Armor as DR

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These are a few of the house rules that I use in my "d20 StarWars 3.5" campaign.

11.Additional Attack Options. The following are available to anyone – they do not require a special feat or proficiency:

•Armor Bypass: A character can take a -8 to hit penalty in order to ignore the damage reduction granted by armor and natural armor. This is necessary because critical hits do not ignore DR – making it potentially impossible to kill someone with a high damage reduction if you have a small weapon. (i.e. a 1d4 dagger vs. a DR of 6),

•Called Shot: By taking a -4 to hit, a character can choose the location rolled for wound damage (should it occur).

•Scratch: By taking a -8 to hit, a character can forgo their normal damage and instead inflict a single would point of damage. But each point of armor DR worn by the victim has a 10% chance of negating the scratch (so DR 3 is a 30% chance of negation). This would mainly be useful for administering poison. The Wound damage done by a scratch does not fatigue the victim unless more than 3 such wounds are inflicted.

•Unbalance: As a standard action start a grapple as normal. After the attack of opportunity, grab, and opposed grapple checks, the attacker aborts the grapple and instead leaves his opponent off balance until the start of the victim’s next turn. An off balance character loses their Dex bonus to Defense.

The whole doc can be found here: http://home.insightbb.com/~ki.ryn/Morningstar/

 

[Spatzimaus]

IMC, we did something a bit different:

> All armors still add their full amount to AC.
> Armors add DR as well; if X is the hardness of the material used (steel is 10), then Medium armors and Heavy/Tower Shields add X/10 points of DR. Heavy armors add X/5. (These are the "Barbarian-style" /- DRs, and stack with all other sources of DR.) This means most armor-wearing characters will have one or two points of DR at low levels, and considerably more at high levels (when you're using materials of Hardness in the 20-25 range).
> The Masterwork bonus for weapons stacks with magical Enhancement, as do any bonuses inherent to the weapon's material.

 

[Aus_Snow]

So how do you handle piecemeal armor and damage to armor?

Oh. Sorry about the delay there - didn't realise anyone had responded to a post of mine in this thread (I don't tend to check out House Rules much anymore.) But probably the best answer would be in the form of an answer to another question, given that the various rules tend to hinge on one another, and there are quite a lot of them in total.

Have you considered publishing your version as a PDF?

Not really. But the more I think about it, the more the idea kind of appeals.


I wouldn't be looking to make any money off it, but to rearrange my house rules, and make them suitable for general consumption, might be a rewarding thing to do anyway. I can then get the PDF hosted somewhere, hopefully.

Hm.

 

[GreatLemur]

I've gotta agree; I'd love to see if somebody could actually pull off workable rules for piecemeal armor. It sounds like a difficult thing to manage, but potentially very cool.

 

[papastebu]

It seems to me that coverage should go directly to AC, maybe even replacing it. This way if you beat the AC (coverage plus 10, plus whatever magic or situational modifiers apply) you beat the soak or damage resistance, regardless, and don't have to think about it in the middle of combat, a process that can get long-winded and draggy with the best of players and DMs. If the character can't beat the AC, then the DR or soak or whatever you like would automatically come into effect, and the attacked opponent would take it on his or her breastplate or full-plate to the tune of 6 or eight or ten points less damage, and so be it if this results in no damage from the attack. Try harder, next time.
Beating the AC would represent the skill of the character with the weapon, and that 1d4 plus strength plus magic plus whatall dagger gets shoved up under the opponent's arm, doing all of its damage against a heavily armored foe. As for increasing ACs with level, perhaps it adds a necessary element for balance, but change the weight-versus-mobility thing to a direct negative modifier at the same time, with each five pounds of weight the character carries above a light load--medium or higher, basically--costing one point's penalty to AC.

 

[GreatLemur]

Okay, here's a quick and dirty attempt to sort out armor types under the kind of system I was talking about (armor as DR and no AC, with a coverage rating to show how much higher than the wearer's AC you've gotta roll to bypass his DR). Instead of statting up existing armor types like "chain shirt" and "splint mail", I just decided that each basic armor type has a particular level of DR, and the level of coverage (limited to increments of five, to keep things from being completely overcomplicated) obviously indicates how much armor the suit includes. The table below shows proposed armor types and armor check penalties for each DR/coverage combination.

                         [b]coverage 5[/b]      [b]coverage 10[/b]      [b]coverage 15[/b]
                         (chest)         (partial)        (full)
[b]DR 1[/b] (leather?)          light, 0        light, -2        light, -4
[b]DR 2[/b] (chain?)            light, -1       light, -3        medium, -5
[b]DR 3[/b] (banded?)           light, -2       medium, -4       medium, -6
[b]DR 4[/b] (light plate?)      medium, -3      medium, -5       heavy, -7
[b]DR 5[/b] (heavy plate?)      medium, -4      heavy, -6        heavy, -8

I didn't really try to follow the PHB's numbers, here; instead going for a simple and hopefully logical progression, which rules more armor to be light than heavy, and gives much tougher armor check penalties for high coverage.

I'm not really sure about max Dex bonuses. Maybe the armor check penalty should just be applied to the wearer's dodge bonus? I realize this would mean that heavy armor fighters would do better to strip down when fighting low BAB, high damage opponents, but I'm actually okay with that. I'm just not sure about the exact numbers. Maybe half armor check penalty, instead?

Also, I didn't include arcane spell failure chances for several different reasons. First, I personally dislike percentile roles in d20. Second, I don't like that spell failure is just a flat rate, regardless of the caster's skill or the difficulty of the spell. Third, the whole "it's tough to make magical gestures while wearing armor" explanation never sounded quite perfect, to me (How restricting of your hand movements is a breastplate, anyway?).

