Why are helmets in Dungeons and Dragons based RPGs so rarely actually protective?
D+D has been the backdrop to a lot of video game RPGs, many of them extremely famous titles of the genre (such as Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and, of course, the incredibly excellent Planescape: Torment). And in each of those games, the average helmet really doesn’t do much for your defense. Until you get far enough in the game that you start encountering a ton of enchanted equipment and may then come across a helmet with some trait that’s actually useful, the only thing a helmet does is prevent critical hits. It doesn’t add to your Armor Class, or reduce damage, or anything.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s nice not to have to worry that some punk ass little goblin’s gonna roll a critical right when he’s beating otherwise ineffectually against your mage, but this setup doesn’t seem logical to me. Yeah, I can kind of see the reasoning behind it--your head’s a pretty important and vulnerable spot on you, so you could say that any critical hit is an attack on your head, and thus a helmet is protecting you from those. But your heart, your liver, your stomach, your neck, and your genitals are all extremely vulnerable areas, too. The whole human body is basically one giant weak spot, really. It’s only reasonable to assume that attacks that penetrate those areas would be critical hits, possibly even more so than several parts of your head (which does have that thick, or even utterly impenetrable if you work at SquareEnix, skull around it). The regular armor covering those areas doesn’t protect against critical hits, despite being, often, considerably thicker than a helmet--it just increases the Armor Class.
Of course, Armor Class is kind of logistically bizarre already, so I don’t know why I’d expect the helmet situation to make a whole lot of sense, either.
It’s not a big deal, I know, and the games themselves aren’t solely at fault--they’re just following the way that the armor system worked in the actual version of Dungeons and Dragons that they were based on. I’m sure that the role of helmets in D+D were determined with gameplay balance in mind more than making sense of the armor defense system. It’s just weird to see what would normally be a vital part of one’s defensive equipment relegated to such a tiny protective role, that’s all.
I can only speak to editions 3.5 and 5, but in those games, helmets as a distinct piece of armor don't exist. It's either suggested to be part of the Armor like with Full Plate or up to interpretation/flavor whether someone is wearing headgear. There are some specific magic items that are headpieces, but as the mundane equipment goes, there simply aren't helmets at all.
ReplyDeleteYou say all this already more or less, but I reiterate it here to point out that AC is one of the more influential stats, with a lot of balancing based on who can wear what, and armor is one of the simpler things to calculate and account for to accommodate all the other things you're managing. It's one thing for a game to handle all this crunch for you, but in a tabletop setting, it can be quite the pain in the ass. A videogame based on a ruleset can obviously expand equipment, but at least in 5e(I'm not too learned in 3.5), AC is both easy to track and tightly bound, with the last two sets of heavy armor costing 200 and 1500 Gold respectively, each for just 1AC over the previous armor.
On the other hand, the tabletop setting is unrivaled in just Asking for the helmet anyway. Wanna spend some cold cash for extra AC or advantage on particular saves? Go for it. I can probably Google D&D helmets and find several houserule systems immediately, and if I ever desired a helmet for my Fighter, either for cosmetic or mechanical purposes, I'd get it faster than I could download a mod. A videogame is not nearly as malleable to a player's desires.
Apologies if this is scattered to hel and back.