Defense Rating In D&D 3E

[yipwyg]

I took a look at Shadow Chasers, as well as read up on information dealing with d20 modern. I noticed that they use a defense rating that help determines AC, and that Armor subtracts from damage.

I was wondering if anyone adapted this to their D&D campaigns and what was the general response to it.

 

[sotmh]

I've been looking into this. I think it works better in Wound / Vitality Point systems, where the armor only prevents Wound damage (I think the new Star Wars system works this way) otherwise it would probably be too powerful. IIRC, the armor also applies it's armor check penalty against your Defense, making you easier to hit (Not too sure about this, but I seem to remember reading it).

Also, D&D type magic tends to make this a little flakey too.
Imagine +5 Full Plate preventing 13 points of damage each hit. So, I'd imagine it would work better in a low or no magic setting.

It's not impossible to apply to D&D, but balancing it would be a difficult exercise between making armor worthless (like in the current edition of Star Wars) and making armor too strong.

sotmh

 

[yipwyg]

RE Defense Rating In D&D 3E

Interesting.

I was thinking on the lines of something like this.

Full Plate Armor has DR say of 8

If the Player has +5 Full Plate, the Armor would still have a DR of 8 and the +5 magic bonus adds to the Defense Rating.

So say a fighter had a defense bonus of 9, a Dex of 12, and was wearing +5 Full Plate.

He would have a total of 10 + 9 + 1 + 5 for a subtotal of AC 25.
His full plate would absorb the first 8 points of damage.

 

[hong]

Everyone would take Power Attack, that's for sure.

 

[yipwyg]

Sort out confusion

Just noticed that I posted something that might be confusing

Ok what I was thinking is this:

Full Plate provides Damage Reduction of 8.

If the player is wearing +5 Full plate. It would add +5 to his Defense Rating and still have 8 Damage Reduction.

So the if player has a 9 Base defense rating, +1 Defense Rating due to Dexterity, and is wearing +5 Full Plate, Then

His Total Defense Rating would be 10 +9 +1 +5 which equals 25.
The Full Plate would provide Damage Reduction of 8, ignores first 8 points of damage.

Anyway thought something along these lines.