Class Based Defense System [Archive] - Wizards Community

Class Based Defense System [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Necroblivion
06-26-07, 10:06 PM My campaign setting mixes D&D classes in with d20 Future material as well, so a suitable defense system had to be reached.

By adding the base attack bonus with the base reflex save and halving the result (round down) you get the defense score for any character class. This represents both combat training and ability to dodge.

The groupings presented in the UA did nothing for me, so I devised this system. It works pretty well. Let me know what you think. :b:
Lawkeeper
06-27-07, 07:44 AM Interesting idea. What do you do of armor and natural armor ? You convert to DR, wholly or partly ?
Necroblivion
06-27-07, 05:59 PM For my system, we are converting all armor types into a damage reduction die. So, you have on plate mail? You now have a d8 protection rating that reduces all physical damage you take. Studded leather? d3 protection.

Some naysayer is going to say that this is too much, or that it slows down the game, but my players love it. It is a worthy trade off.

It gets tricky when you combine in a lot of different types of protection (natural armor, etc.), but we just add up the total and find a dice set that matches appropriately.
Eater_Of_Souls
06-28-07, 03:36 AM defence value works as long as your characters are at reasonably low level after that they start to get feats like combat reflexes and such which makes their AC's to soar on the better side of 30 ...
In other words you need just one guy min/maxing AC and your system is done for unless you plan for it before hand. :schemes:
Tomkin
06-28-07, 11:04 AM If it works for your players, then it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. :P

Now, to find a way to break it...

How do you manage armor DR, by the way? If studded leather is 1d3 and full plate is 1d8, it seems like you don't have enough in between. For natural armor, is a +X bonus just converted into 1dX DR? Does armor DR stack with other sources such as barbarian DR or natural armor DR?

It looks like a good system, though.
Necroblivion
06-28-07, 05:39 PM For natural armor, is a +X bonus just converted into 1dX DR? Does armor DR stack with other sources such as barbarian DR or natural armor DR?

It really is that easy. Just add it all up, including DR and then find a die total. I'm working on a chart that more easily summarizes everything.
Necroblivion
06-28-07, 05:42 PM defence value works as long as your characters are at reasonably low level after that they start to get feats like combat reflexes and such which makes their AC's to soar on the better side of 30 ...
In other words you need just one guy min/maxing AC and your system is done for unless you plan for it before hand. :schemes:

AC's over thirty are commonplace in 10th level or above games anyway without this rules modification. There is also the fact that you lose your class defense bonus when flat-footed, surprised, etc.

I'm thinking about including a modifier to defense based on your armor. Obviously if you rely on armor to mitigate damage, then you aren't dodging as effectively as if you were not wearing armor. That might balance things out some more.

Honestly though, even if you attempt to make Defense Man!!!, you end up a one sided character who can do little else. It is just the same as every other one-trick pony that ever gets ridden to the game table.

I of course think that one trick ponies make good glue...
Vaelan
06-28-07, 10:17 PM I think that you would be better served with a system that originates from an objective rather than a combination of statistics you thought up that happens to seem reasonable. It probably isn't a big deal, though.

As for the system itself, the Defense Bonuses range from +0 (common) to +16 (exceedingly rare). I don't know the specifics, but it seems to me that defense significantly disadvantaged. Is this intentional?

As for the Super AC character, I have played two characters with ACs that basically amount to untouchable. One was your typical full-attacker and took exactly -4 to hit in return for being untouchable. The other was a Warblade that took no penalties. Don't be so quick to assume that any character with good AC will be a one-trick pony.
Necroblivion
06-28-07, 10:30 PM Ha ha... warblade. Bring's back fond memories...

As for the overall weak defense... yes. It is meant to be relatively soft unless you happen to be one of those high level characters from a base class that enjoys both those statistics.

My goal is to have the characters hit more often (element of danger), but be able to mitigate some of the damage (DR die roll). As I said before, it made combat far more exhilarating for my players.

My gunslinger class turned out to be one of those freakishly high defense classes, but they are limited to light armor. It seems to work out ok.
Lawkeeper
06-29-07, 04:19 AM As I understand it, you only replace armor and natural armor ? What do you do with the shields ?

About the weakness : if it only replace armor and natural armor, +0 to +16 is a bad way of comparing it, better have specific take at it to get a more detailed analysis.

