Natural armor & armor as is AND as pseudo-DR?

[Schattenbach]

To sum it up, Natural armor and armor eventually become something that's somewhere between "not so great" and "nearly useless" later on ... so I'm wondering if making those two count as both the usual chance to not be hit and as pseudo-DR (that turns either outright negates some amount of damage ... as pseudo-dr that stacks with other DR or so ... ... ... or turns damage equal to the amount of armor it provides into nonlethal damage) would work out reasonably fine or if it ends up as "too much" (compared to how things are as is or compared to simply using it as DR that might stack with existing DR or so)?

Has someone some insight in regard to how this might turn out?

Thanks in advance.

[Svata]

I'm just going to leave this here. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm

[Schattenbach]

I'm just going to leave this here. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm

Thanks for pointing that out, as I've actually forgot that that exists as variant rule, too, though what I had in mind is more along the lines of this:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/damageConversion.htm (with either keeping things at nonlethal damage or outright soaking up the damage).

[Necroticplague]

Having armor give DR doesn't help the reason armor becomes useless at higher levels: spells. Against normal attacks, it's not too bad, because enchanting armor to make you harder to hit is actually cheaper than enchanting a weapon to make it more likely to hit. The reason armor is useless at higher level is because, as levels increase the category of "stuff that can seriously ruin your day" and "things that ignore AC entirely" get bigger, and bigger, and start to overlap more. So at higher levels, armor is pointless because the things you have toe worry the most about (SoD's) don't care about armor at all. Of course, DR, in any form, doesn't help the issue. All it does is further nerf those that rely on physical attacks for damage.

[martixy]

I am particularly fond of the Damage conversion variant, as
a) It makes the game less volatile for PCs.
b) It makes combat healing a more viable approach (since healing effects heal equal amounts of non-lethal damage).