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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guilt Puppy" data-source="post: 813762" data-attributes="member: 6521">Just to chime in for the "armor giving DR makes no sense" crowd:I could see giving armor penalties/bonuses versus certain types of weapons (you could probably model it so that it balanced out enough that it wouldn't effect game balance much... people would be more inclined to carry around a lot of weapons, but to get that benefit they'd have to sacrifice other gear, et cetera...) But DR? Armor is not built to take the force from blows, but to avoid them. (Padded and to an extent leather armor are an exception to this...)Of course, if you really wanted to be accurate about it, piercing weapons would be better than slashing or bludgeoning weapons in all cases...Really, bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing weapons all interact with armor very differently. While piercing weapons are the most likely to get past armor, slashing weapons are going to do more damage when they do... Bludgeoning weapons, on the other hand, have the added benefit of being able to damage through armor (at least, more than slashing, and way more than piercing.)Here's how I'd model it, if you really want to know:Piercing: +1 to hit armored enemies, -1 damage to all enemies. At first it seems odd that it would be better at hitting armored characters than unarmored one, but really it's just negating the effects of the armor (since you're never going to have less than +1 from anything considered armor.) A more accurate way of modelling it would be -1 AC to opponents, but that's harder to track.Slashing: -1 to hit armored enemies, and a flat +1 to damage. Makes slashing weapons universally better against unarmored opponents -- but against armored opponents, your blade is going to be gliding right off.Bludgeoning: -1 to all attacks -- however, if it hits touch AC, it still does damage -- however, each armor is given a certain amount of DR which applies only to bludgeoning touch attacks.That DR should be substantial, up to 15 to 20 or so for full plate. Bludgeoning weapons would become kind of a weird case... You wouldn't want to use it against unarmored opponents, for certain, but against people wearing chain shirt or something with low DR they'd be very nice.In short, slashing weapons would be best against unarmored/light-armored opponents, bludgeoning weapons against opponents in medium armor, and piercing weapons against heavily armored opponents... This gets a little closer to actual weapon/armor dynamics (at least compared to the core rules), without getting too complicated to implement. (although I personally wouldn't want to take the trouble <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> )Some things it really doesn't resolve: Shields, and magical armor bonuses. Piercing weapons don't really negate a shield (although I wouldn't consider a character with a shield "armored" for those purposes), and it's hard to say how well they'd "pierce" through magical armor (in other words, should a monk with Bracers be considered armored for these purposes? I wouldn't say so...)With bludgeoning weapons, the touch attack isn't going to do much of anything if it "touches" the shield and not the body armor... Of course, you could model that as "if it would hit ignoring the armor bonus from a suit of armor", but more people have touch AC written down on their character sheets. Also, with magical armor bonuses, it's tough to say how much of a blow that absorbs... None? All?In cases of multiple damage types (such as a S/P scythe, or B/P morningstar), I'd simply stack the effects... A scythe would have no bonuses or penalties against anyone, and a morningstar would have a -1 to hit unarmored characters, a -1 to all damage, a +0 to hit armored characters, and the benefit of bludgeoning impact... In short, it would become not a great weapon, but a fairly good choice against armored characters -- you're just shifting the penalty of bludgeoning from attack over to damage. (Statistically, a bonus to hit is usually worth more than a bonus to damage, so that's a good trade-off for its penalties against unarmored characters.)It's not a perfect model by any means, and it's full of problems, but it meets the criteria of maintaining balance, reflecting more closely (but still abstractly) the real physics of weaponry, and being reasonably easy to implement and track.(An even simpler way would be to keep the bonuses/penalties entirely on attacks... Piercing +1 to armored, -1 to unarmored, vice versa to slashing -- it's easier to dodge a stab than a swipe, but that stabs going to be much better at sneaking through armor. Bludgeoning, then, could simply be kept as is -- a dependable weapon, good in all circumstances. The effects of impact through armor don't get reflected in this much, except for in the difference between it and slashing -- it's not really better at passing armor than slashing weapons, except for the occasional hit that rings through the armor. Which would do less damage, but you could just say that's what a low damage roll means <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Very much an abstraction, but an operable one...)</blockquote>

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