Sindeloke
2014-10-26, 04:16 AM
I realize there might be rules for this in the DMG, but that's like ten years away.
Anyway I've always really liked armor as damage reduction. It removes the fiddlyness of touch AC without losing the simulationist advantage thereof, differentiates dodge tanks and soak tanks, lets defensive prowess be a factor of skill rather than money, and lets me scrap Dex penalties on armor that, in reality, you could do cartwheels in. Also it can make combat less swingy and dodge-or-die, which is always nice. It even helps make shields less utterly useless, since they're now the only easy source of AC.
The only real issue is, once you turn an armor's AC into damage reduction, everybody's getting hit way more often than the game expects, and they die too quick even with the effective HP increase you've given them. You need to bring AC back up to a nice balance point where everyone is getting hit only a little more often than the game expects. So in 3.path I set it up by basically giving everyone a +1 dodge bonus to defense for every 4 BAB, which kept the numbers roughly where they should be for martial classes without essentially giving wizards free heavy armor like a flat per level scale would have.
That obviously isn't going to work in 5e; all there is is proficiency and it's the same for everyone and also gets too high. I actually wonder if any extra AC bonus is even necessary in 5e, since bounded accuracy and no magic mart keeps the numbers so tight - would the DR alone be enough to compensate for getting hit more often? Except, given there's the way weapon finesse works in this edition, there'd be no incentive for heavy users to have lower dex than light users, and the incoming damage balance between dodgers and soakers would be lost, you'd just have dodgers and then dodgers with soak too. It's already hard enough to justify a non-polearm strength fighter with the dex cap on good armors. Take it away, and basically everyone will have a rapier, max AC and 8 DR.
I dunno, I don't see an elegant solution. Or even a functional one. I would love to hear suggestions or number crunching on how to make this work in a balanced way.
Anyway I've always really liked armor as damage reduction. It removes the fiddlyness of touch AC without losing the simulationist advantage thereof, differentiates dodge tanks and soak tanks, lets defensive prowess be a factor of skill rather than money, and lets me scrap Dex penalties on armor that, in reality, you could do cartwheels in. Also it can make combat less swingy and dodge-or-die, which is always nice. It even helps make shields less utterly useless, since they're now the only easy source of AC.
The only real issue is, once you turn an armor's AC into damage reduction, everybody's getting hit way more often than the game expects, and they die too quick even with the effective HP increase you've given them. You need to bring AC back up to a nice balance point where everyone is getting hit only a little more often than the game expects. So in 3.path I set it up by basically giving everyone a +1 dodge bonus to defense for every 4 BAB, which kept the numbers roughly where they should be for martial classes without essentially giving wizards free heavy armor like a flat per level scale would have.
That obviously isn't going to work in 5e; all there is is proficiency and it's the same for everyone and also gets too high. I actually wonder if any extra AC bonus is even necessary in 5e, since bounded accuracy and no magic mart keeps the numbers so tight - would the DR alone be enough to compensate for getting hit more often? Except, given there's the way weapon finesse works in this edition, there'd be no incentive for heavy users to have lower dex than light users, and the incoming damage balance between dodgers and soakers would be lost, you'd just have dodgers and then dodgers with soak too. It's already hard enough to justify a non-polearm strength fighter with the dex cap on good armors. Take it away, and basically everyone will have a rapier, max AC and 8 DR.
I dunno, I don't see an elegant solution. Or even a functional one. I would love to hear suggestions or number crunching on how to make this work in a balanced way.