Level Up (A5E) Adding narrative satisfaction to armor

[dave2008]

I ran a few campaigns with an armor giving DR system where medium gave DR1 & heavy armor gave DR2.

Was this on top of their AC?

Monsters it harder & squishies felt squishy.

What does Monsters "it" harder mean? I would have guessed you meant "hit," but that makes no sense given the context. Care to explain?

If anything it sped things along because players needed to think & strategize more than yoyo healing word/healing light/etc &

Interesting, I have never seen players thinking and strategizing speed the game up. Of course neither do I have a problem with yoyo healing, so we just may run our games differently.

I as the GM had more room to provide players with cool toys to use in fights.

How does adding 1 or 2 DR have any effect on "cool toys to use in fights." Do you care to explain?

 

[tetrasodium]

Was this on top of their AC?

What does Monsters "it" harder mean? I would have guessed you meant "hit," but that makes no sense given the context. Care to explain?

Interesting, I have never seen players thinking and strategizing speed the game up. Of course neither do I have a problem with yoyo healing, so we just may run our games differently.

How does adding 1 or 2 DR have any effect on "cool toys to use in fights." Do you care to explain?

I'm (still) on my phone right now. Yes hit harder. By allowing players to subtract zero to two damage per hit I could use/make monsters thst hit more often and fbrought a bigger stick as a result. More attacks per round going out st players made yoyo healing more dangerous while the reduction for crunchy types had better durability than less crunchy types so they didn't need so much healing. Yhe dr was on top of ac, if bob was in plate and got joy three times for a total of 20 damage he can trivially subtract 6 from 20 and 14 from his hp


Players needed to focus for more and use control abilities to protect from some opponents being in range or whatever so it sped things in that way while the rougher monsters I threw out meant that I could give more magic items. Unfortunately wotc removes cantrip casters from the equation where loot tables can do much and correcting that is very nontrivial without changes that move into "is this still d&d 5e?" Territory. Eventually covid hit and I quit gming

 

[Scars Unseen]

How does adding 1 or 2 DR have any effect on "cool toys to use in fights." Do you care to explain?

Yeah, this is the part I don't get. There's nothing interesting about DR. It's basically 3E again with all of the little numbers that you only take into account when you fill out a formula on your character sheet. It's the same simulationist argument for armor we've seen since the TSR days. And to be clear, there's nothing wrong with that. But it's the complete opposite of being "narratively satisfying" because it has nothing to do with, you know, narration.

When I think of something having an effect on the narrative, the one absolute requirement in my mind is that it has to be something that you bring up in play. If it's something that you just jot down and then quietly add or subtract from the result of a die roll, that's just a math variable. In that regard, the bonus HP idea is even worse because it's something you literally write down and then never take into account again unless you change equipment. Not necessarily a terrible idea in itself, but kind of out of sync with the topic that was raised.

 

[dave2008]

I'm (still) on my phone right now. Yes hit harder. By allowing players to subtract zero to two damage per hit I could use/make monsters thst hit more often and fbrought a bigger stick as a result. More attacks per round going out st players made yoyo healing more dangerous while the reduction for crunchy types had better durability than less crunchy types so they didn't need so much healing. Yhe dr was on top of ac, if bob was in plate and got joy three times for a total of 20 damage he can trivially subtract 6 from 20 and 14 from his hp


Players needed to focus for more and use control abilities to protect from some opponents being in range or whatever so it sped things in that way while the rougher monsters I threw out meant that I could give more magic items. Unfortunately wotc removes cantrip casters from the equation where loot tables can do much and correcting that is very nontrivial without changes that move into "is this still d&d 5e?" Territory. Eventually covid hit and I quit gming

I guess I don't buy it based on my experience. I just don't see DR 1-2 having any effect on how we play. PCs have so many HP it is not like I (DM) have to worry about hitting them with the heavy stick.

Now, we did find a way to use DR in our games, but it is much more substantial than what you propose and has more narrative impact IMO because it actually means something in terms of the narration instead just being a number you subtract (and a small one at that). If it works good for you, great! I just don't seeing it being worth the small bit of math on every hit for most people.

 

[tetrasodium]

I guess I don't buy it based on my experience. I just don't see DR 1-2 having any effect on how we play. PCs have so many HP it is not like I (DM) have to worry about hitting them with the heavy stick.

Now, we did find a way to use DR in our games, but it is much more substantial than what you propose and has more narrative impact IMO because it actually means something in terms of the narration instead just being a number you subtract (and a small one at that). If it works good for you, great! I just don't seeing it being worth the small bit of math on every hit for most people.

You are getting stuck on the wall wotc created for o5e GMs by setting baseline to powerful PCs with he assumption of no feats & no magic items. In order to change much of anything you need to change a bunch of other things. In this case it's either come off as the bad guy and give the PCs a bunch of nerfs before giving them something nice or giving the PCs something nice and more than countering it with monster design. Unfortunately there is a lot of trial and error& working by feel to flesh things out because everything in o5e is a one off edge case supported by a pile of things intended to reinforce the one true way of blessed fun.

At the end of the day however armor with DR does not "make combat slower to resolve" & that was my point. Questions like"but how did you, "why did you", "go into detail on", "what about x", & so on immediately veer into the ways o5e's simplicity obsession sets up the gm to fail when they start engaging in homebrew.