For a fighter/paladin/barbarian, it means his defense goes from +0 at 1st level to +13 at 20th level, with a non-regular progression of +1 every two levels and an additional +1 three times. Taking a few bookmarks, we get :
- 1st lvl : +0
- 3rd lvl : +2
- 6th lvl : +4
- 9th lvl : +6
- 15th lvl : +10
- 20th lvl : +13
Compare that to an ordinary fighter/paladin going for heavy armor. At first level, he's gonna have scale mail (50gp), upgrading to half-plate at 3rd level (600gp on 2700gp) and certainly a full plate at 6th levl, maybe even +1 full plate (2650gp), which is improved with the levels (+3 at 9th, +5 at 15th - armors are cheap). Add in a +1 amulet of natural armor at that point, improving it with the levels (+2 at 9th, +4 at 15th, +5 at 20th), and we get :
- 1st lvl : +4............. 4 higher than defense variant
- 3rd lvl : +7............. 5 higher
- 6th lvl : +10........... 6 higher
- 9th lvl : +13........... 7 higher
- 15th lvl : +17......... 7 higher
- 20th lvl : +18.......... 5 higher

So, the defense variant gives a lower AC particulary at the middle range, but the difference is reduced at max level. On average, it still amounts to a big 6-point difference, or 30% of the attacks will hit instead of miss. Suppose a challenging encounter where you'd normally have to roll 11 to hit (50% hits, 50% misses), your attacks now hit on a 5+ on the roll (80% hits, 20% misses). The point of rolling an attack roll is mostly unimportant for the first attack. It however also modifies the importance of iterative attacks : the second will hit 55% of the time, the third 30%. This makes the iterative attacks more important again, as you stand a chance of hitting more often with them (instead of have a small chance with your second but close to none with the third) : with three attacks, one main and two iteratives, you get only 31.5% chances of missing with both iterative attacks (you fail with both one round out of three), while with the regular AC system you have 71.25% chances of missing with both (so, an iterative attack hits only once every three rounds). On average with for a BAB+11/+15 character, your system brings 1.65 hits per round instead of 0.8 hits per round with a stand-still full attack, doubly more effective : compare to a simple +60% relative efficiency for standard attacks (going from 50% to 80% hits). So, your system encourages standing still and taking "dumb" full attacks. This is to be taken into consideration too : every character that happens to have more attacks than standard is going to get a bigger advantage than sword-and-shield characters.

I'll go on with an even more detailed example using a 20th lvl Fighter, Strength 30 (15 base + 5 level-increases + 4 inherent + 6 item), using a +5 shock & frost bastard sword with which he is specialized and using in one hand. I count on the fact that with the normal rules he'd need to roll an 11+ to hit with his first attack, given an appropriately challenging encounter. His damage potential is 1d10+10 (Str) +5 (enhancement) + 2d6 (frost & shock) +2 (specialization) = 1d10+2d6+17 = 29.5 average. Say he's hitting a foe in a +5 full plate & +5 amulet of natural armor, so +18 armor/natural armor for a (theoretical) d18 damage reduction for a -5 on his AC compared to the normal system.
On average, with a full attack action he has 1.55 hits per round with your system, or 0.85 hits/round with the regular system : 82% more hits. On average, his dmg reduction protects him of 9.5 points, bringing the average damage of his sword to 20 (pure coincidence, it wasn't meant to be that). On an average round, he will do 31 dmg with your system compared to only 25.075 dmg with regular game : it brings up his average dmg potential by 24%. Nice.
Now, look at a standard action : he gets a 75% chances of hitting instead of 50%, so it's 50% more hits. On average, with your system he'd do 15 dmg/round compared to 14.75 dmg with the regular game : hardly a 1% increase efficiency. Yup, on standard attacks your system and the regular one are on par - but your's is greatly favoring the full-attack action.

Now, let's consider that same Fighter20 uses his sword two-handed and has Power Attack. His regular average damage without PA is 34.5 ; with 5-point PA (5 points being the difference in AC between systems), it's rising to 44.5, much more than single-handed. By using PA for 5 points, he's bringing his average number of hits per round on par with the regular system, so 0.85 hits/round for full-attacks and 0.5 hits/round for standard attack. His average damage with the regular system is respectively 29.325 and 17.25. Under your system, counting the same 9.5 average reduction, his average damage per hit is 44.5-9.5=35 : slightly better than the average damage per hit of the regular game, but in essence his PA-use is simply cancelling your variant. On average rounds, he's gonna make 29.75 or 17.5 dmg/round, less than 2% more than the regular system. It's logic that it cancels out : a 5-point lower AC allows for a +10 dmg to offset the average 9.5 DR. For 20th level, it's fine.
But what for other levels ? Look at 6th : +10 armor/natural compared to +4 defense. 6-point lower AC, for a d10 DR giving an average of 5.5. A two-handed 6-point PA is giving +12 dmg : it not only fully offsets the DR, but it also gives a +6.5 dmg. At this lower-middle level, using PA two-handed is actually greatly increasing your dmg potential compared to regular system.
And that's where I see a small problem : at those middle levels, PA is even more abusable than now.