So, instead, I'd like to complicate things with this rule: In order to cast arcane spells while wearing armor, you need to make a caster level check vs. a DC of (spell level x 2) + armor coverage rating. The idea is that physical coverage of your skin by heavy (that is, DR-conferring) material blocks the free exchange of magical energy that's needed to cast spells (so full leather armor is actually worse than a breastplate . . . assuming the caster is actually proficient in both).

I think this leads to much more harsh failure rates for a given caster's highest available spell level, while at higher levels, an armored caster can cast lower-level spells with ease. Alternatively, a Spellcraft or Concentration check might be used, if the caster level check is too harsh. And, obviously, various feats and circumstantial rules could be written to work with this idea. Since armor-as-DR generally makes armor weaker, it doesn't seem unreasonable to make armor more viable for spellcasters.

 

[The Levitator]

We've found that tracking damage to armor helps to give incentive to wearing the heavier armor. Leather armor can't take much of a beating and it eventually gets pretty expensive to repair it after nearly every encounter that you take damage.

I would imagine that tracking armor damage manually would be a pain. Fortunately, There have been scripts created for use with DM Genie that not only incorporate Armor as DR (I changed my script to use the Armor as DR rules from Iron Heroes), but the script automatically tracks HP for armor, and even tells you when armor or a shield is destroyed and no longer providing protection.

The players love the system as there are more hits during combat, which seems to make it feel grittier. I like it as a DM because the Armor as DR system, along with the Defense Opposed Roll (also automatically scripted in my DM Genie) gives me very specific numbers that allow me to be much more descriptive during combat. The Iron Heroes version of DR is variable so full plate, for example, offers +0 AC (armor doesn't give AC bonuses in IH) but 1d8 DR. I love the variable factor of the DR because it gives even more information for better combat descriptions. A 10 point strike to a character in plate who gets the full 8 pts. DR could be described as " a strong blow straight to your chest, your chestplate absorbing the blow, but those ribs might be a little sore in the morning." Whereas a 10 pt. strike to the same guy who only gets a 1 on his DR roll might be something like, "his sword strikes you right in a crease in your knee joint, opening up a nasty gash and causing a searing pain in your right leg." We also use a Defense bonus, but simply use the character's BAB as their Defense Bonus. We initially tried the UA Defense Bonus system, but the group didn't like the way it scaled. Matching the Defense Bonus to the BAB just seems to make a lot of sense to us.

BTW, if anyone reading this uses DM Genie, I'd be happy to give you the scripts and items necessary to incorporate Armor as DR right into DM Genie. Just PM me and I'll email the files to you.

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

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?

When I ran a 3.0 campaign, I converted armour AC to DR/—. All other forms of defence including shields improved AC.
— Daggers and missle weapons were ineffective against high DR unless they scored a critical hit.
— Power Attack and improved critical became popular.
— Poison became less popular since the weapon has to overcome DR before the poison takes effect.

Overall, I was pleased with the effect. In hindsight I think it would've been better to change the critical multiplier of all piercing only weapons (arrows, rapiers, etc.) to X4 across the board. That way while the typical Renaissance knight in Maximillian plate (DR 10) would laugh at spears, daggers, and rapiers, a critical hit would be a nasty surprise.

And in 3.0 keen and improved critical stack.

Oh and I noticed that 2-handed weapons became more popular than 1-handed weapons since they overcame DR much more easily. That's when I realized that in Historical Earth, shields lost their popularity not because the added defence was unnecessary but because a 1-handed sword has a tough time damaging a DR10 opponent. Not to mention that the references to 'sword-proof' armor were probably accurate.

As a result I'm a huge fan of converting AC to DR. No additional die rolls. I handled piecemeal armor the same way I did under the AC system. In the interest of simplicity and speed I took the average DR for the body coverage just as it was the average AC.

Changing AC to DR does not mean that DR becomes variable nor does it require tracking damage to armor. An unlike Sean K. Reynolds' argument, DR does not require armor pierce attributes of weapons must be added. Variable AC or DR, Armor damage, and Armor piercing are all more realistic and can be added to an AC system as easily as a DR system. It's up to a GM's personal taste as to whether or not to add the complexity. I find 3.0/3.5 combats take too long as is and I really don't want to add any more dice rolls or modifiers if at all possible.

JVis -- if you're interested in adding an armor piercing mechanic, ask yourself 'would I add this to an AC-based system?' If the answer is 'no', then think twice about adding it to a DR-based system. Personally, I used the weapon v. armor type tables in OAD&D and retained them for 2nd ed. However, I dropped them in 3.x because there are so many calculations already.

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

Acutally there is one change which we should all seriously consider. Why would magical weapons have bonus To Hit if all armor = DR? Maybe the damage bonus should be doubled instead? And what about Str bonus? If there's no AC to overcome, doesn't that shortchange Str? Maybe that should be changed to + damage only? This might be the best way to overcome CR 20 monsters….

Food for thought.

 

[GreatLemur]

Acutally there is one change which we should all seriously consider. Why would magical weapons have bonus To Hit if all armor = DR? Maybe the damage bonus should be doubled instead? And what about Str bonus? If there's no AC to overcome, doesn't that shortchange Str? Maybe that should be changed to + damage only? This might be the best way to overcome CR 20 monsters….

Good questions. I think the magical/masterwork bonus to hit still makes sense if you look at it as representing a lighter, better-balanced, or even magically-guided weapon (and, really, since enhancement bonuses to hit do apply to unarmored opponents in vanilla D&D, that's how I've always regarded them anyway).

As for Str, yeah, I'm all for switching to Dex for melee attack bonuses. I've never understood why an unarmed combatant would have a better chance at hitting an unarmored target if he was stronger, while being quicker / more agile made no difference.