Note: that what I’m presenting here is simply an idea that I’m thinking about incorporating into the Pathfinder game as a house rule. Truthfully it’s not something that would or could show up in Pathfinder due to backwards compatibility issues.
I recently read Crusader of Logic’s thread about AC at higher levels being video game like, this isn’t directly related to that, but it did influence me in questioning how damage resistance worked.
Warning this is a little longwinded.
What I’m thinking about is completely removing damage resistance as it currently exists, and replacing it with a damage buffer. The difference between the two is while damage resistance applies to every attack made against a monster a damage buffer only acts on a per round basses, also it requires less math.
How it works is at the beginning of every round the target monster can absorb a fixed number of damage dice as a buffer, once the buffer is gone every attack there after does damage as normal. So if a dragon had a damage buffer of 3 it could absorb three dice of damage that round, not taking any damage for the round until a fourth damage die is rolled. Magic and unique (cold iron) weapons can still work by bypassing the damage buffer altogether.
So what’s the advantage in this? Well it’s a little simpler, although that wasn’t a big problem before, but what it does that’s interesting is it make the amount of damage done by an attack less relevant. Also it can lead to instant death spells as being less attractive by making it so that instant death effects instantly remove a damage buffer if it is still present that round, only killing if the buffer is already down. This also makes direct damage spells more interesting at least at the beginning of the round since they are more likely to remove the damage buffer and still cause some damage, depending on the number of damage die they do. Lastly this can help equal out the classes some. High level warrior types will likely have an appropriate weapon for bypassing the damage buffer, which wouldn’t go away they would just bypass it, and if you give high level warrior types (fighters, barbarians, monks) a damage buffer themselves at higher levels they become far better at absorbing attacks, including magical ones. Note, this would not make the classes completely equal in power it only favors warriors slightly.
This does need play tested until then it’s just an idea, which admittedly might note work as easily as it sounds, however any feedback would be appreciated.
