Weapons as AC: It's about time...

[Ninja-to]

An excellent thread on the wizards boards was started here.

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=13788852#post13788852

The basic idea is as the topic of this thread. You can read the original poster's thoughts for the gist.

How many times has the villain stripped the hero of his weapon and then the fight is 'over' as he puts the blade to his neck, then somehow the hero regains his sword and the fight ensues again. Princess Bride had a lot of this, Star Wars (all that lightsaber telekinesis stuff), Rob Roy, all the Zorro films, and on and on. Come to think of it, when Zorro did all his sword work, not a single foe, Zorro included, wore any armour whatsover. In D&D it would have been endless carnage and there's nobody that would've come out unscathed.

A weapon should definitely count as a defense. It's really odd having a fighter in full plate, unarmed, being just as unlikely to hit as when he's wielding his sword.

Player - Ok, I disarm the BBEG.
DM - Ok, his sword drops.
Player - I attack!
DM - Ok... AC is exactly the same. Hmm... hold on. Um yeah... it's the same.

A very simple rule, and not an over-powered one, is apply Base Attack Bonus to AC. This way, armour is where it should be... less important than a sword, but still 'useful'. I hear there may be a DR application to armour instead of AC. Maybe it's time BaB was AC (and attack bonus) instead and armour only counted for damage reduction. In fact I can see that working fairly well even in the current 3.5 rules... the higher the level the PC the harder it is to hit him. I'm sure it could be tweaked some more but it seems *way* more realistic.

"Too many rolls, too many rolls!" I hear you cry. Maybe not. You could have a single opposed roll for example by your bad guy. 4 players attack. Maybe he manages to block the wizard, the priest etc, but the fighter is too skillful and breaks through a parry attempt. He takes damage. But the full plate is pretty good, and shrugs off the damage fairly well. The +1 enchantment on it helps reduce the DR another point, so you'd have to do 9 points of damage to get though... haha maybe the AC points for the armour would need adjusting but you get the idea. There's of course the question of how many attacks he should be able to defend against, but current rules are one round is 6 seconds. I don't see why he can't have a chance at deflecting at least 6 attacks... even a peasant might be able to fend off a group of wolves with a pitchfork, at least for a few rounds...

This has another excellent bonus, free, and only if you (WotC) act now! Not only is it far more realistic, the players, especially the fighters, are going to be *far* less reliant on gear to defend themselves. If there's so much as a chair on the floor or a loose plank, a highly trained fighter will have a chance to defend himself from being slaughtered because he slept in the Inn without his +5 full plate. Call me crazy, but the flimsy cloth the kung-fu masters wore in Crouching Tiger wasn't enchanted. They just knew how to defend themselves *really* well... even a stick can outmatch Green Destiny folks... it's true cuz me seens it.

 

[howandwhy99]

Wow. This is a very cool idea. I hope they implement something like it. I could see heavy weapons, like those 6' 2hd swords, have their damaging power mitigated by having poor defensive scores.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I think that would only apply to unarmored, unshielded characters, and even so, wouldn't that put mages into serious trouble unless they get much better defensive spells?

I like "BAB to Defense" but I'm sure that will be taken into account in 4e anyway. Maybe give unarmed, unshielded characters an AC penalty, but this has to be fair to mages and martial artists, too.

For that matter, some weapons, like swords, are much better for defense than weapons like a mace or a katana... maybe swords should just give an AC bonus, in return for something.

PS a greatsword is actually a defensive weapon. This comes both from a real swordfighter/author and also from Amtgard fighting (yeah, it's obviously not real) where I found getting past a greatsword's guard is very difficult, even for a "Fast Hero" like myself.

 

[Cadfan]

I don't think that BAB is a good thing to use to modify AC. I'd like to keep things as simple as possible.

But I wouldn't mind if weapons added a modifier to armor class. Since different weapons are going to have different abilities (at least for fighters (who take certain feats?)?), one of the things they could do is affect armor class.

 

[ShadowX]

Not a bad idea and it surely corrects the obvious lack of a level-based AC bonus for classes in 3e and accounts for varying degrees of martial proficiency among classes, i.e. fighters should defend better than wizards. Of course you might need some tweaks where a fighter in light armor can apply more of his BAB to AC than a fighter in full plate, similar to Max Dex Bonus to AC right now. As you said, making armor into DR works well with this idea. Unfortunately, D&D as it is setup right now doesn't have a good way of making DR scale appropriately. The very fast growth of power levels complicate any attempts at flat DR bonuses.

 

[RangerWickett]

Conan D20 has parry defense and dodge defense. Your AC basically improves automatically as you level. You use dodge against ranged attacks, and parry against melee attacks. Your Dodge AC is Dex-based, your Parry AC is Str-based. And you can only parry if you have a weapon.

 

[italianranma]

For that matter, some weapons, like swords, are much better for defense than weapons like a mace or a katana... maybe swords should just give an AC bonus, in return for something.

Why would you believe that a sword is an easier weapon to defend with than a Mace or Katana? I'll point you to this site and specifically this video. First off if you use a sword like you see in most movies, blocking with the edge, you're going to ruin it very quickly. It takes a lot of practice to learn to parry with a sword. Not so much with a mace.

And a katana isn't that different from the long swords the western knights were using: If you watch kendo, the practice parrying with a Katana all the time. And they still teach using the flat to parry the edge, even though in most practice fights they use a circular blade that doesn't have an edge.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

This would be fairly easily done in 3.5 by just giving everybody Combat Expertise for free, removing the limit, and granting certain weapons adjustments when using it (such as some exotic weapons have already).
I recall that Rolemaster had something like this, with a statement that only an idiot or a berserker would devote his entire bonus to attack each round.

 

[GlassJaw]

Conan D20 has parry defense and dodge defense. Your AC basically improves automatically as you level. You use dodge against ranged attacks, and parry against melee attacks. Your Dodge AC is Dex-based, your Parry AC is Str-based. And you can only parry if you have a weapon.

It's also one of my favorite mechanics from Conan.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Wow, that's a cool thread. Thanks for sharing.

A very simple rule, and not an over-powered one, is apply Base Attack Bonus to AC. This way, armour is where it should be... less important than a sword, but still 'useful'.

I don't like adding BAB to AC. If 4e uses adding your level to your AC like SWSE, I would maybe just remove that bonus. Even that is kinda fiddly to me. Then what happens when you have a character class that is good a fighting unarmed like the monk? What happens when a character is flat-footed?

Even with the issues that come up like that, I would really like to see something implemented that takes into account a lessening of a characters defense when they don't have a weapon. Man, this is so obvious it kinda annoys me that I never thought of it! To make it easier to work with instead of confusing the numbers, I would just add a new line to the AC stat. Something like:

Armor Class: 20 (flat-footed 17, unarmed 15)

Why would you believe that a sword is an easier weapon to defend with than a Mace or Katana?

I'd say katana and swords are on an even keel. I love using a katana for defense as the thickness of the back edge of the blade really helps in absorbing an impact. Maces are harder by the nature of their weight and how long it takes to get one in position. Its somewhat odd learning to block with the flat of a blade, but I don't find it overly difficult. Man, I often forget how insane John Clements is.