Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Thank_Dog Sep 14, 2014 23:22:38	I'm not a math person so if this causes the world to implode, then don't blame me. I just work here.   AC = 10 + Proficiency Bonus + Dexterity Bonus.   Subtract 10 from all armour values. That is the amount of damage reduction versus bludgeoning/piercing/slashing damage. So Leather Armour would only give you 1 DR versus B/P/S, while plate would give you 8 DR versus B/P/S.   All other restrictions still apply so max Dex in Medium armour, Strength requirements for heavy armour and Disadvantage on Stealth checks still function as normal.   Shields add to AC not to DR.   What do you think?
#2 Kishri Sep 14, 2014 23:53:25	DR is one of those intriguing subjects that looks better on paper than in play.   Question:  Do the bad guys benefit from the DR, or is it just the players?  For my response I will assume both "sides" gains the benefit of DR.   Your proposed system will work, but you will find that low damage players will struggle to hurt anything in Plate or its equivalent.     Another aspect, is you the DM might get flustered at the fact that goblins and light damage monsters will not injure plate wearers, or simply do too little damage and trivializing such encounters to the point of,  "Why bother?"  While somewhat "realistic," it opens up a can of worms where lighter armored folks will refuse to enter an area if they have an "immune" player who will be tasked to clear it first, for example.   DR will completely change the battlefield dynamic and not always in a good way.  Those that have it will love it, and those who don't have it will feel especially gimped.  The same will be true of those who cannot overcome such DR.   One thing to keep in mind, that DR systems, will draw out a combat's length due to less damage being inflicted to those with the DR.  The other issue is you very much run the risk of having a couple of players being seriously hurt while others are barely knicked due to inequeties of DR protection.  This will create 5 minute workday issues that may result in inter party strife-- those who can keep going vs those who can't.   I think the biggest issue you will face is that DR systems often create an arms race of sorts that can quickly become, "If you don't have the right weapon, or do at least X damage, don't even bother coming to the battle."  Or the reverse, "If you don't have the DR, don't even bother fighting because you can't take the hits."   If you can overcome or mitigate the above concerns, I have found a lot of players love DR systems.  It's just getting such systems to balance and stay that way over the long term that is the tricky part.
#3 Macv12 Sep 15, 2014 0:37:17	Yeah, I agree that this makes some people disproportionately hard to hurt. We had a defense-focused fighter in our group who already had a lot of HP and a ton of AC, and nothing could bring him down usually. The fact that high-AC characters usually have high HP is sort of a natural DR effect. This also disproportionately favors big-damage weapons. Currently Great Weapon Master already makes two-ganders really great for damage. Adding a threshold for even hurting something you hit would devalue multi-attacking strategies even more.   If you were to introduce such a system, AC and DR should be opposed forms of defense. You trade some amount of AC for DR, or choose one or the other on a given piece of armor. AC is good for negating strong attacks by dodging them, while DR negates lots of weak attacks by ignoring them.
#4 teron82 Sep 15, 2014 6:38:52	The element you are ignoring is the power bonus you suddenly derive from roll to hit spells in this method. Most spells do not do basic physical damage. While you could bypass the aforementioendi ssues with DR by making DR a die roll rather than a static value, you will not be able to bypass the issue of armore being even less useful against spells than it already is. The game was designed in order to balance #attacks with slower, single attacks. And this system does create a gap benefiting the slower single attacks, again usually from spells. This makes classes like fighter or any dual wielder much less viable and really everyone will want to roll a caster, thus negating the need for DR to begin with. Sad, because I like DR systems, but this is inevitably the result with the current system...unless you applied DR to all damage and tweaked multiple attacks particularly for fighters (perhaps grant damage dice instead of multiple attacks).
#5 Thank_Dog Sep 15, 2014 13:49:35	Or you introduce special materials!   Dragonscale, for instance, could give its DR bonus versus a form of elemental damage based on the colour. Adamantine could grant its DR bonus against force damage while mithril could be against all magic, making it the most valuable by far.
