Anyone using WoT-style Def. Bonuses in D&D?

[drquestion]

I'm planning a campaign in which the characters often won't be able to use armor (for social and stylistic reasons) and am considering compensating for this by introducing WoT-style defense bonuses into the game. Has anyone tried doing this? If so, how did you go about doing it, and did it present any unforseen problems?

To give a little more information, I'm planning on putting the campaign in a modified version of the Rokugan setting, so I'd be using classes from there in addition to some of the core classes. Characters would be spending much of their time in courts and urban settings where walking around in full armor would be unacceptable. Also, it seems to me that in the films that I would take stylistic inspiration from for such a setting (i.e., Samurai Trilogy, 7 Samurai, Yojimbo) most of the characters don't wear armor, so it would make sense stylistically, too.

This is also going to be a fairly low-magic setting, with characters having few powerful items (aside from the samurai's daisho) and probably with many of the more egregious buff spells removed.

Any advice that you have would be appreciated.

Thanks,
drquestion

 

[StalkingBlue]

What are WoT-style defense bonuses?
What is WoT?

 

[barsoomcore]

My campaign is intended to be low-armour. Here's what I did:

1. I worsened the Max Dex Bonus on all armour by one. So a type of armour that previously had a Max Dex Bonus of 2 now has a Max Dex Bonus of 1.

2. I changed the class proficiencies so that nobody got heavy or medium armour for free.

3. I created a number of feats: Canny Defense (add your Int bonus to AC), Reckless Abandon (add your Cha bonus to AC) and Step Aside (add your base Reflex Save to AC). The latter one makes rogues MUCH more poweful in combat, so be careful.

That was about it. It's made a huge difference in the style of gaming -- it really favour running around, trying to get sneak attacks -- rogues, generally. It's fun though.

 

[Crothian]

What are WoT-style defense bonuses?
What is WoT?

Wheel of Time.

It's sort of the same thing star wars did. Basically, as you increase in level your AC improves. They do this because of no magic and little armor for the characters to increase AC.

I use it in a modern mystery game. So far, it has worked okay.

 

[Skywalker]

The Original d20 Star Wars game gives each class a natural AC score. This was based upon the classes Reflex save +2.

This was adopted in Wheel of Time except that the natural AC bonus progression was not based solely on Reflexes. Using Reflexes created some strange anomalies, like Fighters being less able to defend themselves than a Thief (which it was argued unconvincingly that this was due to the fact that Fighters relied on armour). The solution was to simple create a natural AC progression that best suited the class.

One main difficulty remained. This was that how did armour bonus and natural AC bonus interact. If they simply accumulated then you simply increased the existing ACs in D&D and made people much harder to hit. This reduced the deadliness of D&D combat further.

So both the Original d20 Star Wars and Wheel of Time ruled that you simply chose the highest bonus. This created another problem in that someone with a natural AC bonus of +8 or more no longer recieved any benefit from using armour.

Other games like Fading Suns d20 tried to get around this problem by creating a cumulative natural AC bonus, with a +1 at level 3 and every 3 levels thereafter.

The continuing problem led to the rules in the Revised d20 Star Wars. This system is IMO much superior for representing armour and presenting a more deadly game. In revised SW each class has a natural AC bonus based on class like in Wheel of Time. However armour gives the wearer a damage resistance (not AC bonus) that is subtracted from damage done. This means that a person is just as capable of defending themself without armour but they will take more damage.

This works very well in a D&D game though you need to come up with the appropriate natural AC progressions and DR for armour. I suggest checking out revised SW d20 as a guide.

Some further points. Be careful not to have too high damage resistance for armour as this becomes incredibly powerful. Most people look to set it at about 1/2 the AC bonus. Being able to subtract 4 from every hit is fantastic.

Another option which is again in SW d20 revised and again is superior IMO is the adoption of the WP/VP mechanic. In essence each PC his constitution as wound points as well as hit points. Wound points never increase. Critical hits do not do increased damage but instead do direct damage to wound points. Hit points heal at a faster rate as they just represent the PCs ability to avoid being hit. WP take longer as they represent wounds.

