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Thread: Using Armor in Urban DnD
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2007-12-22, 06:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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Using Armor in Urban DnD
I'm gonna run an urban campaign sometime soon, and it will have a higher tech base as well as organized crime. My main issue though is I can't see mobsters running around in chainmail, let alone full plate. Street gangsters on the other hand would never wear any kind of armor, let alone chainshirts, which they're very unlikely to afford anyway. Now I know it doesn't matter too much at early levels, but sooner or later they'll fight mid-level gangsters, and a ring of protection seems like a poor excuse and they can't all be running around with high DEX scores.
I've read the alternative rules for base defense bonus, but it seems kinda weird that a monk and wizard would have the same defense (aside from the monk's wisdom bonus), not to mention the nerfing of touch spells. I also read the rules on armor as DR, and combining the two but I don't want to make things too complicated. Anyone else have this problem, or is this really something unique with what I'm going for?
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2007-12-22, 06:06 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
Many of the touch/ranged touch spells could do with some nerfing. Your casters will adapt pretty easily.
I've had this problem before and I expect to again--it's mostly the idea of people doing everything in full plate, all day every day, that gets to me.
You could easily houserule monks to get the best base defense bonus. It's not like they're overpowered or anything as it is (the main quick fix for them I've seen is full BAB).
Combining the two (defense bonus + armor as DR) shouldn't be a problem, but I haven't tried it out myself.
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2007-12-22, 06:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
Most light armors, such as leather, have Modern equivalents (kevlar, etc). While most mooks won't be arrayed in Riot gear, it's not too absurd to think they might have their junk padded a bit.
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2007-12-22, 07:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
The Base Defense and Armor as DR rules are probably your best bet, and they're pretty fair. If you're worried about nerfing touch spells, just make it so the Base Defense Bonus doesn't count towards Touch AC.
The Base Defense Bonus is based on the characters Armor Proficiencies, not BAB -
Monks, Wizard, and Sorcs have No Proficiency (Column A)
Rangers and Rogues have Light Proficiency (Column B)
Barbarian and Druids have Medium Proficiency (Column C)
And Paladin, Fighters, and Clerics have Heavy Proficiency (Column D)
The idea of the system is to give about the average Defense they'd get from Magic Items or Armor, depending on what they'd have. It's actually a pretty good system, especially for what you're trying to do.
And, the Armor as DR variant means if some street thug actually can afford the armor, he'll do alot better in the fights as the armors taking a good bit of the hits for him. You can use it to make the Mob-boss a but harder to fight,If there's a rule, there's someone out there trying to figure out how to get around it just to piss off his DM.
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2007-12-22, 08:28 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
Thugs won't wear armour, but they're unlikely to be good at fighting so trained warriors cutting them to pieces makes sense.
There are a number of odd items designed for personal defence in cities. One example is the lantern shield, which provides light and would be equivilant to a buckler (well, D&D's buckler, which is nothing like a real world buckler). Padded armour would also be worn, though it is the worse kind of armour in the PHB.
If you're playing a moderate magic game, mithril chain shirts would probably be worn by rich people as they give good defence while being hard to notice."that nighted, penguin-fringed abyss" - At The Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft
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2007-12-22, 09:28 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
Are there any rules for "spiders silk shirts" like the one Drizzt acquired in the Hunter's blades triology?
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2007-12-22, 10:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
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2007-12-22, 10:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
You have several options.
1. Just have people go low-armor and play the game with no changes. I'm running an urban campaign now, where only people looking for trouble wear heavy armor - the PCs don't bother, it attracts too much unwelcome attention. Breastplates are much more common, and even thugs wear leather jacks. Rings of protection and bracers of armor are highly prized. This works better than you'd expect.
2. You could just give everyone an armor bonus equal to 1/2 their character level.
3. Borrow class armor bonuses from Star Wars Revised (not Saga).
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2007-12-22, 01:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
It may sound strange, but the armor itself can really just be fluff. As such, just reflavor it. As long as you keep all the mechanics the exact same (price, AC bonus, Armor Check, Arcane Spell Failure, speed changes, etc.), you can turn that "Full Plate" into something else.
