Designing armor with only PRD or MDR

[CWells]

I think this sort of thing would be for games with much  more limited armors/equipment.

What about designing armor that doesn't worry about directly upping the parameters and instead focuses more on just cutting damage through the PDR and MDR?

There are ways around it so that this type of armor doesn't become so extreme. And yes it can  make for more rigid design and there is less wiggle room. But what kind of games would you expect to have such armors?

Oh in case anyone doesn't notice, Certain Hit ignores PDR and MDR as well as reflect and cover. So if you do have special physical attack skills that are certain hit, they will ignore the armor completely. But this sort of thing can be softened by using direct debuffs on the enemy.

 

[orochii]

I would mix PDR/MDR with regular PDEF and MDEF, like in Mabinogi, for example. Equipment gives you Defense (substracts the value from damage) and Protection (substracts a percentage). Don't remember which was applied first, but anyway.

In Final Fantasy VI equipment defenses worked as PDR too. It reduced a certain percentage from total damage.

I do think that using a percentage-based reduction makes armors less limited (making them less liable to become useless). But there is obviously a limit for how much PDR/MDR you can reduce. And there the regular defenses can become handy.

But yeah, all combinations are possible, even no defenses at all,

Orochii Zouveleki

 

[CWells]

Well this style of armor can make for rigidity in terms of percentage but the bonus to this style is that they will last throughout the game. 20 percent reduction will be 20 percent reduction regardless if the attack coming in is 600 or 2000.

Some ways to make such armor unique would be to have PDR but tag onto it other special effects to influence a player to choose something else. Like, have PDR armor that comes with Magic reflection and another with ailment guard. Or even armor that gives special skills. There will always be ways to make some fun combinations.

 

[Berylstone]

What about designing armor that doesn't worry about directly upping the parameters and instead focuses more on just cutting damage through the PDR and MDR?

 Sounds similar to element rates to me.  Could just create two different types of elements, Physical and Magical and then add dramatic resistance levels to the different armor.

I like to add similar mechanics like this to items also, and for the very exact reasons you mention.  It keeps the armors relevant through-out the whole game.

 

[Blindga]

It's an interesting idea to reduce damage based on just two basic types of damage: physical and magical, but as mentioned already it doesn't add a whole lot of options. If your game doesn't really have a big focus on equipment scaling than that may be fine, but even at that it may not be a bad idea to come up with some ideas to help add variety, such as specific stat increases or resistances to specific attacks.

Just sort of an echo of what has been said, but that's my thought.

 

[Berylstone]

It's an interesting idea to reduce damage based on just two basic types of damage: physical and magical, but as mentioned already it doesn't add a whole lot of options. If your game doesn't really have a big focus on equipment scaling than that may be fine, but even at that it may not be a bad idea to come up with some ideas to help add variety, such as specific stat increases or resistances to specific attacks.

Just sort of an echo of what has been said, but that's my thought.

I tend to agree with you.  I think it works better if a system like this is used as a foundation for your armors but with a lot more variety and options added on top. 

But I do think it's a good idea to have basic damage types that any one specific armor can be effective against.  That way they can stay relevant and useful through-out the game.

 

[Tai_MT]

Final Fantasy 10 played with that mechanic.  I have to say...  I didn't enjoy it that much.  Mostly because without knowing what the stats for the enemies are, these numbers are just numbers.  Mass Effect 2 had this issue as well.  "This upgrade increases Shotgun Damage by 10%".  Okay, that would be helpful if I knew the damage values for the Shotguns to begin with.  Without knowing, it's just a meaningless number.  10% of WHAT?  50% of WHAT?  100% of WHAT?  Okay, my damage is doubled.  Well, if a gun does 4 damage to begin with and you double it, that's 8 damage.  Meanwhile if my armor has 100 defense and gets a 100% boost, it becomes 200 defense.  Without these numbers, it sometimes becomes very difficult to know just what it is the player should be doing.  Is it more advantageous to limit 50% of all incoming damage or to increase your Defense by 300 points?

With that in mind, I do have armor that works somewhat like you're describing.  It's called "Casual Clothes".  They offer no defenses what so ever as they are just regular clothes anyone can equip.  What's special about them?  They offer HP and MP percentage boosts to characters.  Early on in the game, these boosts of 10% aren't worth it.  But, as you increase your stats, these bonuses become fairly substantial.  50 HP with a 10% boost is 55 HP.  500 HP with a 10% boost is 550 HP.  It's useful late game, but not necessarily early game.  But, again, these only work if the player knows the stats of their own characters.

With that in mind, simply reducing incoming damage instead of buffing a stat could be used in interesting ways if you had a lot of "elements".  Keep in mind, these elements aren't necessarily for magic use.  You could use Piercing, Blunt, Slashing, Stabbing, etcetera and have armors that limit damage from those.  This would make some armors useful in some situations and others better in other areas.  You could also then have armors with straight stat boosts that are what you call "good against almost everything".  Then, your players have to choose between set defensive stats or super-massive element defenses.  An armor with 50% defense against slashing might be more useful to wear than an armor with 100 extra defense points.

 

[Eschaton]

Well, think of it logically.  How can armor protect you from being magically set on fire?  Is armor going to make you less cold when that wizard manifests a mini-blizzard around you?  Hell if you're wearing armor and you get struck by lightning, you'll die even more than you normally would because metal conducts electricity.

 

[mahan]

Well, think of it logically.  How can armor protect you from being magically set on fire?  Is armor going to make you less cold when that wizard manifests a mini-blizzard around you?  Hell if you're wearing armor and you get struck by lightning, you'll die even more than you normally would because metal conducts electricity.

