Brewhunter's page

Keep it simple to start with. I run a Armor as DR house rule and it does not slow anything down other than getting use to it. I did find that some character can't overcome the DR so I added a Rend rule on critical's where the player can choose to use points that would normally damage the foe towards damaging the armor. If you get too complicated on dressing the specifics you're going to sabotage your efforts. If you're interested in my solution search, "Armor as DR keeping it simple." I run everything from an excel spreadsheet so it is really easy for me to keep track of modifiers, armor hardness, armor hp and modifiers to DR due to armor damage. Good luck, I am interested to see what you come up with. AC definitely needs to be replaced.

Brewhunter wrote:

Had I removed the STR bonus I would have had to replace it with DEX. Your point is valid don't get me wrong, we as a group just didn't want to mess with it.

I'm not understanding the bit about having to replace STR with DEX.

I was simply curious about the STR to-hit and whether you had considered the rationale I mentioned; the best reason for whatever you do in rules modification is that it suits you and your players.

Brewhunter wrote:

We don't have a lot of spell casters in the group, but a touch attack would use DEF if required.

One consequence is a PC caster may find a touch attack failing on a roll under your rules that would have succeeded under RAW. On the other hand, the PCs also benefit by the increase in DEF against enemy touch and ranged touch attacks, whether from casters or others.

Brewhunter wrote:

Magical shield spells would be used as DR.

ooh, THIS is interesting. How much DR? I see shields as aiding defense even in armor as DR, though I also appreciate rules that physical shields have a certain capacity, or hit points, and can be split/sundered/splintered by enough damage over a series of attacks or in a single blow.

Brewhunter wrote:

The games I run are very story base. The current one magic is outlawed. I don't give out a lot of magic items, in my experience character have a tendency to rely heavily on them on forget about their character feats and class specialties. I try to draw my encounters to demand the full use of the team rather than than the Fighter tanking his way through or some OP wizard laying down magical devastation.

I think I would enjoy playing in your campaigns. I've recognized just in reading these boards a (personally disturbing) belief that significant magical aid is assumed by the game rules as characters reach higher levels, and I find that the notion of a "build", never mind optimizing one, leaves a bad taste.

I would think that I could only justify the str to hit bonus as a thought of knocking a sword aside or pushing through ones parry. Dex is more of a muscle memory attribute so I guess it would come down to the characters fighting style. Some styles use brute force, others use more of a finesse.

There are actually more hits on with using DEF. The last game I ran I had a player that found himself in the unfortunate situation of being in the mouth of a dire frog. He was using a touch attack spell inside his mouth but that ended shortly as the frog dived underwater. The frog was crushing him and drowning him but the DR on his armor prevented actual damage to him.
As far as magical spells that would normally act as ac I would look at what the spell is doing. If it provides a kinect defense like dodge, as hand held sheild, I would put whatever points towards defense. If the spell is design to absorb damage like mage armor or shield then treat the bonus as DR. (Arrow pierces your magical shield, but loses so much energy that its tip barely scratches you) What would have been 4 dmg was reduced to 1 if the shield DR is 3. The magical armor would have no weapon type weakness unless the GM thought it logical.
Like I said I prefer a story based game not the ego struggle of GM v. Player. I try to keep my players alive, though sometimes just barely. I have a crazy crit house rule too if you are interested. :D

Brewhunter wrote:

Defense= 10+dex+shield+Misc Armor bonus + Hd (lv) modifier.

HD Mod. = HD or Lv /5
DR = Armor mod+ Natural armor+Existing DR - armor weakness weapon type.

Should we read the explicit inclusion of "HD" modifier as indicating you have taken on the work to convert monsters too?

Have there been concerns about escalating Defense against Touch Attacks as nerfing casters?

Since you are using armor as DR exclusively, do you also exclude strength bonuses to hit? Seems logical to do that when using Armor as DR exclusively, since that approach seems to remove the abstraction of AC corresponding to resistance to damage.

There are about a thousand ways to over complicate this. The HD does relate to the conversion of monsters. You can't use AC as DR just for the PCs it has to be uniform all around. All the monsters in the bestiary have their AC broken down so you get the natural, size and other modifiers. The HD modifier takes into account of xp and knowing how to get out of the way.

I understand your point about excluding the STR bonus though valid, I just did not want to cross that bridge and nit pick. Had I removed the STR bonus I would have had to replace it with DEX. Your point is valid don't get me wrong, we as a group just didn't want to mess with it. We don't have a lot of spell casters in the group, but a touch attack would use DEF if required. Magical shield spells would be used as DR.
The games I run are very story base. The current one magic is outlawed. I don't give out a lot of magic items, in my experience character have a tendency to rely heavily on them on forget about their character feats and class specialties. I try to draw my encounters to demand the full use of the team rather than than the Fighter tanking his way through or some OP wizard laying down magical devastation.