So, in the end your system is encouraging the research of additional attacks (TWF, rapid shot, etc) and the 2H-PA abuse. The "ordinary" sword&shield style will suffer from this - and it's not as if the current game isn't already favoring 2H-PA and TWF.
Zyrusticae
06-29-07, 06:52 PM I've actually done something like this myself...

Rather than repeating what I've already said, I'll point you to my thread, here (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=849872). I think my system works out pretty well. (Funny, I didn't get nearly as much feedback as this thread did... heh.)
starfire311
06-29-07, 06:58 PM My campaign setting mixes D&D classes in with d20 Future material as well, so a suitable defense system had to be reached.

By adding the base attack bonus with the base reflex save and halving the result (round down) you get the defense score for any character class. This represents both combat training and ability to dodge.

The groupings presented in the UA did nothing for me, so I devised this system. It works pretty well. Let me know what you think. :b:

I nearly the same thing I did for my D20 future game.

You got a dodge bonus = to reflex save and a parry bonus = to 1/2 BAB. Parry applied while flat-footed and dodge applied to touch attacks. Also the armor check penalty applied to dodge bonus.
Necroblivion
06-30-07, 08:01 PM You got a dodge bonus = to reflex save and a parry bonus = to 1/2 BAB. Parry applied while flat-footed and dodge applied to touch attacks. Also the armor check penalty applied to dodge bonus.

That's interesting. I might toy with that too. I guess my rules are more abstract. I don't know about parrying when flat-footed, as that implies that you are unable to react. Parrying should be similar.

Conan d20 has parrying and dodge rules, but they are basically extra rolls each time you are attacked. I'm not sure that's a good idea either.
starfire311
07-01-07, 02:56 PM That's interesting. I might toy with that too. I guess my rules are more abstract. I don't know about parrying when flat-footed, as that implies that you are unable to react. Parrying should be similar.

