Help appreciated.
Thanks.
Only problem, is that it basically means once PCs get full-plate early on, most damage is pretty easily negated by little mooks. Granted, it worked in the campaign I was running, but when daggers and small one-handed weapons can only really cause damage on a crit, it kind of throws balance a tad, especially when spellcasters are involved getting hit as well. Keep in mind how it will effect the PCs as well. If they don't hit for large amounts, it may cause the fights against heavily armored foes to run quite long.
I would recommend it for any light-magic/no-magic game though. It works quite nicely I've noticed.
Basically with Armor as DR, there are more successful hits, but less damage per strike, so it reduces the feel of whiff-fest in longer/more complex battles.
I hate armour as DR.
It puts WAY too much emphasis on one feat; power attack. So what if you've got 4 points DR from fullplate? your AC is 4 points lower, meaning I can power attack with my two-hander for a net gain of an extra 4 damage (after DR).
But for lightly armoured characters, not getting hit in the first place is way more important than the 1 or 2 points of DR their light armour provides.
Not taking 1-2 damage is not equal to 1-2 points of AC. The difference is "I get hit for 2d8(9)+16 from that ogre; subtract 2 for my chainshirt, giving me 23 points of damage taken." versus "I have JUST avoided that ogre's hit thanks to 2 points of AC; I take no damage."
Basically the benefit does not work for lightly armoured characters.
Also, dex-based "speed" attackers (like the rapid-shotting ranger, or the flurry of blows monk) now recieve a substancial penalty because their attacks are not based on strength. Monk goes from dealing 1d6 per hit to 1d6 -4 against a character in fullplate. Yay, he can't hurt the guy without rolling high. This also trivializes encounters with stuff like kobolds and goblins. They deal weak damage, and are now doing less to heavily armoured types, while people like wizards and rogues are basically still taking full damage.
Only one type of one group benefits from armour as DR; strength-based fighter-types.
If you're thinking of coupling this with class bonus to AC, the problems only become compounded; now the fighter-types are hard to hurt AND to hit. Meanwhile the rogue, cleric, druid, wizard, etc... get nothing (in comparison).
However, there is one solution to this....allow characters with the weapon finesse feat to strike at the regular AC, allowing them to bypass DR. Ofcourse this only makes weapon finesse as pinnicle a choice as taking power attack, but atleast those characters won't be as jacked damage-wise (you could have ranged types qualify with precise shot instead).
Like most variants, they aren't all for everyone. It depends on what your game style is, what your players are like, and the kind of campaign you are running.
I've run it, and it works pretty well. I combined it with the "turns part of the damage into non-lethal" variant as well.
Cool, I'll look at the nonlethal thing too. Is it in UA?
Only problem, is that it basically means once PCs get full-plate early on, most damage is pretty easily negated by little mooks. Granted, it worked in the campaign I was running, but when daggers and small one-handed weapons can only really cause damage on a crit, it kind of throws balance a tad, especially when spellcasters are involved getting hit as well. Keep in mind how it will effect the PCs as well. If they don't hit for large amounts, it may cause the fights against heavily armored foes to run quite long.
The PCs in game who use daggers (or other small weapons) have a significant amount of extra damage to back it up (death attack, sneak attack, spells, etc.). In addition, six out of eight of the PCs wear full-plate (or samurai armors from UEG). The other two wear breastplates.
I would recommend it for any light-magic/no-magic game though. It works quite nicely I've noticed.
Great, our setting has magic, but few users, so I guess it should work.
McPoyo's right on there. We've been using Armor as DR for a few years now and our system is even more dramatic than UA. Our game is definitely more Sword & Sword Sorcery, not High Fantasy, and Armor as DR helps that feel. We've added the Class Defense Bonus as well, so to make DR matter more, we use a straight conversion of AC to DR. So Full Plate has DR8. Of course, Full Plate is pretty rare in our low wealth "Conanesque" kinda world. Our Class Defense bonus is = BAB too, so that it scales better for fighter types. We initially felt that the UA variant doesn't really feel that much different than Core, so we altered it.
Basically with Armor as DR, there are more successful hits, but less damage per strike, so it reduces the feel of whiff-fest in longer/more complex battles.
Okay. I don't think we'll use the Class Defense Bonus, because that would get us right back where we started, with my PCs having too high AC. But thanks for the input. Btw. the straigt AC-DR conversion, how would that work in a setting where full-plates are pretty common (among warriors)?
