BAB - Why Not Armor?

[RolandDeschain]

I know, I know it's a silly idea, but I've been thinking about how attack bonuses scale and armor class doesn't. Add in the fact that quite a few melee classes are underpowered and I've been thinking about what would happen if you took away the armor class value of armor and replaced it with your class's base attack bonus.

You could switch out the armor class bonus granted by armor and replace it with damage reduction. After all it's not like armor makes you more difficult to hit, that's reflected by your martial skills(and dex) and the armor actually mitigates the damage you take when you are hit.

Adamantine armor grants DR of 1/, 2/, and 3/ for light, medium, and heavy armor. You could use those numbers instead of the armor class rating.

Of course, you would have to allow DR granted by things like class features(barbarian comes to mind), feats, as well as adamantine material to stack.

Your BAB would be your base attack/armor bonus. Weird thought, late at night that probably has all kinds of repercussions that I'm not seeing right now.

Thoughts?

[Ravenica]

besides hurting melee fighters and archers more than anyone?

[Fyermind]

Doesn't sound bad to me. You would want to change class features that grant armor class bonuses in exchange for not being able to wear armor or only wearing light armor though probably.

On the other hand, if you don't, monks might actually become playable due to their inexplicable tanking expertise.

Monsters get much more challenging to work with under this system. I think it would be best if we instead set it to be on a class by class basis and noted that for all HD from class levels you got AC bonuses and from all HD from racial levels you don't. Otherwise you have outsiders walking around with double the standard AC. That's not good.

Another option which is listed in Unearthed Arcana chapter 4 (the very first entry) gives AC at a rate based on armor proficiency. That might actually be the best way to run this. It's listed as not stacking with Armor, but that isn't really a concern now, because you are describing armor as damage reduction, which also sounds familiar. That gets described in Unearthed Arcana as well. They have it going every 2 points of Armor turn in to AC +1, DR 1/- and don't bother to mention that it stacks. Odd armor values increase AC more.

Personally I think there are a lot of things that could be done to improve the armor system. I'd double the AC bonus from shields. Make Armor give DR instead, and give classes a scaling AC bonus based on their armor proficiency. Feats that grant armor proficiency would actually grant proficiency, not increase class based AC bonuses. Non armor things that gave armor bonuses to AC (like spells or VoP) would be ruled individually to either provide non stacking class bonuses to AC or non stacking damage reduction.

[Drelua]

Where do you get the idea that armor doesn't make you harder to hit? It may not make it harder for a weapon to touch you, but, well, there's a reason Touch AC exists. For example, if an arrow or a thrust of a blade hits a breastplate at an angle, it'll get deflected rather than perforating your organs. I'd say that's a pretty big difference. That's basically what happens every time an attack is above your Touch AC and below you min AC.

As for the mechanics of the idea, I'd say the bonus is a bit too high. Maybe half your BAB would be more reasonable, with half the armor rating as DR. One the one hand, it makes mundanes harder to hit, which could be good, but on the other hand it's mostly mundanes that target AC, so it seems like it would just make melee a slower way to kill someone, while spells are just as fast. Really, increasing mundane defenses only slows mundanes down without hurting casters.

[TuggyNE]

Someone (several someones, in fact) is in serious need of re-reading UA's treatment (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/defenseBonus.htm) of these exact ideas (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm). They're at least a reasonable start, and fairly comprehensive, though since I haven't tried them in a real game, I don't know how well they work out.

[Flickerdart]

DR of 1, 2, or 3 is so useless that I wouldn't even bother writing it down on my character sheet. DR 3 - the value you propose for heavy armour that is expensive and requires military training to wear - would be penetrated by a random guy with a knife 25% of the time, and 50% of the time by the same random guy wielding a club. A militiaman would not even notice it was there while cutting the knight wearing it to ribbons. Do you really propose that a warrior in full plate is only 3 points of damage more protected than a naked warrior?

What do you hope to accomplish with this change? For melee to hit more often because AC is lower? That's a double-edged sword, and while monsters will always come with full HP, attrition due to more frequent hits will wear down melee characters and make them even more reliant on their caster buddies for survival. Do you think that this will make AC higher? Monsters usually have more HD, and thus more BAB than PCs. Melee will have more difficulty hitting stuff, which is the one thing they are capable of doing. They will become reliant on caster buffs in order to do their job.

