I've been reading a lot of Iron Heroes lately, and really enjoy a lot of what the system has to offer. One of the things I'm debating right now is adopting the Iron Heroes Armor and Defense systems into my homebrew pathfinder game.
For those unversed, here are the basics:
Classes, similarly to d20 modern, gain a class defense bonus, representing their natural ability to dodge, parry, and deflect attacks. This bonus starts at +0 to +1 and ends at +15 to +17.
A character caught flat-footed loses their entire active defense bonus to AC.
Keep in mind that Iron Heroes does not use magic items at all, so if one were to adapt the defense/armor system from it to a game like pathfinder, certain alterations would have to be made to the amount of defense gained via class bonus and what magic armor does, exactly.
In addition, Iron Heroes states flat-out that most heroes do not use more than light armor, unless they specialize in it, so adapting such a system might require certain thematic caveats as well.
Proposition: Essentially, my idea would be rather simple.
The basic direction of the system would be taking defense and armor whole-hog from Iron Heroes, and lowering the amount given by class bonuses to something that takes into account magic items such as rings of protection and amulets of natural armor (maybe having the highest bonus granted be around the +15 mark).
An easy way to integrate it is to create 3 defense progressions, similar to the Base Attack Bonus progressions. The lowest (essentially delegated to full casters) could start at +0 and increase over time to +5 (every 4 levels is easy). The medium progression would increase at the same rate as the low BAB (+0 to +10) and could apply to Barbarians, Bards, Gunslingers, Paladins, Rangers, Alchemists, Inquisitors, Magi and Summoners (potentially also to full divine casters, though I think that’s a matter of taste and flavor). The high progression could follow the medium BAB progression (+0 to +15) and apply to fighters, monks (I could see this replacing their normal AC bonus), rogues, and cavaliers.
Armor effectively gives damage reduction based on its bonus, rounded down to the nearest die size (so chain shirt would grand 1d4, breastplate 1d6, and full plate 1d8), and it's bypassed by magic or adamantine. This DR stacks with other damage reductions, as written in the Armor as DR section of Ultimate Combat.
I would also include the Iron Heroes rule regarding armor that medium armor reduces your speed by ¼, and heavy reduces it by half. This discourages exploitation of heavy armor with high class defense bonuses.
Magic armor grants a passive bonus to defense (armor bonus) equal to the enhancement bonus, and the DR is now bypassed only by adamantine. Adamantine armor is bypassed only by magic. Magical adamantine armor is DR/-.
Obviously, I’m not totally sure how balanced this would all be. I can definitely see issues at low levels, where you would have a very low defense, though that might be mitigated by the DR. But I definitely like the idea, and it makes possible character concepts that would otherwise be impossible, such as effective unarmored fighters (such as gladiators, or oily comic-book Spartans, or robed blademasters). In addition, I think it could help to mitigate some of the weaknesses of certain classes (rogues are a bit too squishy for their own good, and denying the ENTIRE active defense when flat-footed severely helps with sneak attacks.
What does the populace think? Is it balanced? Would it function well, or make pathfinder totally broked? I’d love to hear. I’ll probably write something a bit more official up and post it later, if people are interested.
…Catch Phrase,
-Chris
Its an interesting thought, its been awhile since I played IH, but I recall having fun in the game.
However, I'm not sure how well just dropping in the Armor portion to PF would work (well). IIRC, Feats & Class abilities also affected the benefit of DR (both positively & negatively).
I think its one of those concepts that you'd have to play it out for awhile and see how it does. You'll also have to compare how "Monsters" in IH vs Monsters in 3e/PF are set up, because you'd have to adjust it from all angles (so it will take some work).
I am interested in hearing how it goes however.
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I think dropping in IH rules to PF would be tough.
Overall the IH rules are balanced for a world where players have NO ACCESS to magic items - or that the magic items they can use are so frightening that they will use them only once or twice.
Therefore "adding them in" will produce power surges that the rules won't handle nicely. Base Defense mirrors the PF expectation of magic armor bonuses, and the Base Attack progression mirrors the PF expectation of magic weapon bonuses.
What I have found to work well is to use strictly IH classes for PCs, along with the core combat & feat rules, and then you can run everything else as Pathfinder. IH really works best as a Conan-style game (or 300, or Centurion, or the like) where magic is rare and scary, and even the party does not have reliable access to magic use.