Percentage based damage reduction is AWFUL!!!

[DraQ]

Percentage based isn't completely worthless if it doesn't cover all the damage sources and can still be used to supplement more interesting armour mechanics, but it's pretty much the second worst armour system out there as standalone (plain HP bonus/percentage reduction against all damage sources is even worse).

Nonlinear armour functions (possibly including flat reduction somewhere) are much more interesting.
Traditional AC is pretty bad as far as it goes, but something like inverse AC - chance for attack to just bypass the rest of armour mechanics and do full damage seems like a nice thing to have.
If armour can be physically damaged you can also discriminate between reduction that doesn't damage armour and one that's ablative.
Flat reduction also allows easy simulation of non-armour piercing attacks by splitting them up into multiple hits.
(As long as you don't have damage avoidance mechanics that works on per hit basis, because then you probably don't want single hit to count as multiple).

Of course that's assuming you don't go crazy with full physical sim approach I have always been partial to.

Morrowind would be better if had flat damage reduction, so really powerful spells like "chill of death"(which I created, it deals 100 pts of damage during 5 seconds or 500 damage) could still be useful vs powerful ice resistant creatures. Not creatures of pure ice like a Frost Atronach, but you got the idea.

Morrowind actually has nonlinear damage reduction function against physical damage - it reduces damage from weaker hits far more than from strong ones. IIRC it halves damage if it's equal to armour rating.

As for elemental resistances - stack your custom spell with 100% weakness to frost for 1s as the first effect.

Normal real world armors are flat damage reduction. Under certain threshold projectiles do squat. Above certain threshold, armor is paper.
Mathematically percentage reduction is bogus. If armor is pierced and reduces damage by n. Why would damage by 1 kg projectile be reduced the same as damage by 10 kg projectile?

Normal real world armours are way more complex than that, but flat DT is definitely a good thing to have somewhere short of full physical sim.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Morrowind actually has nonlinear damage reduction function against physical damage - it reduces damage from weaker hits far more than from strong ones. IIRC it halves damage if it's equal to armour rating.

From UESP:
Damage Reduction From Armor

Physical damage is divided by Min(1 + Target's Armor Rating / Damage ; 4) to calculate the Health loss of the target (i.e. damage cannot be reduced to less than 25% of the original amount).

Armor affects damage in a more complicated way than the other factors, since how much damage a particular Armor Rating prevents depends on the amount of incoming damage.

Here is a quick list of things to remember regarding Armor:

The reduction occurs only after all the multipliers are applied to the damage.
Armor is subject to diminishing returns; each point of Armor Rating prevents less damage than the previous point did.
Greater incoming damage means a smaller percentage of that damage will be prevented (e.g. an Armor Rating of 10 will reduce 10 incoming damage by 50%, but it will reduce 20 incoming damage by only 33%).
An Armor Rating more than three times higher than the amount of incoming damage is wasted.
The ToggleCombatStats Console Code displays only damage before Armor Rating is taken into account, not the final damage.

Example: 1 + 240 / 500 = 1.48 Since 1.48 is lower than 4 it can be used in the equation. 500 / 1.48 = 337

If the number is above 4 then default to 4.

 

[DraQ]

From UESP:
Damage Reduction From Armor

Physical damage is divided by Min(1 + Target's Armor Rating / Damage ; 4) to calculate the Health loss of the target (i.e. damage cannot be reduced to less than 25% of the original amount).

Huh, I didn't actually know about 4x reduction cap.
A bit shame that's in, but it's still pretty decent for a single number armour rating.

 

[Cryomancer]

Morrowind armor system is way better Oblivion and Skyrim. Dark Souls, uses linear flat DR vs physical attacks and percentage vs magical attacks. Which is IMO ridiculous. So, your armor is eqqually effective vs the weakest fireball or vs a pyromancy which creates a miniature star and throws at the enemy(Forbidden sun). IMO any tower shield should be able to block the fireball but forbidden sun, should disintegrate anything that touches. Should be a "magical" version of Fallout's mini nuke.

Cyberbug 2077 also uses flat DR if I remember correctly. But has the retarded "ammo by weapon category" IE - every sniper uses the same ammo. Don't ask me how each rifle clearly uses different ammo in the reloading animations.

BTW, other thing that I wanna see in more games is having higher ground being an advantage. In Dark Souls 3 mod "convergence", cryomancers(my favorite class) has a spell called Avalanche which works amazingly well when you have the higher ground but is worthless in lower ground.

About the mod and class.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Even worse: percentage based damage reduction implies that your armor is BETTER at blocking high damage weapons than low damage weapons.

???

A rusty dagger that does 5 damage get 1 damage point blocked.
A bigass armor-crushing warhammer that does 50 damage gets 10 damage points blocked.

How the fuck is it that the armor manages to absorb more damage from a heavy armor-piercing fuckoff weapon than from a piece of shit looted from a trash bin?
It's not just the problem of low damage weapons managing to get some damage through high tier armor, the real problem is that better weapons get more of their damage soaked up, which is completely illogical and retarded.

This is what happens when system doesn't use damage threshold

DT=10
A rusty dagger does 0/5 damage
A bigass armor-crushing warhammer does 40/50 damage gets 8 damage points blocked

 

[Cryomancer]

Having a warthunder way of modeling vehicles, but modeling human and inhuman body and modular damage in the way that Willy described would be the best. However, would be too complicated.

