Daggers and Armor as DR [Archive] - Wizards Community

Daggers and Armor as DR [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Korimyr the Rat
02-13-05, 09:40 PM I'm using the "Armor as DR" variant from Unearthed Arcana, but one of my PCs uses two daggers in combat, and I'm worried this will make him completely ineffectual when the party starts facing heavily-armored opponents. What can I do to make him more effective?

I'm considering adding an "Armor Piercing" quality to some weapons, like daggers and picks, that halves the DR bonus from armor and natural armor, and allowing adamantine weapons to ignore DR from armor and natural armor entirely, but I'm worried that the latter ability will overpower Monks once they hit 16th level.

Any comments/ideas?
Salla
02-14-05, 02:03 PM Well, let's see ...

The standard armors in D&D would only get you up to a maximum of DR 4/-, which does more or less nullify a dagger (barring strength bonuses, etc). Natural Armor monsters can get worse than that.

What class the character is can make a big difference here. If he's a fighter, he can get Weapon Specialization and Greater Weapons Specialization, which gives him +4 damage; that counters the DR. If he's a Rogue, he has sneak attack, which will more than overwhelm the DR. If he's a Ranger, let's hope he's up against a favored enemy.

Magicking the daggers would also help. Getting one (or more than one) elemental enhancement on it would let some damage go through, even if the dagger itself doesn't deal any damage. This might be an interesting time to revisit our old friend, the Sure-Striking weapon enhancement; in 3.0, it let a weapon pierce any of the DR for a +1 adjustment, but that was when DR had a hierarchy. I would think that changing it to overcome DR X/- (only) for a +1 would be incredibly weak in a regular D&D game, but it might work in yours.

A +1 adjustment for weapon value gets you something like flaming, which averages +3.5 damage; even assuming that you're regularly going to be running into Full Plate Armored targets, the +1 for 'Sure Striking 3.5' is about right, since you'll net four more points of damage than you otherwise would have.

Sorry if I was kind of rambling there ... hope this line of thought helps. :)
Xeviat-DM
02-14-05, 03:13 PM First off, have critical hits ignore damage reduction. Second, inform the player that strength is almost a requirement for melee characters in a campaign which uses armor as DR. Third, look into alternate sources of damage, such as sneak attack and possibly an Improved Weapon Finesse (Int to Damage; precision based) feat could be offered.

There is a feat which allows you to ignore some amount of DR. It is in Draconomicon. Check it out.
Robbo
02-16-05, 04:09 AM I recognised this problem with play balance a while ago, when implementing armour as DR, VP & WP instead of HP, and a few other bits and pieces from unearthed arcana. I dusted off (and bought) a few books about real medieval combat to get a feel for what the situation would really have been like for someone wielding a dagger against someone in full plate armour.

Although some daggers (like some swords) were designed specifically for piercing armour (i.e. diamond cross section, with point but no blade) it doesn't seem very likely that they would have worked against several millimetres of steel, and full plate armour had developed to the point that it didn't have many vulnerable areas in the 1400s' and 1500's. Such piercing weapons appear to have been effective against chainmail.

However it seems to have been a relatively common experience that when an armoured foe was knocked down there was an opportunity to slide a thin flat knife into his visor, or between joints in his armour. i.e. Agincourt.

Of course D&D has more "cinematic" options, but in terms of a relatively realistic approach I would do the following:

convince your dagger-specialist player that his weapons are next to useless against plate armour in normal combat and that he must modify his methods. He would be aware that against such foes, he would have a few options: (1) use a heavy bludgeoning weapon to either damage the armour to the extent that the joints sieze, or knock the armour wearer over, (2) trip and grapple as up close his knives could be effective through any available nook and cranny, (3) allow a "called shot" to give him a small chance of throwing his knife through the target's visor, (4) allow a new feat along the lines of "Armourer's Secrets" perhaps with prerequisits of some skill levels in armourer, and a minimum to hit adjustment, and minimum intelligence and/or dexterity, which would allow the person with the feat to deliberately target weak points of armour with specific weapons. Perhaps -2 to hit for each point of DR circumvented, and also perhaps use of the feat makes one vulnerable to an attack of opportunity.

