Armor Providing Damage Reduction Instead
- Thread starter Don
- Start date
shilsen
Adventurer
I'm also interested in this question. I find almost everyone in my group gravitates towards chain shirts (for high Dex PCs) or full plate (low dex PCs), with almost nobody going for medium armors. To make medium and heavy armors more appealing, we tried a house rule where we retained the regular ACs, but made medium armor provide 1/- DR, and heavy 2/-. It worked fine for the short time we used it, but we had to drop it simply because that was something we were never able to remember to keep track of.
Yeah, they really dropped the ball re chain shirts. What was the purpose of coming up with them, anyway? In the olden days we went straight from studded leather to scale mail or chain mail, and no one complained 
.
IMO allowing the heavier armors to max out at +10, instead of +8 to AC, would be a good call -- as would allowing the medium armors to max out at +6 or +7.
Loss of movement rate is a huge disadvantage -- yet medium armors protect no better, or only trivially better, than light armors. H'm.
. IMO allowing the heavier armors to max out at +10, instead of +8 to AC, would be a good call -- as would allowing the medium armors to max out at +6 or +7.
Loss of movement rate is a huge disadvantage -- yet medium armors protect no better, or only trivially better, than light armors. H'm.
CRGreathouse
Community Supporter
d20 Modern will have rules, and there are at least two dozen threads on the house rules forum about this topic.
Don
First Post
I know d20 Modern will have rules for it, but that's still six months away. I wasn't aware that people have discussed this in the house rules section. I didn't see any with the default message board settings on. I'll have to check again. Thanks.
I'd still appreciate any comments or recommendations here, though.
I'd still appreciate any comments or recommendations here, though.
Wolf72
Explorer
there were some variants worked out in house rules.
the one I liked goes something like this.
Light Armor: no change
Medium Armor: +2 AC, +50gp
Heavy Armor: +2 AC, DR1, +200gp ... except full plate, which had a DR2. Field plate was simply Full plate except DR1.
option: after 25 hits heavy armor needs to be repaired, if not it looses it's DR and recieves a -2 circumstance penalty to AC
the one I liked goes something like this.
Light Armor: no change
Medium Armor: +2 AC, +50gp
Heavy Armor: +2 AC, DR1, +200gp ... except full plate, which had a DR2. Field plate was simply Full plate except DR1.
option: after 25 hits heavy armor needs to be repaired, if not it looses it's DR and recieves a -2 circumstance penalty to AC
Malin Genie
First Post
I think you'll find just making chain shirt Medium armour will solve a lot of problems. It should still retain the high Max DX and low Armour Check Penalty, but making it light armour made it far too good IMHO.
I use the following house rules for armor DR:
light armor DR 1/-
medium armor DR 2/-
heavy armor DR 3/-
The enhancement bonus of armor (but not shields, etc.) is added to these figures. Also, to balance this with creature stats, every full 4 points of natural armor grant DR 1/-. DR from these and other sources stacks (even is some of the DR is of the 10/+1 type).
Armor also provides its usual AC bonus on top of that, but then I use a system of fixed hp that don't increase with level (but AC does, a little). If you use armor DR with standard hp, you should probably reduce the AC bonus.
As for playtesting, these rules worked fine for me, but my campaign has also not been very combat-heavy so far.
light armor DR 1/-
medium armor DR 2/-
heavy armor DR 3/-
The enhancement bonus of armor (but not shields, etc.) is added to these figures. Also, to balance this with creature stats, every full 4 points of natural armor grant DR 1/-. DR from these and other sources stacks (even is some of the DR is of the 10/+1 type).
Armor also provides its usual AC bonus on top of that, but then I use a system of fixed hp that don't increase with level (but AC does, a little). If you use armor DR with standard hp, you should probably reduce the AC bonus.
As for playtesting, these rules worked fine for me, but my campaign has also not been very combat-heavy so far.
IceBear
Explorer
Don said:
Oh sorry...I thought it was coming sooner. I could have sworn that in the last Dungeon Magazine there was a d20 Modern "Lite" type ruleset that included DR armor. I'll have to go find that magazine and doublecheck.
d20 Call of Cthulu is out this month and I think it has DR armor too.
IceBear