Isn't there a "armor as DR" rule in the ultimate combat...

Yes it is Armor as Damage Reduction.

Yup the rules are a tad different and there are more tables which makes it a tad tedious to manage during the combat round. The charts created some redundancies, so this was my solution. We ran the formulas through our group and made the refinements and eliminated the redundancies. We have play tested it through 3 games so far and it is no more complicated to run than AC. We have not play tested the Optional Sunder on a critical yet, but I am hoping that will be a solution to allow player who can't over come the DR on some foes. Players can choose to weaken the DR so cumulative damage can be greater and promotes team work. Or that is the intent. I run my games from my laptop, so all the minor math is left to the spreadsheet, so I can concentrate on the story.

Brewhunter wrote:

Interesting idea. I wouldn't let some of these curmudgeons put a dampener on your idea. Might be something to put an interesting twist on your game. I don't see how it can in any way weaken your wizards and it gives you a little bit more control and allows the wizard to carry more spells on his person. Great idea, thank you for sharing. :D

Eh, PC wizards will have fewer spells, because they are much harder to get. How does that not weaken them?

Well if I understand Greylurker right, a normal spell foot print consists of the "how to" along with the actual spell. His suggestion would be to keep the "how to" along with the spell to be learned in a separate tome. The wizard's traveling spell book would be the cliff notes version of the spell and thus would not take as much space in the caster's book. If the GM wants the player to have access to the foes spells he can give the player access to the tome, if the GM does not then he can just have the spell book available but the wizard can't learn anything new because the details of how to cast and control the spell are missing. So the Arcane Tome would be like a text book explaining all the aspects of the spell, the research involved ect. The spell book you could only use if you understood what was learned from the tome. Did I misunderstand?

So here we go. i have run these rule on the past three games and the players seem to like them. I don't have to beef up encounters, and players live longer. Everything is plugged into an excel spreadsheet where i can monitor initiative encounters and armor hp. (no extra work on the players or my part.)

Defense= 10+dex+shield+Misc Armor bonus + Hd (lv) modifier.
HD Mod. = HD or Lv /5
DR = Armor mod+ Natural armor+Existing DR - armor weakness weapon type.
Critical damage = (damage-DR)critical multiplier
*Optional Sunder on Critical to armor = (DMG - Item Hardness + Rend damage) critical multiplier. Note every 5 hp done to armor reduces the DR of that armor by 1
Rend damage is damage points the players volunteer to remove from HP damage to the foe to damage to the armor.

Armor weakness table: -1 DR
Padded or hide armor weak vs Piercing / Slashing
Pliable armor such as chain or studded leather weak vs Bludgeon (flight arrows)
Hardened Armor (such as leather or plate) weak vs Piercing.

The minus 1 to DR takes into account that the design of the armor is resilient to that type of attack but its actual DR dictates how resilient it actual is.

Interesting idea. I wouldn't let some of these curmudgeons put a dampener on your idea. Might be something to put an interesting twist on your game. I don't see how it can in any way weaken your wizards and it gives you a little bit more control and allows the wizard to carry more spells on his person. Great idea, thank you for sharing. :D

I'm not trying to pee in your cheerios, but I'd go a simpler way, primarily because anything that adds additional math to the table slows things down and as a GM, I am lazy when it comes to this sort of thing (we make enough rolls, do enough math, and so on as it is).

Natural 20? Auto-crit (especially since a natural 1 is an auto fail).
Any other crit? Confirm it.

Doesn't really step on a fighter's toes, as he gets to auto confirm all threats at 20 with his mastered weapon, so no problems there.

Of course, this assumes you're using the standard crit rules. I use the +10/-10 crit/fail rules instead.

I played AD&D back long time ago and found the natural 20 to be a bit of a pain when as a DM you have a challenging final boss lined up for your characters and he gets cut down in 5 rounds. I'm thinking with this model I can temper power players with a simple AC, HD adjustment. The math is simple enough and if it is too much for the GM then the GM can inform the players of their natural damage and critical damage range. Or the calculations can be made ahead of time as the math is based solely on the monster not the player. I got a game for Wednesday night and will see how well this works out. Playing online I am able to make calculations in Excel to handle any of the crazy math. Thanks for the input though. New bowl of cheerios poured. :P

Ok I play Pathfinder with a group of friends online and I find the confirmation of critical hit tedious and unfair to players. So I would like to ask some experienced gamers to review the following model. Take the AC (or modified AC) of the creature +5 + Creature HD.
For an example: Basic Goblin
AC 15 + HD 1 + 5 = 21 or better for a critical hit.

So if a character rolls anything with modifiers between 15 and 20 they do normal dmg. But if they get 21 or better they get a critical hit. I use the critical hit decks so not every critical hit is double damage.

Now the GM can manipulate these numbers by increasing HD, using terrain, surprise, ect.

Thoughts and criticism are greatly appreciated.