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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 1301169" data-attributes="member: 3051">Sorry about the delay, I went on vacation.  I should know better than to do that right after making a big post.Well, right away, having an AC/DR of 10, while still enjoying a +6 Dexterity bonus doesn't make much sense to me. If I'm wearing enough armor to warrant an AC/DR of 10, then without the specifics, I can only assume that my Dexterity bonus should be close to nonexistent.Well, I guess I wasn't too clear on the phrasing.  It wasn't "+6 Dexterity bonus", it was "+6 is tied to your Dexterity bonus", as in "if you're denied your DEX bonus you'd lose 6".  That includes things like Dodge bonuses and Haste.  In fact, was using the Rogue in question against himself.EC:20 DEX (18 plus an item that gives +2): +5Dodge feat: +1Ring of Protection +4AC:+3 Studded Leather: +6 (Max DEX +5)Amulet of Natural Armor +4Besides, it gave nice round numbers.  But, you could have had some of it come from spells (Haste and Barkskin), or Bracers of Armor, or a Wildshaped Druid, or some monster race from Savage Species... same resulting numbers, wildly different ways.I need to know all of these things, as each detail plays an important role in this variant combat system. It makes a huge difference to the whole equation.And that's what worried me enough to bring this up.  In stock D&D, two characters with AC 30 are balanced, with no difference in defense.  In your system, there can be huge differences between them, like you say.  That was the crux of my argument.  The specifics SHOULDN'T be important to the discussion.while you have stacked the example with a 17th level rogue who caught their victim flatfootedDoesn't have to be flat-footed.  Rogues get their Sneak Attack dice when they flank a target, for example, and in my experience that's the far more likely situation (and flanking doesn't deny the defender his DEX bonus, either, just gives a +2 bonus).  They'd get it against blinded or helpless targets, too, but if the target can't fight back the exact math becomes a bit irrelevant.And, I was using a Rogue only to illustrate the extreme case.  A high-level Fighter with a good magical sword would see the same situation to a lesser degree, especially if he uses the 2-handed 3.5E Power Attack to ramp up the damage.  Note the example numbers I gave: if you hit for 25 damage 30% of the time, trading 5 AC for DR increases your average damage per attack from 7.5 to 11 points; a high-end Fighter with Power Attack can easily reach that 25 amount, it's just that a Rogue will reach it more quickly. I could stack the example, rather simply, by giving your victim the Combat Reflexes and Defensive Focus feats. Both of which are available to all the characters in this discussion, and therefore can't be used as a balancing point.  And, on a more general level, requiring specific Feats to counteract a flaw in the system isn't good (not that that's what you're doing, of course).  My critique was about the relative shift your system brings based on the type of the attacker, not the victim.  I'll try to break it down point-by-point:> If I have an opponent with a given AC, under the stock D&D system it's assumed that the various types of attackers will be balanced.  Not identical, but balanced.  Rogues, archers, and big tank Fighters are all viable choices as classes, and there are rarely situations where your attacks are utterly worthless (most of which are due to unusual abilities of the target, not a failing in your attacker).People talk about the Rock-Paper-Scissors approach of D&D (Rogue beats Wizard beats Fighter beats Rogue), but none are completely neutered when going the wrong direction.  It may not be "realistic" (the dagger-vs-plate example you gave comes to mind) but it's good for a balanced game.> In 3E D&D, Power Attack was only useful if your average damage per hit was lower than (20 * your chance of hitting).  Since this was practically impossible at high levels (chance of hitting caps at 100%), Power Attack's niche was mainly against opponents with DR you couldn't bypass, OR against enemies with ACs so low that you could still hit on a 2 even after Power Attacking.> Trading "avoidance" (old AC / EC) for "mitigation" (new AC) on a 1-for-1 basis is the same as 3E Power Attacking in reverse.> Therefore, if your average damage per hit is higher than (20 * your average chance of hitting), then trading AC (that's D&D AC, not yours) for DR will increase your average damage per attack.  This is the reverse of the 3E Power Attack math.  Introducing the AC/EC split as you've done basically does this.I don't think any of the above points are really refutable, and they don't really depend on the specifics of the target.Let's say there are three types of attackers:GROUP 1: The high-damage types with bad BAB (Rogue, Monk, anyone who uses Power Attack, anyone with +damage weapons (Flaming, etc.), or the later attacks in a Full Attack series).  These guys would ALWAYS benefit from your system; any character who has AC from Armor or Natural Armor (at the expense of EC) would take substantially more damage from these types than they would under 3E, unless the attacker had such a ridiculously high attack bonus that he'd have always hit (see also: Dragons).It's ironic that the dagger-wielding Rogue does so well against the plate-clad Fighter, when you used it as the example in the other direction.GROUP 2: The classes that hit consistently with high numbers of low-damage attacks (any archer, most swarms of small critters, non-Rogues using daggers).  These guys would almost always be harmed by your system; against any character who has AC from Armor or Natural Armor, their damage drops straight to zero unless they:> Load up on +damage enchantments like Flaming> Get a Sneak Attack or Favored Enemy bonus> Get a critical hit> Take some sort of AC-bypassing attack like the psionic feat Fell Shot or your Chink in the Armor feat.GROUP 3: The middle of the road (low-level Fighters, Barbarians, etc.)  These guys see no real change.This isn't always a bad thing; I like that a character can't just accumulate a huge AC and sit back behind their walls.  But it's not a minor issue.  Under your system, a fighter in full plate will be utterly invulnerable to archers and will be shredded by a Rogue, unless everyone takes the right combination of Feats/Skills/class abilities.  This can be patched, but not by requiring people to take two or three specific Feats.So, no critique should be complete without a set of suggestions:1> Any "bonus effects" (Sneak Attack, Favored Enemy, Power Attack, Flaming weapons, plus nondamaging stuff like poison/disease/level drain attacks, etc.) only kick in if any of the base weapon damage got through the AC on its own.So, if (weapon damage + enhancement bonus + STR mod) can't beat the target's AC, it's treated as a miss, no matter how many other damage sources you have stacked up.This, right there, solves a lot of the situations I mentioned without ruining the flavor of the change.  It still leaves one big one, though: the monster with 40 STR will always plow through your DR, but then again, he did that before too.2> Add a general combat option "Aimed Shot" that allows attackers to bypass some AC by using a full-round action to make a single attack.  I'd suggest -2 AC, min 0.Don't require everyone to take a Feat for this.  The melee types can already Feint, as you noted, but the archers need something.2.1> Add some feats related to this ability, too.  For example, here's a possible chain for archers to use:Zen Archery: replaces the "-2" with your WIS modifier.  It's entirely possible for AC to be reduced to zero this way.Aimed Volley: can use iterative attacks on an Aimed Shot (so it's superior to a Full Attack)maybe another one that lets you use it on "special" attacks like Rapid Shot or Manyshot, and then finally one that lets you get the bonus on normal attacks.</blockquote>

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