I had this idea just now when thinking about how HP and AC are often confusing when you try to visualize what you're describing. For example, in a fight, a hit isn't always you getting stabbed, and a miss isn't always a sword missing you or bouncing off your armor. HP isn't directly tied to your actual health, but in the players handbook is more described as your endurance/stamina in a fight (Matt Coville's Let's Kill a Player video goes into more depth with this at the beginning), and likewise, your AC isn't just how armored you are, but also how good your reflexes are, how skilled at fighting you are, etc.
The main problem I have with the assumptions the standard language of HP and especially AC leads us to, is that it conjures the somewhat ridiculous mental image of two characters just taking turns hitting each other and either missing wildly or lopping off limbs like The Black Knight.
Essentially, AC does not feel dynamic, even when it should be in the case of your swashbuckling DEX characters, AC still feels like a wall around the character rather than an extension of their skill. On a more subjective aside, I personally find the aesthetic of a character just decked out head to toe in plate maille to beva little boring and uninspiring. I like to have a little more say in how my character looks and g-dangit if the impractical but highly stylized outfits aren't the coolest part of any jrpg? People who prefer realism or historical accuracy (whatever that means in a fantasy game, anyway I'm here to escape reality) will probably fight me on this and they have a point, but I'm just spitting ideas for dynamic playstyles here. It's all about options.
So after that rather lengthy intro, the idea: What if it was your skill with a weapon, not armor, that determined your overall AC?
I feel like that way is much more conducive to the idea of characters being dynamic in a fight, being able to describe misses as parties, or hits as tragic missteps that screws up the opponents footing, leaving them wide open to attack, rather than the taking turns bashing approach.
The system of light, medium, and heavy armor can still be applied, where light weapons rely on dex, medium strength, and heavy maybe con, and I haven't decided if it makes sense for polearms with reach to have higher AC for reach, or lower being a trade off for being able to keep enemies at a distance
Heavy weapons could have lower AC's which you could supplement with armor, which i suppose in this system can function similarly to shields, providing AC bonuses and maybe even resistance depending on how many pieces you wear- the lower AC being the tradeoff for higher damage.
Light weapons could maybe stack for dual welding and have generally low ac but still retain their versatility and stealth capabilities.
There'd still be a lot of fiddling to do to make it not just a retread of the existing AC system and still something that works and makes sense, but I like the general idea of it not only for the aesthetic, but it also makes weapons interesting again. 5e's been criticized for having weapons be pretty limited and cookie cutter, but imagine a fighter with multiple weapons being able to change mid fight to switch up their fighting style to be more defensive if the tide turns against them. Different weapons would have different strategic considerations which you might want to use depending on the scenario, giving material classes more versatility, which I often hear as a complaint.
Lemme know what you think, sorry if the writing is a little disjointed but im typing on my phone at work between calls so, meh.
Some of this is already represented by the Dodge action. 5e is all about trying to get the rules simplified and out of the way. If your table is looking for more crunch though, then by all means homebrew something in.
Some of this is already represented by the Dodge. 5e is all about trying to get the rules simplified and out of the way. If your table is looking for more crunch though, then by all means homebrew something in.
Yes and no. Yes dodge is a thing, but it takes a full action to do and doesn't encapsulate all the DeX- based stuff you can do in combat.
For example, if you attack a rogue with a great sword and the attacker doesn't beat their AC, what happened wasn't likely that the rogue's studded leather armor somehow stopped a great sword that still would've fractured their collarbone even if the armor did somehow block it. What probably happened is that, because skill is already kind of baked into AC which is why you add DeX to AC, the rogue probably steps to the side with a flourish and avoids the blade, maybe deflecting it with their rapier in a way that doesn't absorb the energy but redirects it.
That's not the dodge action, but it's rather dynamic action that's already baked into AC as a mechanic. My point about making it weapon oriented and not armor oriented is just because it shifts the focus to what the character is doing in the fight actively rather than passively. I feel like a lot of the inconsistencies regarding what HP and AC really mean comes down to the misunderstanding that a hit is a hit, and that loss of HP translates to a wound, whereas if you watch the Matt Coville video I referenced and read the descriptions of those terms, their actual definitions seem to have very little to do with armor and more to do with skill, and that a mechanical hit doesn't always translate to an in-fiction hit unless the fight is nearing the end and someone's about to die.
