One thing I've always liked the sound of (and I thought it had been posted previously, but I haven't been able to find it, so I'm posting it again), instead of armor making you harder "to hit", armor reduces weapon damage.
However, instead of a flat rate of damage reduction, which makes the wearer invulnerable to weapons which do less damage than the armor's damage reduction, the armor damage reduction works the same way as the weapon damage. Each time the armor is hit, the damage reduction is rolled in the same way the damage is rolled for each time the weapon strikes.
With one further modfication, the minimum damage reduction is zero, rather than the minimum damage of one. Again, this is to prevent a level of invulnerability.
So, armor damage reduction would look something like:
Code:
AC1 padded 0-1
AC2 leather 0-2
...
AC4 scale 0-4
...
AC8 fullplate 0-8
So, instead of you being invulnerable to dagger damage (1-4) when wearing scale armor (AC4), its actually balanced against it.
And against full plate, though the dagger has a much harder time of it, it still has a chance to do damage.
This then gives armor a different property than to making you harder to be hit; dexterity modifications and better armor are no longer accomplishing the same thing.
Also, perhaps whatever mechanism is used to increase weapon damage (such as strength modifications) only actually increases the maximum damage done, rather than guaranteeing a mininum +X points of damage.
Regards,
Script Wrecked.