I've used an armor includes dr based on type(1 point light 2 medium 3 points heavy) and it was pretty trivial in that it allowed me to reduce hp bloat a bit since there were almost certain to be several points from the big guns going away each round from those who played the odds for their favor with multiple attacks. while those who put it all on one attack had a bigger bite. It was fairly trivial to use
Now, how does that apply to monsters? If I have a tough hide monster, do I get DR? What kind of DR? And, doesn't this basically completely remove the Heavy Armor feat? Just a couple of issues right off the bat.
You are missing the point. We don;t care it its not compatible. We don't care if it's extra work. Often it isn't as editing a monster's AC and adding DR is less work that tracking 100 more HP in combat. Or editing a monster's attacks instead of adding 4 more monsters to a room.
The whole OSR movement is built on taking a simple base system and jamming all sorta of rules you prefer on top of it.
That's the point of OPTIONAL RULES. I as the DM am choosing to add what I want and what workload I want and what logic I want the game to follow. You as another DM, don't have to do it.
Again,I don't see the harm, of giving me a book with rules I want and taking my money? Are you saying WOTC doesn't want my money?
Of course they want your money. They want you to buy MORE than one book though. What's the point of selling you a book that means that every other book they produce is no longer of use (or at least is much less useful) to you? And, while you might not care about it not being compatible, I don't think you can speak for everyone. The whole OSR movement is a rounding error when we're talking about the numbers that WotC expects. A single 5e WotC title has likely sold more copies than all the OSR books combined.
They didn't put any of this in their polling.
The 2nd highest Gear book on DMGuild is the Weapon and Armor addition and variant. It's 3rd for the entire site.
The idea that few wants this variants are false.
It's not splitting the market. It's offering options.
It's like how every burger places is offerng a chicken sandwich and many offer a plant-based burger.
It absolutely IS splitting the market. It's splitting their target market (5e players) by making any subsequent purchase more difficult to use. And, remember, before we go putting those goalposts back on roller skates, we're not talking a single change like Armor as DR. We're talking about a shopping list of fundamental game play changes - that list had what, ten, fifteen changes on it? Focusing on one thing, and then claiming how easy it is, misses the point.
There is zero chance that WotC is going to do something like this. There is no upside for WotC at all. Sure, you get a book you want, but, no one else wants it, and now, you can't use any other WotC book without first rewriting most of it. So, some enterprising 3rd party publisher starts banging out supplements that use those variant rules. Which module are you going to buy? The WotC offering du jour or that 3rd party module that incorporates your new rule changes?
And, let's say that there is a real market there. There is a sizable number of fans that incorporate these variant rules, but, not enough for WotC to directly market to - say, 20% of gamers. WotC is still going to market directly to that 80% - they'd be stupid not to. And poof, they've just created another company who spends the next decade chipping away at all the goodwill WotC has built up over the past decade ("LOOK, THIS company responds to its fans, WotC doesn't care about what you want!") and piggybacking on WotC's marketing dollars.
You still haven't provided any upside for WotC to do this.
