Topic: Crunchier AC Rules for Low Magic Campaigns
I am working out a variant armor class system intended to make a character’s choice of armor more meaningful. It adds some crunch, but a crunch that might be welcome in low or no magic campaigns where enchanted armor isn’t generally available.
I’m drawing some inspiration from a zine article that suggested dividing Hit Points into two pools, Meat and Grit. In that system, a character’s first hit die and constitution bonus is their Meat pool. All subsequent Hit Points are Grit. Grit represents an experienced character’s learned ability to protect their Meat. Grit absorbs hits before Meat, and heals faster than Meat. Losing grit represents a character becoming fatigued, accumulating nicks, or at worst breaking a finger. Things that won’t take away from the character ability to present an offense, but will cumulatively undermine the character’s ability to defend themselves. (A loss of 6 Grit might represent a twisted ankle when a character desperately dodges an axe that would have taken their head off if they stood still. The inability to dodge in that direction again is represented by only have 12 Hit Points to absorb the next hit instead of 18). Things that experience won’t protect you from, like falling off a cliff or poison, are applied directly to meat. You could also opt to apply successful backstabs directly to Meat points instead of applying a damage multiplier. If you want to give leveled characters a little bit more resilience against direct physical harm, you could let them continue to add their constitution bonus to the Meat pool as they leveled up.
I had think the article that coined the terms Grit Pool and Meat pool was in an issue of “Knock!” I’d like to cite it here, but can’t seem to find it.
Another rules variant I’m drawing from is the optional critical hit rules from ACKS. Rather than get a critical hit on a natural 20, you score one when you beat your target roll by 10; and to the to hit die is exploding. Which means that if you roll a natural 20, you roll again and add the result to your first roll, and again and again if you keep throwing 20’s. (So you have pretty a good chance to roll a critical hit on a natural 20 if you needed less than 20 to hit in the first place).
So, I wanted a system where a character’s natural ability protects them from getting hit, and armor protects them from getting wounded when they do get hit. Rather than doing more points of damage when you score a critical, you apply the normal amount of damage directly to the Meat pool, which is just one die's worth of points. And rather than scoring a critical hit on a flat +10 above to hit target, the quality of your opponent's armor determines how much you have to beat the roll by to bypass the Grit pool. Plus, depending on a character’s Strength and Constitution bonuses, they can only wear so much armor before their Grit pool starts getting easier to hit. Here are the formulas I’ve been tinkering with. STR, CON, and DEX represent the ability modifier values of the respective attribute.
To hit Grit pool = 10 + Agility Bonus + Shield Bonus
Agility Bonus = Level + DEX – Agility Penalty
Agility Penalty = [(Armor Bonus – (STR+CON)]/2, (cannot be less than zero)
Armor Bonus = Value of armor, per regular ascending AC rules.
To hit Meat pool = 10 + Agility Bonus + Armor Bonus + Shield Bonus
One kink in this system is that first level characters receive no benefit from armor because they have no Grit pool. To address that, I expect to give the Meat pool it's own die, rather than take it from the regular hit die allotment. Classed characters will have their regular hit point allotment of one hit die per level, which is the grit pool in the system described above; and a single hit die of meat points. I’ll borrow a the page from LotFP that gives a character at least d6 hit die for their first level, but instead say everyone gets at least a d6 of meat points, unless they weigh less than 50lbs or something.
Loss of meat points represents wounds that won’t heal with a couple of days rest, but aren’t life threatening or debilitating until reduced to zero. At that point the wounded are out of the fight and you roll on the ACKS mortality table to find out how badly hurt they are when someone comes to their aid. The Mortality Table is a neat chart that tells you whether a character that was reduced to zero hit points is dead, maimed or just stunned; but not until someone takes a round to check on them. It factors in things like how many negative hit points they have, how long it took before someone comes to their aid, whether medical skill or magical healing is invoked by the first person to come to their aid. You can lose an eye, a leg, lose the ability to reproduce, or just die. It can mitigate character death, but can also incentivize characters to retire after suffering some permanent injuries.
Another kink is a lower base to hit (Grit) value, thus creating a greater overall hit point tax on the frontline fighters. To compensate for that I expect to change the rule requiring a 1 turn rest every 6 turns while exploring the dungeon, to granting CON worth of (Grit) hit points restored for every turn of rest. Characters without a CON bonus will have to rest for one turn for every point they are below +1 before starting to recover 1 point per turn.
An advantage is that mundane armor could be given interesting qualities, like a fancy brigandine giving the same protection as leather armor, but not causing an agility penalty. Or a suit of plate giving an armor bonus of 6, but only adding 4 to the agility penalty if the character pays a blacksmith a premium to have one custom made for them.
A thematic advantage is that less experienced or battle fatigued characters, (who have a lower ratio of grit points to meat points) will have less incentive to wear very heavy armor, and may even want to discard it in the case of fatigued characters. If a character doesn’t have enough Grit points left to keep the next hit from cutting into their Meat points anyway, there is no upside to incurring an Agility Penalty from their heavy armor armor. I find it thematically satisfying that an exhausted hero would discard some of their heavy armor, or that in inexperienced warrior might be more vulnerable trying to wear more armor than they can handle.
I’ve been having trouble getting players to the table for D&D lately, in part because of the pandemic, but also because of a move; so I’m throwing this out without any play testing other than rolling dice by myself. If anyone wants to play around with it in their game, I’d love to hear how the rubber meets the road with players. One easy tweak if it provides too big a disincentive to wear armor would be to change the agility penalty from [(Armor Bonus – (STR+CON)]/2 to (Armor Bonus)/2 – (STR+CON).
(Edited for syntax).
Last edited by Tarynt (2022-05-23 19:32:00)