Weapon vs. Armor type adjustments in 1E AD&D

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Moonglum

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I've always felt like the weapon vs. armor type concept in 1E AD&D was one of the most under-appreciated and under utilized components of the system — a failed experiment that really deserved to succeed. Ignoring it seriously weakens the fighter class because it removes their ability to use a well chosen selection of weapon proficiencies to consistently gain quite substantial bonuses against humanoid foes. And, most weapons usable by non-fighters aren't that great against heavy armors, meaning fighters are defensively stronger, relatively speaking, when these rules are in effect.

The rules usually get lumped in with the kaleidoscopic mess of mutually distinct sub-systems in the game (and not in a good way), but with just a little difference in presentation the value of it could have been more easily understood and used. Like, instead of having 59 weapon types and 9 armor types, how about ~20 unique weapon types and ~5 unique armor types, so the whole thing is closer to the human ability to work with visually complex tables? And how about including the table on the DM's screen (gah!!! One of the only things you have to have in front of you all the time to use the rule effectively, and the chowderhead who designed this thing left it off! At least, off of the version i own.

What's your take on these rules? use them? Love them? Hate them? Any shortcuts you developed to bring them into play more easily?
 
When I was learning AD&D, I didn't understand that they were only for worn armor. I thought they were modifiers to the Armor Class just whenever. I assumed that if the AC was lower than 2 then you just used the modifier for 2 all the way down.

So, my first AD&D character had this copied chart with all these modifiers pre-applied, and I could not hit shit. We were fighting something or other, and I missed yet again with a really high die roll. The other player asked, "What the hell do you need to roll to hit? I hit on X." I told him and both he and the DM wanted me to explain why. I pointed out the weapon vs AC chart.

"What? No. No one uses that."

Later, I read it was only supposed to be against worn armor, but still no one I gamed with actually used it.

I think the weapon vs AC charts are on the player screen of the revamped 1e Dungeon Master's Screens (the ones with covers matching the revised book covers).
 
We used those rules, back in the day, for certain types of combat situations and have found memories of them.

When playing 1e we didn’t used them all the time, but we did in some combats, and it helped to make them interesting. I think we all liked the rules, and they were not that hard to manage at the table.

Then we transitioned to 2e (because we didn’t knew better) and all that experience was lost in time.
 
The hibernating simulationist in me really likes the idea of weapons vs armour mods. Practically speaking it's way more crunch than I look for these days. You can get something like it done with tags that's less crunchy, but not by much. Meh.
 
I concept do not mind them. Tried, oh how we tried, oh so many ways to incorporate. Can go over several. One large issue is as stated right there in the PHB they are geared towards human armor, and AC on creatures requires some interpolation. Not that it can't be done and wasn't tried but now a separate stat in each MM entry. Let alone the interaction of shields with the whole thing.

What worked better was to group weapons by "type" of damage, pierce, slash, blunt etc.. Pretty sure this had already been done in other RPGs by '79 or so.

In a way it was trying tor replicate the ability of different armors to stop or reduce damage, all shoe horned back through the lens of AC.

I really think the whole weapon v AC is too much detail that adds way too much complication for what it captures under the AD&D combat system that was supposed to be abstract. Heck if you like crunchy for crunchy sake it has a pleasure all its own. Many ways to speed its se but the mere inclusion does slow things.

In short I personally experimented with it for 2 years or so, and would say many others did as well. In the end it was never really much worth the effort in any sense and certainly didn't add more verisimilitude...not any more than a good DM just providing modifier. And it wasn't fighters who cared so much but those with worse chances to hit.

As to fighters getting there due and making weapon choice matter, on the latter AD&D never too good about that except for what worked best against various undead and some other creatures. Saw plenty of house rules that expanded on that approach via note in their MM. The more important liberal interpretation of giving fighters their due was to relax the 1 attack per fighter level against1HD creatures or less. So many forgot this...made a big difference when your 3rd level fighter could attack 3 orcs. The most common relaxation was if the monsters where in mix HD groups if the fighter just attacked 1HD or less they got the multiple attacks, and second broadening (less common) upped it to 1+1 HD creatures.

I personally always thought it was the wrong road to go down in AD&D to get more detail on the tactical side, rather provide higher level benefits. The premises and assumptions of the combat mechanics that made it streamlined create issue when you try to undo them in this manner.

