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Has anyone tried the alternative rule for Armor as Damage Reduction?
I'd like to hear your feedback on it. I wanted to try using it for a pathfinder game, but I want to hear some feedback from people who actually tried it out.
I was considering using it for the Shattered Star adventure path, if that makes a difference.
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The other problem is that damage scales differently than atatck rolls, so a goblin with a dogslicer can't ever hurt Mr. Full Plate, while a giant laughs at your puny DR as he basically auto-hits you for 40 at a time.
DR that makes you invincible at 2nd level is much less useful at 10th level, and armor as DR systems tend not to scale very well.
For example, 3 DR at 1st level is a decent amount and will protect you from a reasonable amount of CR1 foes. To get the same proportionate amount of defense you'd need something like 25 DR at 12th level, just because everythign hits so much harder. But tha breaks some monsters that have many small attacks. DR 25 also makes you basically immune to mundane guards and such, as they can't damage you even on a crit.
Basically I'm saying be very careful using armor as DR - the system isn't really designed to handle it and it affects a lot of ancillary bits and pieces of combat.
Spycraft used this, along with a vitality/wounds system.
1) players were a bit more reluctant to start fights, because a lucky hit could really hurt you
2) players were smarter about cover/concealment, choke points, etc.
3) things felt much more cinematic for the gunfights.
4) getting hurt mattered, which I like from an immersion perspective.
5) combat was LESS likely to kill you, because injuring an opponent badly was enough that you could then disarm/capture/ignore them while you stole the hard drive/dna evidence/counterfeit documents/whatever
(You also need npcs with motivations that are NOT 'kill U!'
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I've not used it in D&D/PF, but I did use it as part of D20 Judge Dredd, over 10 years ago.
I can't recall the exact DR value of Judge armour, but it must have been at least DR6, because I remember running a large brawl with a mob of juve gangers, in which it was impossible for them to deal damage with the weapons at hand, unless they critted, or had a Str bonus, and even then, it wasn't a given.
I resorted to grappling, in an attempt to pin and deal damage, though that had issues all of its own, in that the bonuses for multiple grapplers were hardly worth it.
It didn't sour the game, as such, since the encounter was not a pivotal one, so not intended to be lethal, but it did make me run the remaining sessions in a very different way than I would have run typical D&D/PF.
Essentially, I resolved to make the focus of the game skill challenges, and old-style problem-solving (ie test the player's ingenuity, skill rolls alone don't cut it).
The PCs were cadets (level 2), carrying out a fire drill, having to deal with the awkward sods who wouldn't evacuate, and various criminals who were taking advantage of the disruption.
So not 'kick in the door, kill the monster', but "Extract the 100-st fatties from the stairwells, and prevent the citizens behind/underneath from suffocating or killing each other".
"Negotiate with the Apocalypse war veteran, who's bricked himself in the block's water control. Convince him you're not Sov agents, trying to drug his drinking supply."
And future combats relied less on weapons, and more on the NPCs taking advantage of prevailing hazards. One PC thrown down a lift shaft, another had a vending machine toppled on him, another was hit with a live electrical cable. But shooting them, or whacking them with baseball bats? Forget it.
And that's the big issue with Armor as DR.
Set it at DR 1-3, and it's hardly relevant.
Set it at 4+, and you effectively make the wearer immune to whole swathes of potential opponents.
Goblin shortbows do d4 damage. DR4 allows the wearer to step out in front of an entire goblin horde, and allow them all a free shot, and he only has to worry about the crits, and even some of them don't hurt.
Same with kobold spears, small animals teeth and claws, shuriken, ...
A Gm would have to change the way they design encounters, or accept that many of what would have been level-appropriate encounters in the default game are no longer xp-worthy, or worth playing out.
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Short version: You probably want a larger redesign than just dropping in armor as DR.
I've used this with Iron Heroes, although it's slightly different in that the DR is rolled and automatically bypassed by magic. So armor might give you DR 1d4/magic.
This actually works pretty well, although the extra roll slows down combat a touch. I'd consider giving enemies static damage if I used it in the future.
