Greetings!
There is one core rule in CWoD that always has struck me as odd and not very well thought out.
And that system is: Armor.
Armor is rather unimpressive in all aspects. While it allows mortals to soak lethal damage, in the case of most supernaturals it merely acts as a few additional stamina dice for soaking.
Add to the fact that no matter if you wear a leather jacket or the bestetest of Technocracy super armors, your armor might completely fail you simply because the dice don't like you - and even worse - failing on top of your dodge roll already becoming worse because you get a dex impact, your armor just killed you. What.
Armor in CWoD simply is not impressive, and not feeling like it is proper armor to its RL counterparts.
Here is my approach to change that. And it's dead simple to do so.
First off we have to consider three basic variants of armor:
Soft Armor
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Be it thicker clothes, classic leather armor, folded paper armor or what have you, these types of armor pretty much protect the wearer from some harm, but are subjet to wear and tear. They more often than not simply lessen the damage you get instead of negating or changing it.
These armors remain as they are: Extra soak dice. By their very nature they are not very uniform in their damage absorption, but they are light, and allow people to soak some things they normally couldn't.
The rating of these armors gets dropped by 1 after every combat scene where the armor was hit and the wearer was not able to soak all damage, mirroring the need for repairs. Repairs are usually quick and easy to do, even if it turns the armor into patchwork.
Flexible, Reinforced armor
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Ballistic vests are a prime example of these. Modern ballistic vests, light and heavy, are beasts. You can pelt them with 1 bullet or 100 bullets, and they still do their job unless something actually gets through; However, unlike the movies, you won't simply shrug off shots; The kinetic force gets spread out but still hits you like a truck. People end up on the floor with broken ribs..but they end up alive. The armor did its job. Chainmail armor would work along the same lines, as would makeshift armor with inserted metal plates or similiar constructs.
To mimic this, these armors turn a fixed amount of lethal damage into bashing damage, equaling their armor rating. The bashing damage gets soaked with normal stamina. The lethal damage that makes it through in case the damage was higher than the armor rating gets handled separately.
Incoming damage that is already bashing gets soaked automatically by the armor rating, like Hard Armor below does for all damage types.
The rating of these armors drops by 1 after every combat scene where the armor was hit with a higher damage roll result than the rating of the armor, simulating a shot or stab actually piercing a hole, since some lethal damage made it through. Repairs can be fast in cases where the armor holds exchangeable kinetic plates or components, but might become very complicated if the armor is a sort of complex modern material.
Hard Armor
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Hardsuits, full plate armor, the heavy duty stuff.
The ratings of these armors get treated like the durabiliy rating of objects: The armors negate a fixed amount of damage equaling their rating, period.
The rating of these armors drop by 1 after every combat scene where the armor was hit with a higher damage roll result than the rating of the armor. Repairs of this kind of armor are expensive and need a lot of time and equipment.
Aggravated damage is treated as Lethal damage in the context of all three armor types, except when logic dictates that the armor cannot protect against the source of the aggravated damage. Your chainmail won't do you any good when you are on fire.
This system also makes aimed shots at non-armored parts of the body, or special weapons that can pierce a specific armor more worth it. Instead of dealing with the enemy having a couple more soak dice, you are potentially dealing with a change to your damage type, or total absorption..so those things become a really viable option to work against an armored enemy.
Thoughs?
There is one core rule in CWoD that always has struck me as odd and not very well thought out.
And that system is: Armor.
Armor is rather unimpressive in all aspects. While it allows mortals to soak lethal damage, in the case of most supernaturals it merely acts as a few additional stamina dice for soaking.
Add to the fact that no matter if you wear a leather jacket or the bestetest of Technocracy super armors, your armor might completely fail you simply because the dice don't like you - and even worse - failing on top of your dodge roll already becoming worse because you get a dex impact, your armor just killed you. What.
Armor in CWoD simply is not impressive, and not feeling like it is proper armor to its RL counterparts.
Here is my approach to change that. And it's dead simple to do so.
First off we have to consider three basic variants of armor:
Soft Armor
----------
Be it thicker clothes, classic leather armor, folded paper armor or what have you, these types of armor pretty much protect the wearer from some harm, but are subjet to wear and tear. They more often than not simply lessen the damage you get instead of negating or changing it.
These armors remain as they are: Extra soak dice. By their very nature they are not very uniform in their damage absorption, but they are light, and allow people to soak some things they normally couldn't.
The rating of these armors gets dropped by 1 after every combat scene where the armor was hit and the wearer was not able to soak all damage, mirroring the need for repairs. Repairs are usually quick and easy to do, even if it turns the armor into patchwork.
Flexible, Reinforced armor
--------------------------
Ballistic vests are a prime example of these. Modern ballistic vests, light and heavy, are beasts. You can pelt them with 1 bullet or 100 bullets, and they still do their job unless something actually gets through; However, unlike the movies, you won't simply shrug off shots; The kinetic force gets spread out but still hits you like a truck. People end up on the floor with broken ribs..but they end up alive. The armor did its job. Chainmail armor would work along the same lines, as would makeshift armor with inserted metal plates or similiar constructs.
To mimic this, these armors turn a fixed amount of lethal damage into bashing damage, equaling their armor rating. The bashing damage gets soaked with normal stamina. The lethal damage that makes it through in case the damage was higher than the armor rating gets handled separately.
Incoming damage that is already bashing gets soaked automatically by the armor rating, like Hard Armor below does for all damage types.
The rating of these armors drops by 1 after every combat scene where the armor was hit with a higher damage roll result than the rating of the armor, simulating a shot or stab actually piercing a hole, since some lethal damage made it through. Repairs can be fast in cases where the armor holds exchangeable kinetic plates or components, but might become very complicated if the armor is a sort of complex modern material.
Hard Armor
----------
Hardsuits, full plate armor, the heavy duty stuff.
The ratings of these armors get treated like the durabiliy rating of objects: The armors negate a fixed amount of damage equaling their rating, period.
The rating of these armors drop by 1 after every combat scene where the armor was hit with a higher damage roll result than the rating of the armor. Repairs of this kind of armor are expensive and need a lot of time and equipment.
Aggravated damage is treated as Lethal damage in the context of all three armor types, except when logic dictates that the armor cannot protect against the source of the aggravated damage. Your chainmail won't do you any good when you are on fire.
This system also makes aimed shots at non-armored parts of the body, or special weapons that can pierce a specific armor more worth it. Instead of dealing with the enemy having a couple more soak dice, you are potentially dealing with a change to your damage type, or total absorption..so those things become a really viable option to work against an armored enemy.
Thoughs?
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