A good Armor Class Bonus to Damage Reduction house rule?

[radmod]

Guys! Do you all realize that this is a thread from 2004!?

Not only are you guys having a silly argument, you're having a silly argument about something that was resolved or made moot years ago!

Um, I'm responding to a post from yesterday, not 6 years ago. As to being silly, no way. I'm very interested in a DR system. It's just that none I've seen work when statistically analyzed. I think planesailing may be on to something.

Question: Is Valhalla also planesailing?

Huh!?
1) Rogues aren't weak. Just because they aren't the "I win" of wizards or CoDzilla, doesn't make them weak. Sneak attack, alone, allows them to get through DR as (or more) reliably than most Fighter builds.

I beg to differ. IME, rogues are weak. I've heard many complaints, here and in real life, that rogues are weak. Now, of course, it may simply be because people who tend to play rogues also tend to be extreme risk takers or highly chaotic, so ...

2) Monks really aren't affected much. They are still pure AC and rather squishy when they get hit. Their only loss is that they have an even harder time hurting stuff, since their damage won't get through as often (before around level 10). They'll hit a heck of a lot more often, since Defense is much lower, but they should be about as effective as they were before.

See below. The basic answer is that against many, if not most, monsters, AC is breakable, but DR still remains effective.

A) Damage Reduction only applies to physical damage. It does not apply to energy damage. Fire is a type of energy, so it ignores Damage Reduction. This is a core rule and this house rule merely repeats it, it doesn't change it.

I was just curious if the house rule for DR would also change it's effects. Consistency is good.

Huh? No, the guy that gets missed more is the clear winner.

I'm sorry, but your example is statistically invalid. What you are giving is an extreme case of a monster that easily defies DR. That is essentially giving an example that is intended to prove your point rather than a statistically valid example.
I could easily counter with an example of a standard orc with a d8 weapon and +2 STR. Against the FP, he hits 14 times but only does 1 effective (the critical) for 10 pts (unless you do the "a hit always does at least 1 pt of damage" rule). Against the CS, he gets 9 hits + 1 critical for a total of 32.5 pts!
Why ever would the dragon use 16 PA? If he's that high, he's probably smart enough to realize that anyone facing him probably has a better AC.

The way to analyze this is two-fold. One is take the two extreme ends and then the middle. The other is to pit each of the two characters against each other.
We've got the two extremes (dragon and orc). A middle between them would be a +12, 2d4+4 creature with a max PA of 8. Obviously, if the creature doesn't use PA the Plate wins handily (27 v. 99). If the creature uses half PA (2d4+8 @ +8) then the Plate still wins (avg. 5.15 v. 6.95).
Even if the creature uses max PA, the Plate still wins (7.15 v. 7.35). If we start making it magical armor, the shift continues to favor the Plate.
Now I would recommend putting the exact same fighter in both sets of armor and seeing how things turn out. I imagine you'll find the plate tends to win.
I simply don't see that many times PCs run into creatures that just blow through DR so, so easily (e.g. > 15-20 a hit). (Except, of course, for killer DMs).

The real failure of this rule set is that it invalidates every martial build that is not a sneak attack / TH-power attack build.

Yeah, that's a real problem here. In my previous post, I mentioned my friend, the DEX based fighter. Against someone in Plate he would have a really hard time (except for his crits). Yet, my PC, who skirmishes, could easily do more damage.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Um, I'm responding to a post from yesterday, not 6 years ago. As to being silly, no way. I'm very interested in a DR system.

Yep, same here. *Fully* aware it was originally an old thread, now "revived".

Question: Is Valhalla also planesailing?

Unlikely, I would say.

 

[ValhallaGH]

El Mahdi, I'm just trying to help radmod see the effects of this houserule. As Armor -> DR rules go, it's actually really good. It suffers from all the basic issues of such rules, but this one is better than most, and certainly better than the one in UA.

Question: Is Valhalla also planesailing?

Definitely not.

I beg to differ. IME, rogues are weak.

Depends upon how you define weak, I guess. IME they deal more damage than any fighter (except TH / PA). They go squish, if left on the front lines, but they have a lot of options that they can combine to great effect, often with conditional ACs (fight defensively, total defense, combat expertise) that make even the plate / heavy shield crowd look easy to swat. There is a reason they are in the same Tier as Barbarians.

I'm sorry, but your example is statistically invalid. What you are giving is an extreme case of a monster that easily defies DR. That is essentially giving an example that is intended to prove your point rather than a statistically valid example.
...
The way to analyze this is two-fold. One is take the two extreme ends and then the middle. The other is to pit each of the two characters against each other.

Two quick points.
First, I grabbed an example from last night's session because it was fresh in my mind (black dragon, 16 BAB, power attack, +4 strength bonus). Sure, I could have grabbed something at the appropriate level (2 or 3, based upon the gear value of plate), or bumped the characters to be closer to the example monster, but that would have taken more work than I wanted to put into a clarifying post.
Second, I've never seen an orc warrior that only had a +2 strength bonus and didn't TH his weapon. If you want to grab an example orc, at least have the decency to use the SRD orc warrior. +4 to hit for 2d4+4 (average 9) with his Falchion. Average 3.35 for Shirt and 1.95 for Plate (this ignores critical hits but does include the 'critical threats bypass DR' clause).
For a better comparison, bump the probable level up to 6 or 7 (+2 items) and do some real comparisons. That's the point where SRD monsters start having Power Attack, which is when Armor as DR starts getting the party killed for exactly the same reason that Rage gets Barbarians killed.

