Armor as DR

[JVisgaitis]

This is one forum I don't visit often here, so if this has been discussed to death please forgive me. I'm working on crafting my own version of combat for d20 and want to go with Armor as DR. I've looked at a lot of the other rules for this like M&M, Star Wars, etc...

One thing I want to avoid is DR as a die. I really don't want to bog down combat with yet another die roll. The problem I can see with this though is that really good armor, like DR 8 makes a lot of weapons useless. Has anyone come up with a suitable alternative that doesn't nullify daggers and other weapons?

I was thinking of adding a new mechanic which would allow certain weapons to be be better against certain armor types. I want to make it simple though. I was thinking of maybe an armor piercing value that would ignore that many points of DR.

Has anyone else done something like this?

 

[FEADIN]

There is a system for DR with armor in Uneathed arcana but the armor gives you less AC bonus.
For weapon vs armor adjustment you can use the 2nd edition rules, each weapon had bonuses or maluses vs each armor type.
In another thread one of the result was that the DR was not very good, high level opponents have very high damage rating and the you better have a good AC than a less good one with DR.
But the best is to have a good AC and a DR.....

 

[GreatLemur]

I kind of like the idea of armor having both a DR rating and a coverage rating. If your hit beats the target's AC by more than the coverage rating, you bypass his armor's DR completely. So a dagger that could never punch through a suit of platemail is still dangerous, if the guy wielding it is skilled enough to slip it into a gap. It'd require people to do a bit of math, but no more so than a Mutants & Masterminds toughness save.

 

[JVisgaitis]

I kind of like the idea of armor having both a DR rating and a coverage rating. If your hit beats the target's AC by more than the coverage rating, you bypass his armor's DR completely. So a dagger that could never punch through a suit of platemail is still dangerous, if the guy wielding it is skilled enough to slip it into a gap. It'd require people to do a bit of math, but no more so than a Mutants & Masterminds toughness save.

Maybe I'm just tired or dumb (or both!), but I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean have two ACs and if you roll higher then the second AC it bypasses the armor?

 

[GreatLemur]

Maybe I'm just tired or dumb (or both!), but I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean have two ACs and if you roll higher then the second AC it bypasses the armor?

Something like that.

Let's say you've got a character with a DEX of 16 and a breastplate. Just for the hell of it, we'll say the breastplate gives a DR of 4 with a coverage rating of 5 (breastplates are tough, but they don't really cover much). Now, assuming this guy doesn't have any AC-modifying feats or circumstances (and you're not using any of the Base Defense Bonus rules that often come along with armor-as-DR rules), he'll just have an AC of 13 (10 + DEX mod). But then his armor has a coverage rating of 5, so you add that to his AC for a . . . hell, let's call it an "armor limit" of 18.

Now, attacks that roll less than 13 don't hit him at all. Attacks that roll 13-17 hit, but they only manage to hit that breastplate, and thus have to deal with 4 points of DR. But attacks that roll 18 or higher catch the guy somewhere he's not protected, so they do full damage (and make the dude decide to switch to full plate, because it would have a coverage rating of 10 or so).

So you could look at it as a character having two different ACs, yeah. I guess it'd be less hassle to figure out the armor limit (or whatever) beforehand than to subtract the AC from every attack roll and see if the results beat the armor's coverage rating.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Armor as DR generally has two side effects.

1) Some sort of level-based defense appears to maintain a semblance of the current game balance.
Otherwise a character with AC 13 at first level may still have AC 13 at twenty first level; if that's the case then DR needs to grow exponentially to allow characters to survive against enemies with +48 to hit and 4d8+38 damage (worse if power attacking).

2) Armor, as a general rule, becomes weaker. Unless you remove the defense restrictions (Max Dex), armor heavier than leather is essentially a suicidal proposition. Not getting hit is vastly superior to taking another blow for 4d8+38 - 8. This will result in lots of lightly armored and unarmored heroes running about. The only ones in heavy armors will be chumps.
If you remove the defense restrictions then armor may become too good, depending upon class and abilities. As a for instance, in True20 armor prevents you from using the Canny Dodge feat (like monk's defense). The increase in survivability that comes from armor may or may not be worth the loss of that defensive ability; if average damage is high enough then getting hit is nearly suicidal, while if damage is relatively low then you're better off being able to survive the hits when they do come. (True20 versions of Star Wars complicate this issue with lightsabers that get to ignore armor.)

