DR an Hardness... wait what O.o

[rexx1888]

So im just doodlin along, doing some homebrew for an upcoming game, an part of the work is trying to find a nice blend between ac an dr. So, ya know, because im not a nub designer, i figure i should have a look at the systems in question afore i mess with em. An, hell lets look at related systems, like hardness for items...

so, in my question, i come across hardness for armours... hmm, that seems odd. An then, to make matters stupider i notice that an armours hardness is depended on its material... an that the values for hp and hardness are outlandishly disimiliar to the way dr for those same items is handled. i get it, ac is a sorta quasi abstracted version, but its kinda exceptionally stupid that the designers of 3.5 created three very different systems to handle three not particularly different parts of the game, an then later on they sorta mashed em all together in aterrible mishmash of bad design.

so, i just thought id come here an see your folks thoughts on it. Why do you think hardness an dr are so divorced from each other, an what do you think the rationale for ac of armour being higher than dr(take adamantine as an easy example, the rest is a rabbit hole of stupid) is, or the bizarrely huge difference between those numbers and the hardness of those same items is a result of?

[Forrestfire]

The main difference, mechanically, is that Hardness applies to all damage, whereas DR only applies to attacks. The hardness of the material also has much less bearing on how good it is, defensively, than how it's made and how well it fits.

Let's look at a real life example: kevlar vests. These are made of what amounts to extra-tough fibers woven together, and wouldn't have much hardness at all. However, they'll still stop a bullet if you get shot. Likewise, a suit of full plate made of, say, diamond might have a high hardness, but be absolutely impractical in practice, since the point of a full plate is to deflect and stop blows (mostly from blades), and a diamond suit of armor would be heavy, unwieldy, and brittle. Harder metals also aren't going to matter as much for the purposes of DR, unless you're fighting something that's punching through the armor plating itself.

[AttilaTheGeek]

Let's look at a real life example: kevlar vests. These are made of what amounts to extra-tough fibers woven together, and wouldn't have much hardness at all. However, they'll still stop a bullet if you get shot. Likewise, a suit of full plate made of, say, diamond might have a high hardness, but be absolutely impractical in practice, since the point of a full plate is to deflect and stop blows (mostly from blades), and a diamond suit of armor would be heavy, unwieldy, and brittle.

This is an excellent example. Mechanically, they function almost exactly the same*, but the distinction is that hardness is a property of a material and DR is a property of a creature. For example, a fighter might have DR 3/- from Adamantine armor, which reduces damage dealt to the fighter, and the armor itself has hardness 20, which reduces damage dealt to the armor. In my experience, hardness hardly ever impacts gameplay at all, because people rarely try to break objects. DR, on the other hand, is important every time a creature is in combat.

*one exception being Adamantine weapons, which ignore all hardness (up to 20) but do not ignore DR. Another exception is energy spells, which ignore DR but deal half damage to objects and then have damage reduced by hardness.

[rexx1888]

you guys are conflating reality with gameplay concepts though

mechanically, dr and hardness are the same thing and its simply practical and sensible to handle them in the same way. If hardness has a weakness or strength to energy attacks, that should be a function of the thing its made of(materials such as steel) and the way its made(modifiers such as masterwork or what have you).

If i understand correctly then your saying from a mechanic point that since DR responds to attacks only and hardness responds to all damage, they are somehow different, but functionally they do the exact same thing(reduce an amount of damage done to the target of the damage) :\ its just more annoying bookwork :\ Its poor design, an im perplexed as to what value handling them differently has, is there something really important im missing about them??


edit: an a follow on, why in the hell is adam armour dr 3, but its hardness is 20. That just seems straight up stupid. the additional ac from armour is because the armour gets in the way of an attack, so shouldnt the DR an hardness be the same, as the armour(in this case an object) is taking the hit...

[prufock]

Your squishy organ meats can get jostled around and bruised up inside the armor without damaging the armor at all. The damage suffered by a person wearing armor is not necessarily going to equate to the damage suffered by the armor. Take chain mail for instance. A good blow with a heavy object may not break the armor, but it will break a bone.


why in the hell is adam armour dr 3, but its hardness is 20
The armor is preventing 3 points of damage to the person wearing it; this is entirely different than the armor taking enough damage to be broken.

[Psyren]

mechanically, dr and hardness are the same thing and its simply practical and sensible to handle them in the same way.

But they're not the same thing, not even fluff-wise. Damage Reduction is actually represented in a variety of ways. For example, here's a quote from the DMG pg. 291:

"DAMAGE REDUCTION

The arrow sticks into the vampire, but she pulls it out and laughs as the wound instantly heals. 'You'll need to do better than that,' she hisses."