 

[dave2008]

You are getting stuck on the wall wotc created for o5e GMs by setting baseline to powerful PCs with he assumption of no feats & no magic items. In order to change much of anything you need to change a bunch of other things. In this case it's either come off as the bad guy and give the PCs a bunch of nerfs before giving them something nice or giving the PCs something nice and more than countering it with monster design. Unfortunately there is a lot of trial and error& working by feel to flesh things out because everything in o5e is a one off edge case supported by a pile of things intended to reinforce the one true way of blessed fun.

I really do not know what you are talking about or how it is relevant to the discussion. This just sounds like a personal rant.

At the end of the day however armor with DR does not "make combat slower to resolve" & that was my point. Questions like"but how did you, "why did you", "go into detail on", "what about x", & so on immediately veer into the ways o5e's simplicity obsession sets up the gm to fail when they start engaging in homebrew.

I disagree. I know for a fact that it can slow down combat. We (my group) likes armor to have DR combat and we add it to every edition we've played (1e, 4e, & 5e). However, the issue has been that it did indeed slow down combat - always. We didn't really come up with a good solution to minimize the effect until 4e came along and two things led us to a solution:

1. 4e combats could be very long, see we looked for many new ways to speed up combat, that made us look hard at DR again.
2. The bloodied condition, That concept was a revelation for us and gave us the idea to minimize the impact of adding DR to armor.

 

[tetrasodium]

I really do not know what you are talking about or how it is relevant to the discussion. This just sounds like a personal rant.

I disagree. I know for a fact that it can slow down combat. We (my group) likes armor to have DR combat and we add it to every edition we've played (1e, 4e, & 5e). However, the issue has been that it did indeed slow down combat - always. We didn't really come up with a good solution to minimize the effect until 4e came along and two things led us to a solution:

1. 4e combats could be very long, see we looked for many new ways to speed up combat, that made us look hard at DR again.
2. The bloodied condition, That concept was a revelation for us and gave us the idea to minimize the impact of adding DR to armor.

I'm sure that it could slow down combat, but I don't find that players encounter difficulty subtracting numbers like one & two from basically any other number they ar likely to encounte in game and despite all of the details you want from me about how it could not slow down combat there has been little if any detail on how it slows combat other than the assertion that it does leaving me to guess at the differences in our implementations, styles, & problems.

 

[dave2008]

I'm sure that it could slow down combat, but I don't find that players encounter difficulty subtracting numbers like one & two from basically any other number they ar likely to encounte in game and despite all of the details you want from me about how it could not slow down combat there has been little if any detail on how it slows combat other than the assertion that it does leaving me to guess at the differences in our implementations, styles, & problems.

It is adding an operation to the resolution process.

No DR example:
DM: you take 5 fire damage.
Player: OK, I subtract 5 damage from my HP

DR example:
DM; you take 5 fire damage.
Player: OK, I substract 5 - 2, so 3 damage. I subtract 3 damage from my HP.

It is one more process. It takes more time. You can't add a step and it not take more time. How much more time is very dependent on the player. It can be an infinitesimally small amount of time or a significant one. Then that gets multiplied for every transaction on every attack. It is impossible for that not to add up.

 

[tetrasodium]

It is adding an operation to the resolution process.

No DR example:
DM: you take 5 fire damage.
Player: OK, I subtract 5 damage from my HP

DR example:
DM; you take 5 fire damage.
Player: OK, I substract 5 - 2, so 3 damage. I subtract 3 damage from my HP.

It is one more process. It takes more time. You can't add a step and it not take more time. How much more time is very dependent on the player. It can be an infinitesimally small amount of time or a significant one. Then that gets multiplied for every transaction on every attack. It is impossible for that not to add up.

You have not explained any slowdown as adding or subtracting one or two before updating their hit points is not a measurable effort for most people old enough to play d&d unaided. I also don't believe my players over the years are unusually gifted at math by virtue of not needing to spend the time you are suggesting is needed to process what a number minus one or a number minus two is. It's simply done while performing the same step needed to update their hp.

 

[dave2008]

You have not explained any slowdown as adding or subtracting one or two before updating their hit points is not a measurable effort for most people old enough to play d&d unaided. I also don't believe my players over the years are unusually gifted at math by virtue of not needing to spend the time you are suggesting is needed to process what a number minus one or a number minus two is. It's simply done while performing the same step needed to update their hp.

I have explained it, you just don't except the explanation. What a stated was a fact: adding a subtraction process takes more time. The only real question is how much time. You also need to realize the time it takes to do the subtraction is only part of the issue, you also have the issue of remembering to do the subtraction. That part should get better over time of course, but it can also persist for some. I mean the math is not difficult, but it is another process to not only remember, but to do.

Now in 4e, because we were looking for ways to reduce our combat time we did lengthy timed studies. We actually end up using a timer (each person had 30 sec. to resolve their actions from start to finish). In our experiments to get to the time limit we found we had to change DR because it was taking up to much time. We found a way to incorporate it that works for us, I personally think is narratively superior too, and didn't take as much time. So I don't know if you have done timed studies of multiple aspects of a players turn, but we did and DR absolutely had a time cost.

Personally I believe you to are experience a time loss because of, but it so small that you don't really notice it. However, we you restrict your turn to 30 sec or less, you might.

EDIT: I misremembered something about our time experiments, for as @tetrasodium pointed out, the time to deduce the effect of DR on a hit does happen on a player's turn. I was probably think about the time it took me as DM, but I honestly don't remember.