Making a change to the system to make things "more realistic" - or worse yet, for no reason - is a hallmark of poor game design. Any change you make must result in a better game to be necessary. The changes you propose would require massive amounts of rebalancing the numbers just to get the game back to where it is already.

The problem with mundanes is not a numbers problem.

[ericgrau]

It would make AC optimization a lot simpler since it tends to scale at almost the same rate anyway. It probably shouldn't match BAB though. It should be more related to class style and whether or not you have a shield, which would increase you 1 step so you can't get full BAC without one. They should still get normal armor AC with a max dex and shield AC, but this system could replace magical bonuses. Touch AC is a bit trickier; maybe 1/4th of your BAC goes to touch. Though that's not always a great fit to the system or to player desires.

Ya the whole BAC thing is a fairly rough fit that won't work the greatest. But it probably won't ever be off by more than 4 points and that's where things get extra wonky. So it'd at least be tolerable, and perhaps better than those who don't know how to optimize AC.

[eggynack]

Well, the way I figure it if everything has crazy AC, then that makes fighters even worse. Their defenses get higher, but at the cost of losing all offensive presence. Thus, in this way as in many others, wizards would gain a benefit. What you should do is toss a scaling AC bonus onto a good number of the melee classes. That way, fighters would get a relatively unique benefit that gives them a defense that mages would find a bit difficult to gain. It doesn't really level the playing field at all, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. You could even give different classes different AC bonuses, independent of BAB. Thus, monks would get the maximum bonus, to give them reflect their non-reliance on armor in a way that their wis-AC bonus never did, and barbarians would get a significantly slower progression to reflect their rage style. Essentially, you'd be granting this bonus at a rate commensurate with the AC the classes were intended to have. You could also weight it even more towards the classes that need it, so paladins would get a higher AC bonus than crusaders (if the crusader gets it at all, though it'd be pretty perfect on them) due to the two tier gap between them. In conclusion, giving melee characters a way to scale their AC more efficiently with the attack bonuses of monsters is a good idea, but tossing BAB equivalent bonuses at all classes willy nilly is probably not the best approach.

[Spuddles]

If you havin AC problems, I feel sorry for you son.

I got 99 problems but WBL ain't one.

[danzibr]

Someone (several someones, in fact) is in serious need of re-reading UA's treatment (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/defenseBonus.htm) of these exact ideas (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm). They're at least a reasonable start, and fairly comprehensive, though since I haven't tried them in a real game, I don't know how well they work out.
Hmm. Thanks for linking these.

[Talderas]

We have, at one time, had a houserule that applied 1/2 of your BAB as a dodge bonus to AC and another rule that would grant 1/- DR at each additional iterative attack while wearing medium armor and 2/- DR per iterative while wearing heavy armor and those DRs would stack with other granted DR (so 10/magic DR while wearing heavy armor at BAB +7. You would have simultaneously 12/magic and 2/- damage reduction but only use the best benefit.

[stack]

Legend uses this. Light armor adds 1 AC, heavy 2, shields add 1 (technically a guardian weapon adds 1, but the standard fluff is that is a weapon + shield). Then enchants and feats on top of that. Focus on defense, you get a good AC, but will be roughly matched by the attack bonus of a focused offense build, creating some parity.

[Yora]

I use a system similar to Star Wars Saga:

Armor bonus is devided by half and the substracted points become Damage Reduction instead.

Characters always get the DR from wearing armor, but either use the AC bonus from their armor, or a defense bonus from their class levels, whichever is higher.

[RolandDeschain]

Interesting feedback so far. Just to be clear, I'm not even in a game right now so I'm not really trying to "solve a problem". It is, of course, sage advice to identify what you're really trying to address with any rules alteration, but this was simply a thought I had.

To the person that said the DR ratings I rattled off sucked, I agree and maybe you could add the fortification properties as well as DR...

