Armor as Damage Reduction [3.5] [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

jseah

2010-03-23, 09:29 PM

Maybe if you scaled the DR to match character levels... I dunno, 2 per level for full BAB, 1 per level for three-fourths-BAB and 1 per 2 levels for half-BAB?
More like level^2 or something like that.

Say... DR = AC bonus + 0.5 * level^2

Yes, 200 DR at level 20 sounds about right if you want to live through a hit.

EDIT: changing it to DR per round prevents the character from becoming immune to swarm attacks.

Also, allow the attacking character to use standard AC rules to bypass the DR.

EDIT2: or a simpler formula could be DR = AC bonus * level

Jack_Simth

2010-03-23, 09:30 PM

…So besides making archers/TWFing less effective, how does using armor as DR impact the game?

Are there better systems than the SRD's version?

Thanks!

EDIT: 3.5 edition D&D.
It makes two-handed fighters even more effective.

When you trade X points of AC for X points of DR, the guy with Power Attack and a two-handed weapon can trade X points of attack for 2*X points of damage. Guess who comes out ahead?

TWF... is about the same as it always was. That is, it goes very well with things that get lots of bonus damage (such as the rogue - Sneak Attack), but not so well with things that don't get such bonuses.

Ehra

2010-03-23, 09:37 PM

krossbow

2010-03-23, 10:13 PM

lesser_minion

2010-03-23, 10:35 PM

i really wouldn't want to have to stand around with a calculator to for every damage roll.

It shouldn't be necessary. You're certainly edging away from where the game's maths should be, but you're still a long way from some of the monstrosities out there.

ericgrau

2010-03-23, 10:53 PM

It makes two-handed fighters even more effective.

When you trade X points of AC for X points of DR, the guy with Power Attack and a two-handed weapon can trade X points of attack for 2*X points of damage. Guess who comes out ahead?

TWF... is about the same as it always was. That is, it goes very well with things that get lots of bonus damage (such as the rogue - Sneak Attack), but not so well with things that don't get such bonuses.

Except that's a big part of the problem right there. That a point of DR isn't worth as much as a point of AC. A smart player will only avoid heavy armor and look for other sources of AC. Rogues and so on get an advantage. I tried it before and it was pretty wonky in that the best way to work with the system is to avoid DR. Kinda makes it pointless. Ok, fine, not game breaking, but pointless.

John Campbell

2010-03-23, 11:03 PM

The Game of Thrones d20 system, which I consider to be the best d20-based combat system out there (though that, admittedly, is an accolade rather on par with "the smartest orc" or "the best Salvatore novel"), includes armor that provides DR but not AC, shields that provide a considerably larger AC bonus (+6 for light, +8 for heavy), a Defense bonus that advances with level (full progression for the rogue/duelist types, 3/4 for most other martial types, 1/2 for the non-combatants) and provides much of the final AC value, significantly reduced hit point totals, opposed rolls in combat (1d20+AB vs. 1d20+AC) that allow them to eliminate the 1/20 auto-fail/auto-success chance, and serious wounds that require Fort saves to remain conscious and induce HP bleed until tended. Also, 1:1 Power Attack regardless of weapon.

It works very well, IME, but the Game of Thrones world is low-magic enough that magic might as well not exist at all, and it lacks the splatbook after splatbook of power creep that 3.5 has, which generally makes it difficult to produce ludicrous amounts of damage, or ludicrous attack bonuses. When Power Attack introduces a real risk of missing, Weapon Spec is about the best damage-increaser available that doesn't, and there isn't any magic around to bypass the combat system entirely, DR 10/- (which is pretty typical for a mid-level martial character in full plate) is pretty respectable.

And at lower levels, before BAB outruns Defense and before armor that provides sufficient DR to stop most attacks cold becomes readily available, there's a real trade-off between fighting with a two-hander so you can do enough damage to get through your opponent's armor, and fighting sword-and-board to cover your own butt.

In 3.5, on the other hand...

Here's your rocket launcher. Don't get tagged.

nyjastul69

2010-03-23, 11:06 PM

Here is some food for thought.

http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/rants/armorasdamagereduction.html

Superglucose

2010-03-23, 11:12 PM

…So besides making archers/TWFing less effective, how does using armor as DR impact the game?

IMO it doesn't work too well unless you also add the "Class Defensive Bonus." Example: Full Plate gives you +4 AC and 4/- DR, right? Versus +8 AC. Well now I can power attack for 4 more safely, which is +8 damage. Net gain? THF deals +4 more damage. All it really does is make melee characters more effective vs melee characters. And by "melee characters" I mean "people who put the multiplications on their power attack but haven't gotten Shock Trooper yet." And by "all it really does" I mean "After they get Shock Trooper armor as DR is basically eye candy."