...
I played Iron Heroes for a little over two years (and still love that clunky, crunchy, brilliantly incomplete system). It uses armor as DR, which is where I learned the advantages and disadvantages of the concept. Being missed is always better than being hit, period. Maybe your armor will stop it all, and maybe it won't, but not getting hit means that you don't have to wonder.

When facing low-damage foes, such as CR 1/2 orc warriors, having DR is amazing, it makes you as resilient as an older dragon is to the town guards. When facing medium- to high-damage foes, or anyone who's attacks inherently bypass your DR, you find yourself wishing your AC was in the thirties instead of in the teens.
This is just as true for PCs versus monsters. Foes with DR are difficult or impossible for low-damage heroes to kill, and as easy for high-damage heroes as the attack roll.
Armor as DR doesn't work in the d20 paradigm. It is both too strong and too weak. Maybe if weapon damage rolls were open-ended (could Ace or Explode) then things would be different, but they aren't so that equation will never change.


Regardless, good luck with your campaign and your house rules.

 

[El Mahdi]

I wasn't trying to stop anything...far be it for me to get in the way of a good internet argument...

I just wasn't sure if ya'll realized the thread was necroed simply for informational purposes...before ya'll wasted a lot of energy arguing over a 6 year old thread.

Anyways, no worries, and I hope I didn't offend anyone. Apologies if I did.

Carry on.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Armor as DR doesn't work in the d20 paradigm. It is both too strong and too weak. Maybe if weapon damage rolls were open-ended (could Ace or Explode) then things would be different, but they aren't so that equation will never change.

So, is there any way to actually make it work?

A while back, one of the ideas floated for dealinng with getting rid of Iterative attacks was to add a damage bonus based on level (or half level for the nervous folks). Does something like that help address the problem?

What about exploding dice? Say all the damage is d6 based and every 6 explodes?

Obviously the idea of armour as DR is an idea that's stuck around for a decade or so now and folks still do dig it. Is there any way that some of the concerns/oddities that pop up can be addressed so that it can become a viable (if different) approach?

 

[Aus_Snow]

So, is there any way to actually make it work?

IME, Conan's approach works.

Not at all opposed to exploding dice though, just for the record.

 

[ValhallaGH]

With d20? It's extremely tough, and it will require a complete rewrite of how equipment interacts. (Connan did this, having armor stack with itself, provide high levels of DR, and giving weapons large damage with various levels of armor penetration to get through all that DR; then they made it easier to hit when ganging up, so you can power attack like a freak.)

Me, being lazy, I'd just use something like this one, with the note that all damage dice (or maybe just weapon dice) can Ace or Explode (i.e. roll max value, re-roll the die and add to the previous value, to no theoretical limit).
Acing raises the expected value per die by ~0.6, so 10d6 of sneak attack would average 41 instead of 35, or a 2d10 monk fist would average 12 instead of 11. While the average damage is almost the same, individual variance will be pretty crazy.


AC to DR in d20 is complicated by a combination of three factors. (There have been a few great essays about this problem, some of them available on the WotC website. The following is my own explanation.)
First, the scaling of hp: those suckers can go up a lot over two levels, or by the bare minimum every level. That's a huge disparity, not only between classes but between two characters of exactly the same build. That's unpredictable, especially given the lack of scaling for damage (Sneak Attack and certain spells). A sword & board Fighter can expect his per-hit damage bonus to go up by ~13 over 20 levels (+3 from strength increases, +3 magic strength, +2 weapon spec, +5 magic weapon), meanwhile the hp of what he hits goes up by about 60 times (~5 for Orc warrior to ~300 for CR 20 demons). Even with the all four attacks, you're looking at a much smaller increase in damage output.

Second, the scaling of attack bonuses versus defense: you're expected to get hit a lot as you go up in levels (one of the reasons that it's possible to get so many hp). Thanks to iterative attacks (especially natural attacks of monsters), it's entirely possible to get hit three or more times a round per foe. Worse, with power attack, they can directly convert excessive attack bonus into horrific amounts of extra damage (as anyone that's seen a Leap Attack using Frenzied Berserker can attest to).
By removing the primary source of Defense (armor) and not providing any compensation, you provide more incentive to power attack for crazy amounts, as well as dip into sneak attack classes since the loss of BAB isn't as much an issue. A monk's flurry of blows would be vastly more appealing, if he could actually hurt the things he's now hitting (sadly, monks are still combat useless under most armor to DR rules). Conversely, a TWF rogue is actually more effective since his damage will probably overwhelm any sane level of DR and he's almost certain to connect with every single attack; add in a Wounding weapon an it gets a heck of a lot scarier.

Third, juggling the amount of reduction provided. This one is very, very tricky, since it's the bridge between damage scaling and hp scaling. Should this scale, and if so then by how much? How do you scale it without completely invalidating certain builds (like the monk)? It's a lot of design and redesign, and you're almost certain to miss something important.


Best of luck with it.