If one wants weapon choice to matter against target protection, my expereince is an AC approach is the worse way to do it.
 
Another thing is I think the way it was presented in the PHB was very confusing. As I've grown to understand it, the modifier is only against armor, not against natural AC. But the chart just shows AC, so it's not clear that it's about the armor type.

It also leads to weirdness. Chain + shield, Banded mail, and split mail all have the same AC. So, by the rule, all weapons affect those three armors the exact same way, even though they're different armors. What if the shield is steel or wood? It doesn't matter.

It would have been better to present the table with the armor type as the header instead of the armor class.
 
Moonglum said:
.... how about ~20 unique weapon types and ~5 unique armor types,
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I'd say 3-5 unique damage types and 3-5 armor types max.

IIRC the initial pass at this was pierce, slash, blunt, entangle/flexible vs. flexible soft, flexible hard, semi-rigid and rigid. Shields required separate rules and where flails and nets with the entangle/flexible category came in.

I can honestly say weapon choice mattering (in a broad category sense) has been a design touch point for me since '78.
 
Something that occurred to me is to have six tags - three for weapons: blunt, piercing and slashing and (at least) three for armour, call them what you like, with each one modifying rolls, either just a penalty or a penalty and a bonus as appropriate for the three attack types. It's way easier to think of tags that are evocative descriptions as applying to both armour types and various sorts of creature. Anyway, just a passing thought I had one day.
 
Gabriel said:
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It also leads to weirdness. Chain + shield, Banded mail, and split mail all have the same AC. So, by the rule, all weapons affect those three armors the exact same way, even though they're different armors. What if the shield is steel or wood? It doesn't matter.
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Oh so true but this was taken almost straight out of Greyhawk. We likely tried it for the first time then, can't remember.

We also tried all the hit location and HP allocation stuff in Blackmoor. It was even more time consuming but I tried to get hit location to wrok well for way too long in my gaming life...it repeatedly just got dropped. The % based way too unwieldy, even a 2d6 or 1d12 type low level detail too much. But heck it was a zeitgeist of the late '70s and the '80s. Now when I say unwieldy, that is for combats we liked. small numbers vs small numbers or PCs on 1 creature more wieldable.

Realized my main impetus for all this was verisimilitude and not simulation (especially bottom up) and found better mechanics to get this over the years when I want it.
 
Fenris-77 said:
Something that occurred to me is to have six tags - three for weapons: blunt, piercing and slashing and (at least) three for armour, call them what you like, with each one modifying rolls, either just a penalty or a penalty and a bonus as appropriate for the three attack types. It's way easier to think of tags that are evocative descriptions as applying to both armour types and various sorts of creature. Anyway, just a passing thought I had one day.
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Agree, but we always wanted one for flexible as believe one reason for the chain on a flail was to help lower the great advantage of a shield, among other considerations. We thought of and decided to pass on the reason certain weapons were preferred for mounted vs unmounted combat. Mounted combat always given not much though in AD&D, which is no problem if you are dungeon focused type adventuring.

And alas AD&D never really captured it but another historical reason was cost. A spiked hammer much easier to make than a long sword. Seriously Watching Forged in Fire it's just amazing they could make 6 foot blades back then that were effective in armored combat. The time and effort in making long blades is not really reflected in the AD&D price list.

Don't even get me started on weapon breakage and how common that actually was. I'm kind of picking one rabbit hole at a time.
 
IIRC, AD&D2e demoted weapon vs armor to an optional rule and made it slashing/piercing/bludgeoning cross referenced against armor type.

Edit: Yep. This is vastly superior at least in presentation to the 1e version. I did try to use this version of the rule when I GMed, but it was awkward and no one really liked it.


2eweapvsac.png
 
Gabriel said:
IIRC, AD&D2e demoted weapon vs armor to an optional rule and made it slashing/piercing/bludgeoning cross referenced against armor type.

Edit: Yep. This is vastly superior at least in presentation to the 1e version. I did try to use this version of the rule when I GMed, but it was awkward and no one really liked it.


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I don’t remember exactly why, those memories are lost in time, but I don’t think we ever used those rules in 2e.

Even on 1st edition I remember we only used the original rules in certain chosen combats, not most of the time.
 
Gabriel said:
IIRC, AD&D2e demoted weapon vs armor to an optional rule and made it slashing/piercing/bludgeoning cross referenced against armor type.

