Armor and shields, without thac0

I don’t know if you already have an armor system ready, but if we are not going to use thac0 I had some basic thoughts on armor and a possible system.

The simplest thing to do with armor would probably just be to have each point of armor represent an actual amount of damage reduction, maybe .1% damage reduction per point of armor, so that you basically end up getting 1% damage reduction per 10 armor. You could put tiers on certain armor values to make sure low levels were not being gifted insane armor and just plowing through the low level areas taking no damage.

It might be cool if some weapons and armor had inherent values, like a Reinforced Titanium Breastplate (50) might give you a bonus like -10% damage from enemy vital strikes or something on top of the 5% damage reduction. Or kind of like how my cousin suggested with weapons, you may be able to make classes of armor, heavy, medium, light or something.

I was thinking to make it more desirable to use shields when tanking as opposed to two handing or dual wielding, shields should be pretty beefy to increase the motivation to use them and to offset the loss of damage from not using a two hander. So if you got a shield that was around the same tier as that Reinforced Titanium Breastplate (50), the Reinforced Titanium Shield might be (200) and give you a flat block value of 10 damage as well. So you would end up with 20% damage reduction and then block an addition 10 off of that, after the % reduction is factored.

Monks would just have to be adjusted so that their scaling was on par with armor, and since they don’t use shields, perhaps we could add something to their robes to compensate for the damage reduction from the flat block damage of the shield. Maybe their chi absorbs a flat damage amount while they have robes equipped or something of that nature.

I was thinking along the same lines actually.

Additionally adding like reduction to critical strike, or lethal chance as well. It’s easier to make flat rate calculations as such. And it makes a lot more sense logically that a mage would be easier to lethally attack than someone in full plate armor.

Anything above and beyond will be a later update. We’ll prioritize and vote, supposing anyone even actually plays. I’m hoping to get some solid hours this weekend in writing some code. Some of the GM’s really want to start building, so I want to get a web front end and the area’s code ready as well.

I still owe you some formulas. I’ll try to toss them up here Sunday or Monday evening.

Hah I hope your not going to make the mobs have a chance to lethal! that would be harsh. I’m assuming you meant vital. Mobs could double damage and vital you (which was hit straight for health instead of stamina). But yea giving armor some attributes other than just flat armor, like reduction to vital damage would make for more interesting choices. Maybe you took the (30) armor breastplate over the (50) because it reduced vital strike damage by 10%. Or you could make the Frozen Turtleshell shield (200) give a bonus fire resistance since its covered in frost or some such.

I know I used to love my Glowing Battleblades, I think I always carried one in a sack in case my torches all burned out.

You could prob do the same thing with weapons tho, you could add stats that gave bonus crit or lethal chance or like you said this code will allow on hit effects, maybe they could add a bleed or something or a flat damage proc or something. But like you said you can always add stuff like that later after the base stuff gets implemented so its at least playable.