I mean seriously, I charge for... (1d8+5+40+15)*3 damage. As an unoptomized level 20 example. That's 3d8+180. 4 DR (or I guess, 6 DR for +5 full plate) might get rid of the 3d8 part...

Hida Reju

2010-03-23, 11:51 PM

Spycraft 2.0 had a good way of doing DR, Armor just provided DR and in rare cases a point of defense. The rest came from class bonuses, combat options, and feats.

Also the weapons of Spycraft were scaled down to a reasonable lvl so that they made sense.

Darkfire

2010-03-24, 03:51 AM

Instead of making it a flat damage reduction why not make it reduce a percentage of damage taken?
I was considering something similar: it has the great advantage of making DR relevant at all levels and, as long as it's not 100%, it doesn't put players at a huge disadvantage if they don't have a weapon which bypasses the DR.

Obviously you would have to watch out for people stacking too much and having way too much DR, but it seems like it should take care of the problem of it either being worthless against the big hitters or OP against the fast hitters.
Restricting it to AC provided by armour, shield, natural armour and associated enhancement bonuses as well as a hard cap (say 50%) and force it to overlap with any other source to prevent any serious abuse.

i really wouldn't want to have to stand around with a calculator to for every damage roll.
You just need to keep the maths simple: 10% increments for every 5 AC (too much?) should be fine unless you want to use a finer scale.

RagnaroksChosen

2010-03-24, 07:17 AM

We use it in the current campain im running. The problem is my players constintly forget to use it.
As well as me converting natural armor and others to the dr style. so it constantly gets forgotten...

Though during battles we remember it it works out well.

Tyger

2010-03-24, 07:45 AM

We're using it in our latest 3.5 game, and so far its working as expected. I do think that it is going to, as many of the above posters have noted, fall apart as the damage rolls get higher and higher. AC and BAB scale relatively well normally, with damage getting higher as the levels climb. By reducing the AC in this manner, higher level characters are going to get hit more frequently, and when they do get his, they are going to be hit for almost the same damage they would have been under the regular system, for a net effect of a more deadly game.

Our DM put the system in while he works out his own rules on armor, which I am looking forward to as he's a pretty creative thinker. Hopefully those rules will be ready in time to deal with my forward concerns.

Tusalu

2010-03-24, 10:39 AM

We're using it in my current campaign, but we have made some additions. We thought it through, and realized that the rule would make high damage much more important than attack bonuses. For example everyone would be wanting Power Attack. So we also added that you can add your Base Attack Bonus to AC as a Competence bonus, that doesn't apply when flat-footed. And finally you receive (half the max number of your HD minus 1) hit point every second level instead of rolling a HD (though still adding CON). There are probably some balance issues but it works alright. It helps that you generally can't buy magic items in the campaign (Then you could get your AC to ridiculously high levels). Mostly it is more effective to use few attacks with high damage, than lots of smaller attacks. Also these changes only apply to anyone with class levels.

Eldariel

2010-03-24, 11:20 AM

I personally modify it a bit, granting DR AND Armor; full both. Though DR isn't scaled like Armor; it's more flat "light/medium/heavy" line. This way, heavily armored guys truly are not only hard to damage, but also hard to damage on successful hits.

Reducing armor bonuses without compensating elsewhere (and making sure armor is worth wearing) is a recipe for disaster. I also suggest adding armor's enhancement bonus to the DR value. All this basically serves to actually make heavy armor have real advantages over light armor; light armor is more mobile and the characters are harder to notice but heavy armor offers a decent protection.

I also wish to point out that DR of e.g. 15 isn't inconsequential, even in the case of high level damage. If every attack does...say 80 damage and you have 300 HP, DR 15 is the difference between a whole extra hit being required to knock you out, quite possibly keeping you up for an extra turn up and beyond the point where you woulda gone down normally.

Evard

2010-03-24, 12:26 PM

One DM after playing 4e decided to change things around on 3.5

Get rid of AC, your Armor bonus is now damage reduction (this stacks with Barbarian's)

For all your saves add 10 and that is what an attacker would have to hit

For melee it is reflex (dex is factored in no matter the armor i think)

For magic it depends on what the spell targets (reflex, will, fort)

casters would have to roll just like melee characters and armor check penalties did come into play. I actually liked it, nice blend of the two systems

Doug Lampert

2010-03-24, 01:01 PM

Instead of making it a flat damage reduction why not make it reduce a percentage of damage taken? Obviously you would have to watch out for people stacking too much and having way too much DR, but it seems like it should take care of the problem of it either being worthless against the big hitters or OP against the fast hitters.

