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Message: <blockquote data-quote="p_johnston" data-source="post: 8569268" data-attributes="member: 7016849">So I do like the concept of not having an attack roll just damage but I'm not sure 5e is the system for it.So the big problem is that 5e is really not built to deal with Damage Reduction (DR) very well. (Note: I've tried introducing DR to my games before so I do have some actual play experience). To boil it down 5e treats the amount of damage a Character (PC or NPC) can do as a lump sum when calculating it's effect in battle whether or not that damage comes from a single attack or multiple. When you have DR this assumption breaks down pretty heavily, especially when the DR number starts to get high.Let's look at some examples from both PC's and NPC's (Note I will be using average damage for pretty much all calculations)PC: Let's look at the rogue vs the monk at say 5th level. The rogue is a consummate striker. All their damage comes from a single well placed strike. at level five they are probably doing 1d8+3d6+4 (19) damage. A monk at the same level through multi attack is doing 3d6+12 damage (24) without flurry of blows, each hit dealing 1d6+4 (8) damage. Now just for simplicity let's use page 274 of the DMG and say the average AC of a cr 5 monster is 15. That translates to 5 DR. Now the rogue get's to do 14 damage vs the monks 9. Ok now let's up it to level 11. The rogue is dealing 1d8+6d6+5 damage (31). The monk is dealing 3d8+15 (30) damage without flurry at 10 damage a pop. Now the average CR for a level 11 monster is 17, which would translate to a DR of 7. The rogue now deals 24 damage to the monks 9.NPC: Let's look at a level one heavy armor fighter with a shield. His AC is 19 which translates to a whopping 9 DR. This means at level one pretty much any monster below CR 2 will end up dealing about 1 damage an attack. Now let's bring them up to level 5 and pit them against a couple of monsters that should be roughly the same challenge. Let's say AC 21/DR 11 now due to plate. They are fighting a Bullette and then a Troll. The Bullette deals 30 damage an attack or 19 through DR. A pretty solid hit. The troll deals 11 with one attack and 7 with it's other to for 3 damage a round.To make DR work in 5e you need to not only rebalance every class to bring them back in line but you also end up needing to redo the entire way you calculate CR and encounter balance, and change a bunch of spells to make them fit. Exploding damage die do help this somewhat but, I would guess, not nearly enough.TLDR: Replacing AC with DR breaks the fundamental combat math of 5e in such a way that will require you to change almost every aspect of the game to make it work.</blockquote>

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