[Rant] Armor as DR is bad !

[Ace]

More realistic???

hehehe

You've got to be kidding.

More realistic would be:

Full Plate: Armor Bonus +0: DR: +8
Half Plate: Armor Bonus +1: DR: +7
Splint/Banded: Armor Bonus +2: DR: +6
Breastplate/Chainmail: Armor Bonus +3: DR: +5
Scale Mail/Chain Shirt: Armor Bonus +4: DR: +4
Hide/Studded Leather: Armor Bonus +5: DR: +3
Leather: Armor Bonus +6: DR: +2
Padded: Armor Bonus +7: DR: +1
No Armor: Armor Bonus +8: DR: +0

Or something to this effect.

HMM. This is pretty interesting. I might have to fool with this a bit

I will say though it is rather GURPSlike with Armor Bonus standing in for GURPS Passive Defense

 

[Victim]

Coup de gras.

Those articulated weak spots were still hard to hit, with the knight moving around or on horse back. The most common dagger tactic (especially amongst the common infantry) was to pull a knight off his horse with a hooked polearm (or any other means available). Once the knight was on his back like an overturned turtle, it was trival to sit on his chest and slide a dagger through his visor slit. Of course, if you had a knight in that position, you'd normally be better off forcing him to yeild and ransoming him back to his family, but the low-born weren't always very aware of the worth of captured nobility.

Also consider that in historical real life most knights only wore arms and armor (even light armor) during combat. In daily life, only normal clothing was worn, sometimes a sword, but more likely a more useful and compact dagger as a self-defense weapon.

If we assume a STR 10 commoner, then a dagger's CDG damage is 2d4. Compare that with the DR ratings we're seeing recommended for heavy armor. Coup de Grace with a dagger is super tactic.

 

[Al'Kelhar]

Armour as DR is bad, because one of the core tropes of D&D is a puny six-foot-tall human, waving a three-foot-long sword, killing an 80-foot-long dragon (albeit perhaps with some help). "Realistically" speaking, there's no way the sword should do more than tickle the dragon, but that would be no fun for most D&D gamers.

It must be an Australian thingy, cos' the more I read hong, the more I realise I think like him. Except maybe the bit about Large Metallic Genitalia.

I'll put this in simple terms for the North Americans out there

D&D is fantasy. Everything about D&D combat, from AC to hit points to weapon damage, to the effects of instantaneous fire damage, is an abstraction. If you want realism in combat, play another game.

AC is an abstraction of HOW HARD IT IS TO INJURE A CREATURE, not how hard it is to hit the creature. If you think I'm wrong, why are you messing around with armour bonus from armour, and not every other form of armour bonus which isn't counted in touch AC? Try explaining natural armour in terms of DR. Exactly how much fun is it when your DM says "I'm sorry, that Colossal dragon has DR 44/-, so you warrior-types may as well just turn around and moon it in the hopes of distracting it from eviscerating your spellcasters"? Here endeth the rant.

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

 

[AnthonyJ]

In the real world, there are two ways to penetrate armor: you can hit where the armor isn't, or you can punch through the armor. A dagger has negligible chance of doing the second, and doing the first is pretty hard with any weapon.

That said, this just isn't very relevant to DnD. In the real world, people don't throw fireballs around either, and there's a shortage of 80' dragons. It's a genre convention.

One thing I do consider for certain types of monsters:
Feat: Brute Force Attack (Req: 13 Str)

Use a weapon as a touch attack. The victim gets damage reduction equal to their armor plus natural armor. Special attack effects (poison/etc) only apply if at least one point of damage penetrates.

 

[Silverglass]

A very popular house rule is using armor as a damage reduction factor, rather than as the damage avoidance factor it is in D&D.

Here's why D&D is more realistic. With armor as DR, you will only be able to hurt people with the biggest weapons. Unless you've Conan-like strength, you're not going to ever hurt a full-plate armored guy with a dagger.