To the person that brought up touch attack, I was thinking a base armor bonus would be figured into your touch attack AC - yeah I know that's not going to make the spellcasters happy.

To those that say it would scale too fast and would require a separate, slower chart, that sounds really cumbersome but I can say I disagree.

To those that said there are other systems that utilize something similar, frankly I'm quite surprised.

To all those that brought up the impact it would have on the challenge rating of monsters...yikes! That is something that I hadn't obviously considered.

[Flickerdart]

To the person that said the DR ratings I rattled off sucked, I agree and maybe you could add the fortification properties as well as DR...

Yes, because not enough things are immune to Sneak Attack already.

[Frozen_Feet]

DR of 1, 2, or 3 is so useless that I wouldn't even bother writing it down on my character sheet. DR 3 - the value you propose for heavy armour that is expensive and requires military training to wear - would be penetrated by a random guy with a knife 25% of the time, and 50% of the time by the same random guy wielding a club. A militiaman would not even notice it was there while cutting the knight wearing it to ribbons. Do you really propose that a warrior in full plate is only 3 points of damage more protected than a naked warrior?

"Penetrated", in this case, means doing only 1 point of damage for dagger, and 1 to 3 points with the club. This is a significant decrease in damage, especially considering the warrior has 8 hitpoints or more. By virtue of DR alone, he now lasts much longer than usual.

Even the militiaman will notice a difference. Assuming +2 strenght bonus and a 2d6 weapon, his average damage is shifted from 9 to 6 - from enough to routinely one-shot the knight, to taking two turns to do so.

The problem is, damage progression outpaces armor-as-dr at level 2. Traditional AC actually reduces damage much more, and much more consistently, than most armor-as-dr variants I've seen.

If you add armor-as-DR, you pretty much have to make DR scale as well. And it has to scale non-linearly to keep up. Perhaps following prime numbers or fibonacci's sequence.

Example using prime numbers: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37. Light armor starts from 1, medium armor from 2, and heavy armor from 3. Every two levels, DR improves by one step.

Example using fibonacci's sequence: 0,1 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89. Light armor starts from 2, medium armor starts from 3, and heavy armor starts from 5. Being masterwork increases DR by one step, and each + of enhancement bonus increases it further.

[Flickerdart]

"Penetrated", in this case, means doing only 1 point of damage for dagger, and 1 to 3 points with the club. This is a significant decrease in damage, especially considering the warrior has 8 hitpoints or more. By virtue of DR alone, he now lasts much longer than usual.

I'd like you to take a dagger, and start stabbing a mannequin wearing plate mail. Tell me how often you get through the plate at all.

[Tanuki Tales]

I personally am trying out a Parrying house rule right now:


During the heat of combat, skill and experience can allow character to excel against opponents with more impressive physiques than their own, turning attacks that would have split them in half into missed opportunities at victory.

A character can, as an immediate action, give up an attack of opportunity to attempt to parry a number of attacks equal to 1+their amount of iterative attacks+their Dexterity modifier. This ends when the character has attempted to parry their limit of attacks or until it is their turn. When attempting to parry an attack, the character makes an attack roll and compares it to the result of the attack they are parrying. If their result is greater the attack is nullified, but if it is lower the attack goes through as normal.

The following limits are on parrying attacks:
The attacker must be within one size category of the character. If the character is wielding one or more weapons they can attempt to parry one more size category outside their normal for each additional weapon.
Only melee attacks can be parried.
If an attacker is using more than one weapon, the character must use up a parry attempt for each attack made in that routine, not just one for the whole routine.



Mind you, it's not a perfect supplement alongside AC and I still need to Acid test it, but I hope it'll add some interest and further tactical options to fighting defensively other than "I use Full Defense".

[Frozen_Feet]

I'd like you to take a dagger, and start stabbing a mannequin wearing plate mail. Tell me how often you get through the plate at all.

A mannequin? Every single time, because I can take my sweet time aiming for weak spots such as eyes. :smalltongue: Okay, so it's a bit different when your opponent is trying to prevent you, but daggers were, and are, the sort of things you use to get around armor.

