Damage Reduction?

[fuindordm]

Another good point of the AC/HP system is that it allows weak opponents to deplete the resources of strong parties, even if only a little bit. Nickels and dimes aren't impressive, but a good DM knows they can add up quickly.

In game systems where DR and damage scale together, you end up with PCs that can only be hurt by opponents of equivalent level. After years of running a Fantasy Hero game, I started to find that limitation on encounter design very frustrating.

In D&D, damage quickly scales to over 10 hp/hit, so one or two points of DR here and there doesn't hurt the game. I actually think that 3.5 hit the sweet spot with DR: monsters don't have so much that they can't be hurt at all without the "magic key", PCs don't have so much that they can ignore opponents.

Caveat: HP may not be a per-day resource in 4e, which would change the balance of things. If PCs are expected to return to full HP very quickly after every encounter, then nickels and dimes are no longer part of the encounter currency.

I'll cash in before the metaphor becomes too strained...

 

[mhensley]

I think that their decision is the correct one. Every game that I've run that uses armor as DR (gurps, wfrp) end up with almost everyone getting full plate and becoming invulnerable to most opponents. While this might be more realistic, it's hardly fun IMO. It's the main reason I quit playing wfrp.

 

[Warbringer]

I think that their decision is the correct one. Every game that I've run that uses armor as DR (gurps, wfrp) end up with almost everyone getting full plate and becoming invulnerable to most opponents. While this might be more realistic, it's hardly fun IMO. It's the main reason I quit playing wfrp.

Mearls fixed this in Iron Heroes with maing the DR random (as per Chivalry and Sorcery), worked reasonably well.

Seems this is a fight he lost, it's beyonf me how DR wouldn't make it in because of the complexity of subtracting a simple number from a damage roll, but Fast Healing would.

4e is is starting to feel a little schizophrenic... complex mechanics like terrain and manuevers (and yes they are complex - play Iron Heroes) and not DR... simply don't it, and I completely disagree with Mearls that its inclusion makes it harder to work out survivability form round to round..

 

[Reaper Steve]

and I completely disagree with Mearls that its inclusion makes it harder to work out survivability form round to round..

I understand Mearl's point. I have a love-hate relationship with D&D armor class and hit points, but in light of recent d20 design advances (esp SWSE) I do think that a better way of handling combat has yet to be devised. (Coming from the fun > simulation camp.)

AC and HP make it easy to calculate avg hit % and average damage output. Armor as DR messes this up. It's like free hit points, but you don't know exactly how many. The softer someone hits, the more free hit points you have. (If you have DR 3 and are hit 10 times for 5 each, you only take 20 HP...and had 30 free ones. But 5 hits for 10 HP would cause a total of 35 HP, with you only gaining 15 free ones. )

It's worse than my example makes it seem... armor DR would make it impossible to calculate average damage since there would no longer by any constant in the equation. It makes weaker hits much weaker while having less effect as damage output increases. Some may argue 'exactly as it should!' but they need to realize how this totally skews the game's power curve. And again, it is a game, not a simulation.


D&D combat is actually resolved backwards. The attack roll doesn't determine the degree of success...the damage roll does. And with very little exception, the two are calculated independently.
It doesn't matter if the attack roll succeeds by 1 or by 21. The attack roll purely determines if the attacker can hit the defender if the defender doesn't go out of his way to protect himself. If the attack roll is successful, the damage roll actually determines how much effort is required on the defender's part to prevent the hit from causing him harm. That's what HP loss represents...until the hit that takes him to 0 or less...that hit drops him.

When understood this way, one can see how armor actually does prevent one from being hurt (what the DR crowd wants.) When an attack roll against a high AC guy misses, it can mean that the target was hit, but the blow was absorbed by the armor and caused no serious harm. Since the defender was wearing armor, he did not have to go to extreme measures (read: use HPs) to defend himself from this attack. I know, people have been saying 'the attack glanced off your armor' for years... what I think many people miss is that this statement means armor is functioning as DR. Fact: a higher AC reduces damage received.

The worst part about AC and HP is that their names reinforce the misconceptions that 1) an attack roll 'hits' (more accurately: a failed attack roll is characterized as a 'miss' when it is better described as an attack that was easily defended against) and 2) that hit points are 'physical damage.'

If armor was DR (and did not reduce your chance to be hit) it would completely disrupt the game's scaling. I'd love to go into it, but my wife's waiting for the computer. For now, suffice to say that if armor provided DR, the game would quickly get to a point where it NO LONGER made sense to wear armor.

 

[green slime]

Yet again I disagree with Mr Mearls.

Armour with DR does not overly complicate the game at the table. Which is the only place it is ever relevant to a gamer.

Originally, I added the idea as an additional minor incentive to compensate for the loss of movement speed.

IMC, Medium armours gain DR 1/-, Heavy armours DR 2/-, with adamantine adding a further +1.

Mind you, I've competely revised the table of available armour, in order to create racial & local variations.

 

[glass]

Mearls fixed this in Iron Heroes with maing the DR random (as per Chivalry and Sorcery), worked reasonably well.

I was hoping (although not expecting) that that is what 4e would do.

and I completely disagree with Mearls that its inclusion makes it harder to work out survivability form round to round..

As I said in the other thread, even if he is correct that it is hard, he is a professional game developer -he should be being doing the hard stuff. If it was easy, we would hardly need him, would we?

It possible there are very good reasons not to have armour reduce damage in 4e, but 'it was hard' really isn't one of them.


glass.

 

[BASHMAN]

An easier way to deal with it is to give creatures more HP and a susceptibility to take more damage from a certain source.

Example: A creature Level 10 w/ 50 HP that only gets hurt by silver weapons (previously had DR 5/silver). Simply change it to 100 HP with susceptibility/silver 5 so each time a silver weapon hits it, the creature takes an extra 5 dmg.

 

[Odysseus]

The worst part about AC and HP is that their names reinforce the misconceptions that 1) an attack roll 'hits' (more accurately: a failed attack roll is characterized as a 'miss' when it is better described as an attack that was easily defended against) and 2) that hit points are 'physical damage.'

If armor was DR (and did not reduce your chance to be hit) it would completely disrupt the game's scaling. .

Full plate reduces the hit chance by 40% , which is matched by the BAB bonus of an 8th fighter. Armour should be more important than it is at higher levels. And for I've noticed that my sweet spot is in the levels where armour matters. So I believe the scaling is wrong, and I'd welcome some disruption.

 

[Reaper Steve]

I'd welcome some disruption.

I think your disruption will come in the flavor of Defense (inc. AC) increasing with level.