Which is historically realistic because if you look at what happened people went for bigger and bigger weapons as armour got heavier. If Larger weapons were no more effective against plate armoured opponents why did the plethora of Polearms become so widely used by foot soldiers during the dark ages. If your hypothesis was true everyone would have stayed with light weapons.

And that's where the irrealism lies. Daggers were created to pierce armors, because larger, less precise weapons couldn't be used to target the holes in the articulations. Against heavy armor, daggers were the most efficient weapons. With armor as DR, they are the least.

Well all this is based on the assumption that you are not using huge DR numbers of armour:

Firstly Daggers were not efficient weapons against heavily armoured opponents, all this piercing the holes in the armour is rubbish against an opponent who is fighting you, unless you got a lucky hit, which is modelled by D&Ds critical hits. So as long as a critical with a dagger can get through you are ok. The other common situation documented was Knights taken out with daggers after being unhorsed. This is modelled by Coup De Grace within D&D and shows how foot soldiers finished him off "helpless" knights.

Daggers were mainly used carried as a utility item, for eating food and defence against unarmoured opponents.

Beside, with armor as DR, and a heavy armor, you become invulnerable to everything. In a Renaissance game using this method, people in full-plate were immune to pistols -- in real world, pistols were among the reasons full-plates were forsaken.

So, unless you add in armor penetration factors to each weapon - a damage reduction reduction if you want - armor as DR is wrong.

That's my rant of the day. Everything here is IMHO, since it's a rant.

Again wrong, during the early use of firearms armour was able to protect against firearms. "Shot-Proof" armour was available which could stop the balls fired from early hand-cannons and arquebus, so against early firearms doing maybe 1d10 damage armour should be able to protect against some attacks (and a critical is again going to blow through the DR).

So armour DR is realistic as long as it can be bypassed on a high roll critical with light weapons and normal rolls with large weapons (and with armour providing DR there will be proportionally more critical threats being converted as the target number "to hit" will be lower). So a Full Plate DR of 8 is not completely unrealistic, a DR of 16 would be.

 

[Darklone]

I will not go into details this time....

Actually: Armour as AC instead of DR is more realistic. So. Statement. My opinion. Comes from fighting with swords. Your opinion may vary.

Now another statement: Rapiers were not developped after armour became obsolete. They were in use since 2000 years B.C. (bronze rapiers from Kurgan for example). They got more common as armour disappeared, but they were NOT new.

 

[Victim]

Which is historically realistic because if you look at what happened people went for bigger and bigger weapons as armour got heavier. If Larger weapons were no more effective against plate armoured opponents why did the plethora of Polearms become so widely used by foot soldiers during the dark ages. If your hypothesis was true everyone would have stayed with light weapons.



Well all this is based on the assumption that you are not using huge DR numbers of armour:

Firstly Daggers were not efficient weapons against heavily armoured opponents, all this piercing the holes in the armour is rubbish against an opponent who is fighting you, unless you got a lucky hit, which is modelled by D&Ds critical hits. So as long as a critical with a dagger can get through you are ok. The other common situation documented was Knights taken out with daggers after being unhorsed. This is modelled by Coup De Grace within D&D and shows how foot soldiers finished him off "helpless" knights.

Daggers were mainly used carried as a utility item, for eating food and defence against unarmoured opponents.



Again wrong, during the early use of firearms armour was able to protect against firearms. "Shot-Proof" armour was available which could stop the balls fired from early hand-cannons and arquebus, so against early firearms doing maybe 1d10 damage armour should be able to protect against some attacks (and a critical is again going to blow through the DR).

So armour DR is realistic as long as it can be bypassed on a high roll critical with light weapons and normal rolls with large weapons (and with armour providing DR there will be proportionally more critical threats being converted as the target number "to hit" will be lower). So a Full Plate DR of 8 is not completely unrealistic, a DR of 16 would be.

8 is pretty huge. A CDG or crit from a normal (10 STR) person will never beat that DR.