And the negative winds follow me to this thread now....
I hate armour as DR.
It puts WAY too much emphasis on one feat; power attack. So what if you've got 4 points DR from fullplate? your AC is 4 points lower, meaning I can power attack with my two-hander for a net gain of an extra 4 damage (after DR).
I see your point, but I think that this is pretty much what this feat is supposed to do, batter through armor at the expense of accuracy.
But for lightly armoured characters, not getting hit in the first place is way more important than the 1 or 2 points of DR their light armour provides.
Not taking 1-2 damage is not equal to 1-2 points of AC. The difference is "I get hit for 2d8(9)+16 from that ogre; subtract 2 for my chainshirt, giving me 23 points of damage taken." versus "I have JUST avoided that ogre's hit thanks to 2 points of AC; I take no damage."
Basically the benefit does not work for lightly armoured characters.
True, but no one in the party is "lightly armoured", as 6 out of 8 party members wear heavy armor, and the remaining 2 wear breastplates.
Also, dex-based "speed" attackers (like the rapid-shotting ranger, or the flurry of blows monk) now recieve a substancial penalty because their attacks are not based on strength. Monk goes from dealing 1d6 per hit to 1d6 -4 against a character in fullplate. Yay, he can't hurt the guy without rolling high. This also trivializes encounters with stuff like kobolds and goblins. They deal weak damage, and are now doing less to heavily armoured types, while people like wizards and rogues are basically still taking full damage.
The party does not have any rapid shot/flurry of blows -characters, and the party sorcerer is a battlesorcerer (with a +1 Halfweight Fullplate), and the sneaky types have levels in Dread Commando to upset the ACP of their armor (breastplate and fullplate respectively).
Only one type of one group benefits from armour as DR; strength-based fighter-types.
If you're thinking of coupling this with class bonus to AC, the problems only become compounded; now the fighter-types are hard to hurt AND to hit. Meanwhile the rogue, cleric, druid, wizard, etc... get nothing (in comparison).
I don't think we'll be using any system that grants more AC.
However, there is one solution to this....allow characters with the weapon finesse feat to strike at the regular AC, allowing them to bypass DR. Ofcourse this only makes weapon finesse as pinnicle a choice as taking power attack, but atleast those characters won't be as jacked damage-wise (you could have ranged types qualify with precise shot instead).
So for strength-based melee, Power Attack would be necessary (to deal more damage - thus working against the DR), for dex-based melee, Weapon Finesse could ignore the DR granted by armor? And the same could apply for Precise Shot?
I've run it, and it works pretty well. I combined it with the "turns part of the damage into non-lethal" variant as well.
I've talked to two of my players about it, and we've settled on using the UA table, although increasing the DR by 50% (i.e. a +1 Fullplate would grant +5 AC, and grant DR 6/-.).
BUT, I like the nonlethal thing too. How would this work?
Let's say that Warrior A is hit in melee by Warrior B. They are both wearing +1 Fullplates (as above, +5 AC, DR 6/-.). Warrior A takes 7 points of damage. Would that be absorbed by the DR first? og should 5 points of damage become Nonlethal (because of the +5 AC) and then have the remaining 2 points be absorbed by the DR?
Logic tells me that Warrior B would have to beat the DR first, and then have the remaining damage translated into Nonlethal afterwards. That would mean that if Warrior A took 7 points of damage, 6 of them would be negated (by the DR 6/-.), and the remaining 1 would become Nonlethal?
Correct?
That would make for some fun roleplaying situations. The party includes sociopathic killergnomes, halfdragon knights, dragonkin samurai, and a ruthless bugbear commandosoldier (among others).
Okay. I don't think we'll use the Class Defense Bonus, because that would get us right back where we started, with my PCs having too high AC. But thanks for the input. Btw. the straigt AC-DR conversion, how would that work in a setting where full-plates are pretty common (among warriors)?
