Reworking Fortification

[Kerrick]

I really like this idea too. I'd go with the minus to the confirmation roll (+5 armor would pretty well negate all crits) and the minus to dice. Points/die works well enough - 1d6 average is 3.5, so a set of +1 armor would reduce 16% of damage, +3 would be 50%, and +5 would be 80%. These values would be a bit more balanced than 25/50/100 we have now - even greater fortification would still leave a small chance of damage getting through. However, if you want it to scale higher (into epic, with +6 and above armor), you can't reduce points/die. Dice of damage, however, continue to increase, which makes this a more viable mechanic.

The problem is that this special property does protect against at least two forms of special attack (does Heavy Fortification negate Death Attacks?)

I think so. Death attacks only work if you can do a sneak attack, and if the sneak attack is negated, so would the death attack. Under your system, it wouldn't *negate* the DA as such, but I would apply a bonus to the target's save equal to the plus of the armor. Sneak attack damage would be mitigated as normal.

Ablative armor projects a deflective field of force when opponents strike a telling blow, making it very diffiicult for those blows to strike true. The armor comes in two grades, which offer varying degrees of protection. When a creature threatens a critical hit against the wearer of lesser ablative armor, the creature suffers a -10 penalty to its roll to confirm the threat. The greater version of this ability instead imposes a -20 penalty.
Moderate abjuration; CL 12th; Craft Magic Arms and Armor; stoneskin or repulsion; Price +1 bonus (lesser) or +2 bonus (greater).

Not a bad idea, but I think the greater should be +4 to +5, like greater fortification - like I said before, -20 pretty well negates most crits.

 

[comrade raoul]

Not a bad idea, but I think the greater should be +4 to +5, like greater fortification - like I said before, -20 pretty well negates most crits.

The greater ablative ability is straightforwardly worse than greater fortification--it offers at best a 95% immunity to critical hits (and less than that, for characters with very high attack bonuses) and no protection against sneak attacks. So +5 should be right out.

How should it be priced? Well, it can help here to do some math. Think of the attack penalty from the ablative ability like a very big bonus to AC, but one that only comes up some small amount of the time--whenever an opponent is trying to confirm a critical hit. (This is one of those times where it is really helpful to think of a roll to confirm a threat as working a lot like an extra attack.) So the value of the bonus is going to be proportional to the product of the AC boost and the frequency with which it comes up. So how often does it come up? That depends on the attacker's critical threat range. Let's test it with a 19-20 threat range.

Given a 19-20 threat range, roughly 1 out of every 10 attacks will be a threat, yielding the "extra attack roll" that the ablative ability is helpful against. This means ablative will be helpful against, for that threat range, 1 out of 11 attacks, or about 9.1% of the time. If we multiply the magnitude of the bonus (+20) by the frequency with which it comes up (1/11) we get about 1.81--that means, for a 19-20 threat range, it provides a slightly smaller increase in expected defense than a straight-up +2 bonus to AC. Against most opponents, the greater ablative ability will actually be nontrivially less effective, because a significant amount of the AC boost will be overkill (if your enemy needs a 10 or better to hit anyway, a +10 bonus to AC is just as good as +20). It will also be nontrivially less effective against the large number of opponents who have a 20/x2 crit because they attack with natural weapons.

However, it will be better (though in many cases still not quite as good as a straight-up +2 AC bonus) against opponents with larger threat ranges, or against opponents who will hit you all the time anyway (even if their attack bonus exceeds your AC by too much for your AC to be helpful, your armor will now still offer a bit of help against their crits). It also deserves a bit of an edge because, since players arguably have a reason to be risk-averse, benefits that remove some of the unpredictably in combat might (again, arguably) work disproportionately in their favor. In general, though, I think that ablative works pretty well as a +2 enhancement, although if you thought the risk-reduction element was very valuable, or you thought lots of enemies had attacks with high threat ranges or multipliers, you could certainly make a case for its being +3.

 

[Kaodi]

What if fortification was treated as damage reduction vs. critical and sneak attack damage?
10/- for 25%, 20/- for 50%, 30/- for 75% and 40/- for 100%. That way, fortification would be better protection against weak opponents, and worse protection against stronger opponents, while still being worthwhile against stronger opponents.

 

[Quartz]

What if fortification was treated as damage reduction vs. critical and sneak attack damage?
10/- for 25%, 20/- for 50%, 30/- for 75% and 40/- for 100%. That way, fortification would be better protection against weak opponents, and worse protection against stronger opponents, while still being worthwhile against stronger opponents.

Brilliantly simple, and simply brilliant! One could say that for a Death Attack (or whatever) to succeed, at least 1 HP of SA damage must get through.

 

[Kerrick]

What if fortification was treated as damage reduction vs. critical and sneak attack damage? 10/- for 25%, 20/- for 50%, 30/- for 75% and 40/- for 100%. That way, fortification would be better protection against weak opponents, and worse protection against stronger opponents, while still being worthwhile against stronger opponents.

Very nice. But the pricing might be a bit much - the great invulnerability power from the ELH grants 10/magic (+4), 15/magic (+5), and 5/epic (+6). Obviously 10/- is a lot better than 10/magic, since nothing gets around it. Course, it could be argued (and quite rightly) that 10/magic isn't worth a +4 bonus - I'd give it +2, because it's pretty well useless after about 8th level - everyone's going to have either magic weapons, DR /magic (which lets them get around it) or do enough damage to exceed the DR. DR 10/-, I would put at around... +3; DR 20/- at +4(?), 30/- at +5, 40/- at +6. Technically, heavy fortification should be epic anyway - that's where all the immunity items show up - so giving it a +6 makes a little sense.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Of course, it could also be argued that a 10/- only vs Crit and SA is less useful than a 10/magic all the time...

I think starting at DR 10/- as a +2 enchancement works. Having it start as a +1 would make it too much of a good thing, the usual sign for brokenness. Having it start at +3 or above, imho, would make the cost benefit too wide and no-one would bother.

But, I will snag this for the HR folder

 

[Quartz]

Ah, but it's not a pure DR, it's a highly restricted DR - only vs criticals and sneak attacks, not regular damage.

 

[Kerrick]

Of course, it could also be argued that a 10/- only vs Crit and SA is less useful than a 10/magic all the time...

True, true. So a reduction of one plus, putting it around +2, would be just about right. What are we thinking for the other two - +3 and +4?

 

[Quartz]

I'm thinking that a DR of 10/-, only vs Crits etc should be a +2 enhancement, 20/- vs crits etc +3, 30 would be +4, and 40 +5. At Epic levels, I'd suggest 20 per step, so 60 would be a +6 enhancement and 100 a +8 enhancement.