Just some thoughts, of course there are any number of magical means to destroy plate armour...perhaps a weapon that on contact causes plates of armour to simply fall from there wearer's body?
Gold Katana
02-16-05, 09:29 AM Daggers are pretty much useless against plate armor, et al. Also, against bears and other animals with high natural armor.

The problem isn't the system - it's your player. He has willfully chosen a non-combat weapon to take into combat (probably because "it's cool"). There is a price for poor choices.

All the options listed above will help him offset his unusual fighting style. But I would not start changing the game mechanics to cater to a player who has insisted on a poor character build.
Thelon Fairblade
02-16-05, 10:10 AM There is a "Deft Strike" feat in Complete Adventurer that allow (with a Spot check) one attack every other round that ignores armor bonuses -- and you could say it ignores the "Armor as DR" DR as well. He takes careful aim(requiring a whole 12 seconds per precision strike instead of clumsy swings every 6 seconds), then masterfully strikes into an armpit, through a visor, or into the monster's opened mouth, etc.

Otherwise, allow Power Attack to work with "light" weapons, but specify the extra damage only may be used to bypass DR.
Clawhound
02-16-05, 04:43 PM Some weapons should certainly get armor piercing. If you look at medieval weaponry, almost everything had some sort of pick on it. They had lots of heavy armor to contend with.

Heavy crossbows should be AP. That's why people used them. Composite longbows get strength bonuses, and that will offset some armor.

Picks, halberds, big axes, and two-handed swords seemed popular in that era. Getting through all that steel was a trick. Spears and lances should get AP during a charge. I'm a big beliver of using the horse's strength in a mounted charge. (Horses have lots of strength!)

Light weapons just don't do well against DR. The guy above is right, if your player chooses a sub-optimal weapon, that's his choice. If he regrets those choices, give him the opportunity to make some better choices.
Greyman
02-16-05, 11:24 PM I'm considering adding an "Armor Piercing" quality to some weapons, like daggers and picks, that halves the DR bonus from armor and natural armor, and allowing adamantine weapons to ignore DR from armor and natural armor entirely, but I'm worried that the latter ability will overpower Monks once they hit 16th level.Armor Peircing is a nice idea, but halving the DR bonus from armour and natural armour is moderately awkward, and the DR from armour is never that anyway high.

I suggest the Armour Piercing quality reduce DR from armour and natural armour by a fixed amount (say, 2), and make it stackable. You don't want to negate the DR by too much, because it's ballanced out by the already lowered armour class.

Allowing adamantine weapons to completely ignore armor DR is a bad idea, for the very reason you mention as well.

I agree that you should do the obvious and restrict Armour Piercing to finesseable weapons that do piercing damage (like, duh, daggers) and possibly arrows and bolts too.
Xeviat-DM
02-16-05, 11:53 PM For those "chink in the armor" situations, that sounds like sneak attack to me. I sure hope a dagger wielder intends on picking up a few dice of sneak attack.

And it is suboptimal, dagger fighting, which is why a PrC was made for it to make it optimal. (Invisible Blade).
Korimyr the Rat
02-17-05, 03:08 AM I've more or less come to a conclusion.

There are certain weapons which allow DR to be halved, rounded down. This is a moderately powerful ability, but the weapons that it works for are fairly sub-optimal-- dagger (without the ability to throw), punching dagger, picks, morningstar, and crossbows.

I'm going to allow adamantine to bypass non-adamantine armor. While 16th level Monks are an issue, the majority of opponents will be humanoids with class levels, and their Class Defense Bonus is going to make striking them far more difficult for the Medium BAB Monk. Also, adamantine armor protects from adamantine weapons, and negates Armor Piercing except from adamantine weapons.

I'll also allow characters to take -4 to hit on a strike to allow them to bypass armor, if they are using a light weapon. While this eventually surpasses Power Attack-- say, when magical heavy armor is involved-- the limitations of light weapons and the limited number of situations this is useful for make up for it. Also, using a light weapon generally makes certain that they'll be triggering fewer Massive Damage saves.

Thank you for your suggestions.
Robbo
02-17-05, 11:57 AM I think it is facinating that these kinds of debate cannot be straightforwardly resolved by recent experiment - there are even discussion board threads written by historical re-enactors where they argue about whether plate could be pierced by a longbow bodkin, or other weapons!

