Armor Damage Reduction, Defense

[Artking]

You could always play GURPS...this is pretty much waht they do.

Thats one of the things I like about gurps but there is too much detail for me to keep track of. Like the 6 actions in 6 seconds, skill system still confuses me etc

 

[dagger]

The new CoC book from WotC has DR instead of of AC as well I think.

I know for a fact that d20 Modern coming out from WotC will have armor as DR.

Might take a look at those two to see how it was done.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Although I don't use the defence bonus idea, since I got everything crystallised long before SW and WoT rules, I have a set of armour = DR rules on my website (see sig). I'm getting ready to make a couple of revisions to it in the light of higher level play - most to account for the somewhat arbitrary "natural AC bonus" which has been applied to several of the higher level creatures.

It is possible you might find some useful ideas there. I haven't seen Judge Dredd, so I can't comment on that. d20 Modern may have something on this when it appears?

Cheers

 

[Infinite Monkey@Work]

Recipe for defence / damage reduction system:

Go to http://www.sleepingimperium.rpghost.com/d20downloads.htm

Download the Grim-n-Gritty combat rules.
Ignore the hit point rules.
Use the Defence, Protection, Penetration and Called Shot rules.

Stir and cook for 2 game sessions learning time.

Eat and enjoy!

We have been using a modified version of the grim-n-gritty rules, as above, for about 2 months, and they work really well. Armour does become quite useful, but wearing armour gives you a penalty to your defence, so you end up being hit more often. We have several characters that wear no armour, and others that do, and I have noticed no appreciable difference in their survivability.

The onyl problem I have encountered is that monsters that derive a large part of their armour class from armour or natural armour become difficult to wound without massive damage weapons like greatswords. I am going to be trialing a modification in which a critical hit on a penetrate armour called shot completely ignores the armour.

 

[mmadsen]

If you want to use Armor as DR instead of Armor as AC, and you use the same numbers (e.g. DR 8 for Full Plate), no one's going to be able to hurt the tank in armor with mundane weapons.

If you greatly increase Crit Threat Ranges, it should normalize things a bit.