I hope that was helpful to you. Good luck; it's a difficult proposition to deal with.

 

[DrNilesCrane]

Just my two cents... We've been using the Unearthed Arcana armor as DR rules (which basically means half the AC rating is converted to DR, so characters have lower AC's and just about everyone has at least a point or two of DR). We've played just shy of a year (26 adventures) from 1st to 6th/7th level and it has worked extremely well. The extra DR really helped at lower levels when a DR of 2 vs. a d6 damage (for example) made a huge difference in low level character survivability. We haven't experienced any problems with it at mid levels so far.

We haven't used a Defense value to compensate for the somewhat lower ACs although the players knew about it ahead of time and went for light armored, higher Dex builds (which fits the campaign world, as it's a tropical environment and involves lots of traveling by ship--not a good situation for the platemail tanks), so our average AC is close to that of a typical D&D party (and I've encouraged the players to use the fighting defensively option as well for additional AC; a couple of characters went with Combat Expertise for better ACs too). We have one character with AC 15 (horrid), our average is about 20, and one PC tends to fight defensively all the time and can get his AC in the high twenties, possibly even to thirty (just leveled up so I'm not sure if he'll reach 30 yet).

 

[JVisgaitis]

Something like that.

That's a really good idea. You can cap the DR at around 4 or 5, and have the Armor Coverage or whatever it would be called scale up a lot higher. I like that.

I hope that was helpful to you. Good luck; it's a difficult proposition to deal with.

It was, thanks. I've read and thought a lot on this and planned on implementing a progressive Defense bonus as well. That's why I kinda like the way Unearthed Arcana does it as you keep some of the AC bonus, but you also gain DR as well. I'll keep you posted on what I come up with.

 

[GreatLemur]

It was, thanks. I've read and thought a lot on this and planned on implementing a progressive Defense bonus as well.

Yeah, I think a defense bonus is pretty necessary to make armor-as-DR work (and, hell, it just makes sense, anyway). I think the usual rule is to just make the base defense bonus the same as a given class' base attack bonus, which is so logical that it defies my natural inclination to complicate things.

However, I have done a little thinking about giving every class double its BAB as a generic "combat bonus", and letting characters split that number between attack and defense each round, as if everyone had Combat Expertise. We could just call a 50/50 split the default, and whenever anybody wants to play it safe--or put themselves at risk for the sake of a more aggressive attack--they can just say "This round, I'm using X combat points for attack, and X for defense."

Following this mechanic, if we say that the out-of-combat default is +0/+0, and you can only distribute your combat bonus on your turn, then initiative bonuses become hugely appropriate: If you're attacked before you've had a chance to declare a defense bonus, you're in a lot of trouble. Naturally, I wouldn't use surprise rounds alongside a rule like this (ambushes would just be too harsh). Also, I think I'd throw in a neat little rule from Conan d20, which basically uses a Reflex save as an initiative check (so that quicker and more experienced characters are harder to sucker-punch).

But now I'm getting way off-topic and rewriting the whole SRD again.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Over at The Waking Lands, there is are variant combat rules which uses Armor as DR along with the class defense bonus system. One of the changes the author has made to keep flat DR's from being completely immune to lighter weapons is to allow piercing weapons to halve DR. So daggers and spears become a little more useful. He also introduces Degrees of Success for attacks, reducing DR further based on how well the attacker rolls.

There's a few other changes to the combat rules, also; I'd recommend checking it out.

As for variable DR (a'la Iron Heroes), I have to say I like the idea. Yes, it's an extra die roll, but it's one the player gets to make to help contribute to his own defense, and it can be made simultaneously as the attack roll by the GM, not taking up alot of additional time.