where the game starts snapping into sense again, and frankly there's a good argument to be made for starting at level 5 and simply handwaving the baby-steps drudgery if you're not the sort of gaming group that enjoys the whole "rags to riches" thing.  

Either that or change the starting HP formula.  I tend to favor Con score plus Hit Die; not Con mod plus Hit Die.  The latter is not really useful, while the former will give most (most, mind) level 1 characters bulk roughly equivalent to a level 3 character.  And if your level 1 wizard rolled a 6 and puts it into Con to end up with piss-poor HP anyways, well?  That was his choice, he can live with it.

I start campaigns at level 3 and grant an extra hit dice dependent of your race (d6 for small races and aarakocra, d8 for human-ish races, d10 for dwarves, bugbears, firbolg, and other tall races). 

This is an unnecessary detail, ideally even weapons would increase AC, because defending with a weapon is way safer than unarmed, but a TTRPG has a burden of simplicity to maintain to be playable, so armor is a catch all.

This is beside the point that dexterity and mobility are a part of defense, both in the game and in reality, most real warriors only wore full helms with effective face coverings in larger battles and to defend against arrow volleys. In the small skirmishes and duels of an adventurer, perception increases your reactiveness enough to be just as defensive as covering your face. In a fantasy setting where dodging a dragons claw is more important than reducing head damage from a dragons claw for practical defense, there's a very strong case for superior visibility. 

Even a completely open helm with no visual or audio impairment can create fatigue and discomfort, and decrease stealth, in an exploration capacity, going around fully armored all the time would be less practical than it sounds. 

In a more automated system like a video game, where complex systems account for tons of details while maintaining operational ease, it might be novel and immersive to interact with your equipment in detail. You could string and unstring your bow during long periods of ease, don and doff armor in parts as appropriate, and account for the defensive benefits of each item and choice with great detail. But a game that's designed to be reduced to paper and memory should not have extraneous details that don't contribute enough to the gameplay to merit allocating time and attention to more mechanics. 

Maybe you rule in your game that your Fabio Paladin keeps his helmet on during combat because his protection is essential, but even if it's a priority to your immersion, it still doesn't meet the burden of significance to alter the gameplay. The bounded accuracy of the game is designed to keep hit and miss rates practical with account to party level vs CR. Arbitrarily altering AC to recognize equipment immersion dramatically alters subtle balance qualities in the game.

It's better to appreciate the subtle nuances of equipment feats and flavor them as characters mastering the details of their armor rather than follow these rabbit holes. None of these characters are natural, not just the mages, but the warriors too. They run 30 feet and swing up to 4 times at a dragon in 6 seconds while simultaneously fencing to defend themselves from foes attacks in the same time frame. There's a great deal of superhuman behavior in even the mundane PCs, so asserting that the helmet would always be used and always be better is a reductive fallacy. 

The whole thread started because I was trying to think of ways I could add some survivability to low-level players. I'm well aware of the mechanics behind assuming that helmets are included in suits of armour. Consider too, how many special items players acquire that they just would rather have the DM assume they put on when in a dangerous situation, hats, gloves, belts, headbands, etc. Their whole wardrobe could very well have special effects, so don't give me that crap about 'operational ease'.

It's not to add realistic immersion, anyway. That was never the intention. The intention was to add a sensible way for a character to add just a little defense so they don't get insta-killed by a creature that has no place downing a PC in the early going.

The simple fact is, a helmet does a lot to keep your brains on the inside, so it seemed like common sense that a PC could equip one for just a little more protection separate from the armour because it would be a cheap upgrade that any class could use, much like a shield.

As others have pointed out, however, that's not the problem. The problem is 5e's utterly abysmal low-level balance. In order for level 1's to survive their first encounter, they either need to  be fighting small animals until they get up enough XP to reach level 2, gang up like a bunch of angry 5th graders on a single foe, or have a higher-level babysitter along. In a game where you're supposed to be able to do anything, that's incredibly restrictive, and because I DM games that are PBP, I can't fudge die rolls. I don't have a DM screen to keep my players from realizing they all should have died to 2 kobolds with ridiculously overblown bonuses to hit and damage.

It's actually not that hard, as the DM, you can just allow them 1 tier superior grade of armor, subtract 1 accuracy from foes, or just lower foes HP.

It's natural that the first level of the game experiences the lowest level of combat superiority, with opportunities to struggle and reflect back on your progress as you surpass once harrowing challenges which are now trivial. Many early encounters naturally involve a great deal of DM discretion on how the foes will behave tactically, and whether they will kill or capture or negotiate. But if you want to reinvent the wheel rather than use the tools already in the DMs toolkit, suit yourself. There's extensive videos on managing difficulty and determining threat if you'd rather use Perception rather than hardening your head though. 

That'd be a simple matter if I didn't have some players who are just a little sensitive to the idea that they're being babied. In PBP, all rolls can be moused over and players can SEE if I've lowered monster stats or made things easier for them.

I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel because I WANT to. I'm trying to be considerate to the preferences of my players without allowing them to be killed because there's no way to spoof die rolls here.

There's a feature that SAYS it fudges dice rolls, but either I'm using it wrong or I don't understand the function of it.

Like, here, I'm using the dice roller function dF. It's SUPPOSED to fudge dice rolls.

1

But you can see in the mouse over, it's clear it's not an actual roll. It's supposed to, I think, return a value of 1 or -1 either to spoof a botch roll or add a hidden negative value. I've GOT to be using it wrong. "fudge dice" is a widely used term and it's right there in the description.