The other key part is that classes in Iron Heroes get a defensive bonus (that's basically a mirror to BAB). Since flat-footed AC doesn't involve the defensive bonus, various ways to make people flat-footed became very important.
Cheers!
Landon
Hmm...
This is all good information to digest.
If you were to make an adjustment to the way that Armor as DR worked so that it scaled better, what would you do?
Cause I know that with starting cash for a level 5 character you can get Adamantine masterwork Plate armor with +1, which I think would mean a 13/- DR and +1 to Defense Value (since the + bonus still applies to defense from what I read) and even at level 5 that's... quite a bit of DR.
Jeez that does mean that whatever hits you hard enough to hurt at all will be devestating for a light armored character, and the auto-hit thing is also a big point of consideration. Hmmm... I want it to work but I am getting the feeling the system just isn't able to handle it, and the alternate rules is just a flavor band-aid for people more 'Soak roll' oriented.
Overall it works okay at lower levels but as you get into mid-range it quickly collapses. Essentially you might as well not even have it. When you're fighting larger enemies they bypass DR due to size, so that's very much an issue. Magic bypasses it.
Spiking damage becomes far more important than any other. When I played with it (because I really like the idea) I had a player that used two-weapon fighting that did almost no damage at all every round against the tougher enemies.
The weaker enemies could only do any damage to those with the heavier armor by getting a crit.
I houseruled that magic armor kept its DR against magic and gave dodge bonuses the lighter armor you used. That helped some but honestly Pathfinder just isn't set up for the system. It might work in a low-magic, low-level setting but other than that...not really. And my players almost universally hated it.
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Having DR be a variable die roll would be a big step.
I don't have a problem with armor providing DR, in principle. Several games do it (Runequest, Warhammer RP 1st/2nd Ed, Rolemaster, and more).
But what threatens my sense of disbelief is that, by giving it a flat rate, it is essentially stating that the wearer is always able to take the blow on the thickest, most protective plate of his armoured suit.
That they are never hit in the places where the armour is weakest.
Combine this with the modern trend for 'dungeon-punk' piecemeal armour, and the old 'favourite' chainmail bikini and boob-window-breastplate, and it becomes more absurd.
"Your armour has gaping holes everywhere! Why would I not aim my blows there?"
To be quite honest my experience with both wound/vigor and armor as DR have been dismal. The game really just doesn't adapt well to changed in core mechanics. There's just too many interrelated things which break once you change a major mechanic like AC.
The armor as DR mechanic is a very ill considered jury rig which breaks down quickly as levels advance.
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I have been playing with the Armor as DR system and Wounds and Vigor system. We are now level 5 and it has been really good. some things to note.
Fights will last longer, people are taking less damage with each attack so fights will last longer and be somewhat less deadly.
At HIGH levels (15+) the DRs can be obsene. We calculated that a dragon who cast mage armor would have something in the range of DR 35/- Some creatures and players could be higher. This means some characters won't be able to deal damage at all (look at you two weapon fighter).
Elemental damage is king. Since it is not effected by DR it is the most dangerous source of damage. The Arcane Trickster with scorching ray is terrifying.
all that being said I recommend using both of these together. They really make the game interesting.
Hmmmm... personally, from what I've stumbled upon online, I preferred the: "Defense Bonus variant rule" over "armor as DR".
This approach means that you classes will get a scaling bonus to AC that helps to show how the characters become more capable of dodging hits as they gain combat experience. And since the amount of scaling was based upon what kind of armor you could have normally used (fighters with heavy, barbarians with medium, rogues with light, wizards with none; multiclassing still helps you get better set of AC like normal), it helps to show how all that proper training a swordsman gets goes to use while the bookworm mage still has to stay away from all the pointy things.
Also, it allows you to make effective melee combatants that do not need to be encased in a couple dozen pounds of steel. That means you could run settings where the armored knight image would not be appropriate (I like the image of spell and sword wielding mobsters, knocking over banks and such, for example).
Of course, the srd I read this variant rule on also suggested combining it with a different, yet similar version of the armor as DR rule. . Using a combination of these kinds of rules could be interesting, and yet still fairly similar enough to the system's standard assumptions on AC that you will not run into the problems of autohitting trolls mentioned above.