I think 5E provides a simple rule set that does a decent job of statistical modeling. It's up to your group, not Matt Coville's, to decide how to abstract dice rolls into in-fiction combat. I don't know that changing the 5E rules would significantly change that. I would also argue that Matt Covile/Critical Role is an example of why the rules don't need to be changed. They use the same rules, but agree on how they are implemented.
If your skill with a weapon replaced your armor, you're just creating a new game that isn't dungeons and dragons.
It's fine to do that, obviously, but splitting Armor into layers of Absorption (the ability to wear heavy armor that soaks the damage), Avoidance (the ability to mitigate damage by simply moving out the way of it) and Adroitness (the ability to use your weapon or shield to block the incoming attack so it doesn't hit as hard) is very reminiscent of World of Warcraft with Block, Dodge and Parry. It works, it has works for decades but it's not as good in a game like DnD because it'd require additional calculations done manually instead of by a computer behind the scenes.
I assume you'd want something like this:
Absorption - Characters reduce the damage from each blow by 1d6+prof bonus naturally. Light armor is an extra 1d6, Medium armor is 1d6+2 and Heavy armor is 1d8+2. Barbarians could gain absorption equal to their rage damage, for example.
Avoidance - Your Armor Class is still represented by 10 + Dexterity just no armor value added to it.
Adroitness - Each weapon has a % chance to negate a hit of a certain value or lower, for example a Dagger has a 30% chance to negate damage values of 6 or less while a Greatsword can negate a damage roll of 18 or greater with a 15% chance.
Is that the sort of thing you want? It'd be far too much complication for most people but if it's what your group wants it'd be workable, sure.
You can sort of make sense of the current attacks and AC like this. (with suitable adjustment for other AC calculations)
Without any armor your AC is 10 + Dex, I would view a character with -3 Dex pretty much immobile so an attack of less than 7 is a wild miss, a roll of between 8 and the AC is where the characters Dex is good enough to get out of the way of the sword.
Light armor provides extra protection so if the strike is at least 10+Dex but less than AC then the person being attacked does enough for the attack to be a glancing blow that the armor is able to protect them from.
Medium armor means a strike of 12 or more hits the armor but the armor is able to take better blows.
In heavy armor, dex provides no bonus so a 10 or more would make contact but against heavy armor an attack needs to find the weak points in the armor (e.g. the joints) so anything less than the AC clangs into the armor but does no damage.
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I had this idea just now when thinking about how HP and AC are often confusing when you try to visualize what you're describing. For example, in a fight, a hit isn't always you getting stabbed, and a miss isn't always a sword missing you or bouncing off your armor. HP isn't directly tied to your actual health, but in the players handbook is more described as your endurance/stamina in a fight (Matt Coville's Let's Kill a Player video goes into more depth with this at the beginning), and likewise, your AC isn't just how armored you are, but also how good your reflexes are, how skilled at fighting you are, etc.
The main problem I have with the assumptions the standard language of HP and especially AC leads us to, is that it conjures the somewhat ridiculous mental image of two characters just taking turns hitting each other and either missing wildly or lopping off limbs like The Black Knight.
Essentially, AC does not feel dynamic, even when it should be in the case of your swashbuckling DEX characters, AC still feels like a wall around the character rather than an extension of their skill. On a more subjective aside, I personally find the aesthetic of a character just decked out head to toe in plate maille to beva little boring and uninspiring. I like to have a little more say in how my character looks and g-dangit if the impractical but highly stylized outfits aren't the coolest part of any jrpg? People who prefer realism or historical accuracy (whatever that means in a fantasy game, anyway I'm here to escape reality) will probably fight me on this and they have a point, but I'm just spitting ideas for dynamic playstyles here. It's all about options.
So after that rather lengthy intro, the idea: What if it was your skill with a weapon, not armor, that determined your overall AC?
I feel like that way is much more conducive to the idea of characters being dynamic in a fight, being able to describe misses as parties, or hits as tragic missteps that screws up the opponents footing, leaving them wide open to attack, rather than the taking turns bashing approach.
The system of light, medium, and heavy armor can still be applied, where light weapons rely on dex, medium strength, and heavy maybe con, and I haven't decided if it makes sense for polearms with reach to have higher AC for reach, or lower being a trade off for being able to keep enemies at a distance
Heavy weapons could have lower AC's which you could supplement with armor, which i suppose in this system can function similarly to shields, providing AC bonuses and maybe even resistance depending on how many pieces you wear- the lower AC being the tradeoff for higher damage.
