Battle in the Mind + Alternative Armor Rules Concepts

Battle in the Mind

This is when two warriors face off towards each other, close their eyes, and plan every single move they're about to do against each other. This abstracts combat down to a single die roll; instead of having high level warriors dueling and chipping away at their AC and HP pools for ten rounds or more, this keeps it quick. This is essentially a very parsed down duel system.

When the “battle in the mind” is over, the two warriors rush each other and one will defeat the other in one or two rapid blows. The losing warrior will fall over dead, or with their weapon destroyed/disarmed and dropped to one hit point; spared by the victor. Note: This only works with two combatants, more then that and you'll need to use the regular combat engine.

Both Fighters roll a 1d6- then:

• Add +1 to the Fighter who has the better armor and/or weapons. Unarmed Fighters automatically lose unless their Kung Fu is so good it is equivalent to weapons.
• Add +2 if one Fighter is one higher level then the other. If one Fighter is two or more levels higher, they just automatically win. These are duels between equals, not between novices and masters. Level is by far the most important factor to Fighter power in the mind.
• Add +1 to the Fighter who is younger. You could go by cosmic age here, so technically an elf who is eternally young is still older then an aged human, to give some strength to the underdog, or it could just be who is biologically younger. Youth grants an advantage.
• Add +1 to a Fighter who knows a hidden blade art that would greatly help in this duel that the other does not. Like a sliding technique while fighting on a rocky hillside.
• Subtract -1 to a Fighter who is injuried. Doesn't matter if they're cut up and only have 1 HP left, or if they just took a single scratch, even a single wound is enough to be an advantage. If both Fighters are injured, ignore this.
• Subtract -1 to the Fighter who is angry or vengeful. Emotion and rage lend power, but also leave oneself open. Calmness and an open mind is the pinnacle of fighting skill. The passion of the challenger will grant his opponent a window. If both Fighters are equally inflamed, then ignore this or grant it to the one who is more personally involved.

The Fighter with the higher roll wins. If it is a tie, both Fighters either kill each other or survive with 1 HP and struggle to their feet.

Alternative Armor Rules

Armor is a fun rule to mess with. Most people in the DIY or blogosphere use D&D style armor, the AC vs a to-hit roll. This is a nice system because it speeds up play; no need to roll damage if an attack misses, but can also greatly slow down play because of whiff-fests. Designing the game around a small range of possible AC scores and small modifiers can also help this, which is something I wanted to accomplish by putting in a maximum AC score. I also like AC systems because it gives certain attacks or spells the ability to play around with AC scores- like having magical arrows that never miss bypass AC entirely.

Note: If you haven't read my other blog posts about this before, I give each class a maximum AC. The max AC is reached through stat modifiers, armor, magic items, spells, etc. If you get to the max, you don't need to stack any more armor or magical modifiers. That's the most you can have, and that way combat is snappy and fast. There is still a value in finding or getting better armor though, as you can wear less armor (and therefore have less encumbrance) even at the max AC, or you can stack AC beyond the max which just grants you extra in reserve in case a spell or ability breaks some of your armor like a rust monster.

But not everyone is happy with this solution. Even beyond just having armor be useful for a game, it is also interesting to see what kind of ideas or mechanics armor could be made to have simply on the side of game design, untethered to the idea of a fantasy dungeon crawl.

Armor as DR (damage reduction) is an interesting concept as seen in Into the Odd. It is a relatively common houserule or conversion that I've seen. It goes something like this; instead of a to-hit roll, attacks just hit and armor just reduces the damage of attacks. And attack “misses” when it fails to do enough damage to hurt the wearer. Usually leather grants +1, chain +2, plate +3 or a similar metric. This means against plate, a roll of 6 for a sword would only do 3 damage.

