Looking at a Chain shirt, which gives DR 4, basically a normal person with a dagger (Str 10) can't hurt a person wearing it. However, a Chain shirt only covers the upper portion of the body. I would think you could hit and cause damage a lot more 19-20 with 3/4 max damage. I mean, all you have to do is go for ANY unarmored spot.
Any ideas on how to make DR a little more feasible for low end damage weapons?
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Check out called shots.
Specifically, "Stacking: Unless otherwise stated, penalties for multiple called shots do not stack, even if they are to different areas of the body. Ability damage and drain caused by called shots always stacks." Many called shots inflict ability damage on a crit and a reasonable penalty on a normal hit.
Hmmm. That's off where I was thinking, but it's a possibility. I'll have to consider it further.
I had initially thought of some sort of variable damage system, where the better the hit, the greater the damage, regardless of the weapon. For example, if you "just" hit with a dagger, it does 1d4, if you hit +5, it does 2d4, if you hit +7, it does 3d4, if you hit +10 it does 4d4. Similar for different weapons.
In my mind, the simplest method would be to guarantee a 1 point damage minimum, even if an armor's DR would normally absorb everything. Crits could either ignore DR or half them or whatever. Otherwise, once you hit the heavy magical armors or tough natural armors, light weapons will become useless. How will you handle a DEX fighter where light weapons are his prime choice?
You could also have feats or enchantments with armor piercing/penetrating abilities which improve your chances. Penetrating Strike is the obvious one, but the requirements are restrictive.
Going way back to 1st ed. AD&D, you had weapon vs armor types bonuses. i.e. piercing were better against certain types of armor, bludgeoning against other, etc. I don't know of anyone who actually used those rules.
In my mind, the simplest method would be to guarantee a 1 point damage minimum, even if an armor's DR would normally absorb everything.
Hey, that's not bad. I'll consider it. Simple rule.
Going way back to 1st ed. AD&D, you had weapon vs armor types bonuses. i.e. piercing were better against certain types of armor, bludgeoning against other, etc. I don't know of anyone who actually used those rules.
Yeah, I remember that. Never used it.
Hey, just found in another thread about using a variable for DR armor. I like this idea. Basically, just as hard to hit, and if you hit, the Armor roll is subtracted from your damage. This is really easy and has about the effect I want. You CAN damage someone in plate armor using a dagger, but odds are you won't. Makes good sense. I might try that.
I really want to resurrect those rules. I'd give a chain shirt something like DR 6 against slashing, 2 against piercing, and 0 against blunt.
Found it. No rules for variable DR or weapon vs armor, but it breaks AC into 4 different Combat Defense opposed rolls.
Armor Defense = Armor Bonus + Natural Armor Bonus + Deflection Bonus + 1d20.
Block Defense = Shield Bonus + BAB + 1d20.
Dodge Defense = Dex bonuses - ACP + Ref Save + 1d20.
Parry Defense = Max Attack for weapon used (i.e. BAB + Str or Dex bonus + magic weapon bonuses + 1d20).
You can use AD even if other defenses are tried and fail. BD can be used once per round for each attack you can make. DD is a free action, even if Flat footed, but each use in the round after the first is a cumukative -2 penalty. PD can be used for blurry hands, but both are at -2 penalty unless using the Off Hand and having TWF.
This prevents having gigantic ACs that are impossible to hit. I've but evaluated how rid would affect Armor ad DR.
Thats a pretty neat take on it. Do you actually roll all four of those in one round or choose one? Because that seems like a lot of rolling.
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Actually from my POV the problems with armor as DR are twofold - one, your situation, is keeping low level attackers relavent against good armor; the second is simultaneously keeping armor DR relavent against big high level monsters.
How do you make a system that allows both a goblin with a dogslicer to be a threat to a level 1 charcater but keeps armor worth taking when you're fighting a giant that hits you twice a round for 35-40 each time?
What if you combine it with the Vigor-Wounds rules and say the Wounds portion of a Crit always bypasses armor.
Goblin gets a Crit with his Dog Slicer the guy in Plate mail still suffers 2 wounds.
Even with a Con of 30 he can't take too many of those.
To mesh them, I would simply drop the Armor Defense roll, and grant DR as per normal. I'd also add deflection bonus to the other rolls. I actually really wanna try this.
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Logically, you can combine Armor as DR, Called Shots with random hit locations, piecemeal armor, and VP/WP and add minimal extra work for a much richer combat experience...
By all means if you enjoy complex combat then adopt these things. I'm just stating to the OP it will slow his game down and in my experience has bogged games way too much. Adding one extra roll means multiple over a combat. Adding one extra calculation means multiple over combat.
It's also not as easy as converting AC bonus straight to DR. If you're using a system like that then as the OP suggests a chain shirt would block a dagger. If DR is used then light armor should be 1-2, medium 3-4, and heavy 4-6.
And if called shots are put into question, why would anyone wear a breastplate that's twice the price of chainmail that only protects the stomach? Can players have piecemeal armor? Does this mean the GM has to now know what piecemeal armor each NPC has?
VP/WP was a nice system for star wars d20 but doesn't work in Pathfinder. Do a cure spells or channel heal the same ration of WP as VP? Does bleed go straight to WP? Critical threat range 18-20 is even more overpowered in this system as it amounts to instant kill.
Pathfinder is an abstract system to use high magic fantasy roleplaying. Grittier combat with more realistic armor representations is really for a low magic setting and not the strength of this system. Other systems, such as Savage World, handle this much much better.
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How do you make a system that allows both a goblin with a dogslicer to be a threat to a level 1 charcater but keeps armor worth taking when you're fighting a giant that hits you twice a round for 35-40 each time?"Armor gives DR equal to armor bonus, but may only reduce damage to half damage (min 1 nonlethal)."
