D&D 5E DPR, AC, and Alternate Settings

[Beedo]

I have a campaign I'm running set in Mythic Greece. We just have a few sessions under our belt. I saw a thread looking at the DPR of the various classes and it raised an interesting question: will it cause unnecessary problems for the fighting classes (in terms of bounded accuracy) to remove heavy armors from the game, or should we assume that at least some portion of fighters (like the defense-minded) should have access to the higher AC's.

For instance, in the ancient world, there is nothing as protective as full Renaissance plate mail (AC 18). You could argue that AC 18 is absolute - the only way people in your game world can achieve base AC 18 is if the world has a late Medieval \ early Renaissance technology and developed head-to-toe plate mail.Alternatively, AC 18 is relative to the other AC's available in the setting, and characters wearing the heaviest armor of the time can still achieve AC 18 - in the mythic world, that might be a fighter with bronze plate, arm and leg greaves, and a full Corinthian helmet.

You could make a similar argument for weapon damage and how it affects DPR - in a world without the European steel long or broadsword, the default "fantasy" hand weapon for fighters, should the most common weapon of the fighting man deal 1d8 for DPR purposes. In the mythic world, perhaps that's the spear.

Anyway - it's an interesting question to me - this idea of whether class balance is important (so armor and weapon values should flex to maintain fighter integrity) or whether AC and damage values are fixed, and fighters get weakened in non-Medieval settings.

 

[MarkB]

That sort of thing is entirely up to the DM. Personally I'd just come up with a set of era-appropriate armour and weapons that map directly to the ones in the PHB.

 

[Thyrwyn]

What MarkB said: take the most protective era appropriate armor and call that AC18, map the others accordingly. Do the same with the weapons. Not so relevant against "mundane", armor wearing, weapon wielding foes, but Monster AC, Attack bonii, HP, and damage values are all relative to the PHB values. (Not directly, but you get the idea...)

 

[Astrosicebear]

Agree with above.

Its easier to re-skin the current armors, and explain "plate mail" as full bronze armor or some such, than to modify the entire game for era specific ideas.

Its also easier to introduce "game changers" if you do want to introduce steel swords, or such by just increasing those damage ranges. Especially if you arent using magic (not sure if you world is real or mythological fantasy). If its real world, damascus steel swords could easily supplant magic weapons.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The game is not so precariously balanced that removing full plate would cause everything to fall apart. Seriously, it just doesn't matter. Fighters and paladins will be less powerful than they would be in a regular game, but not by enough to shift anything in a meaningful way.

As minor compensation, though, no full plate means you don't have rapiers either, so that's less damage that the high-Strength fighters will be suffering in melee (and the high-Dex fighters will have to suffer the penalty to damage, but get to keep their full AC, so that's the trade-off).

 

[Minigiant]

For an Ancient Greece game, I'd go for buffed shields. Like heavy/large shields for high AC. For flavor.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Don't get too bogged down in realism!

That said, here's what might happen in a game without the higher echelons of AC.

• HPs become more important. People will take Toughness feats and the like.
• Barbarians and monks become more important, since these begin to reach high AC's. To a lesser extent, eldritch knights with mage armor play a bigger role, too.
• Ranged combat becomes highlighted. Folks will use more javelins, more bows.
• You'll see fewer defensive fighters, tanky paladins, and protective clerics. More archery fighters, strikey paladins, and robed clerics.

...all of this seems perfectly thematic for an Ancient Greece setting, so I might just go with it. I'd allow multiclassing, though, so someone who wanted to pick up a levels of barbarian or monk for the AC boost could without much of a problem.