The DnD Armor Class and its graphical representation

[Rabby]

Hey,

I can buy the concept that better armor class is achieved with heavier armor -- that with more protection, blows that would have hurt you would simply glance off that inch of steel on your chest. This would roughly equate to someone who is very agile, and avoids the blows altogether. Thus, both high dexterity and good armor grant good armor class.

However, I've always been bothered by the animation in CRPGs for the equivalence. Avoiding being hurt by the enemy due to armor class has always showed the character dexterously moving to the side, or taking a step back, or otherwise dodging the attack altogether. Fallout and ToEE are two games that use this technique. The IE games seem to have done away with feedback for missed blows altogether, probably because it doesn't work so well in realtime. But I find it odd to see some guy in heavy plate mail casually sidestepping to avoid a dagger strike -- by the line of reasoning outlined above, shouldn't the dagger have glanced off the armor without the wearer actively dodging the blow? In comparison, it's more illogical that my character looks like she dodges more frequently after donning 50 pounds of steel.

I was wondering what people here think about that. . . I guess with the underlying DnD ruleset, it makes little sense to do it any other way, except perhaps removing such feedback to the user altogether, which I would definitely prefer less.

 

[Spazmo]

Fallout is better in this respect because you get hit for zero damage all the time--your armour took all the damage.

As for D&D, this is a misinterpretation of the games, or possibly just a simpler implementation. Armour class is as much avoiding blows as it is deflecting them with heavy armour. So while your 20 DEX thief probably is dodging the dagger, it's most likely just clanging off your fighter's armour. Games don't do it this way, I guess, because people would see the attack connect and hear a clang and wonder why their character hadn't been hurt when they appeared to have been hit.

 

[suibhne]

There's no reason games couldn't implement this more "accurately," though. In D&D, e.g., a character whose AC is primarily due to Dex bonus could be displayed dodging, whereas a character whose AC is primarily armor-based (even natural armor) could use a different animation. It really wouldn't be difficult to code in a game like NWN or ToEE, I think, as long as a developer was willing to invest the art resources. And it would be pretty cool. :D

 

[Rabby]

Yeah, I really liked the damage threshold/resistance for armor of the Fallout ruleset. (What is it called? Was it an established ruleset before being used in Fallout?) It feels both more realistic and less cryptic than the armor class of DnD in my opinion. The armor in Fallout also added to armor class as well, which comes back to the same discussion I think -- it's just not as obvious since the characters' skills at hitting someone increases much faster than the armor does. So towards the end, missing doesn't happen too frequently. In DnD, or at least ToEE, it feels that the armor class increases as quickly, if not more so, than the attack bonuses, and rolling lower than the armor class still happens very often even late in the game. Thus the inconsistencies between the animation and the concept of armor class is more obvious to me.

This is certainly not a huge gripe, but I would kiss a developer who points out the difference between a missed attack and just a failed one. I think Suibhne's point is a good one -- it's probably not too difficult to actually make a difference in the animation. Maybe this is a point so insignificant that it's just never been bothered with.

One thing I've always found odd in Fallout though. When I'm running around with the power armor, and people are firing burst shots at me, it seems that I'm either taking 0 damage or a huge amount like 100+. Is the game actually taking the damage caused by the 1st bullet, and multiplying by the number of bullets shot? It seems that it should average out in each case -- 10-15 shots, some would fail to hurt, and some would get through the armor.

 

[Spazmo]

DR/DT is a fixed percentage and constant that is deducted from damage. Those insta-kills you get sometimes are usually from crits that the armour is less resistant to.

 

[Chadeo]

As far as I know the fallout rule set has a strong base in the gurps system but was changed due to a licensing issue. I do not know how much of the mechanics were changed, but I think some of the same flavor is still there. If I remember right gurps amour had to components, a damage reduction, and a to-hit modifier.

Personally I think that amour should only have a damage reduction ability, and your ability to dodge blows is entirely skill based (which is of course modified by your physical and environmental status).

As far as the feedback given in a d&d game, it is all rather silly. After all hit points are supposed to be an abstraction of damage, not real physical damage. Thus most of your hit point loss should represent nicks, close misses, “using up” your luck, loss of endurance, etc. On top of that you have the concept of an amour class that represents a combination of flat out misses (that don’t use up luck, or endurance, or whatever) as well as hits that were so well absorbed by the amour that it took no effort on your part to take them.

All in all d&d rules are extremely abstract and simplistic to keep the game moving and allow for a kind of “high fantasy” feel. Any simulation of them that attempts to produce a kind of realism is going to have to make some odd choices of interpretation. Yet another reason why I think the d&d rules are a terrible choice to base a computer game off of.

Ah but popular brand names are sure an easy way to generate sales.

 

[Spazmo]

Fallout rule system dealio:

Fallout was originally meant to be the first ever GURPS CRPG. In fact, it was a GURPS game before it was ever a post-apoc game! However, once Steve Jackson (GURPS inventor and bigwig) saw the level of (endearing, really) violence in Fallout, he wanted to pull his ruleset out (the whole RPG hobby had been plagued by parent groups and religious types giving them crap about "Satanic"content. Steve Jackson Games didn't need extreme violence, too) so he broke the deal with Interplay. The game was already underway, though, so the team (I believe mostly Chris Taylor and Tim Cain, but I'm probably wrong) created SPECIAL--named for the seven primary stats of the system. It may well take lots from GURPS (I don't know, never played GURPS), but it's still a damn fine ruleset.

 

[GreenNight]

Armor in GURPS system:

Armor has PD (passive defense) that helps to evade blows and DR (damage reduction) to lessen the damage. There are 3 kinds of damage: blundgeoning, slashing and piercing. When a weapon (or bullet) hits and the damage rolled bypasses armor it is dealt as is if blundgeoning, it's increased by 50% when slashing and doubled when it's piercing.

Some armors have different DR for diferent kinds of weapon damage, but most of them don't. There's also a way to receive some damage even when the armor has reduced the damage to 0, it's for flexible armors (like kevlar) and it's something like you receive 1 blunt hit for the impact's trauma for every 6 points of bullet damage, or somethin similar (too lazy to look fo the rule).

By the way, shields also have a PD rating.

There are two (or more) rolls to decide when somebody is hit. One is the attack roll, when it connects the foe can try to dodge, parry or (shield) block the blow. So here you have to roll more dice, but it's a bit more descriptive.

Back to my books, take care.