Making DR/- work

[Albonor]

Hello all!

I am slowly starting to work on a future campaign set in my ever changing own campaign world. But since the last game ended with the characters at level 17 and a dragonball-like power level, we all wanted to dial down on the crazy.

A few suggestions were made. Since I stated that the technological level was closer to 1880 than anything else, White wolf was looked at, with the hunter rules as well as mage.

We also considered GURPS but it is a bit to much attribute oriented.

But DnD 3.5 remained: I loved the idea to use the Pathfinder srd as a base with E6 (to maintain a power "cap") and the traditionnal srd as a back-up source. I could homebrew a few feat chains to allow some PrC-like customisability and it would work fine!

Now, I really wanted two things: to ban vancian casting and alignments as well as switching to the alternate armor rules spliting the AC bonus between AC and DR/-.

The problem is that it makes Power Attack EVEN MORE advantageous in comparison with TWF or sword-and-board. I thought about imposing an equal penalty to AC to PA but...

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance

[Flickerdart]

You could significantly increase the DR and then rule that it applies only once per turn. So PA for 200 and TWF for 100 and 100 would still do the same amount of damage.

If you want to open a can of worms, rule that bonus damage dice are multiplied on a critical hit. People will flock to TWF like flies.

[thirsting]

Ban Power Attack?

Seriously. Tell them they are already trying to hit with full strength with their normal attacks.

Or make the bab penalty and damage bonus work at 2:1 ratio.



People seem to complain a lot about power attack here, and offer changing other things as a solution, when you could go for the problem itself and hammer the troublemaker Power Attack..

[Runestar]

Trust me on this one - AC as Dr simply does not work.

[Riffington]

Well, what is it about armor-as-dr that appeals? Maybe there's something else that can accomplish the same thing?

[Albonor]

More hit-points to the monsters can do this effectively, as well as some fast healing. But I like the idea of an armored combattant always fearful of a more likely crit...

But if it does not work then I shall just have to give toughness a few times...?

Any other solution (banning PA is being considered)

[Mongoose87]

Use Armor as DR in conjunction with the class AC bonus variant, except allow the class bonus to be used in armor.

[Riffington]

More hit-points to the monsters can do this effectively, as well as some fast healing. But I like the idea of an armored combattant always fearful of a more likely crit...

So you want armored combatants to be "safer" than unarmored ones, but to still be vulnerable to lucky hits?
Wouldn't armor-as-AC accomplish this?

[jiriku]

Use Armor as DR in conjunction with the class AC bonus variant, except allow the class bonus to be used in armor.

This is probably the best suggestion. You want to disassociate Armor from AC so that its utility is purely for soaking damage. You may also want to restrict armor proficiencies slightly to discourage divine casters from maxing out the armor.

TWF is disadvantaged by DR, no matter how it's handled. This is the reason, historically, that styles that involves strikes with small light weapons were used chiefly against unarmored opponents, while styles that involved large, deadly weapons were used against heavily armored opponents. One tactic you can take as the DM is to make heavy armor rare in your world; most opponents the PCs face won't be wearing it.

Note that you may need to adjust the scaling class AC bonus slightly to reflect that in E6, there are only six levels.

BTW, have you considered how your variant will handle natural armor?

[Eldan]

How about just doing both? Armour still gives it's normal bonus, and additionally, light armour gives DR 1/-, medium gives 2/- and heavy gives 3/-?

[Tackyhillbillu]

Armor as DR - screws over TWF and anyone who relies on lots and lots of hits. They already are kind of done for, but you don't have to make it worse.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I've house ruled Power Attack so that the penalty cannot exceed the lower of your base attack bonus or your strength bonus. It doesn't really have any effect on monsters, so all it really does is keep PCs from using Shock Trooper or Wraithstrike to one-shot opponents.

[Ravens_cry]

Use Armor as DR in conjunction with the class AC bonus variant, except allow the class bonus to be used in armor.

