[houserule] Armor as DR, high-powered version

[ILM]

Sense check please: in an effort to make defense relevant at higher levels, I'm thinking about adding an AC as DR houserule. There's two steps here:
a) Creatures gain their AC minus 10, divided by two (rounded down) as DR/-. It stacks with other sources of DR.
b) They also gain that amount in elemental resistances, but that one doesn't stack with any other source.
The second step was added on as an afterthought but I'm not that set on it. The meat is the first part.

Objections I've thought about:
- Monsters get harder to kill. Kind of the point.
- Characters get harder to kill too. Also kind of the point.
- It's fairly easy to twink your AC into the 50-60s. Yes, but at high level even DR 25/- hardly makes you invincible. Plus, if you've focused that much on your AC, it's likely your offensive capabilities are somewhat lacking so why not. SRD Monsters around CR 20 have an average AC of 40, and I don't think giving them DR 20 is totally overpowering.
- It hoses TWF. To be fair, without additional damage, I don't see how a dual dagger dude is supposed to take down a full-plated behemoth of adamantium anyway. In another houserule I've merged the TWF feat line, so at least the feat tax isn't so heavy. Still rather unsatisfied about that situation, though.
- This does nothing to curb god-tier spellcasters. True, but then again I don't think that's doable without rewriting half the books (although I'm working on a thingie that makes spellcasting work like maneuvers, that could give interesting results).

So all in all, what would you think about it? Do you see any other simple-ish way to make defense a relevant part of play at high level?

[Jack Zander]

Try treating precision damage as negating DR (it is precise after all), that'll at least allow rogues to TWF and sneak attack and still get their damage in, even if their weapon damage is completely negated.

[Jergmo]

I have both armor as damage reduction and defense bonus in my campaign. I have armor still give the full AC bonus, as well as half of the armor bonus in damage reduction (effectively against adamantine). This DR is disabled if caught flat-footed. (to signify that your defense is off and they're able to slip in gaps in the armor.)

Defense bonus is slightly higher and works for touch AC, but you lose it when flat-footed. Additionally, there's the Ghost Ward armor property (+1) which adds your armor bonus to touch AC.

It's worked very well for my players and I thus far.

[Seerow]

I have both armor as damage reduction and defense bonus in my campaign. I have armor still give the full AC bonus, as well as half of the armor bonus in damage reduction

I do this, also. Though instead of straight up DR, what I do is give effectively temporary HP equal to the armor bonus times the number of attacks gained via BAB, that refreshes each turn.

So a 20th level Fighter in +5 full plate? He gets 13*4 = 52 temporary hp that refreshes each turn. On the other hand a Rogue wearing a +5 Mithril Breastplate has only 33 hp from his armor, and a wizard with +8 bracers of armor only gets 16.


(the reasoning behind using refreshing temp hp instead of DR is so that it provides a suitable buffer, but can be overcome by pretty much any level appropriate enemy regardless of their fighting style. With DR, someone with a dozen natural attacks or two weapon fighting is losing far more damage than a two handed fighter. This helps even the playing field a bit)

[Beowulf DW]

Pathfinder has alternate armor rules for DR vs. AC. Might be worth a look.

[Jack Zander]

I do this, also. Though instead of straight up DR, what I do is give effectively temporary HP equal to the armor bonus times the number of attacks gained via BAB, that refreshes each turn.

So a 20th level Fighter in +5 full plate? He gets 13*4 = 52 temporary hp that refreshes each turn. On the other hand a Rogue wearing a +5 Mithril Breastplate has only 33 hp from his armor, and a wizard with +8 bracers of armor only gets 16.


(the reasoning behind using refreshing temp hp instead of DR is so that it provides a suitable buffer, but can be overcome by pretty much any level appropriate enemy regardless of their fighting style. With DR, someone with a dozen natural attacks or two weapon fighting is losing far more damage than a two handed fighter. This helps even the playing field a bit)

This seems rather powerful. You've effectively given your PCs an extremely high rate of fast healing.

[ILM]

Okay then, how about this:
Armor and shield bonuses, as well as enhancement bonuses on armor and shields, provide DR/piercing of an equal amount. This DR stacks with all other sources of DR.