If going that way then INCREASE the number of HP instead, it's much easier since the math is simpler. A x% reduction in all damage is identical to multiplying HP by 100/(100-x) within roundoff and ignoring damage types that ignore armor, and to be blunt, I have no problem with saying that there aren't any damage types that ignore armor.

Quick: you have access to basically medieval tech, what's the best thing you can do to defend against blasts of flame or sprays of acit or bolts of lighting? If your response isn't something that looks a lot like full plate then you're a moron. Yep, even for the lightning, being INSIDE a faraday cage is about perfect and nothing else except "don't do that" will help at all.

Doug Lampert

2010-03-24, 01:22 PM

I mean seriously, I charge for... (1d8+5+40+15)*3 damage. As an unoptomized level 20 example. That's 3d8+180. 4 DR (or I guess, 6 DR for +5 full plate) might get rid of the 3d8 part...

Thog Power Attack for 1d12+567 damage! (Hope he rolls a 1 on that d12!)

Seriously, this is one of the two cruicial problems with armor as DR. The other big problem is that the weapon's damage numbers are totally wrong for armor as DR.

Historically a dagger was considered a perfectly good way to kill someone in plate. It fits through gaps in the armor as well or better than anything else, and you're not killing someone by penetrating a solid sheet of steal with anything muscle powered that you swing on a battlefield.

The problem with the dagger is that it lacks reach, not damage. A dagger's blade is more than capable of gutting you.

In reality the big advantage to bigger weapons is in reach and speed (yeah, speed, the point of a two hander moves MUCH faster and even changes direction MUCH faster than the point of a dagger; the movements, especially in movies, tend to be so much larger that they still take longer, but that blade tip is moving fast and accelerating like nobodies business).

To make armor as DR work you need to switch to giving all weapons something 1d6 or so in damage (it's enough to kill Joe Average in one swing, that's really all most weapons needed damage-wise and what the designers typically aimed for, maces and mauls and maybe some of the wierder pole-arms can do more). And then you give the longer weapons a big plus to attack when the combatants aren't grappled and give the two handers another big plus to attack because they really are faster.

And you probably need to make combat a set of opposed roles while you're at it.

Yuck. You've just redesigned the entire combat system. And I see no reason to think the redesign will be better. D&D has been around since 1973, competing systems for high fantasy with DR have been around at least since 1978. Notice which system is still dominant. AC really isn't a bad design choice.

Lord Vukodlak

2010-03-24, 01:25 PM

Think of it this way if the someone attacks you with the sword and strikes a metal plate on your chest and you feel nothing. The metal plate absorbed 100% of the damage.

Its easier and more sensible to explain this as simply the attacked missed rather then damage reduction. Medieval combat often revolved around going for the gaps in your opponents armor rather then trying to plow through it.

If I was wearing a suit of platemail you can hammer on my back all day with a Aluminum baseball bat and I am not going to feel it much. But if you smash me in the neck in the gap between the helmet and the armor. I'd certainly feel that.

The system simply doesn't support armor as DR.

FirebirdFlying

2010-03-24, 02:20 PM

Thanks!

(I love it when my suspicions are confirmed…:smallcool:)

Sergeantbrother

2010-03-24, 02:38 PM

My gaming group has a set of our own house rules that uses damage reduction instead of AC bonus for armor. Though, what we have instead of armor for AC is an AC bonus equal to the character's base attack bonus - basically a level 5 fighter gets a natural AC of 15 plus shield and Dexterity bonus.

To handle the idea of attacking the chinks in armor, we changed the critical hit system to represent bypassing armor DR instead of multiplying damage and had critical threat ranges based on armor instead of the weapon. For example, if you have full body armor that protects everything, your critical threat range is 20. If you don't have a helmut, your critical hit range is 18, for example.

This system seems to work pretty well for us, but we do tend to play in low magic settings.

lesser_minion

2010-03-24, 03:41 PM

If you're using the injury system, then the equivalent of armour as DR can work very well, and you can just keep the bonus it has already - however, using class defence bonuses becomes a very good idea.

Tinydwarfman

2010-03-24, 04:07 PM

Yuck. You've just redesigned the entire combat system. And I see no reason to think the redesign will be better. D&D has been around since 1973, competing systems for high fantasy with DR have been around at least since 1978. Notice which system is still dominant. AC really isn't a bad design choice.

