Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="sorites" data-source="post: 5701669" data-attributes="member: 64431">I've been futzing around with the rules this afternoon, and I'm not sure I want to base levels off of XP as strange as that might sound. Your idea about the Improved tree is interesting. I'll have to think about it. Our discussion about skills and skill caps has got me thinking about Attack rolls and how they are resolved. I've been thinking for a while that I'd like Armor to act more like DR than traditional AC. And the defender's combat skill (if any) is used to calculate a defense score. Something like this: Attacker rolls d20 + combat skill + ability modifier + situational modifiersDefense Score = 10 (base) + combat skill (if any) + ability modifierSo if you have a starting character with a Martial Weapons skill of 2 and a Strength bonus of 1, he'd roll d20 + 2 + 1. Versus his identical twin, he would need to hit a Defense Score of 10 + 2 + 1 = 13. If you are hit by an attack, the attacker rolls damage, which is reduced by your armor value. If your chainmail gives 5 AC, and the attacker does 8 damage, then you've taken 3.On a related note, I mentioned earlier that I have done away with hit points. Instead, there is a damage track which records your status from uninjured to dead. This track has 10 boxes. So if you want to think about it like you have 10 hit points, that's fine (just not exactly correct because different stages of damage result in penalties unlike classic hit points).So if a longsword is allowed to do 1d8 damage, then it could severely wound someone who is not wearing armor. On the other hand, someone in plate mail might have nothing to fear from a longsword.If I allow the Strength bonus to affect the damage roll, then against the leather armor wearer, a strong fighter wielding a longsword would be quite deadly. 1d8+4 against DR2 is quite powerful when you only have 10hp.Maybe this is fine. As I read it, I'm not quite sure what I was worried about. An ogre or a dragon might have high armor values from their natural armor to help their survivability. This kind of combat would probably be pretty quick and deadly. Gritty, maybe. But would it be fun? I read a WotC article a while back that talked about the "neener-neener" problem where you "hit" but then something (like DR) turns your success into failure. It's like when you're a kid. "Hey, I hit you!" "No you didn't -- neener-neener!"This also means that a "weak" weapon would have no chance of hitting a character wearing heavy enough armor, except melee attacks with a high Strength. A dagger (d4) would not be able to hurt someone wearing chainmail (AC 5). In an earlier draft, I had written some rules that would allow for called shots to allow an attacker to bypass armor (and therefore the defender's DR). Thoughts?</blockquote>

Verification