A few supplimentary suggestions, following up on recent posts:

- I also allow heavy crossbows and longbows to be armour piercing, but only at half of short range. At longer ranges the arrows would be fired at an angle, and hence would tend to hit their targets at an angle not perpendicular to the armour's surface. Then they would just glance off the armour.

- I don't just think that light weapons were ineffective against armour - a normal longsword would have had little effect too. The sword was often carried by a plate armoured knight as the second weapon - employed against less armoured foes. A 2-handed weapon of some sort was quite usual as the primary weapon. In my games I double the DR that Unearthed Arcana suggests, so that plate gets DR8, and hence a normal longsword with no bonuses does no damage. However, I do halve that DR for armour piercing weapons, such as the beaks and spikes on polearms, heavy crossbow bolts, etc.

- I reason that any damage above that "normally" dealt by a longsword, due to a strength bonus, is actually bludgeoning damage, even though the weapon being used primarily delivers an alternative form of damage. This brings into question just how effective would such armour have been against bludgeoning damage? The plate harness was underlayed by considerable padding, that helped to prevent the armour from being distorted by blows, and to absorb some of the force of the blow. So it certainly provided considerable protection. However the Channel 4 program "Weapons that made history" stated that the amount of energy that would have been dissipated through the armour wearers body was still considerable, possibly causing internal injuries to organs, so I allow 3/4 the DR to apply to bludgeoning weapons.

- I also have a system (that I must admit I rarely use as it is quite complicated) for causing damage to armour. It is a variation on sunder I guess. A valid and quite effective tactic would have been to deliberately target the joints of armour until they were distorted by impact to the point where they no longer moved freely. That gives the attacker the opportunity to move in for the kill, which is quite easy against a helpless opponent, so long as you have a thin knife - not a normal fighting dagger.

- I also allow bows to have a firing rate 5 times that of crossbows, which tends to limit the use of crossbows, though carrying a pre-loaded one for a single shot before drawing another weapon is often done.