Where can I find this? It would be great for a Stone Age campaign, where the armour doesn't go above hide.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Where can I find this? It would be great for a Stone Age campaign, where the armour doesn't go above hide.

Defense Bonus, also found in UA.

[Ravens_cry]

Defense Bonus, also found in UA.

Thanks muchly.
*reads*
Well, it sounds reasonable enough, but does it work? Has anyone used it and found it a workable variant?
[edit]I' ll start my own thread on this.

[Flavel]

Well there's always Runequest. That game system uses DR for armor.
No alignments, no classes, and a Runelord facing six combatants alone is going to be hurt.

[Dienekes]

Defense Bonuses, much less HP for all characters, much less max damage for all characters.

If everyone has only 30 or so HP and everyone's doing about 5 or 6 damage in a turn it can work. But it essentially means people are stopping progression around level 4. Too balance out how it effects TWF they should have to cut down their feat requirements as well as given more tactical ability and a general increase in damage done by the light weapons.

Of course this means that weapon design will need to be changed to fit this, as well as basic combat design, feats, levels, all forms of magic, items, and so forth.

So you really wouldn't be playing DnD any more and could take a few years of fine tuning to make work correctly.

Well, hope you got a lot of time on your hands.

[awa]

iron heroes a d20 varient had a armor as damage reduction system and a defense system that worked pretty well. (There armor granted variable dr).

If you took off the double damage for two handed weapons and removed shock trooper and leap attack then they would not be able to put out quite so ridiculous amounts of damage

[Merk]

This is a form of DR I've used for my current campaign:

Instead of DR as "DR 5/-", damage reduction now has an additional condition called the increment. So in a stat block, it might look like this -- "DR 5:20/-"

What it means is that with every increment of damage, the damage that is reduced increases by a greater amount, so dealing ridiculous amounts of damage is self defeating.

With DR 5:20 (and no bypass) --

If the PC deals from 1 to 20 damage, 5 damage is reduced as normal. New range: 0 - 15.

If the PC deals from 21 to 40 damage, 15 damage is reduced (5 + 10). New range: 6 - 25.

If the PC deals from 41 to 60 damage, 30 damage is reduced (5 + 10 + 15). New range: 11 - 30.

If the PC deals from at least 61 damage, the PC instead automatically deals 30 damage.

Power attack loses a lot of its value here since "overkill" damage is simply ignored, whereas TWF becomes more viable since the damage is counted separately on each attack. If this was the effect you're going for, maybe you'll find a use for this.

[Mongoose87]

Diminishing Marginal Returns on Damage? As an economist, I find it amusing, but it doesn't make sense for verisimilitude.

[Redrat2k6]

Funny, I'm doing a campaign with Pathfinder SRD and my own E8 rules. I have armor they way it works normally but I have houseruled that Shields (except bucklers) give DR 3/melee and their AC is applies to touch attacks.

Pathfinder has nice Shield feats, so the DR and touch AC from shields gives just enough to make shields worth it.

Edit: Oh and by worth it I mean TWF + Imp. Shield Bash = Good damage and defense.

[goken04]

Diminishing Marginal Returns on Damage? As an economist, I find it amusing, but it doesn't make sense for verisimilitude.

This +1. It's interesting, but doesn't make sense.

[Lycar]

The problem with D&D is that it is so broken. Damage and DR need to scale on a meaningful basis, which they don't.

DR only really works if there is either

A) A hard cap on HP and damage, melee AND otherwise or

B) DR scales.

As far as DR for armour goes, how about something along:

DR = AC, but a hit still inflicts a minimum of 1 point of damage.

Power Attack is ALWAYS 1:1, so it doesn't matter if you do S&B, TWF or THF. Except that 2-handed weapons still have the edge in armour-piercing capabilities.

Everybody can power attack. Without the feat, the ratio is 2:1 though. And as far as flavour goes, people with finesse-able weapons are probably not thrusting harder but smarter. But the net effect is the same: Trade to-hit for damage. Sneak attackers obviously know how/where to find the chinks in the armours...

