The way I'd like to see armour handled in the game is via measuring how much of a given bodypart is covered by a single piece of armour, as a percentage. Armour would then cover that bodypart in a layer fashion, dependent on material type, quality, and any damage that material had suffered.
In other words, a good right gauntlet would cover 100% of the hand, and 100% of the forearm, with leather, perhaps 80% of the forearm with light chain, 10% of the forearm with heavy chain, 70% of the hand with heavy chain, and 30% of the hand with light plate. All materials would be of fine quality, and the metals could be specified as, say, light steel plate, heavy bronze chain, light bronze chain. A weapon strike to the arm would then have a set 100% chance of atleast striking leather before flesh, with maybe a 33% chance to hit the hand.
Hitting the hand would result in the material of the weapon having a 70% chance to be countered by heavy bronze chain, and a 30% chance of being countered by light steel plate. Creating a wound would require cutting through as many layers as the armour provides, and each layer could react to force differently, depending on the material, quality, and if it's a surface layer.
This would give an armour system that is infinitely customizeable and quite deep, and also-atleast relatively-straightforward to understand. If you can understand Z-layers, it's not really all that different.
It should (I speculate) be capable of meshing with the current weapon/combat system, and could even incorporate various special aspects such as damage to armour, failure of small parts of a larger piece of armour, wounds resulting from damage to armour, Armour upgrades (replacing the above fine light chain with masterwork quality light chain, or steel, for instance), and even the calculation of how well specific weights "sit" on specific parts of the body.
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Topic: Suggested Armour Overhaul. (Read 1252 times)