#6 feartheminotaur Sep 15, 2014 15:18:13	Why not just give the proficiency bonus as DR?  It scales with level and is already calculated.  Fluff-wise it represents your battle prowess as you level.   Your current scheme is pretty unbalanced, IMO.  It looks like you're changing the AC calculation to add the proficiency bonus - something that's not built into enemy stats in terms of accuracy or damage.    A Ftr1 with plate mail and a shield has AC 22 (18+2+2) and DR 10 ((18+2)-10).  That is going to pose a huge problem for level appropriate monsters.  A skeleton is 1d6+2 - it will never damage the fighter. Even if you remove the proficiency bonus, a skeleton will still never damage that fighter.  A hundred skeletons aren't going to damage that fighter.  And if that plate mail is 'dragonscale' you'd ignore 10 points of magical damage as well at level 1?  That's going to rock the encounter boat real quick.   Also, as noted, if reciprocal, it will be very difficult to damage monsters for most non-casters. And if you extend the magical DR to PCs...are you going to extend it to enemies too?  Does the skeleton's 'armor scraps' become 'dragonscale armor scraps'?  Does special material do both - DR vs magic and physical attacks?  If so, then everyone is a blaster in heavy armor.
#7 Thank_Dog Sep 15, 2014 16:49:07	feartheminotaur wrote:
#8 teron82 Sep 15, 2014 17:20:40	Well materials could reduce the problem with cantrips, but still be pretty much pointless against any higher level spell that requires an attack. I've considered the material idea before, and while I think it has some promise, I think classes of materials with differing but balanced benefits are better. Mithril isn't necessarily better than adamantine...never has been in D&D. One's basically dwarven, the other basically elven. Regardless, it all still requires a lot of reworking the rules to find a way to manage. I still think a die roll for DR is probably the best bet, but it would slow the game down.   Scaling is still an issue. Consider that 8 DR commentary at low levels is quite a lot. Sure you wont have plate starting off, but should be able to get by 3rd level. Monster damage has not increased a whole lot by then, making it still significant...and it should be. BUT, by higher level, you are dealign with monsters that deal 4d10+8 damage, which makes the armor still pretty meh. Again, I love the idea, jsut will be complicated to implement.
(Reply to #5) crimfan07	Thank_Dog wrote:
#10 Thank_Dog Sep 15, 2014 18:05:30	teron82 wrote:
#11 Thank_Dog Sep 15, 2014 23:25:41	So, how about this. Armour has hit points! Armour has an amount of hit points equal to its gold value. Whenever you are hit, regardless of how much damage gets through the armour, the armour takes the full amount of the damage as well. Repairing it costs the amount of gold to get it back to its full gold value. When the armour reaches 0 hit points, it no longer provides DR.   I'm brilliant.
#12 Kishri Sep 16, 2014 2:20:09	Interestingly, 2e did exactly that with Field and Full Plate armor.  It didn't go over so well.  The biggest issue was that no body wanted to keep track of the extra set of HP and go through the repair proceedure over and over.
(Reply to #7) feartheminotaur	Thank_Dog wrote:
#14 Thank_Dog Sep 16, 2014 14:55:15	feartheminotaur wrote:
#15 teron82 Sep 16, 2014 17:36:27	Kishri wrote:
(Reply to #15) Kishri	teron82 wrote:
#17 teron82 Sep 17, 2014 5:03:25	Kishri wrote:
#18 Nachturnus Sep 17, 2014 5:59:41	Giving armor Dr is a rather massive nerf to classes that don't get decent armor proficiencies, but have class features/spells to make up for it. Notably, Monks, Warlocks, and Sorcerers would be crapped on by this system, because encounters would need to be scaled up in order to compensate for the dramatically tankier armor-classes. Meanwhile, Monks, Warlocks, Sorcs, and (to a lesser extent) Barbarians would find themselves without DR, or even a decent HP pool in most cases.  I'd suggest just using materials and magic items to give people DR, but probably no higher than profficiency bonus. I'd say try giving it to one of your squishier characters first (Mithril chain shirt, or something.) to see how it performs for them before offering it to the people who're already super tough and meaty.
#19 Redbeard2 Sep 17, 2014 7:47:19	Thank_Dog wrote:
(Reply to #18) teron82	Nachturnus wrote:
#21 Thank_Dog Sep 17, 2014 15:01:54	Yeah, the idea is that with heavier armour, you get hit more often, it's just that the damage isn't getting through or is reduced.
#22 Ansbach Sep 17, 2014 15:28:46	Thank_Dog wrote:
(Reply to #22) teron82	Ansbach wrote:
#24 Ansbach Sep 17, 2014 16:56:43	teron82 wrote:
#25 Huntsman57 Sep 17, 2014 17:56:06	Thank_Dog wrote:
#26 teron82 Sep 17, 2014 18:26:03	In effect this method states they are getting a level bonus to AC equal to their proficiency modifier. In other words, your AC goes up as fast as your attack bonus. The problem is then why have proficiency modifiers added to either? It would be good to have something else to offset them.   But the trade off here is to have a higher chance of evading an attack, but when you get hit you take massive damage, or have a higher chance of getting hit, but take less damage from attacks. While the original system is purely the first example, there is an argument to be made for those who might prefer the latter.
