Armor
=====

My current combat system focuses on hitting probability, dodging, damage, and
weapon effects. However, it totally lacks an armor subsystem, because I haven't
been able to find an interesting one to implement. The problem lies in the
combat system's simplicity. Right now, introducing tiered armor sets with
incremental damage reduction (10%, 20%, etc.) would feel unnecessary at best or
an artificial construct at worse: each new piece would be a clear upgrade,
offering no real decision-making for the player.

So, how can I make armors meaningful? I obviously need to expand the combat
system's features.

One idea is to introduce damage types. Having physical, magical (and subtypes
like blunt, piercing, fire, etc.) damage would encourage players to choose armor
based on the type of enemy encountered. However, floors are likely to deploy a
mix of enemies with different damage types and I don't want to encourage armor
switching mid combat.

One idea I'm toying with is to avoid having armor altogether. I can still
introduce damage types and resistances (neutral, weak, resist, immune) but these
would be based on the player's equipped weapon rather than a specific piece of
armor. Since weapon switching during combat is actually encouraged (well, at
least between two weapons), this would still introduce a tactical layer to spice
up combat.

One last idea is to have the armor rich in stats updates and this is more
similar to modern hack&slashes: One armor could give you Fire Resist AND +10 to
max health while another one can give Lightning Resist AND +10 to damage. This
would make the player choose armors based on his playstyle, and possibly force
him to come back on his decision.