Low armor campaigns, why "compensate"?

[RangerWickett]

I am a fan of Wound Points being separate from 'Vitality Points' (but I still call VP hit points, since Vitality Points sounds silly). Use HP to decide if you dodge the blow, and things like poison can afford to be deadly because they only work when you're out of HP, or on critical hits.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

If you want a campaign where "it's DANGEROUS" to get into fights, D&D is the wrong game to be playing. D&D is about heroic warriors and battle mages--it's the role-playing equivalent of an action movie. Sure, Arnold gets his emotionally significant moments in True Lies, but we watch the movie to see him blow away the opposition with increasingly bigger weapons. Braveheart has the romance subplot and Robert the Bruce's character development but it wouldn't be much of a movie (it certainly wouldn't be the same movie) without massive medieval battle scenes. Aliens has its intrigue but we watch the movie to see the marines shooting and getting torn apart and Ripley strap into the power loader and kill the alien queen. It's the same in D&D. A good game has a lot of things other than combat but it has quite a bit of combat too.

The vast majority of the rules are devoted to combat so if combat isn't supposed to be a focus in your game, you're better off moving to a system where combat is less detailed and other situations have more detailed rules.

So that's why you need to have armor substitutes. Because the combat system doesn't work well if you don't compensate for lack of armor, if you don't come up with a substitute, you are ruining the majority of D&D's rules and balance. In fact, even the balance of classes and fighting styles requires appropriate equipment--in a low equipment game, characters will gravitate towards two handed weapons, barbarian rage, and power attack because without the option of decreasing the amount of damage you take through AC, increasing your damage output as high as it can go is the only way to win a battle. (The prevalence of Barbarian 2/Fighter 4 characters in early Living Greyhawk is a testament to this dynamic).

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

A game where there is no compensation for weak armor, perhaps the players would have to create their own compensation - characters with Combat Expertise can at least compensate a bit of it.
The problem starts if the DM throws monsters at them who don`t use magic items or armor to improve their AC and rely on their natural armor. This means the CR in the book is not the effective CR in the "low-armor" campaign.
(To hit the high AC monsters you can`t use combat expertise, but to survive their attacks, you need it again)

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[S'mon]

Dogbrain - I basically agree with you; there's nothing wrong with a low-AC, high-damage campaign. For one thing it helps keep low-CR monsters a threat at higher levels, so the DM isn't forced to use ever more powerful meatgrinder monsters just to threaten PCs' AC. Lower CR monsters mean the GM has more discretion about XP awards too; you can slow down the rate of PC advancement without ever giving them less than book-value XP for challenges overcome.

 

[Snoweel]

Why is there so often an idea that one must "compensate" for a low-armor campaign by inventing AC substitutes? Why not make it plain to the players that it's going to be DANGEROUS to get into fights? That's what I've done, and it's worked rather well.

I'm with you 100% and you're fast becoming my favourite poster around here you cantankerous old fart.

I like a swashbuckling feel to my game, and I toyed with UA's class-based defence bonus, but ultimately decided it was just another level of complexity I didn't want to deal with.

So instead I've implemented a 'mook' system, where basically the vast majority of the PCs' opponents are 1st level. It even works with the CR system (though expect the party to level very slowly, which suits me just fine) and as for armour - the PCs are free to wear the heaviest armour they can find (if they can find it), but since my homebrew takes place entirely on an archipelago and there are no horses, there's a lot of travelling on ships and walking. So heavy armour isn't exactly free of downsides.

 

[hong]

It's a guy thing to "compensate". Sheesh.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

Why is there so often an idea that one must "compensate" for a low-armor campaign by inventing AC substitutes? Why not make it plain to the players that it's going to be DANGEROUS to get into fights? That's what I've done, and it's worked rather well

I've done that too. In fact, my players complained that even with the class based defense bonuses of d20 Modern, their Defense was still too low. I said "well then take cover more often. Or run away. Or shoot back faster."

Like Snoweel, I use a lot of mooks which works well and helps create the heroic imagery that I am looking for.

 

[Snoweel]

It's a guy thing to "compensate". Sheesh.

Only for those guys who aren't well hong.

 

[Snoweel]

I use a lot of mooks which works well and helps create the heroic imagery that I am looking for.

W3rd.

And if you want 'elite mooks' give them high STR scores and tell the players how frickin BIG the guys are, and how shiny their masterwork stuff is.

Still gonna look damn impressive when your 6th level party mows down a platoon of them in 2-3 rounds.

 

[Brad Hindman]

I have been running a low armor campaign for the last two years. It also happens to be low magic, so armor classes are absurdly low. As a result, Power Attack has become one of the premiere feats and damage potentials have increased dramatically. In particular, as the DM, I need to be careful. Strong creatures with a large attack bonus can easily afford to convert all thier BAB into additional damage.

If I run another campaign in the same setting, I will most assuredly use a class bonus to AC.