Product with Armor as DR?

[jollyninja]

a couple other products that use armor as damage reduction are iron heroes from malhavoc press and a game of thrones d20. I've been running iron heroes for a few months now and the only aspect of it that doesn't seem to work well are the feats that come along with it. they make a great number of creatures (even in the monster book for the setting) essentially worthless against a high level character. the base rules (normally gives +4 ac? now it's a d4 damage reduction) are great. they give characters a defense bonus that is based on class and level to even it out a bit. it gets rid of the power attack overuse. it ends at 15 or 17 depending one your class.

 

[Cergorach]

Spycraft...

 

[DMH]

As far as the Bastion rules-- Is there a quick rundown on the general idea?

Armor both increases AC (by a bit) and provides DR. There is a 9/10 of a page chart that lists all the types of armor (lofs of new ones included) that gives the AC and DR numbers. There isn't a formula, but seems to be 1/2 old AC= new AC and DR= 1/4 old AC.

 

[Storyteller01]

Arsenal for Perpetrated Press, but the system is pretty straightforward. Convert the armors AC to DR at a 1:1 ratio.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Two not mentioned already:

From Stone to Steel - a truly excellent though out of print book on weapons and armour, from Monkey God - has very simple optional rules for this, but doesn't really cover any of the 'knock-on effects', other than to casually suggest that a Base Defence bonus to AC might be appropriate, if one so wishes.

Conan OGL (from Mongoose Publishing) has Armour as DR by default, as well as Parry and Dodge scores, and uses some quite innovative methods to get around the otherwise inevitable consequences to the core system. Weapons have different AP (Armour Piercing) values to which an attacker's Str bonus might be added, and if this total equals the suit - or assortment - of armour's total DR, then that DR is halved for the purposes of that attack. Also, Finesse fighting works differently - much more like D&D combat, in fact: the defender's armour's DR effectively becomes AC, and the attacker gets to add their Dex to their finesse weapon's AP value.. and if they succeed at overcoming armour this way, the 'DR' is ignored entirely for that attack.

Of course, Conan's a setting first and foremost. But the system still has some other things to offer, such as magic that better suits that kind of world.


Anyway, the most simple immediate way of getting access to Armour as DR rules to have a look at and maybe try out is, as someone already posted above, via http://d20srd.org. Or yeah, picking up UA. Note: even UA doesn't cover many of the consequences that will arise by bringing in these rules. It requires a better subsystem as a starting point, or a bit of house ruling, IMO.

 

[Nyaricus]

I agree. I strongly feel that if you use Armour as DR, you need to make changes to Power Attack.

Such as? (Just curous to your response )

 

[Kunimatyu]

I think that Armor as DR in a standard 3.5 game will cause more problems than it removes.

A system like True20, while obviously not 3.5, has 'armor as DR' built into the system as a core assumption, so it tends to work a little better.

Iron Heroes, which is slightly more 3.5 compatible, also uses armor as DR -- it gives each class a 'Base Defense Bonus' and armor gives you a small amount of variable DR -- chainmail is 1d6 DR/magic, for example.

 

[frankthedm]

Such as? (Just curous to your response )

I recommend Removal of the power attack feat, making cleave the new baseline feat for the power attack chains.

At the bare minimum, the trade off can not be allowed to be more than one for one. Even then, armor DR is worthless since power attacking is equal or better than the DR you got from armor.

-2 to hit for +1 damage might work.

 

[Sanackranib]

the old and I believe out of print Arcanum system (the book with the black cover and a red or white pentagram on it depending on the addition) used this. basically at level 1 you had a 50/50 chance to hit but the better the armor the harder it was to hurt the wearer. easy to hit someone in full plate but almost impossibe to hurt them with out a strength bonus or d6 weapon since it was somthing like DR5. soft learth was DR1 and hard leather was DR2 I think.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Such as? (Just curous to your response )

If you make armor into DR then you need some sort of way for characters to keep their ACs at their current levels. Otherwise power attack, and similar Attack => Damage abilities, become too powerful.

Iron Heroes, A Game of Thrones, Conan and True20 use a class- and level- based defense system, which works pretty well for those systems. The mechanics vary from system to system but they all work.

Your other option is to either change PA to a 2 for 1, as frankthedm suggested, or remove it entirely.


In the final analysis, armor as DR is weaker than armor as AC. Armor is less powerful, less useful and the heavier armors become much rarer in practice as the drawbacks begin to outweigh the benefits.

Good Luck.