Besides, 1 point of damage. Only on every fourth hit. That is actually very, very poor use of a dagger. At that rate, I'm taking more than 3 minutes (32 rounds) to kill off that knight. On the battlefield, that's too long. Especially considering the knight is killing me back.

[TuggyNE]

Especially considering the knight is killing me back.

Knights: Killing you back since the 1100s. :smalltongue:

[Flickerdart]

A mannequin? Every single time, because I can take my sweet time aiming for weak spots such as eyes. :smalltongue: Okay, so it's a bit different when your opponent is trying to prevent you, but daggers were, and are, the sort of things you use to get around armor.
Exactly. That's my point. The way you are attacking with the dagger is around armour, not through it. You get no bonus points for correctly guessing how much armour applies to attacks made around it.

When full plate provides +8 AC, it's modelling dagger thrusts correctly - a hit on the plate does absolutely nothing to the guy underneath (a miss), while a hit through a joint or through the visor bypasses the steel entirely (a hit) and no matter how thick the armour is, it doesn't mitigate that damage.

When full plate provides DR 3/-, it's modelling dagger thrusts incorrectly. A character with a +3 bonus to damage on that dagger is punching straight through the plate on every hit.

[Amidus Drexel]

Exactly. That's my point. The way you are attacking with the dagger is around armour, not through it. You get no bonus points for correctly guessing how much armour applies to attacks made around it.

When full plate provides +8 AC, it's modelling dagger thrusts correctly - a hit on the plate does absolutely nothing to the guy underneath (a miss), while a hit through a joint or through the visor bypasses the steel entirely (a hit) and no matter how thick the armour is, it doesn't mitigate that damage.

When full plate provides DR 3/-, it's modelling dagger thrusts incorrectly. A character with a +3 bonus to damage on that dagger is punching straight through the plate on every hit.

While that's true, it also models bludgeoning damage rather poorly (something Armor as DR does better).

[prufock]

Exactly. That's my point. The way you are attacking with the dagger is around armour, not through it. You get no bonus points for correctly guessing how much armour applies to attacks made around it.

When full plate provides +8 AC, it's modelling dagger thrusts correctly - a hit on the plate does absolutely nothing to the guy underneath (a miss), while a hit through a joint or through the visor bypasses the steel entirely (a hit) and no matter how thick the armour is, it doesn't mitigate that damage.

When full plate provides DR 3/-, it's modelling dagger thrusts incorrectly. A character with a +3 bonus to damage on that dagger is punching straight through the plate on every hit.

Whichever way it's modeled, a successful hit deals damage; in the case of armor as DR, the damage may be 0. There's no "correct" or "incorrect" way to model it.

Armor as AC: A successful attack roll signifies that you hit a vulnerable part of the character. Attack success is modified by armor, damage is not.

Armor as DR: A successful attack roll signifies that you hit the character somewhere. Attack success is not modified by armor, damage is.

[Flickerdart]

Whichever way it's modeled, a successful hit deals damage; in the case of armor as DR, the damage may be 0. There's no "correct" or "incorrect" way to model it.

Armor as AC: A successful attack roll signifies that you hit a vulnerable part of the character. Attack success is modified by armor, damage is not.

Armor as DR: A successful attack roll signifies that you hit the character somewhere. Attack success is not modified by armor, damage is.
If you think that full plate providing such a miserable level of protection against the post pitiful weapons is modelling things correctly, then there's nothing more to be said.

[Frozen_Feet]

Daggers are not pitiful. Seriously, I don't remember the whole quote, but swordmanship manuals have songs about how no armour can stop a dagger. :smalltongue:

[Xallace]

I haven't tested it in-game yet, but Trailblazer has a system of "Combat Reactions" which include blocking and dodging. Essentially, you gain a number of immediate actions per round equal to the number of attacks you (would) have from BAB. If you use one to dodge, you gain a dodge bonus equal to 1/2 of your BAB, and if you block, you gain the same value as DR /-. Thought it was an interesting take.

[Flickerdart]

Daggers are not pitiful. Seriously, I don't remember the whole quote, but swordmanship manuals have songs about how no armour can stop a dagger. :smalltongue:
And yet a random heavy stick that you pick up off the ground is actually more powerful. Funny how that works.

