[3.5] Anyone have experience using the "Armor as Damage Reduction" variant?

[Vin Robinson]

I am currently on the fence about it. It could be really cool but it seems like it might needlessly complicate the game for not a lot of benefit. Has anyone actually used it?

[Reavent]

I haven't but I'm going to be using it in a Dark Souls based campaign to see how well it works. It looks interesting and it fits alot better in my opinion.

[Snowbluff]

I haven't but I'm going to be using it in a Dark Souls based campaign to see how well it works. It looks interesting and it fits alot better in my opinion.

I'd like to see this. I love DkS.

Have you been to our thread?

[ngilop]

I use a variation of it.

Armor gives damage reduction as well as armor class. not that half AC for DR trade bull****.

DR in my games also increases at a set intervant at every itinerative attack DR increases 1 for light armor 2 for medium and 3 for heavy. so at 16th level a fighter with full plate get dr 4/- (base) plus DR 12/- for 3 additional attacks.

DR 16/- is pretty decent considering melee damage is usually around 30-40 dmg per hit. I also have feats that increase DR but that is a different story


in short armor as DR as you get form unearthed arcana is bullcrap. as the big loss of AC you get for piddly amounts of DR do not make up for the fact that you are now going to be hit 25-45% more often and that extra few DR don't really matter.

So keep the AC and just give peeps the DR.

[Reavent]

I think I have, I dont remember. Though I have been playing alot of Dark Souls lately XD

[Snowbluff]

I agree with ngilop's assessment. Find a way to better balance the AC.

Reavant, I haven't been playing much since ACVD, but here is the thread. Join us in jolly cooperation! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=298310&page=22)

[Emperor Tippy]

The amount of DR isn't enough to compensate for the AC loss after level 5 or so. Maybe in an E6 game it would work but in regular D&D, it's crap.

WotC massively overvalued DR pretty consistently throughout the entire system. DR = to ECL tends to work out about right as damage should consistently be two to five times ECL/CR. The problem is that DR does nothing at all against magic, so higher DR shafts the already shafted melee classes while doing nothing to casters; thus exacerbating the already present power differences between casters and non casters.

[Dark.Revenant]

I use armor as DR+AC as ngilop suggested, but it's part of a larger set of houserules (including a completely different HP system and a modified combat system that eliminates iterative attacks), resulting in DR being pretty effective. I also went ahead and typed the DR values of the armors, such as DR/bludgeoning for full plate, DR/slashing for leather, and DR/piercing for chainmail. To balance this out I increased a number of AC sources by 50%, including Dexterity, Insight, and Wisdom AC.

[ngilop]

The amount of DR isn't enough to compensate for the AC loss after level 5 or so. Maybe in an E6 game it would work but in regular D&D, it's crap.

WotC massively overvalued DR pretty consistently throughout the entire system. DR = to ECL tends to work out about right as damage should consistently be two to five times ECL/CR. The problem is that DR does nothing at all against magic, so higher DR shafts the already shafted melee classes while doing nothing to casters; thus exacerbating the already present power differences between casters and non casters.

Just want to emphasize the whoel overvalued DR, much like hwo the overvlaued base attack bonus or wearing heavy armor, or evocation spells.

just look how easy it is to get energy resistance and now try to find DR that does the equivalent? ( by equivalent I mean resistance 10 is pretty trivial to get and since most spells are Xd6 and cap at 10/15 that means on average without saving you are negating ~30%/22% so you need DR X/- to be negating about 25% or so of the physical damage dealt.)

I just don't know what WoTC had such a hate-on for the poor mundanes.