DR as miss chance

[maggot]

This system involves a lot of really boring math that slows the game down.
Deletion is much harder to do than substraction and is twice more so than addition.
Unless you are willing to bring a calculator to your game, I wouldn't recommend it.

I don't see how a mischance is harder than subtraction. Clearly not applying damage ("deletion" as you called it) is faster than subtracting from a value and then applying that reduced value.

That is why I suggested the miss chance in the first place. Perhaps that idea got lost in all the other options.

So forget everything else, what about using a miss chance instead of DR. I kind of like the last values I showed, where DR 5/x is 20% mischance, etc.

 

[Zoatebix]

Though not "core" creatures, the 3.5 update document says that 3 monsters from the fiend folio have DR of 20/something: Crawling Head, Demon: Klurichir, and Inevitable: Varakhut, though I've only used the Crawling head in (non-3.5) epic play.

I just flipped through the book, and they have CRs 20, 25, and 19 respectively. So I guess that makes two of them "standard" creatures (assuming you mean "non-epic" by standard).


**ANYWAYS - I thought of a neat way to work your miss-chance system that could take into account a lot of variants, and that wouldn't rely on converting the DR amount before the slash into a miss chance percentage.

Work damage reduction like spell resistance: The number before the slash becomes the Difficulty for a d20 roll needed to damage the creature.

For people who want more variety: Every "plus" of weapon enhancement bonus adds +4 to your check to overcome the damage reduction, if the damage reduction can be overcome by magic (X/Magic). The bonus becomes +2 per "plus" if there's another damage reduction factor (alignment, damage type, or special material) after the slash, or +1 per "plus" for 2 or more additional factors.

Of course, there are lots of other game effects to think of: what a special material weapon does to the DC or the d20 roll, feats analagous to "spell penetration" or other effects that could change the "Damage Resistance" die roll, etc.


Hmmm - this system makes DR an awful lot like a secondary form of AC. Maybe we could combine the two into a single roll? DR is now a bonus to AC, that gets neutralized by special bonuses that magic weapons and weapons made of special materials add to the attack roll.

At the low end, this makes it so that someone with a +1 sword has a 5% lower chance to hit something with DR 5/magic than in the old system. And it means a lot of math has to be done on the fly.

I've just taken this thing WAY too far. Way, way, way too far. But it was an interesting ride.

 

[maggot]

I thought of a neat way to work your miss-chance system that could take into account a lot of variants, and that wouldn't rely on converting the DR amount before the slash into a miss chance percentage.

Work damage reduction like spell resistance: The number before the slash becomes the Difficulty for a d20 roll needed to damage the creature.

Excellent idea. Sorry to snip the rest, but my original idea was to make DR x/evil be able to be somewhat bypassed by powerful magic weapons. So I would make DR x/whatever mean you either need a "whatever" weapon, or you must roll X or higher on a d20+weapon enhancement bonus.

Simple and does what I was looking for. A DR 15/evil is still taken out by an evil sword. DR 15/magic creature is still taken down by any magic sword, but that magic sword is somewhat more effective against the DR 15/evil creature.

 

[Zoatebix]

Oh - we were playing with that over on this (http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=100759) thread.

In fact - I'll link that thread over here, too.

 

[maggot]

Finally got around to playtesting this, and it worked great. We used the prevent damage variant instead of mischance, and the extra calculation didn't slow down combat at all. The archers were happy they could still damage the DR 10/good guys, and the power attacking madman didn't lose a step either.

For the record, here is what I used

DR 5/whatever becomes DR 25%/whatever and prevents 1/4 of the damage from the attack.
DR 10/whatever becomes DR 50%/whatever and 1/2 of the damage from the attack.
DR 15/whatever becomes DR 75%/whatever and 3/4 of the damage from the attack.

I was originally thinking of making magic "plusses" bypass part of DR /whatever better, but it turns out to be unnecessary because extra "plusses" mean extra damage and some damage is always getting through.

 

[Zoatebix]

I'm glad it worked out. I'm going to have to try it sometime.

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

Finally got around to playtesting this, and it worked great. We used the prevent damage variant instead of mischance, and the extra calculation didn't slow down combat at all. The archers were happy they could still damage the DR 10/good guys, and the power attacking madman didn't lose a step either.

For the record, here is what I used

DR 5/whatever becomes DR 25%/whatever and prevents 1/4 of the damage from the attack.
DR 10/whatever becomes DR 50%/whatever and 1/2 of the damage from the attack.
DR 15/whatever becomes DR 75%/whatever and 3/4 of the damage from the attack.

I was originally thinking of making magic "plusses" bypass part of DR /whatever better, but it turns out to be unnecessary because extra "plusses" mean extra damage and some damage is always getting through.

The above is looking alot like the Fortification Special ability.

DR 5/whatever = 25% chance to negate a critical.

DR 10/whatever = 50% chance to negate a critical.

DR 15/whatever = 75% chance to negate a critical.

DR 20/whatever would make the creature immune to critical hits, (Epic).

Baring the appropriate material/power. No thought on game balace, just a thought.