Armor Class vs. Damage Reduction - Your preference
Ed_Laprade
Adventurer
Both. Good armor should deflect some blows. But you need to have characters with fewer Hit Points in a DR system, or combat will take forever. And deciding on how deflecting 'some' blows works can get pretty complicated pretty fast, which is not good.
Olgar Shiverstone
Legend
AC. Simplicity is golden.
Mishihari Lord
First Post
I prefer DR because it's more conducive to thinking of hit points as actual physical resilience than D&D's use of hit points as ablative plot armor.
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DerekSTheRed
Explorer
I used to prefer AC to DR but then I played Savage Worlds. Everyone has natural DR in the form of their Toughness attribute with armor adding to it. This increases realism and allows for Savage World's best feature, no hit points (or very little hit points anyway). Since your not tracking every graze and scratch, DR ends up being much easier to do.
3catcircus
Adventurer
I prefer a third option: Armor as penetrative divider damage reduction - armor has a value that gets multiplied by a weapon's penetrative value to result in an effective armor value that reduces damage. I'd use the critical multiplier as the penetrative value instead of using it as a crit multiplier.
I also like the use of hit points, not as a "subtract until dead," but as a "compare damage taken to multiple set-points (multipliers) of your base hit points that result in varying damage effects, with an additional similar level of damage taken increasing the damage effect to the next level."
But - I also tend to prefer house rules where weapons do a fixed amount of base damage (typical 1-2 points for a knife, about 5 points for a sword, etc.) with a margin of success resulting from the dice roll added to the damage (i.e. need a 10 to hit and get a 12? add 2 to the damage you do), and where a margin of success of 5 or more is a critical success.
Ideally, I'd turn D&D into a dice pool system where you'd have combat skills, with more skill ranks equaling more dice being rolled.
So - an example would be a guy wearing chainmail being attacked by a guy with a sword.
The sword would have a base damage of 3 and a penetrative value of 2. The guy wearing chainmail would have an AC of 2 (I'd divide current AC values by half), so the armor would stop 4 points of damage.
The average guy could hit but not do any damage if he just hits. Beats the roll to hit buy at least 2 and you'll do a single point of damage. Beat it by 5 or more and it'd be a critical success, doing twice the total amount of damage.
Using a dice pool system, I'd also make each additional die that is a success add 2 to the margin of success (i.e. need to roll a 10 or better and 3 dice are a success, with the most successful being 3 better? your margin of success is 3 + 2 + 2), resulting in (the above example) 10 points of damage.
But in order to make this work - I'd make base hit points only a factor of STR and CON, and have the set-points be 1 pt of damage, base, base x2, and base x3.
I also like the use of hit points, not as a "subtract until dead," but as a "compare damage taken to multiple set-points (multipliers) of your base hit points that result in varying damage effects, with an additional similar level of damage taken increasing the damage effect to the next level."
But - I also tend to prefer house rules where weapons do a fixed amount of base damage (typical 1-2 points for a knife, about 5 points for a sword, etc.) with a margin of success resulting from the dice roll added to the damage (i.e. need a 10 to hit and get a 12? add 2 to the damage you do), and where a margin of success of 5 or more is a critical success.
Ideally, I'd turn D&D into a dice pool system where you'd have combat skills, with more skill ranks equaling more dice being rolled.
So - an example would be a guy wearing chainmail being attacked by a guy with a sword.
The sword would have a base damage of 3 and a penetrative value of 2. The guy wearing chainmail would have an AC of 2 (I'd divide current AC values by half), so the armor would stop 4 points of damage.
The average guy could hit but not do any damage if he just hits. Beats the roll to hit buy at least 2 and you'll do a single point of damage. Beat it by 5 or more and it'd be a critical success, doing twice the total amount of damage.
Using a dice pool system, I'd also make each additional die that is a success add 2 to the margin of success (i.e. need to roll a 10 or better and 3 dice are a success, with the most successful being 3 better? your margin of success is 3 + 2 + 2), resulting in (the above example) 10 points of damage.
But in order to make this work - I'd make base hit points only a factor of STR and CON, and have the set-points be 1 pt of damage, base, base x2, and base x3.
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Gilladian
Adventurer
Gaaah! Some of these answers make my head swim! If it takes 3 minutes to do the math for each blow, it is WAAAYYYY too complex. 3 math operations is too many. One is plenty for my players.
Also, D&D has always used AC. If you want to use something else, find another game where it is the basis of the armor system. Don't wreck my D&D!
Also, D&D has always used AC. If you want to use something else, find another game where it is the basis of the armor system. Don't wreck my D&D!
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