[Rant] Armor as DR is bad !

A very popular house rule is using armor as a damage reduction factor, rather than as the damage avoidance factor it is in D&D.

Here's why D&D is more realistic. With armor as DR, you will only be able to hurt people with the biggest weapons. Unless you've Conan-like strength, you're not going to ever hurt a full-plate armored guy with a dagger.

And that's where the irrealism lies. Daggers were created to pierce armors, because larger, less precise weapons couldn't be used to target the holes in the articulations. Against heavy armor, daggers were the most efficient weapons. With armor as DR, they are the least.

Beside, with armor as DR, and a heavy armor, you become invulnerable to everything. In a Renaissance game using this method, people in full-plate were immune to pistols -- in real world, pistols were among the reasons full-plates were forsaken.

So, unless you add in armor penetration factors to each weapon - a damage reduction reduction if you want - armor as DR is wrong.

That's my rant of the day. Everything here is IMHO, since it's a rant.

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=29593

dunno if this will help, but I too am one of those DR for armor people.

... but, I'm pretty conservative when it comes to chaning the rules. So I found a way to implement DR that I like.

check out the table and see if that looks okay to you, DR 1 for heavy armor really isn't that much, and it does give wee boost.

if you noticed the AC's they've been bumped too.

I have yet to try any of these ideas though.

ej

I think armour as DR is fine... but to do it this way, we need to make up a set of rules a la the optional rule in 2e and the rule in 1e that made different weapons better against different armours.

A rapier is pretty ineffective against plate armour in real life. An estoc, on the other hand, a much heavier weapon that is basically the same thing, is not. A pistol is great against armour. A crossbow too. A longbow from up close.

Its all about penetration.

As for bludgeons, well, a nice flanged mace can make armour a real pain when its suddenly five sizes too small. In your eye socket area.

A quarterstaff, you can forget about hitting someone with armour for any amount of damage.

Armour can make you harder to hit for damage. If anything, poorly worn armour makes you harder to hit, which I have learned from experience with a too-thick gambeson I made for larp long ago.

Armour does deflect much of a blow's force.

This is less a coherent reply and more a babble, it seems. What I am trying to get at is the game could use rules for penetration, and armour should have both AC adjusting and DR increasing aspects. Heh. I hope that much was clear.

Rolemaster

Now, lets be up front; I hate rolemaster. Its a hideosly over complex system.

But, the core concept of its armor system is this;

Heavier armor makes you EASIER to hit. But heavier armor ensures that those hits will be less severe.

So, in light / no armor you expect a lucky hit to cripple you, whereas in heavy armor you expect a whole succession of "nibbles" to wear you down. (e.g. multiple dagger stabs)

Of course, it helps if you don't have a linear progression of damage capacity for the characters.

Essentially; D&D uses the abstraction of a to hit roll representing a "damaging hit", armor reducing damage is a facet of the abstractions used by other games, where a to hit roll represents "any hit".

You need to alter an awful lot of rules to make armor giving DR work well.

This reminds me of Dragon Knight (I believe it was the name in English). Here, each weapon had two associated dice, one for penetrating armor and one for damage. Once you hitted someone, you had to check if your penetration roll was higher than the enemy's armor's rating, and if it did, you inflicted damage. Not a stupid system, but it required to throw an additional die.

I have armor give damage reduction, but I also asign armor types as weapons have. Full plate is a slashing/bludgeoning armor which means that the full damage reduction given by the armor is aplied against slashing and bludgeoning attacks but only counts as half against piercing attacks.

I just have the DR of an armor depend on the material it's made from. Take the Hardness of the material in question (Steel is 10, the exotic stuff goes up to 40).

Light armor and Small shields (or bucklers) give no DR
Medium armor and Large shields give DR of (Hardness/10)/-
Heavy armor gives DR of (Hardness/5)/-

These stack with each other, so a person in steel plate with a steel shield might have DR 3/-. There's more to it than that, but that's the basic idea. Basically, give something that Bracers of Armor can't duplicate.

I was thinking of adding a AP (armor penetration) rating to some weapons, as the amount of Armor DR it ignores, but there's already a mechanism for that: critical hits! A dagger hitting plate armor isn't going to do much, unless you manage to get it between plates, at which point it's a great weapon.
A pick, for example, might have a x4 multiplier. While a typical hit against heavy armor might not do much, a critical hit is far more likely to get past the DR. So, the only real problem then is that a dagger should have a better crit multiplier.

Gez said:

This reminds me of Dragon Knight (I believe it was the name in English). Here, each weapon had two associated dice, one for penetrating armor and one for damage. Once you hitted someone, you had to check if your penetration roll was higher than the enemy's armor's rating, and if it did, you inflicted damage. Not a stupid system, but it required to throw an additional die.

Click to expand...

Dragon Warriors, in English, Gez. Cool little system, and very simple.

Oy, I've played systems like this ...

1. Roll to hit (consult "to hit" chart, cross reference weapon and armor, roll dice) ... you hit!
2. Roll for location (consult location chart, cross-reference weapon with facing, roll dice) ... left side!
3. Roll for penetration (consult penetration chart, cross reference weapon vs armor, roll dice) ... penetrates!
4. Roll for effect (consult effect chart, cross reference weapon with location hit, roll dice) ... kill!

Give me D&D's abstract, simplified system any day.

I agree to your game balance issues with damage resistance. That's why I built the following system:

(look at the second post for the revised rules, the first needed editing, and the second probably do too...)

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?threadid=30311

Not only did I change the armor rules, I "tweaked" the damage system too. Before you scream about his, it turns out to work about the same as before. The rest of the system does not have to be "fixed" for this to work, and it can be dropped into any game without major worldshaking events.

The damage system now allows for wounds that cause disability. This is an abstract way to deal with gutwounds and broken bones. I have also given a slight tweak to stun (subdual) damage that will allow it to be used for exhaustion and other issues. It also allows for a certain amount of "heroic recovery" for the character.

The armor rules take this into account by allowing armor to change a certain amount of damage to stun, instead of removing it completely.

Also, the character might take a penalty to attack in order to attack an unarmored section of the attacker with that dagger you mentioned. It would be assumed during a Coup-de-grace.

Overall, it works well at keeping characters from allowing thier companions from going down, since it costs so much to bring them back up!

The reason for this armor system? Guns...

Guns (in my game) are ranged touch attacks. The only thing that effects them is the AR of the armor. Modern armors would have better AR, but probably less AC...