I would like to get opinions about the interaction of early firearms and armor as DR.
I am planning to use the Armor as DR varient in Ultimate Combat along with early firearms.
My reading of early firearms is that they are designed to penetrate armor (at least at close range) so, in the standard rules, they resolve as touch attacks in the first range increment.
With the armor as DR varient, all attack resolve as touch attacks (plus sheild bonus and enchantment bonuses) and DR is applied to all physical damage. This kind of gimps the "firearms penetrate armor" concept.
My thought is to resolve firearm attacks like all others (against 10 + dex bonus + dodge bonus + shield + armor/shield enchantments) and allow them to overcome a certain amount of armor DR at the first range increment. I am not sure how much is reasonable. I was thinking that overcoming 5 points of armor DR would be reasonable as it would simulate guns being able to easily penetrate most light and medium armors.
You could make the argument that shields should not come into play when resolving firearm attacks. That argument has merit, but I am willing to sacrifice a little realism for the simplicity of allowing all attacks to resolve the same way.
Does this approach to firearms and armor DR sound reasonable? Is 5 points of DR penetration enough/too much?
Thanks in advance for the advice.
Helloooo? Anybody out there?
If you want to keep in the same spirit of the firearms penetrating armor at the first range increment, just make them ignore DR Armor totally in the first range increment. DR armor only comes from Armor and Natural Armor, so ignoring it at the first range increment is the same as a Touch AC attack before.
Once the DR Armor bonus moves into another type (like a Barbarian having DR/- and DR Armor stacking), give it the above penetrating power of 5 Armor Penetration (which is a good number).
The other way, if you want to keep a straight number, is just to give each firearm an armor penetration (AP) value equal to its maximum rolled damage (non-crit). This would make weapons with more penetrating power (rifles) have more Armor Penetration. A pistol would have AP 8, unless it were small, then AP 6.