TBH Rules Dev - Armor, Shields

Currently Armor is damage reduction through a pool of additional 'fake' HP called ArmorPoints. There are various semi-official ways of doing it differently out there - Additional Things has some. But I've always been uncomfortable with Armor Points. They don't play existing OSR content well, there's a barrier to conversion and playability. I pride myself on TBH being able handle anything you throw at it -- Just look at the sea of genre hacks! Cyberpunk, Fantasy, Horror, Cats. TBH does it all with ease -- but having to convert armor types for stuff blows.

In this hack I've kept Armor Points, but they function slightly differently -- as does the Warriors Shield Sunder. Big shout goes to +Mike Evans

• Each Armor Point can be spent to ignore the damage of an attack. 
• If you don't or can't spend an AP, you take damage/go OofA normally.
• When you rest, roll a 'save' .. 1d6 for each Armor point, Each type has its save value. When you roll the save you regain the use of the AP.
• When a piece of armor has no more AP - it is destroyed/damaged beyond usefulness.
• Armor is available in 3 types, Light, Moderate, Heavy.

Lightly Armored - 1AP (save 2+)

Moderately Armored - 3AP (save 3+)

Heavily Armored - 5AP (save 4+)

Shield - 1AP (save 2+)

Shield Sunder is now Shield Bash

Shield Bash
When you are attacked in melee combat and your roll to defend is 1-5, the attacker takes damage equal to your level.

..

I like this system because it removes an unnecessary level of bean counting. If you're using armor to reduce damage, just reduce it all. We don't need a usage die - armor degrades over time as you fail its saves. It works well with monsters from existing modules and sources, just a judgement call on how well armored something is. Goblin. Lighly if at all. Black Dragon .. Heavily armored. Simple. I also like the new Shield Bash adds an extra things for a player to do reactively, thats always a win.

Feed me back.

Additional Things - Doing Away with Hitpoints

So there s a couple of things you need to adress, if you want to get rid of Hitpoints. These are not fully formed rules, this, like much of the stuff i post to my blog is me thinking out loud. Expect gaps and inconsistencies. Also expect pearls of juicy rules wisdom - you might just have to string them into a necklace yourself.

Each class has a Vitality Die.

• Conjurer - d6
• Thief - d8
• Cleric - d10
• Warrior - d12

When they take damage, roll that Die and add the damage to the result. If the total roll is above the maximum you could roll on that die (12 on a d12 for example) you could do two potential things A) Reduce the die by one step. B) Go out of action - I think that totally sucks, but, its an option.. you could forgo the OofA roll and use the Surplus above the Die value. So. If your Vitality Die is 12 and you roll an 8 + 6 points of damage, you OofA roll would be 2.

The way armor works doesn't entirely mesh with this - it would need some work. Perhaps you use a low AP value, and just 'tick them off' ignoring hits? The same way the 'Sunder Shield' Warrior ability works? Perhaps you use them as damage reduction, reducing the modifier you roll? Who knows. More thought needed.

I'll revisit this at some stage this week - get something more solid.

Anyways. Enjoy!