If you can use a shield while flat-footed, I dont see why you can't parry... the parry bonus, as I did it, works exactly like a shield bonus, except with adifferent name so they would still stack.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Necroblivion 06-26-07, 10:06 PM	My campaign setting mixes D&D classes in with d20 Future material as well, so a suitable defense system had to be reached. By adding the base attack bonus with the base reflex save and halving the result (round down) you get the defense score for any character class. This represents both combat training and ability to dodge. The groupings presented in the UA did nothing for me, so I devised this system. It works pretty well. Let me know what you think. :b:
Lawkeeper 06-27-07, 07:44 AM	Interesting idea. What do you do of armor and natural armor ? You convert to DR, wholly or partly ?
Necroblivion 06-27-07, 05:59 PM	For my system, we are converting all armor types into a damage reduction die. So, you have on plate mail? You now have a d8 protection rating that reduces all physical damage you take. Studded leather? d3 protection. Some naysayer is going to say that this is too much, or that it slows down the game, but my players love it. It is a worthy trade off. It gets tricky when you combine in a lot of different types of protection (natural armor, etc.), but we just add up the total and find a dice set that matches appropriately.
Eater_Of_Souls 06-28-07, 03:36 AM	defence value works as long as your characters are at reasonably low level after that they start to get feats like combat reflexes and such which makes their AC's to soar on the better side of 30 ... In other words you need just one guy min/maxing AC and your system is done for unless you plan for it before hand. :schemes:
Tomkin 06-28-07, 11:04 AM	If it works for your players, then it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. :P Now, to find a way to break it... How do you manage armor DR, by the way? If studded leather is 1d3 and full plate is 1d8, it seems like you don't have enough in between. For natural armor, is a +X bonus just converted into 1dX DR? Does armor DR stack with other sources such as barbarian DR or natural armor DR? It looks like a good system, though.
Necroblivion 06-28-07, 05:39 PM	For natural armor, is a +X bonus just converted into 1dX DR? Does armor DR stack with other sources such as barbarian DR or natural armor DR? It really is that easy. Just add it all up, including DR and then find a die total. I'm working on a chart that more easily summarizes everything.
Necroblivion 06-28-07, 05:42 PM	defence value works as long as your characters are at reasonably low level after that they start to get feats like combat reflexes and such which makes their AC's to soar on the better side of 30 ... In other words you need just one guy min/maxing AC and your system is done for unless you plan for it before hand. :schemes: AC's over thirty are commonplace in 10th level or above games anyway without this rules modification. There is also the fact that you lose your class defense bonus when flat-footed, surprised, etc. I'm thinking about including a modifier to defense based on your armor. Obviously if you rely on armor to mitigate damage, then you aren't dodging as effectively as if you were not wearing armor. That might balance things out some more. Honestly though, even if you attempt to make Defense Man!!!, you end up a one sided character who can do little else. It is just the same as every other one-trick pony that ever gets ridden to the game table. I of course think that one trick ponies make good glue...
Vaelan 06-28-07, 10:17 PM	I think that you would be better served with a system that originates from an objective rather than a combination of statistics you thought up that happens to seem reasonable. It probably isn't a big deal, though. As for the system itself, the Defense Bonuses range from +0 (common) to +16 (exceedingly rare). I don't know the specifics, but it seems to me that defense significantly disadvantaged. Is this intentional? As for the Super AC character, I have played two characters with ACs that basically amount to untouchable. One was your typical full-attacker and took exactly -4 to hit in return for being untouchable. The other was a Warblade that took no penalties. Don't be so quick to assume that any character with good AC will be a one-trick pony.
Necroblivion 06-28-07, 10:30 PM	Ha ha... warblade. Bring's back fond memories... As for the overall weak defense... yes. It is meant to be relatively soft unless you happen to be one of those high level characters from a base class that enjoys both those statistics. My goal is to have the characters hit more often (element of danger), but be able to mitigate some of the damage (DR die roll). As I said before, it made combat far more exhilarating for my players. My gunslinger class turned out to be one of those freakishly high defense classes, but they are limited to light armor. It seems to work out ok.
Lawkeeper 06-29-07, 04:19 AM	As I understand it, you only replace armor and natural armor ? What do you do with the shields ? About the weakness : if it only replace armor and natural armor, +0 to +16 is a bad way of comparing it, better have specific take at it to get a more detailed analysis. For a fighter/paladin/barbarian, it means his defense goes from +0 at 1st level to +13 at 20th level, with a non-regular progression of +1 every two levels and an additional +1 three times. Taking a few bookmarks, we get : - 1st lvl : +0 - 3rd lvl : +2 - 6th lvl : +4 - 9th lvl : +6 - 15th lvl : +10 - 20th lvl : +13 Compare that to an ordinary fighter/paladin going for heavy armor. At first level, he's gonna have scale mail (50gp), upgrading to half-plate at 3rd level (600gp on 2700gp) and certainly a full plate at 6th levl, maybe even +1 full plate (2650gp), which is improved with the levels (+3 at 9th, +5 at 15th - armors are cheap). Add in a +1 amulet of natural armor at that point, improving it with the levels (+2 at 9th, +4 at 15th, +5 at 20th), and we get : - 1st lvl : +4............. 4 higher than defense variant - 3rd lvl : +7............. 5 higher - 6th lvl : +10........... 6 higher - 9th lvl : +13........... 7 higher - 15th lvl : +17......... 7 higher - 20th lvl : +18.......... 