Yes, anything but two-handed weapons has difficulties going through plate (DR 8). As it should be! The trade-off has always been that tin can man is slowed down. So a less-heavily armoured opponent can simply run away. Or pick off tin can man with ranged weapons.

As to make stuff scale: Unless you go with something like E6, DR needs to go up every level. Or maybe every other level. How about adding BAB to DR. Maybe even in E6. Gives the fighting classes some much-needed boost. Alternatively (or maybe additionally), damaging spells are stuck with the damage they do on the level they become available. So fireball will always be 5d6 etc.

Of course this means that you should probably stick with a humanoid-centric campaign, there is just too much junk in all those monster manuals what will throw any attempt at balancing damage right out of the window.

Lycar

[Godskook]

I've house ruled Power Attack so that the penalty cannot exceed the lower of your base attack bonus or your strength bonus. It doesn't really have any effect on monsters, so all it really does is keep PCs from using Shock Trooper or Wraithstrike to one-shot opponents.

Because +20 strength mod is so hard to get??? This'll keep the low-power players from getting full use, but at high-power, even non-cheesy, this isn't a big setback for anyone, and isn't even noticed by the guys who thematically *SHOULD* take power attack(Conan laugh at silly restriction. Barbarians walk around with +7 modifier at 1st level).

[Noodles2375]

This is a form of DR I've used for my current campaign:

Instead of DR as "DR 5/-", damage reduction now has an additional condition called the increment. So in a stat block, it might look like this -- "DR 5:20/-"

What it means is that with every increment of damage, the damage that is reduced increases by a greater amount, so dealing ridiculous amounts of damage is self defeating.

With DR 5:20 (and no bypass) --

If the PC deals from 1 to 20 damage, 5 damage is reduced as normal. New range: 0 - 15.

If the PC deals from 21 to 40 damage, 15 damage is reduced (5 + 10). New range: 6 - 25.

If the PC deals from 41 to 60 damage, 30 damage is reduced (5 + 10 + 15). New range: 11 - 30.

If the PC deals from at least 61 damage, the PC instead automatically deals 30 damage.

Power attack loses a lot of its value here since "overkill" damage is simply ignored, whereas TWF becomes more viable since the damage is counted separately on each attack. If this was the effect you're going for, maybe you'll find a use for this.

That is an intriguing system. On first glance it looked amazing, when I thought about it though I think that it might lead to really strange PC strategies where people are trying really hard to max out the damage in a range without going over. Do you find that happens, or do you find that players mostly just ignore that fact that there are discrete jumps?

[tyckspoon]

Because +20 strength mod is so hard to get???

Yes, actually- that's a raw score of 50. The easy options will get you to about 36-40 (18 base + be an Orc + 6 item + 5 Inherent + 5 levels is 38.) After that it becomes much more expensive to raise Strength further, either in terms of LA sacrificed to be a stronger race, level choices locked down to acquire Strength-boosting abilities, or gold spent to get more exotic bonus types.

[Just_Ice]

Make two-weapon fighting ignore DR.

It doesn't really make any sense, but whatever.

[erikun]

The problem is that it makes Power Attack EVEN MORE advantageous in comparison with TWF or sword-and-board. I thought about imposing an equal penalty to AC to PA but...

Perhaps the problem isn't so much Power Attack, especially when you're limited to level 6 in the E6 system. If it's still a large problem, ban Shock Trooper (or even Leap Attack) so that they have to give up to-hit for damage.

[jindra34]

Make two-weapon fighting ignore DR.

It doesn't really make any sense, but whatever.

If going this kind of route it would seem more sensible to multiply DR the same as the weapon does strength.

[AstralFire]

The issues are less with DR and PA and more with a lack of interesting and useful mechanics where TWF should logically shine. Removing immunity to critical hits at all goes a long way. I'd suggest something as well like building improved crit range or damage into TWF.