Armor as Defense and DR

[ogre]

I am wondering if anyone has developed a system for d20 where armor provides both a Defense bonus and DR.
What I have been working on is adding damage negation for armor for certain damage types. (yup, harckons right back to D&D 1e, which most people ignored, which is why I am asking)My hope being that this will be a good compromise of both systems by melding well with the standard d20 Defense bonus (and all the things that affects) and also having the 'realistic' feel of armor negating damage.
The damage negation would be in the form of dice, like some DR systems use, 1d3, 1d6 etc.
But, I wonder if this would be too cumbersome and end up being more work than it's worth.
I have a feeling players would relish the thought of rolling a die to negate damage, but perhaps it may be too much trouble for GMs.
Any opinions are welcome.

 

[Denaes]

Wouldn't be much a problem at all... depending on your goal.

Do you want it to meld seamlessly into 3.x balance? That might be a little harder.

If you don't care about that and want to make armour stronger just add certain DR (against a certain element or type of damage or whatever) on top of normal Defense.

Doing things a bit more balanced seems like it would involve reducing defense and not having too much DR.

To answer your question though, I can't say I know of anyone to merge the two.

For me, it doesn't really make sense to "double count" armour. I like that it does one thing mechanically or the other. I mean I wouldn't mind, say off the wall, a suit of rubber armour being AC +3 and DR:1d6 vs Electricity. That makes sense. In fact I think it would make sense with many of the specialized types of damage. But if you start heading to the major types (bludgeoning, slashing, piercing) it could get akward.

Also note that I do like the variable DR much more than a fixed DR, but it does add overhead to the combat.

 

[JamesDJarvis]

Unearthed Arcana provides some AC (defense) and DR rules. DR is a fixed score however.

 

[Denaes]

Unearthed Arcana provides some AC (defense) and DR rules. DR is a fixed score however.

for using them both together simultaniously or seperately?

 

[DanMcS]

for using them both together simultaniously or seperately?

I believe it takes armor of old value X to AC and gives it new values of X/2, round up, to AC and X/2, round down, to DR.

So a chain shirt (+4 armor) becomes +2 armor, +2 DR.

It would then be relatively easy to turn each static DR value into a die.

DR 1 -> DR 1 or 1d2 (DM's preference)
DR 2 -> DR 1d4
DR 3 -> DR 1d6
DR 4 -> DR 1d8
DR 5 -> DR 1d10

 

[takyris]

I've toyed around with doing exactly, to the letter, what DanMCS says. And I thought I'd thought it up myself.

The trouble with that idea is that, at least for my group, the players weren't into it. They didn't want to have to keep track of damage soaking that often, and it wasn't fun for them, and they saw it as slowing the game down.

Bummed me out a bit, as I thought that having armor serve as some combination of either Defense, DR, or Convert-to-Nonlethal would be perfect... but it's only perfect if my players like it, too.

 

[Teflon Billy]

We had a system that, while incredibly simplistic, seemed to work for us pretty seamlessly.

Light Armor=DR1
Medium armor=DR2
Heavy Armor=DR4

That was it...made Plate a lot more "it" against common weapons (spears, bows, shortswords etc) than it otherwise is, and reflected more of what we were looking for in terms of Medieval Simulation.

 

[GlassJaw]

I like the armor as DR system (you can check out my own implementation of it in my variant Grim Tales ruleset) but I wouldn't combine it with armor granting a Defense bonus as well. IMO, an armor system works better when it uses one or the other. Each armor system requires other tweaks in the system. Combining them would complicate things as well as make armor too powerful.

A lot does depend on the "feel" you are going for, however. Can you explain in more detail (without getting into mechanics) the type of campaign you are planning to use the ruleset for?

 

[Aussiegamer]

yes I did, it has AC and DR. As i see armours role is too 1st deflect then 2nd absorb. Like real life. Some armours are better at one than the other, as in real life.

I seperated the body into several points, so you can build armour to what you like, such as just a vest or like norman chainmail down to the knees.

 

[Ranger REG]

yes I did, it has AC and DR. As i see armours role is too 1st deflect then 2nd absorb. Like real life. Some armours are better at one than the other, as in real life.

There are those taboo words again.

For the record, Unearthed Arcana "Armor as DR" rules is exactly what I was looking for when Star Wars Roleplaying Game was undergoing a revision, but I was overruled by the majority who prefer just the DR value in the armor stat.