D&D isn't any better than other systems, the reason it's so popular is because it's famous and popular (sounds circular but bear with me). RPG players need to play with other people to play, and D&D is the only one which you can all ways find a game for. It's also the system most people are first introduced to. D&D is definitely not the best designed system (see game balance and melee). I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying it's popularity is not based on it's excellent game design. (I would reference the "Whats good about 3.5" thread, but I can't seem to find it.)

Also, in many other games armor as AC works because of the inherent differences in scaling, like other posters said.

pffh

2010-03-24, 04:21 PM

What about converting ALL AC to DR? I've been thinking about doing that for a future E6 game.

Volkov

2010-03-24, 04:30 PM

…So besides making archers/TWFing less effective, how does using armor as DR impact the game?

Are there better systems than the SRD's version?

Thanks!

EDIT: 3.5 edition D&D.

What about bonuses to armor class that simply make you harder to hit? Such as dex and size modifiers, though this could be made into a simple miss chance. However, as said before, this doesn't scale well, since in optimized play, at higher levels, D&D becomes a game of rocket tag, it doesn't matter how much damage you deal, it only matters that you hit because everything can one shot you if they manage to hit.

Volkov

2010-03-24, 04:31 PM

What about converting ALL AC to DR? I've been thinking about doing that for a future E6 game.

A poor choice considering that many forms of AC merely make it harder for you to be hit, such as Dex, Dodge and Size modifiers.

Eldariel

2010-03-24, 04:31 PM

What about converting ALL AC to DR? I've been thinking about doing that for a future E6 game.

Uh...so you remove To Hit and AC and just cut it down to DR and Damage? That'll make a ton of 3.X mechanics horribly awkward. Like anything that somehow interacts with To Hit (many attack forms and feats, along with spells), and makes AC stack basically completely invulnerable to anything not optimized for damage. You need a lot of work to make that doable.

Volkov

2010-03-24, 04:32 PM

Uh...so you remove To Hit and AC and just cut it down to DR and Damage? That'll make a ton of 3.X mechanics horribly awkward. Like anything that somehow interacts with To Hit (many attack forms and feats, along with spells), and makes AC stack basically completely invulnerable to anything not optimized for damage. You need a lot of work to make that doable.
Not only that, but Disintegrate becomes horrifically overpowered.

lesser_minion

2010-03-24, 05:06 PM

What about converting ALL AC to DR? I've been thinking about doing that for a future E6 game.

Then you basically have NWoD's combat system. It wouldn't necessarily be horrible, but you'd probably have to change what most DR does/means.

It would take a lot of work, and there are easier ways to de-emphasise combat in d20 system.

Superglucose

2010-03-24, 05:22 PM

Not only that, but Disintegrate becomes horrifically overpowered.
...? How does that change Disintegrate at all?

Starbuck_II

2010-03-24, 05:24 PM

...? How does that change Disintegrate at all?

The guy said all AC to DR not all armor to DR. So that means you have no chance of missing (other than 1). Prior to this you need a decent Dex to hit since they have Dex to AC.

lesser_minion

2010-03-24, 05:52 PM

The guy said all AC to DR not all armor to DR. So that means you have no chance of missing (other than 1). Prior to this you need a decent Dex to hit since they have Dex to AC.

I was under the impression that 6th-level spells were not readily available in an E6 game.

pffh

2010-03-24, 05:54 PM

Oh and I should have mentioned I'm thinking about doing this in a no magic game. So no magic classes and no magic items.

Starbuck_II

2010-03-24, 05:58 PM

I was under the impression that 6th-level spells were not readily available in an E6 game.

I thought that was for PCs. There are low CR creatures with that spell.

lesser_minion

2010-03-24, 06:02 PM

I thought that was for PCs. There are low CR creatures with that spell.

I don't know of any off the top of my head, but you could be right.

Even then, however, CR is not the sole thing that determines whether a creature is appropriate or not.

Nero24200

2010-03-24, 06:35 PM

If you remove the AC bonuses then PC's will need to get some alternative to armour bonuses to make up for the lose. DR just won't cut it.

Iron heroes is probably something to look at if you prefer this alternative. Classes gain a "Defense Bonus" similer to BAB. Armour provides DR. Having said that, unless you play the Armiger class, armour doesn't play that big a role at all. Admittidly, I liked that, I kinda hated how in 3.5 warriors either need a high dex out the wazzo or full-plate.