5 higher So, the defense variant gives a lower AC particulary at the middle range, but the difference is reduced at max level. On average, it still amounts to a big 6-point difference, or 30% of the attacks will hit instead of miss. Suppose a challenging encounter where you'd normally have to roll 11 to hit (50% hits, 50% misses), your attacks now hit on a 5+ on the roll (80% hits, 20% misses). The point of rolling an attack roll is mostly unimportant for the first attack. It however also modifies the importance of iterative attacks : the second will hit 55% of the time, the third 30%. This makes the iterative attacks more important again, as you stand a chance of hitting more often with them (instead of have a small chance with your second but close to none with the third) : with three attacks, one main and two iteratives, you get only 31.5% chances of missing with both iterative attacks (you fail with both one round out of three), while with the regular AC system you have 71.25% chances of missing with both (so, an iterative attack hits only once every three rounds). On average with for a BAB+11/+15 character, your system brings 1.65 hits per round instead of 0.8 hits per round with a stand-still full attack, doubly more effective : compare to a simple +60% relative efficiency for standard attacks (going from 50% to 80% hits). So, your system encourages standing still and taking "dumb" full attacks. This is to be taken into consideration too : every character that happens to have more attacks than standard is going to get a bigger advantage than sword-and-shield characters. I'll go on with an even more detailed example using a 20th lvl Fighter, Strength 30 (15 base + 5 level-increases + 4 inherent + 6 item), using a +5 shock & frost bastard sword with which he is specialized and using in one hand. I count on the fact that with the normal rules he'd need to roll an 11+ to hit with his first attack, given an appropriately challenging encounter. His damage potential is 1d10+10 (Str) +5 (enhancement) + 2d6 (frost & shock) +2 (specialization) = 1d10+2d6+17 = 29.5 average. Say he's hitting a foe in a +5 full plate & +5 amulet of natural armor, so +18 armor/natural armor for a (theoretical) d18 damage reduction for a -5 on his AC compared to the normal system. On average, with a full attack action he has 1.55 hits per round with your system, or 0.85 hits/round with the regular system : 82% more hits. On average, his dmg reduction protects him of 9.5 points, bringing the average damage of his sword to 20 (pure coincidence, it wasn't meant to be that). On an average round, he will do 31 dmg with your system compared to only 25.075 dmg with regular game : it brings up his average dmg potential by 24%. Nice. Now, look at a standard action : he gets a 75% chances of hitting instead of 50%, so it's 50% more hits. On average, with your system he'd do 15 dmg/round compared to 14.75 dmg with the regular game : hardly a 1% increase efficiency. Yup, on standard attacks your system and the regular one are on par - but your's is greatly favoring the full-attack action. Now, let's consider that same Fighter20 uses his sword two-handed and has Power Attack. His regular average damage without PA is 34.5 ; with 5-point PA (5 points being the difference in AC between systems), it's rising to 44.5, much more than single-handed. By using PA for 5 points, he's bringing his average number of hits per round on par with the regular system, so 0.85 hits/round for full-attacks and 0.5 hits/round for standard attack. His average damage with the regular system is respectively 29.325 and 17.25. Under your system, counting the same 9.5 average reduction, his average damage per hit is 44.5-9.5=35 : slightly better than the average damage per hit of the regular game, but in essence his PA-use is simply cancelling your variant. On average rounds, he's gonna make 29.75 or 17.5 dmg/round, less than 2% more than the regular system. It's logic that it cancels out : a 5-point lower AC allows for a +10 dmg to offset the average 9.5 DR. For 20th level, it's fine. But what for other levels ? Look at 6th : +10 armor/natural compared to +4 defense. 6-point lower AC, for a d10 DR giving an average of 5.5. A two-handed 6-point PA is giving +12 dmg : it not only fully offsets the DR, but it also gives a +6.5 dmg. At this lower-middle level, using PA two-handed is actually greatly increasing your dmg potential compared to regular system. And that's where I see a small problem : at those middle levels, PA is even more abusable than now. So, in the end your system is encouraging the research of additional attacks (TWF, rapid shot, etc) and the 2H-PA abuse. The "ordinary" sword&shield style will suffer from this - and it's not as if the current game isn't already favoring 2H-PA and TWF.
Zyrusticae 06-29-07, 06:52 PM	I've actually done something like this myself... Rather than repeating what I've already said, I'll point you to my thread, here (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=849872). I think my system works out pretty well. (Funny, I didn't get nearly as much feedback as this thread did... heh.)
starfire311 06-29-07, 06:58 PM	My campaign setting mixes D&D classes in with d20 Future material as well, so a suitable defense system had to be reached. By adding the base attack bonus with the base reflex save and halving the result (round down) you get the defense score for any character class. This represents both combat training and ability to dodge. The groupings presented in the UA did nothing for me, so I devised this system. It works pretty well. Let me know what you think. :b: I nearly the same thing I did for my D20 future game. You got a dodge bonus = to reflex save and a parry bonus = to 1/2 BAB. Parry applied while flat-footed and dodge applied to touch attacks. Also the armor check penalty applied to dodge bonus.
Necroblivion 06-30-07, 08:01 PM	You got a dodge bonus = to reflex save and a parry bonus = to 1/2 BAB. Parry applied while flat-footed and dodge applied to touch attacks. Also the armor check penalty applied to dodge bonus. That's interesting. I might toy with that too. I guess my rules are more abstract. I don't know about parrying when flat-footed, as that implies that you are unable to react. Parrying should be similar. Conan d20 has parrying and dodge rules, but they are basically extra rolls each time you are attacked. I'm not sure that's a good idea either.
starfire311 07-01-07, 02:56 PM	That's interesting. I might toy with that too. I guess my rules are more abstract. I don't know about parrying when flat-footed, as that implies that you are unable to react. Parrying should be similar. If you can use a shield while flat-footed, I dont see why you can't parry... the parry bonus, as I did it, works exactly like a shield bonus, except with adifferent name so they would still stack.