Pathfinder 1E Armor as Damage Reduction

[enigma5915]

As far as natural armor when I am converting a creature I only give it 30% -100% of its natural AC converted to DR totaly depending on the the creature and my rational of how it should work. With most creatures the natural armor would not count against elemental damage except for special circumstances or specific creatures. so this will be a benefit for casters dealing damage to creatures with natural armor. But it is what it is. Magic is powerful, but casters typically are more fragile, there is a bit of a trade off.

 

[enigma5915]

I would suppose though that a wizard/rogue or cleric/rogue multiclass combo might be advantageous. I would like to see what would happen with that.

 

[Matthias]

I once toyed around with armor DR when I used pre-PF D&D. 3.5. I could not sell my players on the rules so we stuck with standard, but the house ruleset went like this:

Armor Class was not replaced by d20 modern Defense scores, but characters gained _both_ DR and armor bonus from worn armor. DR was based on the sturdiness of the armor, and the armor bonus scaled directly with how much body surface the armor covered.

If an attack missed Touch AC, it was a complete miss.

If an attack hits Touch AC but misses total AC, the armor's DR kicks in.

If am attack hits total AC, the target takes the full damage from the hit (no DR applies)


Armor bonus from coverage was like this: +1 for just greaves and a helmet; +4 for limb and helmet armor or a shirt;+7 for coverage of vitals and limb extremities; +9 to +11 or more for field plate or full plate; and potentially infinite (DR always applies) in cases where a set of armor could completely encase the wearer, if possible.

 

[triqui]

The problem with armor as DR is that it render useless some archetypes and themes and playstyles. For example, having a monk that flurry of blows, or a ranger dualwielding two kukris, is much worse than having a big, heavy hitting two handed weapon. It's better to do 60 damage, and then substract 10 DR, than doing 15 damage four times, and then substract the DR four times.

Also, some encounters become trivial (goblins can't pierce even the lower armors), and some others become stronger (monsters that miss a lot, but do a lot of damage, actually get better)

 

[enigma5915]

Your are correct Triqui. But these areas i've thought about lately and i'm ok with this. Big heavy things should hurt more, so this is welcome. My game has armor at a much rarer occurance than the norm. At least compared to modules. Small creatures dont do a lot of damage, which is not a suprise. But a lot of small creatures can grab and tackle creatures. A grappled and restrained creature would have it's DR halved a while a pinned creature would have no DR. A halfling should have a hard time to hurt over as it is. An armored ogre should be impossible for a halfling to kill and all but the best circumstances.

 

[N'raac]

Your are correct Triqui. But these areas i've thought about lately and i'm ok with this. Big heavy things should hurt more, so this is welcome. My game has armor at a much rarer occurance than the norm. At least compared to modules. Small creatures dont do a lot of damage, which is not a suprise. But a lot of small creatures can grab and tackle creatures. A grappled and restrained creature would have it's DR halved a while a pinned creature would have no DR. A halfling should have a hard time to hurt over as it is. An armored ogre should be impossible for a halfling to kill and all but the best circumstances.

Empghasis added

That's fine, so long as you accept that this change will make such characters considerably less viable, and thus unlikely to be played. Players will gravitate to characters which can be effective under this model which, for physical combatants, will mean heavily armored, high damage warriors. Abilities like Sneak Attack, Power Attack and the various abilities allowing a single attack consolidating all iterative attacks that would otherwise be available, so these will be more focused on. Abilities that allow a larger number of smaller attacks, like Rapid Attack or Flurry of Blows, are devaluedso expect not to see them in play (or for players choosing that approach to be dissatisfied with the ineffectiveness of their characters). Small PC's will be spellcasters (or sneak attackers), not combatants, since that is their only option to be effective.

If you're OK with that reduction of PC variety (and especially if you want to encourage the heavy hitters and discourage the multiple small attackers), this should work in your game.

 

[Seaman]

I have done the ac to dr but I have made minor tweaks. First, I don’t care about monsters. They stay the same out of the book. Why spend time changing them when they are just there to die lol. Next, I ruled only heavy armor counts as dr. Light armor characters generally don’t want to be hit in the first place and heavy armored characters take most of the punishment. Also, shields I found are underutilized in my game shields add to ac, ref, and touch. I know there are feats that allow this but I have never encountered a player who took the time to take these feats.

 

[enigma5915]

Yeah, im fine with accepting that smaller characters will not be melee powerhouse. Though all characters ending up as heavy hitters is something im not worried about. My campaign should be only about 1/3 combat and of that not much will be decked out in armor.

 

[triqui]

Yeah, im fine with accepting that smaller characters will not be melee powerhouse. Though all characters ending up as heavy hitters is something im not worried about. My campaign should be only about 1/3 combat and of that not much will be decked out in armor.

It's not about "smaller characters". It's about single heavy hitting atacks, vs multiple attacks.

With DR rules, a Bison is more dangerous than a lion. A Bison can charge for 2d6+12 damage. A lion does 1d8+5, plus four 1d4+5 claw attacks on a pounce. While on regular D&D, a lion is much more dangerous than a Bison (he does 1d8+4d4+25 vs 2d6+12 in a round), in a game with DR, it's not true. A DR 8 armor will make you almost inmune to the lion, whille the Bison still does 2d6+4, which is respectable damage.

It's not only that you are inmune to low level goblins. You are inmune to multiattack creatures too. Aurumvorax, or displacer beasts, or even Hydras, are incredibly weak threats against anyone with a half decent DR. Anyone with a full plate and a Natural ARmor amulet can take down as many hydras as you want, without sweeting. And I mean an *army* of hydras, like 20.

 

[slobster]

If you're really worried about DR and its outsized effectiveness against many small attacks, you could experiment with DR applying once over the course of a turn (a hydra hits you 6 times for 5 damage each; your DR 12 stops 12 of it for a total of 18 dmg) instead of separately for every attack.

You could also have it apply once over every attack you receive over the course of a whole round, though that entails a little bit more tracking and bookkeeping.

A system like that also allows packs of small enemies to pierce an opponent's heavy armor if they delay to act on the same round. They overcome the DR with pack tactics.