Damage Reduction?

[Commonblade]

I am sorry if this is old news, I couldn't find anything on it.

Has there been a mention of Damage Reduction at all?

 

[BeauNiddle]

There has been mention of poison reduction so I'd assume normal DR is in as well. Maybe something was mentioned in the dragon encounter they did ages ago.

 

[JohnSnow]

Well, Mike Mearls made a comment about this over on the WotC boards. Assuming Mike wouldn't mind, I'll quote his post here. Originally posted here.

We tried a few methods for using armor as DR in 4e. None of them proved viable. Even systems that looked good on paper failed in playtest. Typically, the problems we encountered were:

1. DR makes it hard to balance the heavily armored guy against the lightly armored guy. In the AC system, you simply compare expected attacks vs. expected AC, and expected hit points vs. expected damage. You can then cross reference those two to figure out how long a PC can survive.

For instance, you might want a fighter to stand toe-to-toe with a monster for 8 rounds before dropping, but a mage only lasts 3. You can manipulate both AC and hit points to hit that sweet spot. Then, you can increment both values up at about the same rate to keep that comparison (mage vs. fighter) intact.

Once you add DR to the system, things get a little weird. It makes it hard to use all three factors (hit points, hit rate, DR) without dropping one or making one a constant.

For instance, you might say that all melee attacks hit 50% of the time, then use DR and hit points to differentiate survival. Or, hit rate and DR might change, but everyone gets the same hit points.

Now, DR works very well in online games that have threat/aggro systems. Under these rules, the guys with high DR focus almost exclusively on drawing attacks. That can be fun in a real time game, but in D&D it's a real drag. MMOs don't have to worry as much about the disparity between the heavily armor guy and the guy in light armor because there are lots of mechanics that simply prevent the light armored guy from suffering attacks.

2. DR adds an extra step of work. Rolling to hit is something we expect to do, and accounting for armor in that step speeds up the game. Adding another step, the check for DR or the time spent resolving it, slows the game down on every successful attack.

If I wanted to add DR to D&D, I think I'd do away with scaling attack bonuses. The to-hit number of the 1st and 30th level fighters would look a lot alike, as would their defenses. The issue would be that the 1st level guy would do little to no damage with each hit, while the 30th level guy smears the 1st level one in a single shot.

The potentially interesting thing is that it makes for a clear distinction between high defense, low armor guys, and low defense, high armor guys. The fighter might take hits all day, but his DR lets him shrug them off. The rogue dodges attacks, but if he takes two or three hits he needs to run. We don't really have that in D&D, because both rogues and fighters play with the same defense value.

So, there's no armor DR in 4e. However, I assume that there will be some form of DR that isn't related to armor.

 

[Aage]

Didn't one of the playtest talk about a warforged with DR?

Edit: Ah, I was right. Castle smoulderthorn 3, last paragraph:

As it turns out, Toby’s warforged paladin is essentially indestructible under the current rules. I suppose a warforged ought to be tough, but the really odd thing is that his damage resistance (any DR, really) ignores psychic damage and poison damage. I’m not sure things ought to work that way; it seems to me that some sorts of damage ought to bypass DR by their very nature.

Off-topic: Just realised it mentions psychic damage too.

 

[Commonblade]

Thank you both.

I think in Mearls blog he is talking about the old notion of DR as we think about it. However, drawing from the play test I think DR is still in. I am guessing here:

The Warforge probably has DR/Adamantium (sp?) and thus anything without that damage type was not hurting it at all (on/off it either hurts it or it doesn’t). Or if it was hurting the warfroged it was subdural damage, and something it could shake off between encounters.

Since it sounds like they are going to change the way DR works based on the play test. I have a feeling I am back to square 0.

What is throwing me is the Spinned Devil doesn’t have a DR listed on its stats. I wonder if the card stats represent its final form, or if play testing on DR wasn't finished so they didn't put it on the preview card. Back to my research I go.

Thanks again.

 

[KingCrab]

Off-topic: Just realised it mentions psychic damage too.

I thought they were waiting for PHBII for psychic stuff. I gues psychic exists as a damage type in PHB1, just not as a power source.

 

[DreamChaser]

I thought they were waiting for PHBII for psychic stuff. I gues psychic exists as a damage type in PHB1, just not as a power source.

Right...there was a reference before to the fact that the psionics rules are being created in tandem with the PHBI rules but that they were holding off on the release. This tandem creation should help make sure that they are better integrated into the system as a whole. The idea of psychic damage also works great for illusions (which we have some reference to from some "made up" spells from a playtest character (Rob Heinsoo's I think).

DC

 

[ruemere]

[...]

What is throwing me is the Spinned Devil doesn’t have a DR listed on its stats. I wonder if the card stats represent its final form, or if play testing on DR wasn't finished so they didn't put it on the preview card. Back to my research I go.
[...]

A random guess:

They could have replaced damage reduction with Defense Bonus - any time you try to hit some target without meeting its defense bonus prerequisites, its armor class goes up by some number.

A random guess II:

Defense bonus/reduction may depend on race/creature type. Its presence in a statblock may be unnecessary.

Example:

Spined Devil - creature of "devil" type. Automatic defense bonus of 10/cold iron.

Regards,
Ruemere

 

[Gloombunny]

The article on zombies seemed to be saying that hitting them for a lot of damage all at once is much more effective than hitting them weakly several times. That sounds a lot like DR to me, though I suppose it could also mean some sort of fast healing thing.

 

[Derren]

Somehow I get the impression that 4E will be flooded with damage types.

• Physical damage
• Fire Damage (unconfirmed but expected)
• Cold Damage (unconfirmed but expected)
• Acid Damage (unconfirmed but expected)
• Electricity Damage (unconfirmed but expected)
• Poison Damage
• Psychic damage
• Force/Magic Damage (unconfirmed but expected)

And I also think that each of this damage type will have its own "DR" or "Resistence".