I think this idea is pretty interesting but it makes weaker small weapons unhelpful in almost all circumstances except circumference or class restrictions. It also has the strange idea of the most tough class (Fighter) taking the least damage from hits. D&D style armor already does this by avoiding hits however, it's not unusual at all, just is one of those weird things that makes combat take longer. It's not necessarily bad or anything, just not super common.

Armor as DL (damage limit) isn't a concept I've seen anyone else suggest; but nonetheless I think could be interesting to explore. Consider it in the form of damage dice. Armor “blocks” all damage die that size or higher. Using normal armor tiers; consider leather as a d8, chain as d6, and plate as d4. This means if you tried to use a d10 battleaxe on someone wearing leather, they can't be hit by it. (abstracted as damage or by not being able to make an effective cut). The only way to hit someone wearing plate armor would be to attack them with a dagger or other very small weapon, which fits the idea of d4 weapons still being useful. Arrows of a d6 bow bounce off, but chainmail can still be pierced by them, because it's damage limit is d6. If you aren't wearing armor using this system, you just take the full damage. Of course, there could be special rules for certain weapons like blunt weapons to have anti-armor properties, or perhaps Fighters can use various parts of a weapon- such as Half-Swording to use the point of a sword much like a dagger, this way they can remain flexible. Instead of making it so the weapons are totally ineffective, it could just lower the size of their die to the armor. So using a d10 greatsword is reduced to a d6 sword against chainmail, but you can still use it without difficulty.

The second version of the above is just to limit the points of damage you can take in a physical attack. Using the above but as the point values; such as Leather being 8, Chain being 6, and Plate being 4. This means whenever you take damage from an attack, the maximum points you can take from the attack is equal to the point value or less. This would encourage the use of heavier weapons, at least for dealing the maximum amount of damage every round, but it would have the same effect of DR but backwards. Interestingly, this point idea could be used to make multiple dice attacks still fit under the paradigm; like a 3d6 super slam move is still limited to doing 10 damage to your Rogue or whatever.

Armor as Resource is another method that has been used to give armor more texture and interesting gameplay. In some games, this would equate to armor being used like temporary hit points. I like this concept, as it allows for each piece of armor to be truly useful and valuable, but it also leads to some questions. Does “armor points” restore after each combat? After a long rest? Only when returning to town? Is it described in the fluff as being actual damage dealt to the armor that is reduced as damage is taken, or is it a totally abstract measurement?

Another idea with the above is “shields will be splintered” as a rule, but with armor instead. I really like the concept of doing this, but with specific pieces of armor. And instead of reducing damage by points, it just negates an attack entirely. It also only works with specific attacks- to give armor more usage and more ways to attack foes. For example, if an enemy is trying to bash you with a club, it's more then likely trying to strike you in the head with it. In this case, your helmet would have to save you. One hit you can absorb per combat is fine. Two hits in one combat and the helmet is dinged up, lowering your vision or needing repairs. Three or more and you start taking damage; or it is knocked off on the third hit and you are now vulnerable to getting killed and/or struck unconscious the next time he comes around swinging his club. Shields may be special in that they can absorb any attack, or most forms of attack, and could have their own pool of hit points- if this game is using hit points at all. Platearmor could be the best because of the fact it can take a lot of hits before losing its effectiveness, or because it can take basically any kind of hit, from blunt to piercing to slashing and form many different angles- both of which would be valuable qualities for armor in this concept.

Secondly; combining the above with an AC system sounds pretty doable. Keep AC extremely limited; you only get AC for being high level, weapon bonus, being a specific race, a stat bonus, and with a base of 10. Read “AC as fencing” below. Doing this keeps most enemy chances to hit at roughly 50% depending on modifiers, which makes only half the attacks sent at a character needing to be absorbed by their limited armor and defensive resources.

Armor as a Block is a concept that I don't have a good name for, but it doesn't fit so well for tabletop games. It kind of does though, moreso for a game with some strategy or board game elements. I like to think of this as being able to “block” a certain number of attacks or amounts of damage each round, similar to the armor as resource or armor as DR, but it has a set limit to how much it can take.