RPG's are meant to be really fictional, it doesn't need to conform to reality. If you play RPG games a lot there are armors that are enchancted. they are maybe metal but in RPGs, metals can even make you stronger when it conducts electricity, just widen your imagination and think out of the box.... designing games must be really out of this world but still there's must be a balance within the whole game 

 

[Eschaton]

Well, here's an idea for balance:  wizards who can't wear armor, are weak to the attacks of warriors, who can.  Meanwhile, warriors are weak against the spells of wizards who can cast spells.   It's like elemental rock-paper-scissors, but with classes.

And yes, maybe armor can be enchanted to overcome this weakness.  Wizards can cast a spell to make them more resistant to blows, as well.  Who knows? 

These are suggestions.

 

[orochii]

Make armors have a non-conductor material under the hard metal carcass, and voilà, this thing will make you resist some amounts of electricity C:. And there could be some workaround for fire and ice.

But yeah, all armors being good against all kinds of "magic" can get pretty irreal. More if this resistance is progressively updated every time you update your equipment. And very uncreative. =D.

Salut,

Orochii Zouveleki

 

[Eschaton]

Most players aren't going to nitpick the way I did.  But the guy had a question, and I had one of the many answers.

In the end, it's a fantasy world; magic will do whatever the developer damn well pleases

 

[Tai_MT]

Well, think of it logically.  How can armor protect you from being magically set on fire?  Is armor going to make you less cold when that wizard manifests a mini-blizzard around you?  Hell if you're wearing armor and you get struck by lightning, you'll die even more than you normally would because metal conducts electricity.

Which is something I've implemented.  Metal armor has innate weaknesses to electricity.  Plate Armor especially.  Chain mail and Scale Mail, not so much.  Standard Leather armor also has slight weaknesses to fire and cold while Hard Leather Armor removes some of those weaknesses.  I also have some metals that don't conduct electricity very well or even have resistance to heat/cold (as metals do in real life).  By no means are these things required by the player to remember or anything like that, I just thought it would be fun and interesting for players to not be able to go "equip best defense armor I can" and have to make an actual choice as to what they'd want.

I've always wondered why more RPGs don't implement systems like that.  Metal Armor should cook the wearer if hit by flames (most metals retain heat instead of repel or resist it) or make an electric shock worse (a good chunk of metals conduct electricity as well).  Just seems like something that should have been done in most RPGs to keep players from going "you know what, I don't mind the speed penalty for wearing the super heavy armor because it makes me a virtual tank".  What you equip on your characters should give you pause as a player.  If it doesn't, then you're kind of overlooking the point of equipping things to characters and it just becomes a secondary "level up" system that bolsters stats.

 

[Eschaton]

Make armors have a non-conductor material under the hard metal carcass, and voilà...

...?

Did you mean cuirass?

 

[Imemperor]

Actually the word he's looking for is Faraday Cage.

 

[Chaos Avian]

Hmmm, then what would reduce fire damage by a fairly large margin? I can think of stone off the top of my head, but that's pretty much it (barring dragon scales).

 

[Eschaton]

I agree on the dragon scales. Stone would make a terrible armor. Paleo-meso-neo-lithic peoples didn't make armor out of stone for a reason. It's quite brittle under blunt force. Stone-age peoples weaponry was blunt force: axes, clubs, other rocks.

The ductile malleability makes metal ideal for armor. If it gets hit with with blunt force it will dent, it will channel te energy from the blow all over the wearer, but it won't break (well it will eventually.). Plate armor and chainmail aren't really there to protect from blunt force (or missiles-I mean arrows), that's what shields are for. Armor protects from slashes.

Plate armor fell out of use when other people started shooting guys in armor. With guns. And a musket shot will get trapped inside a cuirass, bouncing back and forth until it runs out of energy.

As for fire, metal is treated with varying amounts of heat to make it stronger. However, most metals conduct heat very well. Not as well as electricity. If metal gets hot, it will stay very hot for a while. If it gets cold, it will stay very cold for a while.

Hot or cold enough for the wearer to be VERY uncomfortable until he takes it off. And by "very uncomfortable, I mean he's suffering from hypo- or hyperthermia, and he probably had frostbite and/or third degree burns just from contact with his magic-affected armor.

If he's hit with electricity, he's being electrocuted until all that current goes into the ground. And all that current will travel through anything that conducts electricity: plate armor, a full-tang sword, his nervous system... It'll be bad. Probably worse than fire or ice.

If I were to make an rpg, mundane metal armor would have no defense vs magic. In fact, it might make it might make a weakness to magic. Enchanted armor could provide protection, but it can't be so common as to break te game in favor of warriors vs wizards. Maybe armor built with leather and cloth insulation could work too.

Again, most players won't be as nitpicky as I.

 

[Chaos Avian]

Hmmm, chainmail for resisting pierce based damage (it's naturally pretty good at resisting slashing. correct me if I'm wrong)? Or light pierce even, i.e. Good against knives and the like, but not so good against bows and spears. In real life bows are ridiculously powerful, yet in RPGs not so much weaker tier even.

About heat and cold protection, wool could potentially in theory provide decent resistance but have significantly lower PRD than most armors but decent MRD. Though Kevlar would probably be a better choice, but I guess it's down to what time era you're in.

 

[Eschaton]

Chain mail would probably resist a dagger; it doesn't have any space between plates. It's just one shirt. A forceful enough thrust will defeat chain mail; as you said, it was designed to stop slashes.

I remember freezing my balls of in Kevlar armor in the Marine Corps. And sweating my balls off.

 

[Chaos Avian]

Fire, Ice/water and lightning are the most destructive forces of nature. Is there ANY logical way to resist them to a significant degree? xD