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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8798650" data-attributes="member: 4937">DR as armor tends to reward being an outlier.  The details are that 6d6 damage is vastly more dangerous than 1d6 x 6.  Against the first, the armor protects against like 15% of the damage, whereas against the second it probably protects against like 85% of the damage.  For example, the details of implementing minimum damage of 1 despite DR, is that 12 rats become more dangerous than 3 orcs which tends to be opposite of intuition and often the intention with DR as armor.   Against the rats, it protects against like 33% of the damage, while protecting against like 85% of the damage from the orcs.   Which is why I don't like minimum damage rules and prefer DR as a random dice roll.  If you were really worried about the concerns that minimum damage is trying to address, I'd suggest having the minimum of the range be zero,  so things like DR 0-5 (1d6-1) would address that problem without causing highly unexpected math where a rapid-fire BB gun is more dangerous than a .45 caliber revolver (as it were).I guess before I can give specific advice beyond, "It works best if DR is random", I need to know what problem you are trying to fix.  Were you in games where you were like, "I need a way to nerf hydras that doesn't nerf dragons." or "I need a way to nerf a fight with gnolls that doesn't nerf the classic fight with a dozen large rats in a basement?"  In my case, it might be like, "Back when I was a 10 year old DM all PCs wore plate armor and I happily said things like "plate mail" without feeling stupid, but now that my games are more realistic no one in my games ever wears heavy armor, because they've seen too many PC's drown, fall on their face fighting on a muddy jungle hillside, get stuck trying to crawl through a cave passage to get away from an oozing/creeping horror, or just simply been unable to run away fast enough from the cannibal horde.  The small extra AC tends not be worth the small extra penalties to mobility, because they've learned the lesson of surviving my games is always addressing the question, "How is this character going to die?".  It probably won't be by taking 5% more damage from physical attacks.  How can I lure the fools into wearing heavy armor by offering heavy armor wearers some sort of carrot?"  Or maybe, more seriously, "How do I make DEX less of a god stat?"</blockquote>

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