Armor Class. Help!

[cdsaint]

I started using the class defense bonus and armor as damage reduction optional rules in my campaign, as an experiment to see how I liked it. My conclusion is that tinkering with armor class has a tremendous impact on the game. My advice would be to stick to your guns and run the game you want to run. Any tinkering with AC can have drastic effects on the feel as well as the mechanics of your game.

Chris

 

[kamosa]

I would stick with the core Armor class and DR that is in the standard fantasy setting. If people want to do DR, fine, do it as if modern weapons were a type of damage that defeats certain types of armor.

IE: Modern Armor gives you a 15/Modern rating 15 points of DR except against modern or more advanced weapons.

 

[Silveras]

I have to agree with those who say stick to RAW. The mechanics should be different from genre to genre; that helps to promote the feel. A unified mechanic is likely to be something that proves a poor fit for all.

I have, in my 25 years of rpgs, tried my hand at "fixing" or "improving" the rules on numerous occasions. I am much more conservative about it now, though I do still "adjust" things to promote the feel I want. I am much less an advocate of "realism" than I used to be. This is mostly because every attempt at greater realism that I have seen has:

• added complexity in the form of additional specialized tables and sub-tables
• relied on specialized knowledge that is not available to all or not intuitive to all
• frustrated the players who think it should work differently
• required more time to teach new players/members ..."we don't do it like the book says, we do this instead... "
• often required additional "fixes" on the "fixes" because of unforeseen side-effects

A weather system is a good example. For a while, I was all about mapping my world as a globe, laying out temperature zones, figuring prevailaing wind directions and ocean currents.

Then I remembered that it is a fantasy world.

My world is composed of multiple flat "plates", some connected only by magical gates, and the sun really IS a blazing chariot drived by the sun god.

There's a fire creature living under the ground of a large swath of land in the Temperate zone, creating a tropical sandy desert.

There is also a floating island of dirt and stone in the sky, where a wanna-be godling imprisoned the "daughter" of the Lord of the Earth Elementals.

Wizards and Clerics can Control Weather, so there can be an isolated thunderstorm over a 1-mile area.

Cloud giants shape clouds and build with it. They can direct the motion of their clouds.. holding them still or sending them against the wind currents.

In the end, I realized that a random weather generator gave just as reasonable a set of results as all the elaborate planning of a "realistic" system. The best I have seen so far, by the way, remains the excellent treatment in the Wilderness Survival Guide.

 

[WayneLigon]

They say: "Why should the primary 'physics' of the game change between genres? The genres are just the setting/mood/feel and the primary rules, like AC, are the basic 'physics' and, thus, should be constant."

Generally speaking, the minute someone mentions 'physics' in relation to any form of gaming AC/weapon damage/melee attacks/whatever.. hit them right in the face with the largest fish you can lay hands on.

Genre or 'flavor' colors the entire 'physics' of a setting as well, esp. when you're mixing in anime or superheroes. If I'm playing in a 'Hong Kong action film' setting, I'll expect to be jumping out of the way of bullets, using two or three guns at once while simultaneously using the Hidden Fist technique to throw a couch at the triad gang, etc. If I'm playing in 'Cold War spy thriller' setting, I'll expect to get shot in the leg and then have to make Fort saves every minute or so not to go unconcious.

 

[Planesdragon]

So . . . just to prove to them that I'm not stubborn and that I'm not resistant to change, I'm asking ENWorld members: How do you treat AC in your games?

AC is one of those things I "Randomly renamed for a reason" to call it Defense.

Every class grants a defense bonus, just like in d20-Modern but it stacks with armor. In exchange, hits that "touch" an armored character are treated as attacks against the armor.

(I also use a new wound-system I'm working the bugs out of in place of PC HP, though objects and constructs still have HP as normal. But you didn't ask about that.)

 

[The_Gneech]

Dude, it's your game, it's your rules! Tell 'em they get AC and like it!

Oy!

-TG

 

[Angcuru]

In each of the games I play, we use the core rules. My favorite, however, has to be the Dodge/Soak rules in Exalted, i.e. avoiding getting hit and reducing damage are totally differed. Plus, no matter how weak or powerful you are, there is still a chance that any old mook or BBEG can deal some serious damage if you aren't careful. Good realism feel, works well for a fantasy setting, plus it's not overly complicated.

 

[mmu1]

Basically, anyone who thinks you can do what the other three DMs are proposing most likely doesn't have a clue what he's doing. (and definitely not if he thinks it'll be either easy or simple)

For standard D&D, completely changing the way AC works results in a mess unless you also: 1. Rebalance most of the classes - some, like Monks, which rely on AC bonuses from multiple sources, will require much more work than others. 2. Go over a huge amount of spells, and adjust them for the way the AC system works. 3. Look over the feats to make sure certain ones aren't useless anymore.

Even smaller changes can result in very serious differences. I played in an Epic game once in which the DM changed the way critical hits were inflicted, in a way he didn't consider major. In practice, it ended up making keen weapons, improved critical, a whole slew of magical weapon abilities and all Epic-level feats depending on scoring critical hits worthless, along with weapons that relied on a high crit range but low crit multiplier.

What you should do, really, is get them to come up with those rules, then post them here, and I guarantee the people here will quite happily tear them to shreds in a matter or hours, and you'll have a pile of contradictions, exploits and oversights to wave at them... Assuming they're the kind of people who care about objective feedback, which they unfortunatley don't sound like.