Armor as DR, your experiences

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I've become rather fond of the GT system myself. The 'armor converts to non-lethal damage' combined with various settings of Massive Damage Threshold gives you a lot of flexibility. It introduces a little bit of tension into combats. You don't want to sit back and let the bad guy plink you to death, but if you charge in, you risk getting dropped by a single shot. I like tension.

 

[ledded]

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

We have used a very similar system, the only differences being that:

1) armor provides a small bump to Defense (sort of like "cover that you wear" ) and also a certain amount of DR.

2) Crit multipliers have not been dealth with much (I *think* that we currently just reduce multiplier by one and apply as above), however I expect when we deal with less of a firearm-reliant d20 Modern game and more with the swashbuckling/steampunk/pulp/VSF type game coming up, that Crit multipliers are reduced by 1, and for every multiplier over one you reduce the DR of the armor. For example, x3 means %50 reduction in armor's DR, x4 means 75% reduction in DR (rounded down). Any confimation roll exceeding defense by 10 or more bypasses Armor DR altogether. Facing a big fella in plate armor or a big steam-suit that has a higher DR? Time to break out the pick.

We have very much liked this system, as it tends to keep even higher level characters on their toes; a mook can have several levels of ordinary allowing him to have a decent amount of feats and a decent to-hit, while still going down easily (ordinaries dont get VP). Meaning that even a stormtrooper can score that lucky hit that totally ruins your day.

 

[The Horror]

Here's how armour works in Talislanta. Very similar system in a lot of ways.

Armour rating subtracts from total damage inflicted. Leather has about 2 pts of protection, with plate about 5 pts.

If the attack would do no damage because of armour, and the attack hits with a critical, armour is ignored but the critical has no other effect (the effect of the critical is to inflict the damage).

Any player may attempt to bypass the armor entirely by making a called shot (effectively -5 to the roll) with an additional minus equal to the protection rating of the armour. So for example, -7 vs leather, or -10 vs plate. An additional minus on top of this can be applied by the GM if the armour covers a substantial portion of the body (eg. a shot through the visor of full plate mail, etc).

There have been no complaints so far using this system in my games.

 

[scourger]

Armor Conversions

Armor Conversions

In Judge Dredd, armor provides DR but can be overcome if the armor piercing (AP) of the weapon is higher. Defense (AC) is given a bonus based on the character's total reflex save (no, DEX doesn't count twice; it's 10 + REF). [Suddenly, Lightning Reflexes is on everyone's feat list!] The net effect is that charcters get harder to hit (especially as levels increase) and may have some DR from wearing armor. This system makes sense in that game, but it gets a little tedious to compare the DR against the AP for each hit.

In Omega World, relic wepons (guns, etc.) ignore the first 5 AC points of non-relic armor. So, +5 natural armor doesn't help at all vs. guns but does against a sword. +5 relic armor is good vs. anything. This is a great, simple system. All that has to be tracked is the "relic AC"; but I found myself wondering about touch relic AC and flat footed relic AC. It didn't come up very often in play, though.

Star Wars has been explained. The system has an increasing defense value, and armor is not very protective so as to discourage its efficacy and use.

For my D&D/Judge Dredd/Omega World/Star Wars hybrid game, I went witha standard D&D AC value. The Judge armor provides a +6 AC bonus and DR 6/bludgeoning; no AC bonus based on reflex save; and the lawgiver guns bypasses armor up to the AP of the round fired (so armor piercing is very against heavily armored foes). The jedi get no AC bonus as for Defense; but light sabers still ignore armor and DR altogether. The Omega mutant is really unchanged.

It has been a good mix so far.

 

[Ghostwind]

Arms & Armor v3.5 has a revised and expanded version of the rules first found in Torn Asunder.

 

[Ymdar]

We're just starting an Eberron campaign with armour as DR variant just to test it. After the first game I'll comment.

 

[Narfellus]

I like the rules in Grim Tales too, concerning damage being converted to subdual. As someone else mentioned, it also has a great Massive Damage system that is flexible. I've played SW d20 and i really like it. My only concern is that it seemed really easy to die really quickly. One good roll from the enemy could kill even a high level character, but maybe that was the point. Anyway, it was still a very good system, and a good GM could tweak it perfectly.

 

[0-hr]

- 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

That looks a lot like d20 Star Wars, except for the multipliers (nothing is multipliedin d20 SW). Having a crit go straight to wounds and multiply damage seems far too deadly. Maybe it would be ok for d8 and d6 weapons though (rather than th 3d6 blasters I'm used too ).

 

[DMScott]

I've used the armour-as-DR system in Ken Hood's grim-n-gritty HP rules (or maybe a variant thereof, been a while). Worked decently enough, but there were some burps concerning types of damage reduced, or whether called shots to avoid armour (to deliver poison with a blowgun, for example) were OK. Like any system designed to be a bit more realistic, you run into some simulationist headaches.

I've read the UA version and didn't like it as much, the DR values seemed too low to be worth the trouble. I've also read the OGL Ancients version, in which there's a coverage roll to see if armour acts as DR versus some damage, takes some of the damage itself (damaging the armour and eventually making it less effective), and then the rest hits the character, with different values for different types of attacks. If the coverage roll fails, the armour doesn't absorb any damage at all. It looks like a pretty realistic and comprehensive approach, but a lot more figuring and record keeping. I think Conan uses the same system, but I haven't tried it yet.

Shields usually get kinda short-shrift in armour-as-DR systems, but they're handled pretty well in OGL Ancients - defender makes an active roll to block with a shield. Simulates real weapon-and-shield combat nicely, where the shield blocks far more blows than the 10% or so the D&D AC system allows.

 

[arscott]

I like the rules in Grim Tales too, concerning damage being converted to subdual. As someone else mentioned, it also has a great Massive Damage system that is flexible. I've played SW d20 and i really like it. My only concern is that it seemed really easy to die really quickly. One good roll from the enemy could kill even a high level character, but maybe that was the point. Anyway, it was still a very good system, and a good GM could tweak it perfectly.

Out of curiosity, how does non-lethal damage work in Grim tales. Do they use the standard D&D version, the D20Modern all-or-nothing version, or something else entirely?