Pitfalls of Defense & DR Armor...?

[Terraism]

Ok - I'm looking into using a level-based Defense bonus (something I've been intrigued by for a while,) but I'm not sure how to do it. I've seen some systems that use a Defense stat and then have armor serve as DR - and I've heard some of the drawbacks. Anyone have any experience with such a system? I'm not all that interested in having Wound/Vitality points, so... any help would be much appreciated.

 

[mmu1]

Ok - I'm looking into using a level-based Defense bonus (something I've been intrigued by for a while,) but I'm not sure how to do it. I've seen some systems that use a Defense stat and then have armor serve as DR - and I've heard some of the drawbacks. Anyone have any experience with such a system? I'm not all that interested in having Wound/Vitality points, so... any help would be much appreciated.

Having both a defense bonus and DR is sort of redundant, you take away armor AC, but you add in some other bonus (which has to be fairly close to what you took away for the system to work without needing major changes) to compensate, so in effect, all you're doing is adding DR to the equation...

Anyway, I don't know what precisely you're trying to achieve, but in my experience with this sort of thing, without changing the rules of D&D in a major way, all you'll be doing is increasing complexity of the bookkeeping with no real change to the feel of the system.

 

[DanMcS]

Biggest problem is that small weapons won't penetrate the DR, ever, no matter how skilled the attacker. For instance, daggers, carried by knights to finish fallen foes, have no chance of actually doing this against someone wearing heavier armor. There are a couple ways around this.

Variable DR. Alternity used this. Armor provides DR, but it's a die roll. Adds another die roll to the attack-roll/damage-roll sequence, but it's by the target, not the attacker, so an insignificant slowdown. A chain shirt provides maybe a d6, chainmail d6+1, adjust from there, you want the average of the die roll to be a little less than what the armor would provide if it were converted straight to DR X/-. Armor versus a coup de grace should give the minimum value.

A simpler variant is to say that, for instance, a coup de grace ignores armor DR entirely, and armor applies only to the normal die of a critical hit, so a longsword doing 1d8 versus a chain shirt providing DR 4/- would do 1d8-4 (minimum 0) + 1d8 on a crit.

 

[Terraism]

Having both a defense bonus and DR is sort of redundant, you take away armor AC, but you add in some other bonus (which has to be fairly close to what you took away for the system to work without needing major changes) to compensate, so in effect, all you're doing is adding DR to the equation...

Anyway, I don't know what precisely you're trying to achieve, but in my experience with this sort of thing, without changing the rules of D&D in a major way, all you'll be doing is increasing complexity of the bookkeeping with no real change to the feel of the system.

You've got a point, largely because I didn't. What I'm shooting for is some way to allow for unarmored characters that avoid being hit to be a bit more viable, without making them intrinsicly better than armored folk, and I've no real idea how to go about it. I was toying with the ideas I'd mentioned, but I suppose I'm more lost than anything.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Armor provides DR, but it's a die roll. Adds another die roll to the attack-roll/damage-roll sequence, but it's by the target, not the attacker, so an insignificant slowdown. A chain shirt provides maybe a d6, chainmail d6+1, adjust from there, you want the average of the die roll to be a little less than what the armor would provide if it were converted straight to DR X/-.

There was a nice thread on this a while back, except it was more of a half-and-half thing. So, for example, Chainmail (was AC 5) was changed to AC 3 and 1d4 DR, while the Breastplate (also AC 5) was AC 2 and 1d6 DR. Basically, a metal plate supported by leather armor had more vulnerabilities than a uniform suit of chain, but when critical blows hit it was more likely to stop it cold. You'd still keep SOME AC, and you now wouldn't be immune to light weapons.

Full Plate, for reference, was either AC 4 and 1d8 DR or AC 3 and 1d10 DR depending on who you asked. And the Masterwork bonus for armor was changed from the current ACP to "increase the DR die by one size" (1d4 goes to 1d6 to 1d8 to 1d10 to 1d12)

The idea was, the heavier plate-type armors were more about outright damage stoppage than overall protection. This also allowed you to separate the previously redundant armors (Splint/Banded, Chain/BP, and so on) by giving one a higher AC and the other a higher DR.

 

[Greatwyrm]

Has anybody tried a system where armor just lowered the number/size of dice rolled? Light armor could reduce by one, medium two, heavy three. Then use any magical bonus as DR.

For example, a target wearing leather armor is attacked by an enemy with a longsword. Instead of rolling a d8 for damage, you roll a d6. If the target was in plate mail, you'd roll a d3.

Not sure how well this would work. Just a thought.

 

[Jack Daniel]

My system uses a version of wounds/vitality, but it may give you some ideas. The highlights:

• The defense bonuses are taken from d20 Modern (which, appropriately enough, are just a fraction more than 2/3 of a given base attack bonus in most cases). All classes with the good attack bonus use the good defense bonus; all classes with the average attack bonus use the average defense bonus (except monks); all classes with the poor attack bonus use the poor defense bonus. Monks use the fast hero's special "average defense bonus +2" progression.
• To keep defense bonus balanced, it works exactly like a dexterity bonus to AC does. It's lost when a character is flat-footed, and capped by the sort of armor a character wears. Unarmored characters benefit greatly from defense bonus; characters in heavy armor hardly benefit at all.
• DR (which, since I use a VP/WP system, only protects wound damage) is a die roll keyed to the sort of armor bonus an armor or protective item provides. A +1 armor bonus also grants DR 1d4/--; +2 and +3 are 1d6/--; +4 and +5 are 1d8/--; +6 and +7 are 1d10/--; and an armor bonus of +8 grants DR 1d12/--. It makes sense that armor would provide both AC and DR, because armor is both designed to deflect, and to stop or absorb.

 

[Aaron2]

The biggest problem I've found with armor=DR is that it encourages everyone to only use massive two-handed weapons, making fighting with two light weapons non-viable. I saw this in both my Stormbringer and Runequest campaigns were the characters originally started off using a nice variety of weapons and within a few sessions had all switched to pole-axes.


Aaron

 

[Jack Daniel]

That ceased to be a problem for me once I put the kaibosh on Power Attack v3.5.