[prufock]

If you think that full plate providing such a miserable level of protection against the post pitiful weapons is modelling things correctly, then there's nothing more to be said.

How do you figure damage reduction is a "miserable level of protection" as opposed to AC?

DR +1 = -1 damage per hit
AC +1 = -average damage/20 per hit

[Paul H]

Hi

Pathfinder Fighters have more Armour bonus abilities than 3.5 (Increase max dex etc).

There is a Barbarian Archetype called Invulnerable Rager, who gets some nice DR as well!

As an aside I play Magi & Barb/Oracle/Rage Prophets in Pathfinder. The ability to use spells in combat usually makes you far harder to hit and deal more damage than basic fighters. Not too hard to hit AC 30 with a Halfling at 6th Lvl. (AC 28 plus defensive fighting)

Thanks
Paul H

[Yora]

Daggers are not pitiful. Seriously, I don't remember the whole quote, but swordmanship manuals have songs about how no armour can stop a dagger. :smalltongue:
Possibly because a dagger strikes you in the back while you are not wearing any armor.

Everyone can have a knife, everyone can hide a knife, and everyone can kill with a knife. And because of that you can be mortally wounded before you even noticed you are under attack.
You can't defend yourself against an attack you don't know is comming.

I would even think it likely that more people were killed by another person with a knife or dagger than all other methods combined.

[Flickerdart]

How do you figure damage reduction is a "miserable level of protection" as opposed to AC?

DR +1 = -1 damage per hit
AC +1 = -average damage/20 per hit
Not at all.

AC is an all or nothing game. When the giant that could flatten you in one blow swings at you and misses, then you don't die. When the giant that could flatten you in one blow swings and hits you, that DR 3/- you have is incredibly unlikely to matter, because the chance that those 3 points of damage are what were standing between survival and death is incredibly small.

Small amounts of DR would be useful in a game where HP attrition mattered and damage was low, so that a guy that took a hundred hits of 1d8-1 damage would be a lot better off than a guy who took 1d8 damage. But that's not how D&D plays. Healing between encounters is trivial, and encounters are short. An average orc (which deals an average of 9 damage per hit with its Falchoin) will only need to hit a level 1 fighter twice (10 HP from HD, 2 more from Con) to knock him out. In order for it to matter, this fighter would need to have DR of 4 or more, a tall order at level 1. Meanwhile, if that fighter were investing in AC, the orc would have trouble landing those hits in the first place, which is a much more effective plan.

As the levels go up and damage increases, DR becomes increasingly useless.

[Clistenes]

If it were me, class levels would give an appropiate bonus to AC rather than hit points. A character who has experience and trains a lot should be able to parry and dodge many attacks, not to take those attacks as if they were nothing. A fighter 20 shouldn't be able to resist being summerged into an acid vat much more time than a fighter 1, the flesh is the same.

[Flickerdart]

A fighter 20 shouldn't be able to resist being summerged into an acid vat much more time than a fighter 1, the flesh is the same.
Is it really, though? By level 20, a fighter has been on the receiving end of thousands of spells, both beneficial and harmful, and has gone through unimaginable and supernatural hardships for over two thirds of his career. It's perfectly acceptable that past level 6, characters exceed the limits of toughness of normal humans and start becoming something else entirely.

[JusticeZero]

I'd like you to take a dagger, and start stabbing a mannequin wearing plate mail. Tell me how often you get through the plate at all.
More often than you'd think. Armor penetration is actually one of the things that a combat dagger has going IN IT'S FAVOR. (Not the utility knife that they carry to eat with, the dagger. There's a difference.) There's other problems with bringing a dagger to a swordfight, but armor penetration isnt one of them.

DR emphasizes people using huge two handers more often and penalizes anything lighter disproportionately. It's a huge nerf to two weapon and X-and-board users, because it turns an already somewhat off kilter damage calculation into a "wow chart". Fractional DR (ie. "25% damage reduction" and the like) works better, but then you have to do math on every hit and most people cry at maths. With straight DR you get a situation where the only weapons worth bringing to a fight are a greataxe or greatsword.