For example, chainmail might be able to block 1 “attack” per round. Meaning the first person to attack the armored guy is not effective. But this isn't just people; high level characters could have multiple attacks, so the first attack is not effective but the second is, and so on. High powered armors could block multiple attacks each round, where as weaker armors like leather or improvised armors may do something like have a 50/50 chance to block an attack or something similar.

The idea behind this is armored users require multiple concentrated efforts to take down. The main disadvantage is that you could never defeat certain foes regardless of how good your rolls are depending on the situation. Some platemail wearing beast that takes three attacks to even scratch for a whole round needs to be focused on by the entire party, and when only two characters are left they are now faced with an impossible challenge. The same applies for the players though, so as long as a heavy armored guy doesn't wade into a huge group of goblins they won't get hurt from one or two griffon claw swipes. I like the idea but it would be hard to balance, difficult to add granularity due to high jumps in power, and could make the players accuse the GM of focus fire or favortism since, logically, most enemies would need to artificially focused on the fighter with heavy armor to take them down. Of course this armor concept might just be for player-character armor, and monsters use a traditional AC vs a d20 + modifiers roll the players are used to, which could work for its own game. There is no reason to assume players and monsters are running on the same combat engine, so why not?

Edit: Instead of armor blocking one attack, it could block one die of damage each round instead. Perhaps it blocks the largest single die the enemy has, or blocks the highest die of up to a limit (based on the armor level) If you have multiple attacks, or throw out multiple damage die per hit, it would fit well. You could also consider having weapons do multiple dice worth of damage, if such a thing was built into the core of the game.

Armor as Fencing

The above concepts of armor apply specifically to armor as an item, or as a piece of equipment. They do not, however, necessarily correlate to what AC is or how you get it. I've seen ideas for AC to be based on fencing and self-defense techniques; which are based on character class, Dex modifier, level, and the like. This concept I feel is strong. I can't take credit for this because I've read it on the blogosphere somewhere before at least once, plus Anonymous posters on various internet forums have also posted a similar idea.

It could be something like thus; Fighters get the most basic AC from deflection skill, Rogues and Semi-Fighters like Clerics and Paladins get less, and Magicians/Sages get the least. The idea is that if you are armed with a weapon, you can deflect and dodge incoming blows. This certainly adds to the feeling of Fighters being highly skilled warriors, and Fights can be more based on characters wearing robes or dueling on the sides of a mountain and the like, over people in knightly armor trudging around. This could be a sort of “Base” AC based on your class, then it advances upwards as you level up. Here's a rough table outline; probably not the final figures.

LVL	Fighter AC	Rogue AC	Sage AC
1	12	11	10
2	13	11	10
3	13	12	10
4	14	12	11
5	14	12	11
6	15	13	11
7	15	13	11
8	16	13	12
9	16	14	12
10	17	14	12

The problem with this idea is twofold. Firstly, it would greatly slow down character strength, especially against high ranking monsters with high +to hit for their attacks. In normal D&D you can usually buy the best armor pretty early on, but with this system you have to slowly build up. The second is based on the above suggestions and ideas for armor; What does armor exactly do? What should it do? If your AC is mostly based on your personal skill and level, your character wouldn't need or want to wear much armor. That is unless armor is really powerful- armor as temporary hit points or a flat number of blocked “attacks” that hit could be really good depending on the action economy and damage numbers of a game. You'd also have to unteach everything your players already know. In fact, in this kind of system, wearing really heavy armor might reduce your AC, given that you can't see or deflect blows as well. Instead, your armor would have to help you soak damage, so you'd be more of a tank.

You also probably want to have at least some benefit to wearing armor, especially magic armor. You could also say that the above is your AC, but characters could still have an AC “cap” as in my homebrew system, so you wear armor until you grow out of it. Big boys don't need armor, they just deflect everything. Which I think is kind of cooler.