Edit: Yep. This is vastly superior at least in presentation to the 1e version. I did try to use this version of the rule when I GMed, but it was awkward and no one really liked it.


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That's cool. Pretty sure it was an optional rule in AD&D 1e as well.

The thing that got me with these types or armor is they all include padding of some sort underneath, you rarely had just a shirt of mail ala The Hobbit. Let alone some of those armor types were not really different (just different names for different form factors with little to no difference otherwise...except maybe weight and cost and reliability....which while critically important in real life not important at all in D&D combat).

Some may not have even existed, but one needs to realize Gary based this off in part of rule of cool and also books likely from the 1950s if not earlier...not even necessarily good sources then let alone in the 1980s. Hence a warning my son when try to "simulate" and from the bottom up..much better to seek verisimilitude and abstract a bit.

EDIT: Oops forgot to also add flexibility on armors of different form factors.
 
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I like the idea in theory. I just think it sits oddly in D&D. Realism is great, but starts to feel very selective when your tanking a swing from a storm giant's club, or a dragon's breath weapon. (And I've never understood why armour doesn't protect you from things like fireballs. Sure full plate would cook you if you were in a fire for a sustained time, but against a sudden instantaneous blast of flame? Wouldn't you much rather be wearing it than not?)

Now if I had to use AD&D to run a much more historically based or low fantasy game where most opponents were humanoid I'd be more on board for it, but the thing is I would be looking at a different system at this point.
 
Didn't 1e Gamma World and/or Metamorphosis Alpha use a "Attacker's Weapon Class + Defender's [descending] AC + roll vs. TN to succeed? I always thought that was part of the rationale for descending AC. Pretty sure the OG Gamma World's matrix boiled down to the above factors, 21 or better succeded.
 
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Really, the to hit table should have been integrated with the weapon verses armour type table and the character's level should have given a bonus to hit. They did this in The Arduin Adventure and it blew my mind at the time.

The big problem with first and second edition D&D is that the balance of the weapons is tied to the table and you get weird and wonky damage results where some weapons are just plain out superior to similar weapons.

But what do I know? Arms Law is my favorite combat system.
 
I used them for a bit in 2e but found they slowed down combat too much, I already find combat in D&D too slow.
 
I like each weapon having its own bespoke chart rather than rolling it up to types (piercing vs blunt vs slashing). The problem is the adjustments don’t layer well on top of the AC system. If you used the chart instead of the AC chart (like the Chainmail man-to-man combat table from which it was derived) it might work - say use the number required to hit AC 7 (13+ for a 1st level fighter) as the baseline, +/- the weapon type adjustment, so someone with a longsword would need 11 to hit AC 10, 12 to hit AC 9, 13 to hit ACs 8-4, 14 to hit AC 3, and 15 to hit AC 2.
 
Moonglum said:
What's your take on these rules? use them? Love them? Hate them? Any shortcuts you developed to bring them into play more easily?
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A Brief Overview.
It begins with Chainmail
1635822384593.png

Then is followed with the OD&D Greyhawk Supplement
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And winds up with AD&D 1e chart

1635822512359.png

The core issue
Take a look at the Chainmail table. Each column represents a specific type of armor. This pattern is carried over into the Greyhawk Table.

9No Armor
7Leather
5Chain
3Plate

A shield will add +1 to each base armor type.

In AD&D now has a bunch of intermediate armor types.
1635822705484.png
The logic of the table in AD&D is completely broken. Scale Mail + Shield is the not the same type of armor as Chainmail without a shield.

Basically it is extra work that doesn't make sense even for a D&D based game.
 
My "fix" for the issue is to bake in a bonus or an ability into the weapon description. The advantage of this approach is that it give fighter a mechanical benefit tied to the weapon but doesn't require a table look up. Just a simple effect or bonus to be applied.


For example
1635822917912.png

For something more complex like a Halberd
1635823012541.png

Even an axe has an ability.
1635823049402.png
 

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This level of granularity is more suited for video games IMHO but if I wanted to implement weapon vs. armor mods I'd probably use keywords. You can see the 2e chart groping towards that solution.
 
xanther said:
Agree, but we always wanted one for flexible as believe one reason for the chain on a flail was to help lower the great advantage of a shield, among other considerations. We thought of and decided to pass on the reason certain weapons were preferred for mounted vs unmounted combat. Mounted combat always given not much though in AD&D, which is no problem if you are dungeon focused type adventuring.

