Armour rules from Unearthed Arcana

[Waylander]

Hi!

I'm quite attracted to the idea of using the Class Defence Bonus from Unearthed Arcana as well as using the armour as damage reduction.

However, I just wondered if anyone had any experience of using them in play as the Class Defence Bonus seem a little high at 1st level (e.g. for clerics, fighters, and paladins it's +6).

Also when I use both I'll probably not have armour have an Armour Bonus and just have damage reduction. This will limit me to 4 types of armour: Light (leather 1/-), Medium (chain mail 2/-), heavy (half-plate 3/- and full plate 4/-). As it's predominantly a medieval knights campaign that shold be fine. Although if anyone can think of a sensible way of encorpoating different armour types that would be great.

Does anyone anticipate any problems?

 

[frankthedm]

Does anyone anticipate any problems?

2 handed weapons high minimum damage is a problem. Open ended power attack is a big problem. With Armor=chance not to hit, Power Attacking usually has some modest risk of not hitting. With Armor = DR more hits get scored, but with a few not getting through DR... Except that 3E two handed weapons will always get through the DR and the bonus damage from power attack will shear though armor like butter.

chain mail DR 2/-, Someone with a two hander won't even notice two points of DR.
full plate DR 4/- Oooh 4 points of damagesoaked up per hit... 2 points of power attack with a two hander nixes this.

 

[blargney the second]

I found that the Damage Conversion system worked much better than armor as DR. The math of 3.x still works, and you get the effect of armor absorbing blows.
-blarg

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

I ran a BESMd20 variant game for a year. It featured Armor as DR, and a Class Defense bonus. I didn't have any real problems with how it worked out, and actually liked how it played.

Some folks complain about the whole dagger thing. "OMFG!!!1! It's br0kn!! If I have a dagger, the plat mail guy is invulneable!!1!1!"

Whatever.

The biggest thing you're going to have to worry about is the potential for combat to take longer. Since armor is absorbing damage, it means you're going to have to roll more often in order to get the same amount of damage.

In my game the increased time was avoided because of how magic damage worked in the game. All "magic" (including magical weapons) used d6. On a 6, you'd reroll it and add that to the total. So for example, if you rolled a 6 and then on the reroll you got a 3, you'd do a total of 9 damage. As long as you keep rolling 6s, you keep rerolling and adding.

So you've got the potential for a pretty big wallop to happen.

The players were fine with this and loved the rerolls, but it might not work for everyone.

As I recall, the Conan rpg does Armor as DR too. They've got some sort of funky precision hit or something to deal with the "immune to daggers" thing that some people scream about. I don't happen to have my book easily accessible or I'd look it up. I felt the Conan version just complicated things though, and would rather see the usual AC system instead.

 

[El Mahdi]

I liked the armor as DR also (satisfies the simulationist in me), but I found it brought it's own problems; the aforementioned "daggers are ineffective" problem, and the "I keep forgetting to subtract DR from any damage I take" problem (my players chief complaint) among others.

I solved this in my game by eliminating DR and adding bonus hit points of a certain percentage of total Hit Points based on armor (i.e. leather armor adds 10% of total hit points; Plate armor adds 25% of total hit points, etc.). If the character takes his armor off, simply reduce his current total hit points by the same percentage. To aleviate the "Tank" effect by using AC and Defensive Progression, I reduced the AC bonus of armor by 1/2 and used it with defensive progression and a d20 defensive roll (instead of adding to 10). I also eliminated Max Dex bonus (with an AC reduction of 1/2 I considered it "added in"), but kept armor check penalties for use with skills and ability checks.

If you feel that adding a defensive roll will slow down combat, start using either a predetermined attack score for monsters and npc's, or pre-roll a set of attack rolls for each monster and list them with their stats when you make them up.

If the extra hit points make combat last excessively longer for you, increase the effectiveness of crits (i.e. instead of only automatic hits on a natural 20, make automatic hits on any natural roll within the weapons threat range).

 

[benjamin]

Extra complicated rules for fixing realism not worth it...?

Me too...

I've gone through various different stages of thinking, "Oh, this DnD thing is Sooooo unrealistic... Ah let's try this, that will fix everything..."

I thought I liked Armour as DR, but deffinately more hassle than it's worth! (for me)!

In the end the game needs to flow (As much as possible)... and it is really quite abstracted already... so who am I kidding...

Same with the whole HPs thing... tried lots of other systems... but int he end there is nothing quite so exciting as watching a whole pile of your HPs dwindle to 3! Fighting the last few round of battle with single figure HPs is just FUN! And is is a game...

...and you can SORT OF justify any abstrat rule... with enough fancy talking.

Ben

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[benjamin]

That said...

That said...

I tried to build a cleric for a new campaign (that I'm NOT DMing YAH!)

I wanted a big fat Frier Tuck kind of a guy... wears no shirt and has low DEX... fights with a quarter staff...

But in the end... how am I going to do with an AC of 12?!?!

I've ended up deciding he'll just have to carry full plate around with him, and only get fully set up when he expects trouble. I plan to have him winge a whole lot when he's wearing armour too (too hot, too itchy)...

It's just not fun to play someone under armoured in DnD...

...or is it?

Ben

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[Aries_Omega]

I like UA

I have had GREAT results with the Armor as DR rule and Vitality & Wound Points rules and I recommend them to anyone. My players really like the rules. Subdual damage is a bit of an issue with the rules but we houseruled how that works for us.

 

[Waylander]

Thanks for all of the replies!

I think the rationale for a Class Defence Bonus is strong based on the benefit of having viable non-armour wearing characters (as commented on by benjamin) and the whole scaling of BAB at higher levels where the d20 roll to hit can become a little redundant.

However, that means the (to my mind) logical benefit of wearing armour is DR with the downside being the usual penalties (or limits on benefits) from Dex, Skill checks, etc.

Is there a real problem with the use of daggers? At 1d4 damage they are still pretty lethal against leather, less so against chain mail, and only become useless against the "tanks" of medieval combat the full plate fighter. I may be being naive but that seems about right . . .

I think Conan RPG has a variable amount of DR for armour that is somewhat offset by the fact that weapons tend to do more damage than their equivalent in D&D (e.g. a longsword is d10 rather than d8).

I should also point out that I'm using the "Morrus" version of hitpoints where there is no non-lethal damage. All hitpoint damage is considered "lethal" as hitpoints don't just represent physical damage. (I have a modified "massive" damage rule that renders characters unconscious rather than dead.)

Magical healing is also relatively rare in the campaign and so part of the rationale is to limit the actual damage done in combat but make any wound realised actually carry more weight than in a typical campaign.

I guess my concern is around just how often characters get hit?

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

To fix the dagger with armor as DR...

Why not change the DR from X/- to X/critical?

A critical hit automatically overcomes the damage reduction?