@Stabbey: You've a frustratingly poor ability to structure an argument. Instead of countering one piece of logic with counter logic, you just give a simplistic, subjective opinion without backing it up with any type of concrete evidence.
'If the enemies are varied and can use several different elemental types, then that makes your split magical armor even weaker'
How, exactly? Evidence? If anything, it makes it more robust. The fact that they can use different elemental abilities is the entire point of what I'm saying.
How?
Well to be honest, you have not conveyed your elemental armor idea well enough for me to know how you see it working. So some of my assumptions might be incorrect. But they are all I have to go on.
So I am using the assumption that each piece of equipment will have some amount of armor for one element.
In that case, when you are facing enemies which have, say, two types of elemental attacks, your elemental armor will be divided into roughly four different types, two of which are not contributing anything, and two of which are contributing at one quarter the value that they would as a unified magic armor.
Your idea for active skills to boost armor completely and utterly fails to take into account Memory.
At the moment, magical armour just counters every element. That's simple, but not interesting.
My armor doesn't have to be "interesting". It just has to work. A piece of armor which has a 25% chance to explode for 25-125 damage when struck might be "interesting", but I wouldn't want to wear it.
It doesn't make me fear the fact that I haven't diversified my investments in various spells. I can just focus on ice, make that uber-powerful, then destroy magic armour with my one-dimensional investment into that single area.
If there are multiple 'magical armour' types, it means I can't be so single-minded. I have to diversify.
You said that you want 5 pools of magic armor, and under your system, doesn't that mean that a mage will need points into all 5 schools in order to be able to deal with certain enemies?
That is literally the OPPOSITE of "forcing diversity", that is forcing all mages into a five-school build. Worse still, that's forgetting about both Memory and Cooldowns. A spell typically has a 3-turn cooldown, so if I use a Necro spell to chip away part of an enemy's necro armor, I can't do anything else to them for 3+ turns. And I need to have at least one damage spell equipped of each type.
'So now you need to rely on the RNG (in the limited resource/limited drop game)'
Never said that should be the case. In fact, glad you mentioned it. They have a skill/ability (whatever it's called) that adds to your default magic and physical armour. Each time you level up, I think armours should be in a third tab that allows you to invest points in fire, ice, earth etc accordingly. You're not relying on gear (although that could help you out). You're enhancing the armour of your character at each level up, with a separate point system.
So you want to take an ability which is effective protection against 4-5 types of damage, and replace it with 5 different abilities which are only effective against 1 type of armor. That is worse than it is now. Why would I want such a change?
A skill which boosts one of your magic armor types runs into issues with needing to spend lots of Memory slots.
Resistances are so bland and rote they're in every RPG since the dawning of time. Better to innovate and suffer the lamentations of a few dull fools, than stick to doing the same thing, over and over, without risk.
Change for the sake of change is not good by default. Change is only good if it is a good change. I see nothing in your idea which looks like a good change.
Your idea is bad.