For instance, say in your campaign that the best armor (i.e., the heaviest armor with the highest bonus) is Kevlar with an energy pack of some sort. The Kevlar provides excellent protection, but you can run as fast with the pack on (either because it's heavy or there's a [non-real] chance of hurting it if you go to fast or something).
You can come up with stuff like that pretty easily. Any armor up to Chain Shirt is probably just street clothes in a couple of layers, maybe a leather biker jacket, some gloves, and stuff, adding or subtracting bits depending on the armor. As you get into the higher levels of armor, riot gear, bullet-proof vests, and other stuff is available.
And if all that seems a little too much, you might want to check out the Star Wars Saga Edition and see how it does class armor bonuses.
Also, are you set on doing D&D in a high-tech urban setting. Because if you're not, you should probably check out d20 Modern. It sounds perfect for the sort of thing your doing, especially using the Urban Arcana setting, where everything is modern but secretly involves dragons, magic, and all the fantasy staples.The Playgrounder Formerly Known as rtg0922
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2007-12-22, 04:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
I'm not going for very high technology, more like mid-1800's. In any case though having "counts as" armor is probably the best idea. And I did think about Base defense as they do in Star Wars, in fact I thought that's how it would work in the rules for base defense but as it turns out it's a completely different system. I know it does work off armor proficiency, which is why I was confused at the whole monk/wizard thing, it just didn't make sense.
Can someone explain the progression of the defense bonus in Star Wars? I notice some classes share the same progression (like BAB), but I can't make out how it progresses.
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2007-12-22, 09:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
It makes perfect sense for the monk and wizard to have the same class defense bonus. The monk's AC is only good because of his wisdom bonus (and the fact that he probably has high dex). In a normal, armor-using game of DnD, you'd get the same result, except that instead of the class defense bonuses you'd have each of them with bracers of armor or mage armor.
Last edited by CthulhuM; 2007-12-22 at 09:33 PM.
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2007-12-24, 12:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
This might not help you much because I am using it for an E6 urban campaign. But here is what I have done.
Spoiler
It could possibly be adapted for a 20 level campaign. If you extend the charts. The main difference from the UA version of defense bonus is that AC/DB for multiclass characters is determined individually for each class they have taken. As to the monks, in the game I am DMing E6 monks have full BAB and a light armor proficiency.
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2007-12-24, 12:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
The Star Wars Health system is also a good work around to AC, you take "hits" more often but you "heal" most "damage" like nonlethal damage, as the opponent isn't actually hitting you, but wearing you down. You only have as much wound points as your constitution score, which is only affected by dropping your vitality to 0, or a critical hit or a form of precision damage. Most class based precision damage is halved to nerf it's deadliness. It was very realistic, IMO.
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2007-12-24, 12:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
Some variation on this would indeed seem to be meeting your goals.
Having said that - if I was a mob boss in a DnD environment, I'd definitely have invested in a mithril chain shirt, worn over a light shirt and under my good clothes. Not because of my enemies - because of my friends!"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." Kurt Vonnegut
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2007-12-24, 04:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
That looks interesting, but I looked at Star Wars and decided to steal the base defense from that. There's four different progressions that I found (poor, okay, average, and good) and I'm just gonna apply one to each class. Wiz/Sor will get the worst one, Rogues and Bards get okay, Paladin, Ranger, and Fighter get good, and everyone else gets average. I realize I also have to apply this to prestige classes, but since we're starting at 1st level I'll worry about that later.
Originally Posted by cupkeyk
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2007-12-24, 04:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
If I was planning out a full 20 level campaign I would probably go with something similar to the StarWars system you describe. Does armor get DR?
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2007-12-24, 05:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
Your defense bonus link is broken so here's the correct one.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/ad...fenseBonus.htm
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2007-12-24, 08:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
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2007-12-24, 10:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
The advantage of using the class defense bonus system from Unearthed Arcana is that since it's based on armor proficiency it would be really easy to calculate how it would apply to other classes, in fact it would be pretty easy to allow someone to spend a feat to jump up to the next AC tier.
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2007-12-26, 09:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Using Armor in Urban DnD
Armoured Greatcoats: Stacks on light armour, Has a Armour bonus and DR
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