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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Derro" data-source="post: 4661703" data-attributes="member: 51010">Yes there are two main methods to bypass or diminish armor.All weapons have an Armor Penetration rating. This ranges from 1 (dagger) to 8 (pole-axe). The wielder adds their strength bonus to this. The final number is compared to the DR provided by the target's armor which ranges from 3 (quilted jerkin) to 12 (plate mail and great helm). If the AP rating exceeds the DR the DR is halved. Additionally whenever an armor wearer suffers a blow that deals 20 or more damage their DR is reduced by 1d4 to represent damage to the armor from such a mighty blow. My own houserule has DR being reduced by 1 everytime armor is penetrated.Some weapons, mainly primitive stone weapons and bare fists, cannot penetrate armor at all and even have a chance of breaking against heavily armored foes.The other method of bypassing armor is Finesse. D20 Conan veers from the SRD in this respect as all combatants are capable of attacking with their Dexterity bonus instead of their Strength bonus with a selection of weapons. This is mainly light weapons but also includes spears and some some swords when wielded two-handed.Finesse attacks are resolved by adding the targets DR to their Defense, whether Dodge or Parry. An attack roll that succeeds against this target number completely ignores DR. An attack that hit the standard defense but does not breach the DR addition is reduced by the DR as normal. Since most finesse weapons have pretty low APs and damages and finesse attacks don't receive a Strength bonus to AP they generally don't do much damage without bypassing DR.Notable in this regarding monsters is that DR is not separated in to an armor/supernatural immunity division. Most creatures with weapon immunity have DR of total/silver or magic.   There's a brief section in the Campaigns section of the book about how characters could or should be armed and armored at the beginning of adventures. Mainly it is a statement on how equipment does not make the adventurer. And I agree with that whole-heartedly. Anyway in the examples provided they show Conan to be lightly armed and armored most of the time although he definitely girds up when battle is afoot.There was something that I was reading a while ago about armor that essentially stated wearing anything but the lightest of armors unless you know you are headed for a fight is impractical and uncomfortable. This isn't really reflected in most games rules and honestly since most adventuring involves lots of battles that is reasonable. What I do like about the Conan system is that characters can be viable combatants even when caught unawares or in situations where armor is implausible. Obviously armor is always a boon but making it a requirement detracts from some scenarios. Pirates in heavy armor. BS I say. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Anyway, no system is perfect but I think d20 Conan did a nice job of making many of the genre conventions viable without deviating too much from the rules in the SRD.   The maneuvers are definitely a high point of the game. They give the players options beyond just attacking and evoke some of the scenes from classic S&S literature. My only problem with them is that they sometimes have very punitive and lengthy prerequisites. I've taken to reducing most of these in my own games just so players can get some arse-kicking heroism going on without having to be so built.</blockquote>

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