Good point. If I didn't mention it before, we play a Sword & Sorcery style game, not a high magic game, so magical items are pretty rare and that keeps the infinite AC bonuses in a standard game under reign. Full Plate is pretty rare in our game, and when the group has encountered foes in Full Plate, they definitely had to adjust their strategies a bit. Some people bag on this type of gamestyle because PC's with daggers can't just walk up and gut someone in full plate armor, but ironically, a rogue in my party took down a fighter in full plate with a well-timed critical. It was a memorable moment because it wasn't easy and it wasn't common for a dagger weilding elf to take down a 300 lb. fighter in a tuna can. Criticals are really critical in our game too, because criticals bypass DR. I can't remember if that's how the UA variant works, because we've been using AaDR for so long that I can't recall what of the UA variant we actually use in our game. :embarrass
Dog-O-War, I haven't really seen anyone jump on you here. You have valid points, and just because some people like DR, doesn't make you wrong for not liking it. Armor as DR gives a game a different feel, that's it. It's just another variant among dozens that people use to appeal to their playstyle. Some groups might actually like the lethality of power attack, especially as much as some people whine about the inefficiency of fighters in standard D&D.
I would personally find Armor as DR difficult to use on its own with Core rules. It definitely requires close attention to how it impacts your game and I believe should be tweaked to work the way you want it to for your playing style. But other OGL-based games use Armor as DR (Conan being my favorite) so I don't buy the premise that it can't work or takes too much work or isn't worth it, etc.
At the end of the day, it's just a game and part of the fun for some of us is customizing the games we play to increase their appeal to us. The great thing about variants is that they are just as easy to take out as they are to put in! :D
My guess is that more people who try the various variants out there end up agreeing with Dog-O-War than agreeing with me because adding variants can be a lot of work and variants often change the "feel' of the game. More often than not, I would guess that those changes are more often viewed as negative than positive. One thing is for sure; the only way to know if you will like a variant is to just try it. You can just as easily take it out of the game if it doesn't suit your playing style. The nice thing about this board is that you usually hear from both sides of most issues, and that's a good thing.
And yeah, the variant'll be removed if we don't like it, and I just wanted to get some inputs from people on the boards.
It's not something I use all the time, mind you. But, it is good for a nice change of pace and feel to the game.
Granted I'm not going to run armor as DR in any of my games simply because I don't want to worry about balancing it. >>
The Armor turning Lethal into Nonlethal damage thing is in UA as well, but I do not remember the page number off the top of my head, and I'm AFB. It's basically "Whatever your armor bonus to AC is, change that much damage from each physical hit into non-lethal damage, and the rest stays as lethal". There's a couple changes and stuff, like with the way Natural Armor works that's covered in there, but more or less that's the basic gist of things. It worked really well in the campaigns I've used it in so far.
It's not something I use all the time, mind you. But, it is good for a nice change of pace and feel to the game.
I know I know, ( www.d20srd.org ) but I was just wondering how that would interact with the Armour as DR?
The problem with the mechanic is that AC goes down, but the DR is not nearly enough to balance it. Taking a hit of 4 to your AC to get 3/- DR isn't that good when things start hitting you for 30+ damage per hit.
Ok, so here's an idea i've been tinkering with. In addition to the Base Defense bonus idea, have armor that uses both AC and DR. You still use the normal AC bonus value given in the PHB, but on top of that the armor has a somewhat healthy (or even hefty) DR. Now if you are hit within the protective range of the armor (presented by the AC the armor gives) the armor is hit and the DR is applied, but above that protective value (above your AC actually) you take the full damage, no DR to help you. Below that protective value represents you avoiding that attack all together, with no damage being recieved. This helps with problems like Power attack being able to negate any DR and seems a bit harder to abuse, but I'm still working on finding a way to reduce numberkeeping, as this way of doing it requires a lot (your avoid AC range, your DR AC range, and your hit AC range) especially if you roll for your defense. If I remember correctly I got the idea for this system from Rifts.
It is a cool system. Paper cutters can't have low dexterity scores or they are useless, and power attack is REALLY good to have.
what I understood (from post#20):
barring all magic and misc bonus,
with D your Dex bonus (capped by armor worn, as usual), and A the AC provided by your armor
- to hit < 10+D
no harm done (as per the normal rules) - 10+D < to hit < 10+D+A
hit: roll damage, reduce it by the amount of DR provided by your armor - 10+D+A < to hit
hit: roll damage, apply it all to your HP (as per the normal rules)
if it is so, you haven't solved the PA issue at all, in fact you worsened it because now the threshold to meet is even lower (10+D) than in UA system (which still give you some AC)