A basic Chain Shirt gives DR 4. Hit someone for 4 points and they take 2 points (half damage is the minimum). Hit that same someone for 20 points and they take 16 damage.
Full Plate +3 gives DR 12. Hit someone for 20 points of damage and they take 10. Hit them for 40 points and they take 28.
This is the approach that gives basically worthless results at high levels. When you're staring down a +35/+30/+25/+20 attack sequence for 2d6+40 each hit, I'd much rather have +14 AC than 14 DR. (Imagine comparing an AC of 40 vs. AC 26 against that attack sequence) In such a game I'd pump my Dex and ignore armor as more hindrance than help. Or just not play martial characters.
Basically it's really hard to model damage mitigation that has the same effectiveness as AC bonuses against a wide variety of foes.
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Kais006, except for a question about healing magic, your observations about Armor as DR or Vitality/Wound Points do not lead to this conclusion.
The point I'm trying to make is you have to do a complete overhaul of the system to get it to work not just a few simple fixes here and there. You might as well try a different system.
For instance critical threat range was mentioned and in a true VP/WP system a critical hit deals damage instantly to WP regardless of how much VP are left (weapon damage is not multiplied on a critical hit). Armor only provides DR against damage for WP, not VP. If you don't play with this concept then why play with VP/WP at all because you're turning the abstract HP into two different pools that mean the same thing. If you do play with this concept then you need to change all weapons so they crit only on a 20 with maybe, maybe a few on 19-20. This also makes critical effect feats pretty useless since your opponent will most likely die on a critical hit. Since armor only protects WP now you must develop a balanced scaling Defense with class level.
Also, as Ryric points out simply changing armor to DR can throw off game balance. And this is just one change.
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What's a "true VP/WP system"?
I'm talking about the Vitality Point / Wound Point system presented in Star Wars WotC 1st and 2nd edition lol. It's what the vigor and wound system in Pathfinder is based off except the reason it doesn't work well is it probably became apparent to the designers that a simple chapter wasn't enough for such a big overhaul.
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This is the approach that gives basically worthless results at high levels. When you're staring down a +35/+30/+25/+20 attack sequence for 2d6+40 each hit, I'd much rather have +14 AC than 14 DR. (Imagine comparing an AC of 40 vs. AC 26 against that attack sequence)I'll example how you could build for it. With those 4 iterative attacks, I estimated level 16. I chose an Invulnerable Rager Barbarian as my example character.
+14 DR from Mithril Full Plate +5
Reduces the attacks to 2d6+26.
+8 DR from Barbarian 16
+3 DR from Rage Power: Increased Damage Reduction
(+10 DR from Stoneskin spell for a fighter version)Further reduces the attacks to 2d6+15.
IF Natural Armor bonuses are counted as DR in that system:
+4 DR from Natural Armor Amulet +4
+4 DR from Rage Power: Beast TotemFurther reduces the attacks to 2d6+7.
I think a nice theme in that campaign would be to go for the Rage Power: Crippling Blow. After a full attack (pending saves and how many attacks hit), that foe could have a -2 to -16 STR penalty (-1 to -12 damage penalty).
EDIT: Removed Stoneskin from the barbarian example. Stoneskin would be for the fighter version.
Fair enough, by stacking on 11-19 points of DR from other sources you sure can get high level damage down to reasonable amounts. Of course, now you've got the problem where an army of 5000 NPC archers can't touch your PC ever, since his 33 DR negates even their max damage crits whereas AC 40 guy still takes 250d8 damage or so per round. I freely note that this may not be an actual issue in your game, but I've seen players realize that they could crush an army alone with no chance of injury and it can be ugly.
Also I'm still not sure that the barbarian wouldn't be better off with +22 AC and "just" DR 11/-. And how does this work for a class that doesn't have easy access to innate DR? Must all fighters, cavaliers, and paladins use stoneskin constantly?
I'm not saying armor as DR can't work, it's just full of unintended consequences. I have found it unsatisfying when used over a wide range of levels.
One thing that comes to mind for me is aimed shots. An aimed shot could negate any amount of DR from armor if it succeeds.
Full plate armor doesn't do you much good if you forget to put on your helmet....:P
Quick post - and I will expand later.
I use Armor as DR.
3.5 Unearthed Arcana style - Studded leather, for example, goes from granting +3 AC to +2 AC with DR 1/- (and so on).
Additionally, all characters have a Base Defense Bonus that scales with level.
Couple those two things with the fact my campaigns have no rings of protection, amulets of natural armor, stat buffers . . . it all works really well.
I do use a lot of Trailblazer stuff too.
Long story short, Armor as DR can work, but you end up having to change a lot of other standard PF/3.5 elements to make it so.
Addendum to above - I go through all those hoops to make armor DR and use things like a dodge combat reaction and scaling defense bonuses because I HATE, HATE, HATE boring magical items like rings of protection and amulets of natural armor that essentially become needed.
What if you could bypass DR by rolling an attack that exceeds an opponents AC by a number greater than their armor bonus?
For example guy in chainmail's Defense Score is 12. Roll a 12-16, apply DR, roll a >16, no DR. This combines the normal rules AND the armor as DR rules WITHOUT adding sn extra roll, with the bonus of simulating the difficulty of nailing an armor's weakspot.
Or would this just be negated by a high attack bonus?
Use two AC figures. Hit AC, Armored AC. Armor gives DR equal to AC bonus.
Random guy in chain shirt: Hit AC 10. Armored AC 14.
You need a 14 to hit him well enough to ignore the armor completely. Full damage.
You need a 10-13 to contact well enough, although the armor stops the first 4 damage of the hit.
9 and under you miss.