And alas AD&D never really captured it but another historical reason was cost. A spiked hammer much easier to make than a long sword. Seriously Watching Forged in Fire it's just amazing they could make 6 foot blades back then that were effective in armored combat. The time and effort in making long blades is not really reflected in the AD&D price list.

Don't even get me started on weapon breakage and how common that actually was. I'm kind of picking one rabbit hole at a time.
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Lets assume for a moment I don't care about chain weapons, which I don't. The historicity of chain weapons' has always been in doubt and as an actual scholar of the period I don't have it in me to disagree. Chain weapons no bueno. Sorry. Cost, as you construe it, is nothing like AD&D ever wanted to capture. I might not disagree about the actual cost but that was never the point that mattered about why it was in the AD&D book or not. D&D wad never about a specific period at all, and to think it was is to make a serious category mistake. You simply can't take a moment in history to prove AD&D wring, that's not how it works.
 
I do recall using those rules when we played 2e, but 2e combats were already long, adding one more modifier wasn't a huge deal either way, especially as players figured out all their mods before it got to their Initiative turn and then we just rattled them off to the DM when we rolled.

If I were to try and redo that in a system today, what I'd probably do is classify weapons as Slashing/Piercing/Blunt, and then have three AC scores for each armour type vs a specific type of attack. If a weapon is capable of more than one type, there would be a default and then it would be on the player to announce if they were doing something different.
 
robertsconley robertsconley Your post #19 nailed it. It wasn't that it was unclear back in the day, at various points most of us attempted to use it. It was just too cumbersome to add it to the flow of combat. It slowed an already slow combat system down even further.
 
The official orange AD&D character sheets had spaces to fill in the modifiers. Which sped up play but slowed down character creation. Really, if you fill out that sheet, Rolemaster character creation isn't any slower.
 
Bunch said:
You guys just needed to use the combat wheel. It fixed everything...
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I had forgotten all about that thing. I don't think I've ever seen an example of that product in person.
 
Gabriel said:
I had forgotten all about that thing. I don't think I've ever seen an example of that product in person.
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I have one up in the office. When my new phone with working camera comes Thursday I'll take a picture for you.
 
David Johansen said:
The official orange AD&D character sheets had spaces to fill in the modifiers. Which sped up play but slowed down character creation. Really, if you fill out that sheet, Rolemaster character creation isn't any slower.
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Yeah, early D&D expected you'd copy the whole to hit chart to your character sheet. The examples always showed people writing down to hit numbers for AC 10 thru 0 and the pre-printed sheets had spaces for the same. Those orange AD&D sheets had that for each weapon.

THAC0 wasn't a thing yet.
 
I'll admit, copying / figuring out weapon stats in GURPS is also annoying.
 
David Johansen said:
I'll admit, copying / figuring out weapon stats in GURPS is also annoying.
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It just occurred to me that this was just the sort of thing I expected to do BitD. I've commented before about my Palladium Robotech character sheets, and all of us just accepted that we'd have to pre-calculate all our bonuses for Hand to Hand combat, and then Veritech combat, and then Cyclone combat, and then whatever others we needed. I don't think that kind of thing flies so well today.

But AD&D1e really had the worst of all worlds with this rule.

First, do players even get to know their hit chart? The information is sequestered away in the DMG, and I seem to recall the DMG claiming with typical Gygaxian authority that nothing in it's pages was for players. Yet, it had already been defined that players should write their hit chart on their character sheets. So is the to hit chart universal info or only for DMs?

The official AD&D1e sheet shows space to fill in for each weapon. Presumably the player is supposed to get their hit chances from the DM, and then pre-apply their modifiers by weapon against each AC. That's great when you're fighting an orc with AC5 from wearing chainmail. But what happens when you're fighting a troll with AC4, or any other monster not wearing armor and therefore having a natural AC? What if you're fighting a target in magical armor or that has a Dex bonus? Is the DM supposed to remember that your chart only accounts for base AC and then flip the numbers around in his head. You say that you hit AC 3, so the DM then calculates that the thief has +2 armor and a -4 Dex adjustment, so you still miss, because you were attacking AC8 but you needed to hit AC2?

