Damage to Armor
 

Does anyone use rules for wear and tear on armor? How many times can my leather armor's DR be penetrated with a cutting attack before it's useless ribbons? How much would it cost to get repaired?

Or should I count every piece of armor as losing hp for every point of damage its DR blocks? Assume I'm running a gritty, detailed, realistic game and am okay with a lot of bookkeeping.

Re: Damage to Armor
 

There's this ruleset.

Re: Damage to Armor
 

I definitely wouldn't do 1-1 unless you're keeping VERY specific records of the location where the DR is damaged. Something more like Semi-Ablative may be appropriate.

Perhaps Low-Tech will contain rules for this as well.

Re: Damage to Armor
 

That's very cool. It's for 3e, but I'm not sure how much you'd have to change it.

Re: Damage to Armor
 

The problem with damage to armor is that some attacks no matter how plentiful will never wear armor down (You could shoot a tank with 5.56 rounds all day and never do more then mark it up).

On the other hand some attacks, no matter how minor, on some armor will degrade it. Ever just 1 point of cutting damage on a suit of cloth armor will eventually turn it to tatters.

I generally just deal with damage to armor by telling PCs occasionally that they need to pay a maintenance on there adventuring gear, valued at 1/10th the value of the gear (1/20th if they do the work themselves). The frequency of those upkeep goes up with what they were doing.

Re: Damage to Armor
 

Companion 2 rather than LT proper, but yes.

Re: Damage to Armor
 

I'm fond of replacing the '9,10,11' results on the Critical Hit table with 'in addition to normal damage, the attack reduces the DR of any armour on the affected hit location by 1 for every five points of damage'. Mostly because it 'fixes' a frequently complained about issue with the critical hit table and requires a lot less book-keeping than more detailed solutions.

Re: Damage to Armor
 

As Matt said, there are armour damage riules in Companion 2, but all of the options examined in the Low-Tech playtest involve an annoying level of book-keeping. We did include a Quick and Dirty option but it isn't very satisfying IMO. I would only bother with armour damage when the PCs are involved in frequent fighting and don't have access to armoury services for extended periods of time - such as when exploring a dungeon or when in the middle of a military campaign. For the rest of the time I would just rule that the Cost of Living expenses includes keeping your armour maintained.

Re: Damage to Armor
 

If it's the option that appeared in the initial manuscript, then yeah, it isn't the most satisfying of them, but it required rather less bookkeeping than the others. Now I would only use it in a grim and gritty military campaign, since I feel that DF usually goes for quick and dirty rules. Now, I use damage to shields rules even in DF, and I'll probably add damage to armors...

Re: Damage to Armor
 

I wasn't thinking of DF. Plenty of my campaigns involved the party exploring a "dungeon"* for extended periods of time. If they were involved in frequent combat then I would use armour and weapon damage just as I would keep record of their arrows, food, and light sources. Most of the time I don't bother with this level of detail since they would have ready access to supplies and services.

* mine complex, catacombs, ruined fortress, derelict spaceship, etc.