anyone playtested injury plus defense/armor reduction

since the rules are official [from unearthed arcana], i decided this was the more appropriate forum for my question than house rules, but if a mod disagrees, slide away!

anywho, i'm looking to replace the standard combat system with the both more realistic [you're never sure when a blow will take you down] and more abstract [no tracking of hit points, etc.] injury system from arcana unearthed.

however, i also wanted to try adding in the defense bonus system and its counterpart armor as damage reduction at the same time. i don't really want to debate the merits of these systems. i just want to know if anyone has playtested these three subsystems together and, if so, how it turned out.

just from tumbling a few numbers through the old cranial organ, i can imagine that it might make combats drag out quite a bit [hardly ever scoring a hit from increased AC and when you do hit, it's too hard to score enough damage to often disable an opponent]. are my instincts right? anyone given it a whirl?

thanks for the help.

I think the damage save mechanic isn't going to have a huge problem combining with damage reduction - basically you're getting a bonus to your fortitude save that isn't that major - it's going to be on the order of... well... bugger all.

Platemail is giving a 4/- DR. You get a +1 to the DC of a damage save for every 5 points of damage you take.

So a guy in platemail gets (basically) a +1 to his save.

Damage save + class defense bonus won't make much of a difference either - fundamentally class defense bonus is aimed to make up for a lack of armour.

The main effect that class defense bonus will have is that a wizard will get a big boost out of a single fighter level (as will most classes). That's it. The wizard is taking a minor hit from the damage save system, so I daresay this will balance it out a bit.

People who suffer under this combo: Barbarians, big time. They don't get a great defense bonus, they don't get armour that's good enough for much damage reduction, and they lose their extra hit point over warriors each level. OTOH, they're not under threat of death when rage wears off, which is kinda cool.

People who benefit under this combo: Clerics! Good armour, good progression, good fort save! Clerics are the ultimate tanks, although that's more a failure of the damage save mechanic than anything else.