This system has the effect of making low level PCs more durable, PCs able to recover quickly from minor fights but keep combat deadly no matter what level the PC.

Anyway, in SW d20 revised, armour only gives a damage reduction to hits that cause WP damage. This decreases the power of armour but emphasised armours usefulness in keeping you alive especially from the lucky critical.

If you are looking to use natural AC bonus in D&D you may want to consider also adding in the WP and VP distinction.

 

[drquestion]

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

barsoomcore, I'm not necessarily against introducing a more mobile style of combat. it seems like it would encourage more elegance from the samurai/fighter types, rather than just having them stand there and hack at things.

Skywalker, I'll definitely check out the revised Star Wars d20. I'm unsure about having armor do damage reduction, though. I was hoping to avoid changing the mechanics that much. Instead, I was leaning towards simply having something along the lines of the WoT Armsman, where the defense bonus, or at least a portion of it, stacks with the AC bonus from wearing armor. Have you tried using armor as DR in a D&D campaign? How did it work out?

Thanks,
drquestion

 

[drothgery]

So both the Original d20 Star Wars and Wheel of Time ruled that you simply chose the highest bonus. This created another problem in that someone with a natural AC bonus of +8 or more no longer recieved any benefit from using armour.

... with the important difference here that Armsmen (WoT fighter-equivalents) get Armor Compatibility, which means that Armor and Defense bonus stack for them (but not for any other core class). Original Star Wars d20 Soldiers (Star Wars fighter-equivalents) did not have armor compatibility. Of course, WoT is a low magic-item setting where there is no known magic armor, and full plate is only used in a few areas (mostly the Borderlands).

 

[Squire James]

The VP/WP system requires some thinking about what happens to healing spells. I can easily think of several systems of equal validity:

1. Cure spells don't work on WP at all (making them "Cure Vitality" instead of "Cure Wounds" spells). Someone hit for wound damage are really wounded for a while, and magic can't do a thing about it.

2. Change the current Cure spells to "Cure Vitality", and make up another set for "Cure Wounds" (to heal whatever one considers as a "light", "moderate", "serious", or "critical" wound; something like 1d4 per spell level seems to work).

3. As #2, but track each time someone takes Wound damage, and allow each grouping of points to be cured ONLY with the spell with equal or greater intensity (for example: 1-4 WP is "light", 5-8 WP is "moderate", 9-12 WP is "serious", and 13+ WP is "critical").

Another issue is the Heal spell. If allowed at all, the spell can either be limited to Vitality only or just go ahead and heal everything. Perhaps have Heal Vitality as a level 6 spell and Heal Complete as a level 8 spell replacing Mass Heal.

Yet another issue is handling x3 and x4 critical weapons, which really lose value in such a system if the multipliers are simply ignored. IMO the game is sword-centric enough without making axes substandard weapons. Such weapons can do increased damage, or perhaps be "armor piercing" and cut armor DR in half or some such).

The last issue to consider when deciding to convert to VP/WP is the effects of critical hits in combat. In VP/WP, a critical hit will often result in insta-kill. This makes the system somewhat better than the standard HP mechanic for "gritty" campaigns, but less so for "high heroic" campaigns.

 

[StalkingBlue]

Thank you for explaining about WoT.

I agree that damage reduction through armor can become ridiculously powerful.

The German RPG DSA uses that mechanic. My DSA character subtracts 3 points of damage from every hit, and that's a studded leather armor bonus. Damage ranges between 2 and 8 points per hit on average, at our level.

 

[drquestion]

Those are good points about cure spells and conversion to VP/WP, Squire James. I'd have to think about whether or not the conversion would be worth the effort. It's tempting, though, as I see it as being in the style of the campaign to give sword fights a little extra edge of deadliness.

originally posted by Squire James:
Yet another issue is handling x3 and x4 critical weapons, which really lose value in such a system if the multipliers are simply ignored. IMO the game is sword-centric enough without making axes substandard weapons. Such weapons can do increased damage, or perhaps be "armor piercing" and cut armor DR in half or some such).

That's a good point, but I don't see it being a huge issue, as this is going to be a Rokugan campaign, so the main weapons will be katanas, anyways.

drquestion