How powerful would armor DR 5/+1 vs. Piercing be?

[Ruined]

I don't usually tear apart the item creation and cost rules, so I thought I'd check with the knowledgeable bunch here. Here's the magic item:

Hide Armor Arrowfoe, Damage reduction 5/+1 versus piercing weapons; counts as light armor.

(not quite sure how to write the DR rating. basically it takes off the first five points of dmg unless the piercing item is magical)

I'm looking to see how powerful this would be compared to normal magical armors. I'm known to be a magic-item miser, and I wanted to see if this was way powerful, relatively weak, or just right. My party is level 4 right now.

Any help appreciated greatly.

edit: to change from 5/- to 5/+1. Thanks, Zenon.

 

[Zenon]

Re: How powerful would armor DR 5/- vs. Piercing be?

(not quite sure how to write the DR rating. basically it takes off the first five points of dmg unless the piercing item is magical)

Wouldn't it then be written as: DR 5/+1 vs. piercing damage only? DR 5/- vs. piercing damage only would mean take 5 points off of all damage, magical or not, of piercing damage.

 

[nameless]

It would seem to me that its "DR 5/+1 piercing". That's just a guess since the official 3.5E rules aren't out yet...

EDIT: I totally misread the request. It would either be something clunky like 5/Blunt, Slashing or +1, or to make it simple do it as a Piercing Resistance 5/+1. There are no physical resistances in 3E (yet), and none with bypasses, but it looks legal to me.

 

[trentonjoe]

I think that would be an appropraite magic item for a 4th level character.

And neat too!

 

[Ruined]

Thanks so far. I'm just remembering some comments people had for NWN talking about Rings of Damage Reduction being really broken, allowing them to kill powerful wyrms, etc. This has more of a practical application, and I didn't think it was too overbalanced.

Plus, as two of my characters are spear-wielders, the guy wearing it rocked!

 

[Mahali]

5/+5 DR is about 75k

 

[Legildur]

I have an elven fighter/paladin of 8th level in an e-mail game. He recently found a +2 chain shirt with DR 5/- vrs piercing. I didn't think much of it at the time, but he was recently cornered by some creatures wielding tridents, and it has saved him around 30 hit points (and probably his life). I figured it was only good against arrows etc. Didn't think much about spears, tridents etc. I rate it as a good thing.

As a note, the Invulnerability enchantment for armor grants DR 5/+1 has a price modifier of a +3 bonus. So I guess making it 5/- vrs one type of damage would probably be worth around a +1 bonus price modifier.

 

[dcollins]

This thread does look like House Rules to me.

 

[Darklone]

This thread does look like House Rules to me.

He was asking for similar things in published stuff?

 

[dcollins]

He was asking for similar things in published stuff?

Not seeing it. Perhaps you could quote where he said that.