Imagine a single bone spear from d2 that way. The skill could dish d6 * skill level damage or ;

Roll to hit, then roll a d6 to determine where you hit in the enemy. If hit in leg, check the page 8642 and table 9852 to calculate the blood loss, internal damage if hit a artery and then, check the page 9862 at table 9872 to see how mich energy and velocity the bone spear has after passing a target. For hiting in chest or head, do the same with the tables 22345 and 22346 at page 9i921. To calculate how windage and projectile drop affect your bone spear, check the tables 666 and 879. If hiting a druid with hurricane skill active, add to the wind speed the value in table 9864. To calculate to hit, not only check the windage and drop table, but also check the likeness to pierce against the enemy armor. At table 9648. And remember to take magical energy into account as described in page 6723.

HP simplify things a lot. Would be cool to snipe with spells being like sniper elite marksmanship but too much work...

 

[Reinhardt]

Having a warthunder way of modeling vehicles, but modeling human and inhuman body and modular damage in the way that Willy described would be the best. However, would be too complicated.

Imagine a single bone spear from d2 that way. The skill could dish d6 * skill level damage or ;

Roll to hit, then roll a d6 to determine where you hit in the enemy. If hit in leg, check the page 8642 and table 9852 to calculate the blood loss, internal damage if hit a artery and then, check the page 9862 at table 9872 to see how mich energy and velocity the bone spear has after passing a target. For hiting in chest or head, do the same with the tables 22345 and 22346 at page 9i921. To calculate how windage and projectile drop affect your bone spear, check the tables 666 and 879. If hiting a druid with hurricane skill active, add to the wind speed the value in table 9864. To calculate to hit, not only check the windage and drop table, but also check the likeness to pierce against the enemy armor. At table 9648. And remember to take magical energy into account as described in page 6723.

HP simplify things a lot. Would be cool to snipe with spells being like sniper elite marksmanship but too much work...

Then roll for 7 other characters in your party. We are talking about FUCKING RPGS, not diablo 2.

 

[Rilmani404]

I've been looking at the Open Legend (free tabletop RPG) rules lately which involves exploding dice kinda unrelated to crits- so you'd roll 1d20 and add X dice of Y size to it (extra dice based on your Stat). If any die rolls its maximum size, it explodes and you roll it again and add it to the total. Let's imagine an ever-shifting stat called Guard instead of Armor Class which'll be based on the Morrowind setup above. Kinda. How would Guard work? Guard would be a combination of one's ability to dodge and properly deflect appropriately for a given attack- which means sometimes your instinct or your magical warding bubble may be poorly calibrated for an attack you've never seen before. Using a cape to deflect tiny shuriken or wave of fire makes sense, but a punch is a bad choice for a glob of magma.

1. Let's imagine Average Damage as something easy to find out for a given weapon attack, skill activation, etc. even after any stat modifications. On your turn you attempt the attack and compare the attack's Average Damage against the target's Guard squared (to the power of 2) at the same time. If your Average Damage exceeds the target's Guard^2, you gain a small boost to your attack roll. If your attack roll matches or exceeds the target's Guard, but your Average Damage does not exceed the target's Guard^2, inflict your damage normally. If your attack roll matches or exceeds the target's Guard AND your Average Damage beats their Guard^2, you roll your damage, reduce it based on Damage Resistance, and then reduce your target's Guard stat until they reroll it. I'm imaging a heavy maul smacking a wizard on a flying broom (reducing their Guard), after which an ally will smack the tumbling wizard with far greater ease, and so-on.
So where do we go from here?
2. "If this attack reduces a creature's Guard below X, inflict Y condition/penalty or gain Z buff." There. Some abilities will require you to reduce a creature's Guard to 0. Others will say "reduce it below 20" if it is a minor condition.
3. "If your attack roll exceeds a target's Guard by A..." also seems like a reasonable route. I can imagine some effects like mana-draining, mind-rending, and buff disruption would be far easier after a wizard's head has kissed the cave floor.



A) Some abilities force you to reroll your Guard using an inconvenient stat- if you are Confused or suffering Insanity, you may have to use a mental stat, rolling 1d20 and (almost definitely lower) X dice of Y size from your ability score. You'd still get flat bonuses from your armor type and passive buffs orrrrr those sorts of things would just be rare, replaced by a few kinds of Damage Resistance.
B) Some circumstances reduce your Guard until it is rolled again. If you just took a critical hit, a game could represent your temporary stamina loss and decreased coordination by chipping away at the current Guard score. Perhaps reducing it by a number corresponding to the weapon, with the number growing for some weapon types and growing from mods/enchantments.
C) Sometimes a Guard reroll will be activated by some passive ability (magic armor), sometimes it will be a deliberate reaction (entering a parry/riposte stance), or so-on. You may or may not get to use your "ideal" stats for your Guard roll depending on negative conditions, how many reactions you've taken this battle, or how much stamina you have.

I admit the open legend system can be "swingy" and using it for defense of all things probably feels weird. Just need to figure out how often one could reroll their defense and if any deliberate actions (movement, getting up after getting knocked prone, or reloading a weapon) should reduce your Guard.