So recently I decided to try and use the variant rules of armor as DR and the wounds and vigor rules. The wounds and vigor was interesting, and went smoother once I myself understood it better... but the armor as DR proved to be polarizing for my players. Some of my group loved it, since it meant it was easier to hit the intended targets, but some of them, despite hitting the target, couldn't do enough damage to overcome the creature's DR and thus were more than a little upset about the whole thing. At the same time, this was a CR 3 encounter, and the creature had 7 natural armor, thus giving it DR 7. For such a low level, that does seem to be inordinately high. I'm not sure if I'm doing the math wrong, somehow, or what... but he also struggled to damage a much lower DR creature as well. He's a ranged paladin (I know, I know) and so he doesn't really do much damage in the first place. He's mostly dex based, and his bow does 1d8+2, so minimum damage is 3, and max is 10. Now, with the default system, his high dex helps him hit, but with the armor as DR it seems that you need less dex to be effective. If I do decide to switch to this system, I'm wondering if I should allow him to reallocate his ability score points... Thoughts? Advice? My other players seemed to really love the changes, and since two of them have natural DR in the default system, I thought it might level the playing field for my poor creatures. As it is, the group tends to shred everything I send at them unless I hit them with something that can nearly TPK everyone but the one character.
I see no problem with allowing rebuilds, especially when introducing house rules or variant rules sets.
What if it was easier to kill things(Like, a lot easier, they didn't have much vigor or whatever), that way the armor is the challenge, but once you get past that, it's easier to drop the fleshy creature inside.
Also, it seems that sundering would be a more valid tactic now.
If you're going to do armor as DR and have archers, it's critical to also allow some variant on the called shot rules. Because this is working exactly as it should: a bunch of arrows should be bouncing off something with a lot of armor. But then the archer's strategy is to very carefully aim for the thing's eye, or the chink at its elbow, etc. Tack that on, and I think you'll be on to something, because it will give the archer their own fun subsystem.
Alternatively, guns.
I'll reply in more detail after some research, but just wanted to quickly say: I don't allow guns.
You can give everybody Power Attack and Deadly Aim for free so that they can do more damage with the cost of to hit.
@Orich Starkhart - Can you explain "margin of success bonus"?
@Vamptastic - None of my players use sunder or anything like that right now, and I was actually hoping to encourage them to do so. We're playing Kingmaker, and so they're going to have to start learning tactics sooner or later.
@Eridan - Giving out free feats isn't going to balance anything. The issue here is most of them are already too strong. We have a Werebear in the group, and he's level 3 wandering around with natural 10 DR/Cold Iron
A scaling +1/2 level damage bonus to all non-spellcasting attacks helps to deal with the DR issue.
If you want casters to get it to, limit it to spells that require a touch or ranged touch attack. For spells like Scorching Ray, where you get multiple rays, allow it for only one of the rays.