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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1259015" data-attributes="member: 812">Well, uh, sheesh. Thanks. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /> A couple of ways. First off, I nerfed armour by reducing the AC bonus it supplies and increasing the Dex penalty. In addition, I took heavy armour proficiency away from all classes.On Barsoom, only wimps wear armour.Second, I added a bunch of feats to enable pretty much any character to drastically improve their AC. There's two that allow characters to apply other stat bonuses: Canny Defense (Int) and Reckless Abandon (Cha). And there's another feat, Step Aside, that allows characters to apply their base Reflex Save to their AC. All of these stack, of course, and all are lost when Dex bonus is lost -- which makes 4 levels of Rogue (Uncanny Dodge!) almost mandatory for anyone serious about combat.Rogues are actually much more serious combatants on Barsoom -- they still don't have the hit points but they can be SO hard to hit that they do well.Basically, I wanted a system that rewarded smart, agile, charismatic characters. Because that's cool. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" />Balancing encounters is more of an art than a science for me anyway, so hand-tooling everything is fine. I'll do a certain amount of tweaking on the spot if I realise I've misjudged something.So far it's worked great. My players wear no armour, jump all over the battlefield and have a good time. Their AC scales as they increase in level (either by acquiring new feats, or taking Step Aside, which DOES improve their AC on a level basis), and tougher bad guys tend to have higher ACs. It's cool.</blockquote>

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