Hardness is just what it sounds like - material X (usually an object) is so hard that it resists whatever attempt is being made to damage it. But while DR can also refer to how tough/rigid something is, it can also refer to nullifying damage in other ways, such as instantly repairing any damage caused that does not match the creature's weakness. That might sound like regeneration or fast healing, but mechanically it's different because the damage is basically too low to even register and need healing - so treating it like prevention is more accurate from a timing perspective.

[Forrestfire]

edit: an a follow on, why in the hell is adam armour dr 3, but its hardness is 20. That just seems straight up stupid. the additional ac from armour is because the armour gets in the way of an attack, so shouldnt the DR an hardness be the same, as the armour(in this case an object) is taking the hit...

The armor is taking the hit, yes. Steel armor is also taking the hit. Unless the blow is physically breaking through the armor, the difference is negligible, because the armor's job is to deflect blades away from the squishy vulnerable bits (which is why a mace or hammer is a better anti-armor weapon: its force is transmitted through the plates. In contrast, most of a sword's danger is in its cutting power, which doesn't do much of anything to metal plates). The material of the armor matters much less than the shape, in this case.

Situations where the hardness might be argued to matter for the purposes of DR is if the weapon striking would just pierce through. An adamantine sword might, fluff-wise, cut right through leather armor or steel plate. Whether or not you add mechanics for that is up to you, though.

[rexx1888]

it doesnt look like ive actually missed anything here.

AC is an abstraction yes? It represents not just the hits that miss, but the hits that dont hurt you. Additionally armour can be sundered without hurting the person in it, so i fail to see how DR is weaker than hardness just because the person in the armour was apparently jostled too hard(and that doesnt even consider the way armour is built, which is not like some big hollow shell you hop in, but more like layers of cloth with chain over it and then plate or what have you over that. Thus, we have different types of damage such as Bludgeon(breaking bones through the armour) pierce(pretty self explanatory) and slash(equally explanatory.. an was also pretty pointless according to wikipedia) to represent that 'jostling). An then we talk about the abstraction of DR, which is exactly the same sort of stuff as AC. I wouldnt be surprised if there is a description of AC that says "the hit was of so little consequence that PC's dont notice it an it doesnt deal HP damage" somewhere in the dmg.

yet even then, assuming you are all correct in arguing its somehow different because its basically objects with blood(is a vampire actually all that different to a table anyway, its just an animate object with consciousness when you think about it), it doesnt actually behave differently. It still just absorbs damage. In the case of hardness the fluff is "you barely hit it" or "you didnt hit it hard enough" versus the fluff of DR "the vampire doesnt care, go die in a hole". you could sub both of those around. How do we know there isnt an item out there with faux healing like a vamp.. would anything change if the chair recovered from a hit rather than just ignored it.

Basically, from an rpg design point, why are these two things considered actually different when they dont behave differently. They have two seperate parts of the dmg for them. They function the same, except that DR is more fleshed out about what can get through it than Hardness. That implies that the difference is in edition copy paste more so than anything else :\ Its more of a sin though when you consider the implication that adamantine armour suddenly gets terrible at absorbing blows when you put it on a person :\ adventurers would be better off making a table out of adam an hitting things with it than wearing it :\ At least then they could hide behind it an never be touched by arrows again...

[Psyren]

In the case of hardness the fluff is "you barely hit it" or "you didnt hit it hard enough" versus the fluff of DR "the vampire doesnt care, go die in a hole".

Actually, "you didn't hit it hard enough" applies to both of them. A vampire only has DR 10 - if you crit with a meteor swarm or raging lance charge or something similarly nasty then you will reduce it to vapor just as surely as if you were using a silver weapon.

[Forrestfire]

But they do behave differently.


Hardness
Each object has hardness—a number that represents how well it resists damage. Whenever an object takes damage, subtract its hardness from the damage. Only damage in excess of its hardness is deducted from the object’s hit points (see Table: Common Armor, Weapon, and Shield Hardness and Hit Points; Table: Substance Hardness and Hit Points; and Table: Object Hardness and Hit Points).




Damage Reduction
A creature with this special quality ignores damage from most weapons and natural attacks. Wounds heal immediately, or the weapon bounces off harmlessly (in either case, the opponent knows the attack was ineffective). The creature takes normal damage from energy attacks (even nonmagical ones), spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities. A certain kind of weapon can sometimes damage the creature normally, as noted below.


Emphasis mine. Damage Reduction is a measure of supernatural/extraordinary toughness, whereas hardness is a measure of how easy something is to break. They do different things mechanically and different things fluffily.

[rexx1888]

But they do behave differently.