Do you tell the players the AC of the target? If they have the numbers pre-calculated on their sheet, then you also need to tell them if it's Armor based AC or Natural, because that will change what they need to roll. You also need to tell the player the Base AC if the final AC is Armor based, meaning they get to know if there are magical or dexterity modifiers. And then the player really needs to keep two rows of to hit charts for each weapon: one for against worn Armor and the other against natural AC. The kicker is that if it's worn Armor, then you STILL have to do math to get the final to hit number because you have to calculate magic and dex modifiers separately.
 
David Johansen said:
The official orange AD&D character sheets had spaces to fill in the modifiers. Which sped up play but slowed down character creation. Really, if you fill out that sheet, Rolemaster character creation isn't any slower.
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Lol, yes, yes they did. You have to trust your players to do that though. :wink:
 
Moonglum said:
What's your take on these rules? use them? Love them? Hate them? Any shortcuts you developed to bring them into play more easily?
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I remember when we first saw these. We might have spent as much as five minutes discussing it before deciding, unanimously, to ignore it. We were AH wargamers before finding D&D, so it wasn't an aversion to simulations. It was just obviously too cumbersome for what we thought D&D should be. Despite what it said on the cover of the white box, we never approached it as a wargame or combat simulation.
 
I wish weapon choices had been more of a "thing" in the DnD games I played in. Everybody trains their PC in the use of 1 or 2 weapons and thats all they use for the whole campaign. There's never any debate about what weapons are appropriate to equip for this adventure or whatever job it is the PC's are on. (And the same for armour now I think about it.)

It doesn't help that DnD weapons seem to exist in a strange realm where the rules of a 3 dimensional universe never apply to them. In a cramped cave system, which has been dug out by Kobolds or other small humanoids, there shouldn't be enough space to swing a double-handed battle axe, or fire a longbow. And if there ever were rules for that sort of thing I don't ever recall using them.

Maybe I am just a sadist, but it would be nice for it to matter in DnD now and then.
 
Some of the reasons I never used those modifiers:

+ It seemed to make some weapons REALLY good or REALLY bad. I admit though I never really looked carefully at the numbers
+ By listing AC not armor types, it obviously lumped X+shield with Y.
+ The big one - no creature weapons (note that in contrast Traveller's similar table includes animal weapons) and no creature armor types (again, note that Traveller classifies each animal's armor in terms of the available armor types, though it would have been cool had they added an animal armor type or two that had a different pattern of modifiers than the regular armor types).
+ Extra steps during combat can be a pain, though I have played with plenty of systems that add extra steps so this one would be mitigated with more experience with the system
 
ffilz said:
+ It seemed to make some weapons REALLY good or REALLY bad. I admit though I never really looked carefully at the numbers
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Really good: Two Handed Sword, Footman's Flail, Morning star: positive modifiers against nearly everything.

Really bad: Battle Axe, Guisarme, Scimitar, Spear :Negative modifiers against any armor you're likely to encounter.

Quarter Staffs and Daggers also have really bad penalties against any real armor, but considering what they are, it's really no surprise.

Bastard Swords are pretty good, with a +1 against everything until you come up against Plate.
 
Maybe we were thinking about the chart wrong?

1635879906684.png
Instead of the above we should be thinking of it like this and ignoring the + shield part after AC 9 and maybe consider AC 2
  • 10 - None
  • 9 - Shield Only
  • 8 - Leather or Padded Armor
  • 7 - Studded Leather or Ring Mail
  • 6 - Scale Mail
  • 5 - Chain Mail
  • 4 - Splint or Banded Mail
  • 3 - Plate mail
  • 2 - Plate mail + shield
Reading over the rules. It not stated anywhere that the AC column is the target's AC. Instead it is emphasized that they are adjustments for specific types of armor. Now the precedent of Greyhawk is that there is a column for the base armor type and a column for type + shield. While it doesn't change how cumbersome the table is to use, just considering the base armor makes it work better logically in my opinion.

1635880320649.png
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robertsconley said:
Instead of the above we should be thinking of it like this and ignoring the + shield part after AC 9 and maybe consider AC 2
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That's how it should be, but the actual modifier charts toss that out the window, because there are separate entries for AC9 and AC2, which are only possible with shields. Those entries do sometimes differ from the entries with just armor, meaning there was some conscious attempt to say that a weapon would/would not be as effective if a shield were also used at those base armor types.
 
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