What in the world are you talking about? Wearing armor by itself does not provide any DR at all. Are you confusing Armor Class (AC) with Damage Reduction (DR?)
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCombat/variants/armorAsDamageRed uction.html
What in the world are you talking about? Wearing armor by itself does not provide any DR at all. Are you confusing Armor Class (AC) with Damage Reduction (DR?)
He speaks of the armor as DR alternate rules, which don't have issues with and I find the best thing you can do is not use goblins but instead other medium creatures to deal actual damage.
or just give the goblins slightly better weapons and/or up their strength score.
As far as the Ogres (or any more damaging creature), using Armor as DR does change the dynamic of combat. Heavily armored low Dex characters will want to modify their tactics quite a bit vs. creatures with good damage. Also, Feats that add AC or HP are more use than normal, since getting hit WILL happen more often.
One. Goblins. How to I make them dangerous for 1-3rd level adventurers when their weapons are in the 1d3-1d4 range on average and even the least armored character is in Studded Leather? (3 DR)
Two. Ogres. Other than by magic weapons, how can I make an ogre NOT mop the floor with 2nd-3rd level characters?
For goblins, giving them something other to use (like, say, flaming oil), or just large amounts of attacks and hoping for critical hits. The grappling rules are another option; pinned and trussed up heroes have a short lifespan.
But goblins are basically children with knives. Why the heck should someone in steel plate armor be afraid?
As for ogres, they'll have 9 points of DR from armor and natural armor. You melee types should be putting out at least 1D8+3 on a non-power attack, and up to 2D6+9 for those two handed power attacking guys (without buffs). Those guys will hit almost all the time and they'll have DR to soak up the hits as well (about 1/2 of the damage the Ogre is doing). It's more of a war of attrition than a regular fight, and there's always casters.
Armor DR doesn't apply to almost any spell damage. Doesn't apply to Sleep or Color Spray either.
Our group uses armor as DR. We ran the math and found that in the cases where the armor made the difference between getting hit or not, the DR usually soaked up more harm than the AC would have caused misses (though it wasn't a huge gap).
In the case of monsters that will consistently hit you (unless you're uber-AC-guy), armor as DR basically saves you hit points at the cost of nothing. And yes, in cases where your opponent does 1D6 damage, wearing Chain Mail basically makes you invulnerable where AC15 would not; this really isn't a problem.
Anyways, I wouldn't hesitate to use an ogre against a 2nd-3rd level party. Several ogres at once, yeah, wait until they have magical weapons. Multiple CR3 monsters against 2nd-3rd level PCs in regular rules armor isn't exactly happy fun time for PCs either.