Emphasis mine. Damage Reduction is a measure of supernatural/extraordinary toughness, whereas hardness is a measure of how easy something is to break. They do different things mechanically and different things fluffily.

we seem to be talking across each other. So let me re iterate. DR subtracts damage from an attack unless the attack is made with an item that overcomes it. So, for our purposes dr 2/- doesnt have anything that specifically negates it(excluding energy attacks, spells, etc which might as well be a conceit of DR. Its the only noticeable difference between the two mechanics an has little bearing on this conversation).

Hardness also subtracts damage from an attack. It doesnt care what its made with, so it is essentially akin to having 20/- or 10/- or whatever.

^^ those two things are the same. We are talking mechanically here. You can try an talk about fluff, but thats not useful to any discussion about mechanics. You can try an talk semantics because one relates to attacks(dr) an the other refers to damage(hardness) but thats a daft differentiation because its reasonable to expect DR to work on damage(except where its stated otherwise like on energy attacks etc) and being attacked is one of the ways hardness comes into effect. You can try an argue about how they work on different things(objects versus critters) but there specifically are awakened objects in DnD and it specifically states that they use hardness on damaging attacks(i can link the srd if you desperately need it) which means that creatures can also use hardness in lou of DR( an lets not go into the RAW on that, point is warforged an awakened constructs exist but somehow get shafted whereas a talking sword doesnt :\). An that isnt including the way breaking objects versus sundering interact, or the fact that objects do in fact have an AC etc etc. An the fact that energy attacks and spells are called out specifically is not a big enough difference in the mechanics to have actually warranted them being two seperate things. You literally could have condensed the two sections and noted that objects using dr #/ - negate any and all damage. Its a single sentence, and its existence doesnt negate my argument.

My point is not about what these two things refer to. My point is that they are the same mechanic reprinted within the rules. They dont work different. Yes, you could say they do if say DR acted as normal but hardness caused fluffy bunnies to appear, but they dont. They both, functionally, reduce damage taken in the same way. You can fluff that however you want, but just because you paint two donkeys different colours doesnt change the fact that they are both donkeys.

An while this has been a bit of a daft discussion, thankyou all for helping me make sure i didnt miss anything in my tinkering :) Last thing i want to do is inadvertently break something. Having said that, **** knows what im gonna do with hardness, i definately cant use its values for anything, they're inane :\

[Psyren]

^^ those two things are the same. We are talking mechanically here.

The effect is the same, but that is only one of the mechanics at play here. The other mechanic is what bypasses it, i.e. nothing for hardness and the listed material/alignment/etc. for DR, plus anything non-physical like a spell.

[Pan151]

It's necessary to have DR and Hardness be 2 distinct concepts mainly for reasons of clarity and ease of use.

Yes, you could totally merge the two, and say that an Adamantine armor has DR 20/- and confers DR 3/non-physical-attacks, but doing so is

a) incredibly confusing, as you now have to make the player understand how exactly the DR of the armor and the DR given by the armor are two different things.

b) even more incredibly confusing, because anyone who sees the description will immediately go "WTF does "non-physical-attacks" even mean?"

Hardness and DR are similar concepts, but applied differently and to different things. Separating them into 2 different concepts thus simplifies the rules, and that's why it is the way it is.

[Hazrond]

(is a vampire actually all that different to a table anyway, its just an animate object with consciousness when you think about it)

Can i sig this? :smallbiggrin:

[illyahr]

I've found that a good way to play is to say the armor or shield provides DR of X/- where X is it's armor/shield bonus, instead of adding to AC, and double the effect Dexterity has on your AC. Change them to Armor and Defense where one is straight damage prevention and the other is how hard you are to be hit.

Another way to play it is, if the weapon is of a hardness greater than the armor, half the damage dealt to the target is also dealt to the armor. A steel sword will slice right through leather armor, even if you aren't attacking the armor itself.

[Jeraa]

My point is not about what these two things refer to. My point is that they are the same mechanic reprinted within the rules. They dont work different. Yes, you could say they do if say DR acted as normal but hardness caused fluffy bunnies to appear, but they dont. They both, functionally, reduce damage taken in the same way. You can fluff that however you want, but just because you paint two donkeys different colours doesnt change the fact that they are both donkeys.

No, they do work (somewhat) differently. Yes, both do reduce the damage you take. But there are several differences.

First, Damage Reduction is normally only for creatures. Hardness normally only applies to objects.

Second, Damage Reduction can be overcome with a specific type of damage,or any type of energy damage, or damage from spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities. Damage Reduction only applies to weapon attacks. Hardness, on the other hand, can not be negated (with the exception of when using an adamantine weapon against hardness less than 20). It even applies to untyped damage from spells and energy damage.

