Damage Resistance realistically

Damage Resistance
Cloth - No natural DR
Leather - +3 DR
Chain - +7 DR
Plate +15 DR
I'm sorry, but "the wolves standing around you while your wearing plate and you take no damage" argument makes no sense to me. If I'm wearing plate and my natural damage is +10 any thing below a 10 should not hurt me.
Here is my rationalization for this. A wolf would not be able to bite through plate, it would break it's teeth. The only time they should do damage to you is going for the soft space between the armor,
Chain they have more spaces to get through.
Leather can be bitten through with some effort.
Cloth is not going to protect you against razor sharp fangs.

So simplify the math. Start with above, and change AI. If a wolf attacks plate and can't bite through it is likely to try and tackle you, or drag you to the ground, and it will go for the fleshy parts. But if it's dumb enough to try and bite through plate it SHOULD do no damage. To adjust for that, make the AI adjust it's attack based on the type of wolf.
ie. Elder wolves are likely to have survived and seen it all, give them attacks like 'drag down', 'ankle bite', 'throat lunge' etc. you get where I'm going.
However, if they direct attack and it's not greater than my DR, I should not be taking damage.
Get rid of the Max % nonsense as in reality that makes no sense. I should be able to stand in the middle of pups and NOT take damage unless it's above my DR. Puppies and bunnies are not going to able to bite through plate, and I'm going to be 100% resistance to their damage while wearing it.
Adding bindings of metal and straps of leather are going to make damage resistance higher for cloth, leather and chains, but should not make a difference with plate, unless you are saying it can be cut off me with a blade or chewed through (unrealistic). Will it add to plate DR though... very doubtful.

With these things in mind it will be easier to make DR understandable to all. Throw some realism in there!
Takeaways.
1) Make DR a straight block of damage points. if I have 10 DR and get hit for 9 damage, no damage is taken. 10 and 15, I take 5 damage.
2) Change DR for armor types (lower its base if you have to) Make all increases work off the base.
3) Separate DR and MR into their own types.
4) Adjust AI to alternate attacks.

 

I agree, at my level of skills and with me wearing end game +17 full plate mail (made with my 122 blacksmithing level) I shouldn't take any damage from a bandit in a tier 1 zone wielding a fruit knife.

 

I think leather and chain needs to be same but different in, Leather is kinda plate light (they used boiled and waxed leather, that stuff is TOUGH.

Leather armor was good against piercing and blunt, chain against slashing, not so good against blunt (that is what the gambesone is for)

What i am missing here is "Using the right suit for the occasion", kinda same with wepaons, there was a time you used blunt on skeletons with devastating damage inflicted but piercing was meh, whereas with plate you used blunt and piercing, and so on.

the whole systhem is simplified down and complicated up at the same as it is.

There are plenty of already written and thought out AC and weapon systhems out there, what we have is kinda foggy.

I mean i am an light armor wearer with high dex and skills in light armor, i should tank by evasion but i have to train earth magig innates to push my what ever it is that makes me take less damage?

That is blunt said silly.

Light armor skill, and this only, should define my AC and evasion. Period.

Type of armor and fizzle ok in my book, you trade magic ability for protection, classy and prooven to work.

Resists, is in Sota meh.

Even in plate i learn all magic schools for resists, from an RPG point of view you have an char who is as good or bad in life and death magic, in sun and moon and so on for the...resists... I mean.. meh....

Magic resist systhem needs rethinking, either more jewellery and over that (classy way) or make it an own skill set (One for weapons, one for armor/resists one for magic)

I would tend to jewellery/armor enchantments for resists, it is very classical and frees pure melees from magic learning (I am ok that they can if they want to, but making it someway madatory to train them all for resists is in my eyes taking away from allowing an classless free systhem because it turns chars in that regard into cookie cutter chars.

The danger is by allowing "free choice of skills" forces everyone into "you need all skills to be viable"

I have no idea if it is even possible to rethink so much findamental things at this stage but i think we NEED to get away from the way it is as faar as possible in regard to armor types and AC and resists, it all links and it all as it is forces us from "free choice of how to build your char" into "you need to do the same as everybody else or end crispy with the next elf mage slinging fireballs"

Give us magical asbestos underwear if you have to, but do not force an fanatical water mage to learn fire or he ends crispy every five seconds, one could discuss an water mage has offcourse very good defenses against fire by layering water on his skin or whatnot.

An pure melee (tank) should have its ac over heavy armor skill, (not like everyone else for an sizeable ammount over earth), an light armor wearer over light armor skill (same with earth applys here)

Resists it own school or with jewellery (2 rings, neck, shield and belt, maybe cloak

Free melees from enforced magic learning, make armors having it weaknesses and advantages, right now it is an gory mess that does in some way the opposite from classless, it forces everyone into ONE class, earthmage.

 

I don't disagree with anything mentioned here, I'm just thinking of the reality of some of it. At this point the AI of most monsters is extremely simple so getting to a point where the monsters are actually smart enough to swap a move set (that currently doesn't even exist, so from scratch moves too) is nothing that's imminent. I don't want to give them any excuses as to why this broken nonsense remains any longer than it has by saying they'd need such behavior on the mobs before they made the change.

On the flip side, it's a tough juggling act to balance. How much DR is enough to be both realistic but still allow for some choice in play-style and skills when confronting "boss" monsters? Further, as there's no real distinction between who can effectively do what with this game, how do you prevent the "tank mage" scenario where someone is able to reduce their incoming damage enough that they can heal all of it by themselves? There's never going to be an end game economy if everything is always solo-able (nor can we prevent everything from being solo-able by brute means like making stuff hit like a mack truck). I think this can be worked through with specializations, but we're a LONG ways off from seeing anything with any immediate impact surface here. We would need locked-to-specialization skills effectively making the specializations form a rough class system.

I know personally I'm in favor of pseudo-classes via specializations at this point. I think it'd make things far simpler to balance overall if they don't have to account for someone able to do everything at every single design venture moving forward. Hell you could go so far as to require heavy armor specialization to even be able to wear plate. This obviously would have drastic consequences towards the notion of a "classless" system though so who knows what we'll get...