#27 Saturn830 Nov 25, 2014 6:05:50	I realize this is bumping a thread from a while back but I came across it in Kalani's thread cataloging all the various homebrew ideas floating in and I thought I'd just add my two cents because this is something I'm considering as well.   If the worry is that high DR armor like plate will make characters invulnerable to weaker enemies or leaping too far ahead of characters using light or no armor there are several things one might consider to reduce these problems.  I'd recommend checking out the Conan D20 RPG which uses armor as DR right off the bat- it gives various weapons Armor Penetration (AP) properties that reduce the amount of DR from a given armor by a value equal to the AP value as well as suggesting an optional rule where all attacks, even if they would be reduced to zero damage by DR, do at least one point of damage (suddenly those hundred skeletons do become a problem).   You could also deem that certain armor types have something similar to damage vulnerabilities where certain damage types of damage reduce the effective DR of that armor by half.  Criticals might ignore DR giving an attack that otherwise wouldn't be able to overcome a particular armor at least a slight chance.  Finesse weapons might use their Dexterity modifier to not only add damage but reduce the effective DR of the opposing armor representing the ability of a well-placed strike to hit a gap said armor.  Maybe you could even have a non-lethal damage track that increases with otherwise nullified damage and if it reaches an amount equal to the character's total hit points they're knocked unconscious regardless of how many hit points they have left.
(Reply to #27) intently	Everything in here can be done and has been done... but does it add value to the game? Not for me. Just makes a lot more bookkeeping that leads to the same result (in the best case scenario).
#29 SillyMind Nov 25, 2014 11:36:18	I just want to point out that DR is already a part of the AC mechanic: Character A has Dex 18 (+4) and wears leather armor (11 AC+Dex) for a total AC 15 Goblin attack roll is 13 or less, he misses because character A gets out of the way. Goblin attack roll is a 14, he strikes character A but his armor takes all the damage. Goblin attack roll is 15 or higher, he strikes character A and the damage goes over the armor's threshold.   Character B has 12 Dex (+1) and wears full plate (18 AC and no dex bonus) for a total AC 18. Goblin attack roll is 9 or less, he misses because character B gets out of the way. Goblin attack roll is between 10 and 17, he strikes character B but his armor takes all the damage. Goblin attack roll is 18 or higher, he strikes character B and the damage goes over the armor's threshold.   You can see that the AC bonus from an armor is in fact Damage Reduction.
#30 iserith Nov 25, 2014 11:43:39	The reason I don't like DR from armor is that in games where this has been a thing, there's often a lot of rolling and calculating and ending up at 0 damage done. So, yay, you hit, but boo you didn't do anything and wasted everyone's time. If the result of my turn is going to be effectively nothing, I'd like to spend as little time figuring that out as possible.
(Reply to #30) Larry_Hunsaker	One idea that indirectly deals with this concept is to allow those in armor to automatically recover a certain amount of damage taken after a short rest. They only recover from damage taken since the last time they benefited from this. Just assign each armor type a recovery value. Heavy Armor could be say 20%, Medium 10% and Light 5%. So say you suffered 25 hitpoints of damage in the last fight and wore Heavy armor. After a short rest you automatically regain 20% of that damage, or 5 hitpoints as if healed. If you then suffered 10 damage in the next fight, you gain 2 HPs back after a short rest. If you did not get to rest between these 2 fights, you then suffered 35 total since your last benefit and thus if you rested would get 7 HPs back.    This does not mess with combat at all, but what it does is say the damage you suffer still impacts you during battle, but it really is only partially lasting, some of it is only stun type damage you recover from quickly if you rest. The heavier the armor the more counts as stun damage and you thus recover from more (a higher percent).    You can tweak these percents to suit your playstyle, you could rev up Heavy to 50% recovery (treating it like you had resistance to damage, but only after the fact) and scale the rest accordingly. If you like PCs who can recover from damage faster this is an option for you. You can make it more complicated (but harder to track) by saying it only applies to damage caused by slash/pierce/blunt, and thus exclude some damage from this recovery option. Or just keep it simple.
