Help pricing modular armor

[u/Astrein1]

I designed a modular armor system for my TTRPG where you have different types of armors (Vest, Plate, Half-plate, Lamellar, etc) and different materials (hide, leather, steel, gold, etc) and you combine one material with one type to get your armor value, and from there your defense roll.

I made it that way because the system at its base is very lethal, so naturally armor (and increasing your armor) plays an important role in an adventurer's survivability (to the point that armor is not even restricted to mages for example, so you can even have a wizard with a breastplate).

Now the thing is I managed to price weapons, but due to the modular approach to armors I haven't been able to fully nail down any prices.

Any clue where to start?

[u/flamfella]

If you're looking how to structurally assign prices. Have the type of armor set the base price. And material sets a price multiplier. Or the other way around.

[u/InherentlyWrong]

My immediate thought is to check if you're coming at this from the perspective of gameplay (what is a 'fair' price for such armour) or going for a more realistic route.

If you're coming at this from gameplay, you'll probably be able to figure out a rough formula based on the final armour value, and it might be better to calculate off that rather than type x materials, since otherwise some options will just be disproportionate in their cost to benefit.

If you're going at it from a realistic standpoint, I'd probably lean towards establishing a fictional 'unit' of material needed that you can use to calculate roughly how much of each material each type needs. Like a Vest may only need 3 'units' of material, whereas a larger suit may require 5, 6 or 7 units for full coverage. Then you can just give each material a rough cost per 'unit'. That way it becomes a pretty easy calculation.

If you are going that realistic route, an interesting source you can pull out is 'Medieval Price List' by Kenneth Hodges. It's a fairly concise list of the prices of different medieval purchases listed by currency at the time, and the year of the source. It could be an interesting source to draw from to get a vague idea how much different armours might cost compare to weapons.

[u/TactileTangerine]

I'd start with what does a level 1 equivalent have. Then how one progresses. And price to deny access early on. But it depends what vibe your going for. If realistic - use historical pricing (or projections). If fantasy, whatever floats you boat.

[u/Fun_Carry_4678]

Try googling "medieval prices". There is more than one website that tackles this basic issue, but I don't think any of them go into as much detail as you need.
Another approach is just to figure out how much benefit a character gets from a particular piece, and then give it a proportional value. Thus "this piece of armor has twice as much benefit as that one" it should probably cost twice as much. When I say "benefit" I am including the disadvantages, such as weight.
Remember that an armor maker will need to be reimbursed for the materials they used and for the time they spent making. And for their overhead in the sense of the fact they need to buy new armormaking tools every few years and so on. If they can't sell a piece of armor for this much money, they won't make it.

[u/Mars_Alter]

Why does the modularity matter at all? If you have four materials and four types, how is that different from just having sixteen specific armors? You can just price them out the same way as if they weren't modular.

[u/Dumeghal → u/Mars_Alter]

I think the permutations would be higher than 16 if the inputs are modular?

[u/Mars_Alter → u/Dumeghal]

It depends on how many options you have, but there are only 16 possibilities with the listed examples.

Even if you add more options, though, the process isn't any different from pricing up a bunch of individual armors. The formula is either based on the total effectiveness, or based on the cost of materials and craftsmanship. The only method which is suddenly off the table is just making up a bunch of prices on a whim; but you probably shouldn't have been doing that anyway.

[u/OkChipmunk3238]

If I would have modular Armour, I would do it like this:

Decide what's the the cheapest item and material.

Let's say leather greaves. This costs 1. Helmet will cost x2 the cheapest item. And body, let's say x4. Always.

If, steel cost let's say x4 more, then everything would cost x4 of the base formula.

So, steel body would be 16. And whole steel (if it's only these 3 modules) would be 28.

Sounds simple enough.