Hey everyone, thanks for reading.

Something that bothered me a lot in both Morrowind and Oblivion, is that your armor just gives you a defense rating and that's it.
However, don't you think that certain armors are more effective agains certain types of damage?

For example, if you'd shoot a powerful fireball on someone wearing fur armor, the fur could burst into flames.
Or a shock spell on someone wearing steel could ignore the armor rating completely.

There are many more examples, where a piece of armor's materials would matter an awful lot for the actual damage done.

With current technology, it should be possible to implement this system which would add a lot of tactic and depth to the combat system in return.

Anyone with me?
What are your views on this subject?

absolutely!!! this is something that actually would be fun.

the fur is a bit oot

but i like the sentiment.

And how would this be balanced with shield spells, how would you alter them?

how would you doit?

Being magic, I'd say that shield spells don't really need to be altered. They can simply reduce all forms of physical damage.

But I believe what you have in mind would essentially be a system where rather than providing a flat damage resistence, armor can allow you to resist different types of damage, with different types of armor offering different resistences to different things, I would say such a thing might actually be a good idea. I'm not so sure about things like fire and frost damage as those things generally come from spells or enchantments, which would probably still be handled by magical resistences, but I would say at least that blunt weapons should do a different type of damage from say, bows. After all, blunt weapons rely on smashing targets with their weight, whereas arrows pierce through targets, and an armor that's good at protection against one might not necessarily work that well against another. Aside from allowing the choice of what kind of armor to wear to be more than just choosing whichever one has the best defense, this could also add a bit more strategy to choosing weapons. Because let's face it, the way things are in Morrowind and Oblivion, there really isn't that much difference between different weapon types. While within each weapon type, you might select different options based on damage, weight, attack speed and such, the question of whether to use blunt weapons or swords pretty much comes down to whichever one you feel like.

But I wouldn't expect to see a system like this, not that there's anything wrong with hoping, just keep in mind that your wishes might not come true.

it would probably work.... but all heavy armor is made from some kind of metal, so anyone wearing heavy armor would get destroyed by a mage with lightning spells

I think this would make mages way too powerful.. I mean any furwearing guy (Which I imagine there are alot of in skyrim) is easily defeated by fire, whilst any metal wearing guy is easily defeated by lightning

I'd so something like this. If all these stats were applied to every set of armor, you'd have to wear the right armor for the right job. This way there's no "best" overall armor, there's the best armor for the job. Need to hunt for treasure in a volcano? Use the dwarven armor for the heat resistance. Need to fight a lich? Wear the spell resistant Mithril. The factors of every set of armor can be:

Durability
Enchantability
Agility
Speed
Endurance
Climbing
Athletics
Acrobatics
Slashing resistance
Piercing resistance
Blunt resistance
Fluting
Repairability
Frost protection
Fire protection
Lightning protection
Spell resistance
Joint protection
Sound
Shine
Attractiveness
Value
Weight


So as an example, let's apply this list to a standard suit of dark brown cow leather armor, with values of 1-10. The negatives show what stats would be hampered by you wearing this armor.

Weather Durability 4
Enchantability 1 (Can't hold strong enchantments)
Agility -.5 (All armor hampers your agility to some degree)
Speed -.5
Endurance -.5
Climbing -.5
Athletics -.5
Acrobatics -.5
Slashing resistance 2
Piercing resistance 1
Blunt resistance 3
Fluting NA (Fluting is a metal working process to make armor lighter and stronger)
Repairability 10 (Easy to repair and find replacement parts for)
Frost protection 7
Fire protection 4
Lightning protection 4
Spell resistance 1 (Non-elemental spells)
Joint protection 2 (Elbow, armpit, and other joints between main pieces of armor)
Sound .5 (Is fairly silent when using)
Shine 0 (Doesn't reflect light, in regard to stealth)
Attractiveness 2 (Increases with dying or good repair, decreases with wear)
Value 1 (Cheap)
Weight 1 (Lightest armor in the game)


Now with that example, I'll do one more to illustrate. This will be for Dwarven.

Weather Durability 6
Enchantability 7
Agility -6
Speed -4
Endurance -4
Climbing -5
Athletics -4
Acrobatics -6
Slashing resistance 8
Piercing resistance 6
Blunt resistance 5
Fluting NA
Repairability 3 (Harder to repair and find replacement parts for)
Frost protection 2
Fire protection 10
Lightning protection 2
Spell resistance 4
Joint protection 7
Sound 6
Shine 4
Attractiveness 8
Value 8
Weight 5

With the Leather, it barely detracts from your skills and attributes at all while it gives decent elemental protection and basic bodily protection. Dwarven is great for fire protection, joint protection, and is fairly enchantable.

YES YES YES, This is good. I like this idea nice 1.

hey that sounds pretty good.
i really like the idea of armor penalties.

edit: how would you do weapon materials?

Great idea but I sincerely doubt that in current age of streamlining everything it would work, heh today's "casual" player after seeing such developed stats for plain leather armor would be probably rather scared than thrilled.

Shades, thanks for your more detailed description.
That's exactly what I had in mind.

As for weapons, you could have blunt, piercing and slashing damage. Add fire/frost/... from enchantments, weight, and I guess you've got most factors thrown into the equation.

Maybe this should be implemented on the hardcoe (Survival) mode?

This should have been a poll, but I agree. Attractiveness Resistance should have been on there, seeing as we have no defense against the charms of Nords.

I agree, and what Shades posted would be excellent. Unfortunately, I share Aqshy's doubts about anything this extensive being included. Then again, the majority of the properties Shades listed wouldn't necessarily have to be visible to players by default (there are item traits in Morrowind [and Oblivion?] which are only visible in the construction set, IIRC).

I deliberately did not make it a poll to get more in-depth feedback and the initial replies.
Thanks for your support anyway!

I agree with this idea very much. take chainmail for example, it's strong against slashing cutting strikes, but often chain mail would fail when struck with an arrow or spear as the sharp point would split the rings and force it's way through.

I would also argue that elemental destruction spells (fire, frost shock) shouldn't be resisted by magic resistance, but require actual fire/frost/shock resistance. After all, the 'magic' part is creating the spell, the resulting fire or lightning bolt is a physical manifestation.

Someone HAS to mod in this the first day!

The good thing about this idea is that it seems very easily modable, I haven't modded much with the CS before but it seems that all you would need is a script and some formulas that govern how specific armor types react to certain damage types. Like all you would have to do is create a variable in the damage formula for each type of armor and how that armor reacts to it, so for fur fire damage could have a x2 multiplier.

Yes i agree with every equipment adding and reducing some type of damage you recive and give.
But still it shouldnt be a judging factor cuz that would create a major disbalance in the game.

Yea, I'm not sure if was included in OB but just hidden, but in Morrowind higher quality armors actually had higher "health" so not let's say steels armor rating was only 2 points higher than iron...it's health may have been 300 instead of 200, needing less repair to maintain effectiveness. In OB everything was just 100, but maybe they hid the actually health (it kind of looks weird to see "Dwarven Helmet 4534/5000, Orcish Cuirass 1242/2300)

does anyone here play other rpgs besided TES games. this was being done in other games for years if not decades. hell the might and magic series which came out in the 90s had different resistances to different magic attacks. why TES never adopted that along with the pierce, blunt, slash damage resistances is beyond me. it adds a whole new layer of depth for picking the right armor for the right situation.

wearing full plate metal armor should make you very very susceptible to lightning attacks after all.

@keltic..........that was percent they were showing. different items did have different health values.

Woah, I didn't like your others ideas, but this is pretty cool!

There's nothing hardcoe or extra challenge about it. It's just a better system.