(Reply to #30) crimfan07	iserith wrote:
#33 DM_Nel Dec 03, 2014 17:08:44	I've always liked the concept of armor as DR, but I can see why it's not part of the core rules.  I don't think it would break a home game to implement a very small DR value to armor.  Light armor gets DR 1, medium armor gets DR 2, and heavy armor gets DR 3.  That way the goblins & kobolds that do 4 damage on a hit still get a point of damage through even heavy armor.  As you gain levels and acquire magic armor, the plus value would add to both AC and DR.  The most powerful armor you'd end up with is +3 Heavy, which would equate to 6 DR. At high levels, shrugging off 6 damage isn't all that great.  Even if it does get out of hand, the DM can always implement house rules to address it.  I have a house rule that grants combatants that are piled on a single opponent +1 to damage for each ally attacking that opponent.  So a single goblin attacking a character wearing heavy armor may only do 1 point of damage, but 8 goblins surrounding that character are each doing +8 damage on hits.
#34 dave2008 Dec 04, 2014 22:42:25	Thank_Dog wrote:
(Reply to #32) dave2008	crimfan07 wrote:
(Reply to #33) dave2008	DM_Nel wrote:
#37 ProphetAD Dec 14, 2014 7:39:45	I've read over all of this and have to agree with SillyMind about AC being a form of DR.To hit anyone is a base of 10. Any AC you add will make you harder to get hit. But this leads to Damage Avoidance. The way DR is explained and utilized is/was the early form of Damage Mitigation. Much like the familiar sound of *tink!* when you realized you hit a creature with at least 1 layer of stoneskin. You've overcome the Avoidance, and now they're Mitigating the damage.   I'd use skeletons as an example, but they seem to have lost their damage reduction since 3.x. Instead they now have vulnerabliity to bludgeoning. which means it takes double damage from maces and such. Otherwise the damage is half.    If you wanted to, and if I recall right (might have to check 2nd ed books), armor types have weaknesses and protection against other types of attacks.  In the case of plate, I think it was weaker against piercing. To keep it simple, you could announce that a person wearing plate who is successfully attacked by a poke attack would take double the damage. Stabbed by a dagger? Roll 2d4+bonuses. Critical hit with an arrow of something? Roll 2d6x2 (or 4d6 [much more tension])+bonus+the something.    All armors have trade offs. If DR is something you truely want to work with out the armor shop, then adopt the addage that whats good for the goose is good for the gander.   So would it be wise to incorporate DR and then fight only creatures who would do half damage? Not much fun.  Nor is it much fun to send this plate wearing fighter into battle against a squad of Sahaugin wielding tridents who go into blood frenzy (gaining advantage) vs a creature who doesnt have ALL of it's HP.   I'm curious to know what you come up with.   Cheers!
#38 Redbeard2 Dec 16, 2014 18:50:30	A higher AC already gives DR just by the PC being hit less than another PC with a lower AC.  Why add in rules just to complicate combat.   Cheers,   Redbeard2             Thank_Dog wrote:
#39 Caliburn Dec 17, 2014 2:06:47	It doesn't take particular intellectual 'brilliance' too see that DR is much better served without high hard numbers - 9DR for plate is clearly unworkable in a system where many weapons have a results range within this...   I am writing a S&S D&D system variant with +1-2 AC and 0-1DR for Light Armours; +3-4 AC and 1-2DR for Medium; and +5-6 AC and 2-3DR for Heavy with half Proficiency Bonus added to AC.   Dex Caps for armour are also raised if Str requirements for an armour are exceeded by at least 3 - with +1 Dex cap if this is so for Medium and Heavy Armours.   Armour Mastery Feat drops incoming target dice by one step for B/S/P damage (i.e. a 1d6 becomes a 1d4, a 1d4 a 1d3 before static DR is applied), which makes it worse against low level attacks but better against high level ones.
#40 AndyDay Dec 17, 2014 12:35:04	Armor as DR invalidates some types of character builds. The single weapon fighter becomes much more potent than the two weapon fighter, and even a duelist might be able to match the 2 weapon fighter in some cases. Peppering with light hits becomes a lot less effective than singular, annihilating blows.   Then, you have spells that do damage in other ways. Like Witch Bolt. Will armor work on every attack with that spell (making it useless)? Or will the damage reduction onlywork on the initial bolt (making subsequent bolts signficantly more powerful)?   Magic Missile... fail.   Etc.
(Reply to #40) LupusRegalis	AndyDay wrote:
#42 transcendantviewer Dec 18, 2014 23:19:16	Thank_Dog wrote:
#43 EzechielDantan Dec 18, 2014 23:25:39	Im not a big fan of adding DR to any kind of armor, even a single point of DR to medium armor will make a barbarian considerably more durable because the damage dealt to him is already halved.   It will make magic stronger in comparison, which I'd like to avoid.   It's fine as is in my opinion.