Light weapons could maybe stack for dual welding and have generally low ac but still retain their versatility and stealth capabilities.
There'd still be a lot of fiddling to do to make it not just a retread of the existing AC system and still something that works and makes sense, but I like the general idea of it not only for the aesthetic, but it also makes weapons interesting again. 5e's been criticized for having weapons be pretty limited and cookie cutter, but imagine a fighter with multiple weapons being able to change mid fight to switch up their fighting style to be more defensive if the tide turns against them. Different weapons would have different strategic considerations which you might want to use depending on the scenario, giving material classes more versatility, which I often hear as a complaint.
Lemme know what you think, sorry if the writing is a little disjointed but im typing on my phone at work between calls so, meh.
Some of this is already represented by the Dodge action. 5e is all about trying to get the rules simplified and out of the way. If your table is looking for more crunch though, then by all means homebrew something in.
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Yes and no. Yes dodge is a thing, but it takes a full action to do and doesn't encapsulate all the DeX- based stuff you can do in combat.
For example, if you attack a rogue with a great sword and the attacker doesn't beat their AC, what happened wasn't likely that the rogue's studded leather armor somehow stopped a great sword that still would've fractured their collarbone even if the armor did somehow block it. What probably happened is that, because skill is already kind of baked into AC which is why you add DeX to AC, the rogue probably steps to the side with a flourish and avoids the blade, maybe deflecting it with their rapier in a way that doesn't absorb the energy but redirects it.
That's not the dodge action, but it's rather dynamic action that's already baked into AC as a mechanic. My point about making it weapon oriented and not armor oriented is just because it shifts the focus to what the character is doing in the fight actively rather than passively. I feel like a lot of the inconsistencies regarding what HP and AC really mean comes down to the misunderstanding that a hit is a hit, and that loss of HP translates to a wound, whereas if you watch the Matt Coville video I referenced and read the descriptions of those terms, their actual definitions seem to have very little to do with armor and more to do with skill, and that a mechanical hit doesn't always translate to an in-fiction hit unless the fight is nearing the end and someone's about to die.
I think 5E provides a simple rule set that does a decent job of statistical modeling. It's up to your group, not Matt Coville's, to decide how to abstract dice rolls into in-fiction combat. I don't know that changing the 5E rules would significantly change that. I would also argue that Matt Covile/Critical Role is an example of why the rules don't need to be changed. They use the same rules, but agree on how they are implemented.
If your skill with a weapon replaced your armor, you're just creating a new game that isn't dungeons and dragons.
It's fine to do that, obviously, but splitting Armor into layers of Absorption (the ability to wear heavy armor that soaks the damage), Avoidance (the ability to mitigate damage by simply moving out the way of it) and Adroitness (the ability to use your weapon or shield to block the incoming attack so it doesn't hit as hard) is very reminiscent of World of Warcraft with Block, Dodge and Parry. It works, it has works for decades but it's not as good in a game like DnD because it'd require additional calculations done manually instead of by a computer behind the scenes.
I assume you'd want something like this:
Absorption - Characters reduce the damage from each blow by 1d6+prof bonus naturally. Light armor is an extra 1d6, Medium armor is 1d6+2 and Heavy armor is 1d8+2. Barbarians could gain absorption equal to their rage damage, for example.
Avoidance - Your Armor Class is still represented by 10 + Dexterity just no armor value added to it.
Adroitness - Each weapon has a % chance to negate a hit of a certain value or lower, for example a Dagger has a 30% chance to negate damage values of 6 or less while a Greatsword can negate a damage roll of 18 or greater with a 15% chance.
Is that the sort of thing you want? It'd be far too much complication for most people but if it's what your group wants it'd be workable, sure.
You can sort of make sense of the current attacks and AC like this. (with suitable adjustment for other AC calculations)
Without any armor your AC is 10 + Dex, I would view a character with -3 Dex pretty much immobile so an attack of less than 7 is a wild miss, a roll of between 8 and the AC is where the characters Dex is good enough to get out of the way of the sword.
Light armor provides extra protection so if the strike is at least 10+Dex but less than AC then the person being attacked does enough for the attack to be a glancing blow that the armor is able to protect them from.
Medium armor means a strike of 12 or more hits the armor but the armor is able to take better blows.
In heavy armor, dex provides no bonus so a 10 or more would make contact but against heavy armor an attack needs to find the weak points in the armor (e.g. the joints) so anything less than the AC clangs into the armor but does no damage.