Optional Armor Rules

I've been thinking about optional combat and armor rules for awhile now, but I've never found the time to put pen to paper.  When I used to play the Stormbringer and Elric! Roleplaying games, they had a damage reduction system with the armor.  If you were struck in combat, you would roll your armor dice and the result was the reduction you took in damage.  Some armor rolled a 1d6-1 and so on and so forth.  The idea I have is classify armor by type, such as light, medium and heavy.  Light armor would reduce damage by 1d4-1, medium 1d6-1 and heavy 1d8-1.  Shields would not act as damage reduction, but would affect the to hit factor mentioned below. 

Now with this system, you would have to rework the to hit system just a bit.  For this, I would use the base to hit number of 10 and add your DEX bonus, shield bonus and any other situational modifiers such as cover or concealment.

           

To hit ≥ 10 + DEX + Shield + Situational Modifiers

Armor Type	Damage Reduction w/o Helmet	Damage Reduction with Helmet
Light Armor…Padded, hide, leather	1d4-1	1d4
Medium Armor…Chain, Scale	1d6-1	1d6
Heavy Armor…Plate, Full Plate	1d8-1	1d8

This is just a rough draft and I’ll expand upon it in later posts.