Sort-of makes sense - spears and arrows were kind of designed to penetrate armor; daggers and rapiers not so much, but eh, it's not a military simulation - and provides decent bonuses. At lower levels, gives players a reason to carry backup piercing weapons. If I'm not mistaken, the most you can get would be a +5 Mechanus Armor and +5 Tower Shield, for a total of DR 24/piercing. Respectable at higher levels, not overpowering.

I still hate that BAB doesn't factor in AC at all. Seems to me like your basic affinity for combat should also contrinute to how well you defend yourself.

[Straybow]

I still hate that BAB doesn't factor in AC at all. Seems to me like your basic affinity for combat should also contrinute to how well you defend yourself.

That should require facing rules with full bonuses only on certain faces.

[Seerow]

This seems rather powerful. You've effectively given your PCs an extremely high rate of fast healing.

Not quite. It's more along the lines of damage reduction that applies on a per round rather than per attack basis. In fact, I could pretty much rename it from temporary HP to damage reduction, and have that mechanic replace the damage reduction rules, and things would work just fine (probably with a need to increase DR of a lot of monsters though)

Consider the normal armor as DR variant. iirc you get half the armor value normally, and add the enhancement bonus to that. So a Fighter in +5 Full Plate would have DR9/-. Against an enemy with 5 attacks (pretty average at high level), this would block 45 points of damage. But against an enemy with a single strong attack it blocks only 9. Against an enemy with 10 attacks, it blocks 90. This makes the value of the DR vary not just a little, but drastically, depending on who is attacking you. That is very bad.

My solution makes it so your resistance applies equally regardless of who attacks you. This makes it much easier to balance the defense vs damage output appropriately.




The big difference between this and fast healing is that this doesn't actually restore hit points. If a Fighter with 300 hp ends the fight with 1 hit point, he may still have his 52 hp armor defense, but even after resting for several minutes, if something deals 53 hitpoints in damage to him, he will drop. If it was fast healing, the character would be back up to his 300 hit point total after just over 30 seconds of rest.

[Suddo]

How does your system work at the low levels and with shields Seerow? I mean a level 6 fighter with Full-Plate has 16 HP? That seems a bit much, I know this is the worst point. Do you do it as a fraction? If not how do you deal with the fact that it jumps from 5 to 6, 9 to 10... Do you have a system for epic? Do you still add the bonus to AC? I understand to an extent, giving melees nice things is a good thing, I'm just thinking about how it might become a pain.

[Seerow]

How does your system work at the low levels and with shields Seerow? I mean a level 6 fighter with Full-Plate has 16 HP? That seems a bit much, I know this is the worst point. Do you do it as a fraction? If not how do you deal with the fact that it jumps from 5 to 6, 9 to 10... Do you have a system for epic? Do you still add the bonus to AC? I understand to an extent, giving melees nice things is a good thing, I'm just thinking about how it might become a pain.

Shields and most other armor bonuses continue to provide AC as normal, except natural armor can apply the temp hp like regular armor. If someone has both, the highest applies. (So if you have 10 armor and 5 natural armor, you use 10 for determining the resistance from armor). Simple method is to just not give the benefit to monsters at all, but if you want to keep monsters the same, I have worked out a better conversion method. There's a link in my sig, I'll edit it in here shortly.

Second, yes a 6th level Fighter in Full Plate has 16 temporary HP. He also has most likely ~50 actual HP. A CR6 Babau on a full attack can deal an average of ~40 points of damage if all his attacks hit. The armor bonus takes a Fighter from being killed on average in two rounds against a CR appropriate opponent (and possibly being killed in one with a lucky strike) to being able to hold his own for several rounds.


Third, yes the jumps at the levels where you get an extra attack are noticeable, but there should generally be an accompanying jump in enemy damage output when it comes. It may not be the most linear scale, but it's better than trying to figure out fractions (ie multiply armor by 1+.2/BAB or something silly like that), it's a sacrifice in the name of keeping it simple and easy to track. Any on-CR encounter that can't deal with the resistance granted by armor as described almost certainly has some way of attacking opponents that has nothing at all to do with hit points.



And yes, you do still apply the armor to AC. No, I don't have any sort of epic scaling. I'd probably introduce an epic feat or something that lets you jack up your effective armor dramatically. (To keep up with the crazy scaling of epic it'd probably be something like +100% per time you take it. So 52 becomes 104 becomes 208 becomes 416, etc. But I generally just avoid epic entirely to ignore the headache caused by the nonsensicle scaling there)