Heavy weapons were needed to maintain "damage per round" against heavier armors. 2 guys with 10 HP and +0 atts fight. First, we'll give the guys padded armor and daggers so that normal hits do 2.5 and they'll hit each other 50% of the time. Damage per round is 1.25 and time to kill is 8 rounds. Now we'll arm someone with Full Plate and small shield. He gets hit 10% of the time. Damage against him is .25 and so time to kill is a whooping 40 rounds. So using bigger weapons will have a big impact on that time. Just giving the guy a longsword will shave off 20 rounds.

Finally, I thought polearms were developed against cavalry or adapted from farming tools. Isn't the purpose of pike hedges?

In many ways, Power Attack can circumvent the whole armor versus DR arguement anyway.

 

[Al'Kelhar]

I think arguing about the penetrative capabilities of daggers, rapiers, polearms, firearms, and the protective capabilities of various armours is missing the point. It's like arguing about the colour of the tiles in the bathroom when you haven't built the foundations of your house - it's irrelevant. I'll go over this one more time.

AC is a measure of how hard it is to injure a creature with a physical attack, it is NOT a measure of how hard it is to hit a creature with a physical attack. The people advocating that armour should provide DR miss this fundamental point. We know armour doesn't make you easier to hit, it makes you less likely to suffer injury. Duh. Consequently, under D&D combat mechanics, it is represented by AC. 3E represents difficulty in "hitting" an opponent with the concept of "touch AC".

DR is a 3E concept which provides interesting "flavour", but actually doesn't sit very well with the basic D&D combat mechanic of attack-roll-is-ability-to-injure, AC-is-resistance-to-injury. Remember in 1E and 2E, certain creatures could only be "hit", i.e. damaged, by "+1 or better", "silver", "cold iron" etc. weapons. DR n/magic or DR n/silver etc. provides a similar set of limitations on the effectiveness of attacks other than those specified, and so conceptually it is simply an adjunct to the AC-is-resistance-to-injury philosophy. The alternative of having different ACs against different kinds of weapons - which is the purist approach to AC - is more complex, so has been done away with by introducing what is the mechanically superfluous concept of DR.

DR n/- is inconsistent with the core concept of AC. Conceptually, DR n/- should actually be a bonus to AC.

Again, for those seeking realism in combat, play a game other than D&D. For those seeking to make sense of D&D's combat mechanics, AC-is-resistance-to-injury is a core concept, DR n/- needs to be fixed.

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

 

[AnthonyJ]

The people advocating that armour should provide DR miss this fundamental point. We know armour doesn't make you easier to hit, it makes you less likely to suffer injury. Duh. Consequently, under D&D combat mechanics, it is represented by AC. 3E represents difficulty in "hitting" an opponent with the concept of "touch AC".

The problem is: if you use a vastly overpowered weapon (for example, a rifle against medieval armor), armor doesn't realistically reduce your chances of being injured -- either the attack misses, or it blows through armor and does damage. What armor does do is reduce the severity of those injuries which are suffered.

The same thing applies against things like giant attacks. It's not especially important against human melee weapons.

 

[ciaran00]

It must be an Australian thingy

...

D&D is fantasy. Everything about D&D combat, from AC to hit points to weapon damage, to the effects of instantaneous fire damage, is an abstraction. If you want realism in combat, play another game.

Yeah, maybe it is an Australian thing. Why don't you go play another game? This IS the House Rules forum, isn't it? Your definition of fantasy vastly differs from mine, and it's not even the point. We're supposed to be discussing balance.

Exactly how much fun is it when your DM says "I'm sorry, that Colossal dragon has DR 44/-, so you warrior-types may as well just turn around and moon it in the hopes of distracting it from eviscerating your spellcasters"?

You're right. It sucks when the DM has no balance. That's nothing new. It's an overzealous assumption that only idiot DMs are out to use Grim n Grittty rules, or assign DR ratings to Armour.

ciaran