Don't think of Damage Reduction and Hardness as the same thing, because they are not. Instead, think of them as Damage Reduction and Improved Damage Reduction (hardness). Also, while two forms of Damage Reduction do not stack, you can stack Damage Reduction and Hardness.

[Dorian Gray]

Don't think of Damage Reduction and Hardness as the same thing, because they are not. Instead, think of them as Damage Reduction and Improved Damage Reduction (hardness). Also, while two forms of Damage Reduction do not stack, you can stack Damage Reduction and Hardness.

Or even just think about it as Damage Reduction (because that thing is tough as **** and the sword barely hurt him when it should've cut it's friggen arm off) and Hardness (because it's hard to cut plate armor with a knife). Because as Jeraa said, DR is creatures, Hardness is objects.

And there are variant rules for all armor giving damage reduction, as well, if you don't like the way the system works. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm)

Edit: They're also separate for balance reasons. It wouldn't make sense for Adamantine armor to be able to be cut with a normal sword, so it has hardness 20. But it would be totally unbalanced for an adventurer to avoid 20 damage off of every attack, just from buying adamantine full plate. So the full plate has hardness 20, but only gives DR 3/-.

[bekeleven]

Here's the issue. I'm wearing leather armor and somebody punches me. I get hurt. He doesn't punch my armor to pieces.

He sticks a spear into me. Well, that might cause a slight hole in the armor. Certainly it deals less to the armor than it does to me.

hardness is generally larger than DR because it's easier to hurt someone wearing armor than it is to hurt the armor.

Also, you can't sunder armor. Or disarm it. There are no rules for either. Maybe some epic slight of hand somewhere, but I don't recall any.

[Psyren]

Also, you can't sunder armor. Or disarm it. There are no rules for either. Maybe some epic slight of hand somewhere, but I don't recall any.

Just summon a Bebilith or use Disintegrate :smalltongue:

[Hazrond]

Also, you can't sunder armor. Or disarm it. There are no rules for either. Maybe some epic slight of hand somewhere, but I don't recall any.


Just summon a Bebilith or use Disintegrate :smalltongue:

Where does it say you cant sunder armor? :smallconfused: just swing use an adamantine greathammer or something?

[Psyren]

Where does it say you cant sunder armor? :smallconfused: just swing use an adamantine greathammer or something?

"You can’t sunder armor worn by another character." (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/specialAttacks.htm#sunder)

[Phelix-Mu]

I think the OP has a point in that, even if the concepts are distinct and non-redundant, the game later on added stuff that makes the matter much more complicated and the distinction even fuzzier. Example: Some constructs have hardness, most others have DR. What exactly is the difference? None. Why do animated objects use hardness? Why is it possible to get hardness as a creature (because of the above conflation)?

From my view, in terms of design, they made hardness too good. Why do people never try to break stuff? Because stuff is hard to break, and you just wasted an action trying to do something that may not even neutralize the threat even if you succeed (like if the enemy tank is carrying a backup weapon...hard to believe, I know). Part of the thing is that stuff breaking in 2e used to be a saving throw/totally houseruled stuff that was very inconsistent, and I think they wanted to resolve this by making it clear under just what circumstances stuff a character is carrying breaks.

And due to a shift in the tenor of the game, toward a character-focused game, it became monumentally less appealing to have one's character's kit breaking at all, let alone seldom. As such, even the rules about gear damage that are out there are often ignored in favor of not screwing over gear-dependent characters.

Thus, there are many influences that suggested that hardness and rules for damaging objects should be a thing and a thing separate from creatures that are just hard to hurt. Remember, that DR3/- from the adamantine plate isn't the armour alone, it's the armour worn by someone that now knows their armour is nigh unbreakable. A talented combatant can make big use of this, no longer trying to maneuver to line up incoming blows with plates or whatnot; the armour soaks up damage reliably and won't break, fending off small blows and weakening bigger hits when worn properly.

[gr8artist]

Interestingly, in PF, Hardness also has a perk that reduces energy damage by half before checking to see if damage overcomes the hardness threshold.
PF also lets you sunder armor.
The better way to handle it, however, would probably be to give the armor a lot of HP and a little DR benefit. Each time an attack damages you, you reduce the damage by the DR amount of your armor, but subtract the difference from the armor's HP. When the armor blocks an attack that would otherwise hit you (exceeds touch AC but not full AC) the armor takes full damage from that attack.
So a chain shirt might be +4 AC, +1 DR, and have 400 HP. When you get hit by an attack that deals 12 damage, you take only 11 damage and your armor now has 399 HP. If the armor fully blocks the attack (ie the attack misses you by 4 or less) then it is reduced to 388 HP.

