Armor as DR, your experiences

[Voadam]

If you have used any variants where armor is DR what were the mechanics, how did it work out for you, and how did it affect the feel of the game?

I have Unearthed Arcana and Torn Asunder which each present some options but I'm looking for people's actual experiences with alternate armor rules and I understand a bunch of OGL variants might have some different rules.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Mm, I don't use Armor As DR, per se ... I'm currently using a Grim Tales variant where armor, in addition to giving an armor bonus, converts that armor bonus in Lethal Damage to NonLethal Damage with each hit.

That variant, conversion, seems to work quite well. Combats don't stretch out forever but at the end of combat it's noticable that armor means you got HURT less.

... I'll also talk about my experience with a near-d20 system, Alternity, which had Armor As DR.

I like Alternity's combat system quite a bit. Armor is non-static DR. You roll a die and that's the damage it ablates for the particular hit that was rolled. It was alot of fun, but one thing became pretty apparent after several combats:

It made combat take forever. You roll to hit ... but that hit doesn't mean you actually did anything. The DR may negate the hit entirely, or reduce it to negligible amounts. You may run a combat where a guy takes round after round after round, but the armor absorbs it ALL. It had its own aspects of entertainment, but there was a serious and noticable increase in battle times, and it reduced the "Fun Factor" for the guy doing the attacking. You roll to hit, there's a miss chance there. There's the joy of the hit ... but it may turn to ash in your mouth as you find the DR just negated it.

--fje

 

[ragboy]

I like Alternity's combat system quite a bit. Armor is non-static DR. You roll a die and that's the damage it ablates for the particular hit that was rolled. It was alot of fun, but one thing became pretty apparent after several combats:

Would a decrease in the armor's efficiency after a certain damage level fix it? Seems like it would be an easy stat to incorporate.

 

[takyris]

Conan does something like that -- any hit over a certain static amount will damage your armor, lowering its effective DR. Also, they added armor-bypassing factors for weapons, which makes combat a lot slower in some cases, but no more so than having lots of magic would have done.

The rule I ended up liking (although I'm in M&M right now, so all armor IS protection, I guess) was this:

- Go to VP/WP
- Armor provides DR, but only against WP damage
- Crit multipliers are dropped by 1 (x2 becomes x1, x3 becomes x2, etc.)
- Crits go directly to WP
- Crits that beat the confirmation Defense by 10 or more bypass Armor DR


Ergo, your swashbuckler is wearing a Chain Shirt (DR3), and a bunch of bad guys fire arrows at him. He's Defense 17 and has 63 VP.

- One bad guy hits for 8 damage. The damage comes out of VP, and there's no DR
- One bad guy rolls a critical (natural 20) and confirms with an 18. He does 3 WP damage, and the DR3 of the chain shirt soaks it.
- One bad guy rolls two natural 20s, critting and confirming with a 28. He does 5 points of WP damage, and the damage is not even slowed down by that armor.

If these were crossbow bolts (19-20/x2 normally), they'd be doing the normal damage, even on a crit. If they were arrows (20/x3 normally), they be doing double damage on a crit -- meaning that getting your bad ol' self critted by archers is not a good plan. Especially if they beat your defense by 10 or more on the confirmation roll.

 

[Acid_crash]

The rule I ended up liking (although I'm in M&M right now, so all armor IS protection, I guess) was this:

- Go to VP/WP
- Armor provides DR, but only against WP damage
- Crit multipliers are dropped by 1 (x2 becomes x1, x3 becomes x2, etc.)
- Crits go directly to WP
- Crits that beat the confirmation Defense by 10 or more bypass Armor DR

I really like this, I might have to swipe it. I am wondering how feasible this would take to d20 Modern and not D&D.

 

[Storyteller01]

There is always the STar Wars model, but I've heard the DR was deliberately kept low. Something about maintaining the feel of the movie (the heros never wore armor for defensive reasons...)

 

[takyris]

I really like this, I might have to swipe it. I am wondering how feasible this would take to d20 Modern and not D&D.

Heh. Sorry, should have specified -- I was actually using that in a d20 Modern-ish game (d20M system but set in a Renaissance-era world that had just uncovered some long-lost magic -- so d20 Modern classes and everything).

It worked well for easy fights -- no cleric needed. For hard fights, it was appropriately tough. There were justifiable reasons to wear armor, but it wasn't utterly necessary -- and somebody in armor could still get eventually stabbed to death by a determined person witha dagger.

The big place to watch out is in mobs. Mobs can still trounce folks in this system, if they've got a lot of heavy-hitter weapons. And when you've got this, I don't believe you need the Massive Damage threshold from d20 Modern core rules. I'd just assume that this takes the place of it.

Hope it helps!

 

[Nilhgualcm Leahcim]

The only problem I have with using the vp/wp rules is the fact that certain weapons and their critical multipliers makes for an incredibly deadly game. If i remember correctly, wp are just your con score, so x3 criticals are going to be very deadly for people, let alone scythes.
just my thoughts.

 

[PosterBoy]

Charles Rice did some DR armor rules for d20 Modern for the Modern Dispatch, which we released free as a promo:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=3260&

Check'm out.

 

[Ranger REG]

There is always the STar Wars model, but I've heard the DR was deliberately kept low. Something about maintaining the feel of the movie (the heros never wore armor for defensive reasons...)

Not as low as the model presented in Unearthed Arcana. Then again, UA doesn't have futuristic armor.

Unlike UA, armors in SW only only protects Wound Points.