Alternative Monster Armor Rules

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  • Unarmored => Takes full damage from all sources.
  • Medium Armor => Takes half damage from all sources.
  • Heavy Armor => Takes half damage and only damage from dice, ignoring modifiers.

Crits and attacking an enemies weakspots (e.g. a damage vulnerability) ignores armor.

It is suggested to pair these rules with additional monster weaknesses to exploit which gives the game a Witcher like feeling of researching monsters and targeting their weak spots.

These rules are intended for tables that liked the old armor rules, but want them to affect the party more evenly.

Variants: For tables that have the experience of only counting dice portion of damage produces a lot of back and forth, alternatives for heavy armor could be

  • Half damage and miss on 2 or less.
  • Just using unarmored and armored (half damage from all sources)

Tips & Tricks:

  • Instead of halving every regular hit, you can also double the monsters HP and then count regular hits like normal and crits as double damage. This is both easier to math and you have to do the calculation less often.

Replaces

Monster Armor

Most monsters are unarmored, but some tougher foes might have:

  • Medium Armor: –5 damage from incoming attacks.
  • Heavy Armor: –10 damage from incoming attacks.

Crits ignore monster armor.

Some monsters may also be Vulnerable (+10 damage) or Resistant (–10 damage) to certain kinds of attacks.