Note that other types of armour warrant similar adjustments i.e. chain in great against slashing attacks but not so good against piercing and bludgeoning attacks.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Korimyr the Rat 02-13-05, 09:40 PM	I'm using the "Armor as DR" variant from Unearthed Arcana, but one of my PCs uses two daggers in combat, and I'm worried this will make him completely ineffectual when the party starts facing heavily-armored opponents. What can I do to make him more effective? I'm considering adding an "Armor Piercing" quality to some weapons, like daggers and picks, that halves the DR bonus from armor and natural armor, and allowing adamantine weapons to ignore DR from armor and natural armor entirely, but I'm worried that the latter ability will overpower Monks once they hit 16th level. Any comments/ideas?
Salla 02-14-05, 02:03 PM	Well, let's see ... The standard armors in D&D would only get you up to a maximum of DR 4/-, which does more or less nullify a dagger (barring strength bonuses, etc). Natural Armor monsters can get worse than that. What class the character is can make a big difference here. If he's a fighter, he can get Weapon Specialization and Greater Weapons Specialization, which gives him +4 damage; that counters the DR. If he's a Rogue, he has sneak attack, which will more than overwhelm the DR. If he's a Ranger, let's hope he's up against a favored enemy. Magicking the daggers would also help. Getting one (or more than one) elemental enhancement on it would let some damage go through, even if the dagger itself doesn't deal any damage. This might be an interesting time to revisit our old friend, the Sure-Striking weapon enhancement; in 3.0, it let a weapon pierce any of the DR for a +1 adjustment, but that was when DR had a hierarchy. I would think that changing it to overcome DR X/- (only) for a +1 would be incredibly weak in a regular D&D game, but it might work in yours. A +1 adjustment for weapon value gets you something like flaming, which averages +3.5 damage; even assuming that you're regularly going to be running into Full Plate Armored targets, the +1 for 'Sure Striking 3.5' is about right, since you'll net four more points of damage than you otherwise would have. Sorry if I was kind of rambling there ... hope this line of thought helps. :)
Xeviat-DM 02-14-05, 03:13 PM	First off, have critical hits ignore damage reduction. Second, inform the player that strength is almost a requirement for melee characters in a campaign which uses armor as DR. Third, look into alternate sources of damage, such as sneak attack and possibly an Improved Weapon Finesse (Int to Damage; precision based) feat could be offered. There is a feat which allows you to ignore some amount of DR. It is in Draconomicon. Check it out.
Robbo 02-16-05, 04:09 AM	I recognised this problem with play balance a while ago, when implementing armour as DR, VP & WP instead of HP, and a few other bits and pieces from unearthed arcana. I dusted off (and bought) a few books about real medieval combat to get a feel for what the situation would really have been like for someone wielding a dagger against someone in full plate armour. Although some daggers (like some swords) were designed specifically for piercing armour (i.e. diamond cross section, with point but no blade) it doesn't seem very likely that they would have worked against several millimetres of steel, and full plate armour had developed to the point that it didn't have many vulnerable areas in the 1400s' and 1500's. Such piercing weapons appear to have been effective against chainmail. However it seems to have been a relatively common experience that when an armoured foe was knocked down there was an opportunity to slide a thin flat knife into his visor, or between joints in his armour. i.e. Agincourt. Of course D&D has more "cinematic" options, but in terms of a relatively realistic approach I would do the following: convince your dagger-specialist player that his weapons are next to useless against plate armour in normal combat and that he must modify his methods. He would be aware that against such foes, he would have a few options: (1) use a heavy bludgeoning weapon to either damage the armour to the extent that the joints sieze, or knock the armour wearer over, (2) trip and grapple as up close his knives could be effective through any available nook and cranny, (3) allow a "called shot" to give him a small chance of throwing his knife through the target's visor, (4) allow a new feat along the lines of "Armourer's Secrets" perhaps with prerequisits of some skill levels in armourer, and a minimum to hit adjustment, and minimum intelligence and/or dexterity, which would allow the person with the feat to deliberately target weak points of armour with specific weapons. Perhaps -2 to hit for each point of DR circumvented, and also perhaps use of the feat makes one vulnerable to an attack of opportunity. Just some thoughts, of course there are any number of magical means to destroy plate armour...perhaps a weapon that on contact causes plates of armour to simply fall from there wearer's body?
Gold Katana 02-16-05, 09:29 AM	Daggers are pretty much useless against plate armor, et al. Also, against bears and other animals with high natural armor. The problem isn't the system - it's your player. He has willfully chosen a non-combat weapon to take into combat (probably because "it's cool"). There is a price for poor choices. All the options listed above will help him offset his unusual fighting style. But I would not start changing the game mechanics to cater to a player who has insisted on a poor character build.
Thelon Fairblade 02-16-05, 10:10 AM	There is a "Deft Strike" feat in Complete Adventurer that allow (with a Spot check) one attack every other round that ignores armor bonuses -- and you could say it ignores the "Armor as DR" DR as well. He takes careful aim(requiring a whole 12 seconds per precision strike instead of clumsy swings every 6 seconds), then masterfully strikes into an armpit, through a visor, or into the monster's opened mouth, etc. Otherwise, allow Power Attack to work with "light" weapons, but specify the extra damage only may be used to bypass DR.