[Forrestfire]

It does that in 3.5 as well, sorta. Acid and Sonic do full before hardness, Fire and Electric do half, and Cold does 1/4th. Ranged weapons also do half.

[Jeraa]

Interestingly, in PF, Hardness also has a perk that reduces energy damage by half before checking to see if damage overcomes the hardness threshold.

It does that in 3.5 as well, sorta. Acid and Sonic do full before hardness, Fire and Electric do half, and Cold does 1/4th. Ranged weapons also do half.

Actually, no it doesn't. In either Pathfinder or 3.5. The damage is halved because you are attacking an object, not because of hardness. That is why they each have their own section.


Hardness: Each object has hardness—a number that represents how well it resists damage. When an object is damaged, subtract its hardness from the damage. Only damage in excess of its hardness is deducted from the object's hit points (see Table: Common Armor, Weapon, and Shield Hardness and Hit Points, Table: Substance Hardness and Hit Points, and Table: Object Hardness and Hit Points).

Energy Attacks: Energy attacks deal half damage to most objects. Divide the damage by 2 before applying the object's hardness. Some energy types might be particularly effective against certain objects, subject to GM discretion. For example, fire might do full damage against parchment, cloth, and other objects that burn easily. Sonic might do full damage against glass and crystal objects.

[Doorhandle]

About that though:



Hardness: Each object has hardness—a number that represents how well it resists damage. When an object is damaged, subtract its hardness from the damage. Only damage in excess of its hardness is deducted from the object's hit points (see Table: Common Armor, Weapon, and Shield Hardness and Hit Points, Table: Substance Hardness and Hit Points, and Table: Object Hardness and Hit Points).

Energy Attacks: Energy attacks deal half damage to most objects. Divide the damage by 2 before applying the object's hardness. Some energy types might be particularly effective against certain objects, subject to GM discretion. For example, fire might do full damage against parchment, cloth, and other objects that burn easily. Sonic might do full damage against glass and crystal object

So in short, leave Sundering to barbarians and not evokers. (Unless they have siege spells.)

[Jeraa]

About that though:

But that is not because of hardness. It is because it is an object. That would also apply against an object that somehow didn't have a hardness score at all.

[Psyren]

And it doesn't even apply to all objects, as noted. It's perfectly reasonable for, say, acid to be fully effective vs. metal and the rules allow a DM to decide such.

[jiriku]

so, i just thought id come here an see your folks thoughts on it. Why do you think hardness an dr are so divorced from each other, an what do you think the rationale for ac of armour being higher than dr(take adamantine as an easy example, the rest is a rabbit hole of stupid) is, or the bizarrely huge difference between those numbers and the hardness of those same items is a result of?

I've read a great deal of the work of some of those designers. None of them are "exceptionally stupid" people, so I'm inclined to think your judgment is off the mark. But to answer your questions:


The reason that hardness and DR of an armor are different is that those subsystems are not part of the core system and were not designed in concert with one another. When the damage reduction and hardness systems were originally created, there were no armors that offered damage reduction. The two systems had no overlap and there was no reason to think they would ever overlap. The scenario that puzzles you so greatly simply didn't exist. By the time someone said "hey, I think armor should offer damage reduction", the two systems were already part of the core mechanics, and designers had no choice but to work with what they already had.
Hardness is an attempt at simulationism. It tries to reflect the real-world hardness of different materials. Hardness is, very roughly, double the real-world hardness of an object on the Mohs hardness scale. Damage reduction has no such basis in simulationism. It is a pure abstraction. That is why the two are so divorced from each other.
Why is AC higher than DR? Well, first of all, it isn't. I've seen single sources of DR that go as high as 50 pre-epic. I can't think of a single source of worn armor with AC higher than 10. But to more directly answer your question, the game designers originally thought that DR would be more valuable than it ultimately turned out to be, and for quite some time they were very conservative in the bonuses they wrote into the rules. Later DR figures were much liberal. You should also consider that AC bonuses are to some degree constrained by the need to fit the 1-20 range of the d20 used to make an attack. This imposes a limit on AC modifiers which isn't shared by damage modifiers. To consider things from a simulationist perspective, Armor Class was originally intended primarily as a measure of how effective armor was at deflecting blows. The ability of an armor to absorb an impact was neglected or abstracted. A suit of armor's ability to deflect blows has a great deal to do with its shape and construction, which are unrelated to hardness. Thus, given the simulationist roots of D&D and the design goal of the mechanic, there is no a priori reason why AC and DR should ever match up.