Clawhound 02-16-05, 04:43 PM	Some weapons should certainly get armor piercing. If you look at medieval weaponry, almost everything had some sort of pick on it. They had lots of heavy armor to contend with. Heavy crossbows should be AP. That's why people used them. Composite longbows get strength bonuses, and that will offset some armor. Picks, halberds, big axes, and two-handed swords seemed popular in that era. Getting through all that steel was a trick. Spears and lances should get AP during a charge. I'm a big beliver of using the horse's strength in a mounted charge. (Horses have lots of strength!) Light weapons just don't do well against DR. The guy above is right, if your player chooses a sub-optimal weapon, that's his choice. If he regrets those choices, give him the opportunity to make some better choices.
Greyman 02-16-05, 11:24 PM	I'm considering adding an "Armor Piercing" quality to some weapons, like daggers and picks, that halves the DR bonus from armor and natural armor, and allowing adamantine weapons to ignore DR from armor and natural armor entirely, but I'm worried that the latter ability will overpower Monks once they hit 16th level.Armor Peircing is a nice idea, but halving the DR bonus from armour and natural armour is moderately awkward, and the DR from armour is never that anyway high. I suggest the Armour Piercing quality reduce DR from armour and natural armour by a fixed amount (say, 2), and make it stackable. You don't want to negate the DR by too much, because it's ballanced out by the already lowered armour class. Allowing adamantine weapons to completely ignore armor DR is a bad idea, for the very reason you mention as well. I agree that you should do the obvious and restrict Armour Piercing to finesseable weapons that do piercing damage (like, duh, daggers) and possibly arrows and bolts too.
Xeviat-DM 02-16-05, 11:53 PM	For those "chink in the armor" situations, that sounds like sneak attack to me. I sure hope a dagger wielder intends on picking up a few dice of sneak attack. And it is suboptimal, dagger fighting, which is why a PrC was made for it to make it optimal. (Invisible Blade).
Korimyr the Rat 02-17-05, 03:08 AM	I've more or less come to a conclusion. There are certain weapons which allow DR to be halved, rounded down. This is a moderately powerful ability, but the weapons that it works for are fairly sub-optimal-- dagger (without the ability to throw), punching dagger, picks, morningstar, and crossbows. I'm going to allow adamantine to bypass non-adamantine armor. While 16th level Monks are an issue, the majority of opponents will be humanoids with class levels, and their Class Defense Bonus is going to make striking them far more difficult for the Medium BAB Monk. Also, adamantine armor protects from adamantine weapons, and negates Armor Piercing except from adamantine weapons. I'll also allow characters to take -4 to hit on a strike to allow them to bypass armor, if they are using a light weapon. While this eventually surpasses Power Attack-- say, when magical heavy armor is involved-- the limitations of light weapons and the limited number of situations this is useful for make up for it. Also, using a light weapon generally makes certain that they'll be triggering fewer Massive Damage saves. Thank you for your suggestions.
Robbo 02-17-05, 11:57 AM	I think it is facinating that these kinds of debate cannot be straightforwardly resolved by recent experiment - there are even discussion board threads written by historical re-enactors where they argue about whether plate could be pierced by a longbow bodkin, or other weapons! A few supplimentary suggestions, following up on recent posts: - I also allow heavy crossbows and longbows to be armour piercing, but only at half of short range. At longer ranges the arrows would be fired at an angle, and hence would tend to hit their targets at an angle not perpendicular to the armour's surface. Then they would just glance off the armour. - I don't just think that light weapons were ineffective against armour - a normal longsword would have had little effect too. The sword was often carried by a plate armoured knight as the second weapon - employed against less armoured foes. A 2-handed weapon of some sort was quite usual as the primary weapon. In my games I double the DR that Unearthed Arcana suggests, so that plate gets DR8, and hence a normal longsword with no bonuses does no damage. However, I do halve that DR for armour piercing weapons, such as the beaks and spikes on polearms, heavy crossbow bolts, etc. - I reason that any damage above that "normally" dealt by a longsword, due to a strength bonus, is actually bludgeoning damage, even though the weapon being used primarily delivers an alternative form of damage. This brings into question just how effective would such armour have been against bludgeoning damage? The plate harness was underlayed by considerable padding, that helped to prevent the armour from being distorted by blows, and to absorb some of the force of the blow. So it certainly provided considerable protection. However the Channel 4 program "Weapons that made history" stated that the amount of energy that would have been dissipated through the armour wearers body was still considerable, possibly causing internal injuries to organs, so I allow 3/4 the DR to apply to bludgeoning weapons. - I also have a system (that I must admit I rarely use as it is quite complicated) for causing damage to armour. It is a variation on sunder I guess. A valid and quite effective tactic would have been to deliberately target the joints of armour until they were distorted by impact to the point where they no longer moved freely. That gives the attacker the opportunity to move in for the kill, which is quite easy against a helpless opponent, so long as you have a thin knife - not a normal fighting dagger. - I also allow bows to have a firing rate 5 times that of crossbows, which tends to limit the use of crossbows, though carrying a pre-loaded one for a single shot before drawing another weapon is often done. Note that other types of armour warrant similar adjustments i.e. chain in great against slashing attacks but not so good against piercing and bludgeoning attacks.