Don't.
The unchained defense/DR rules are horrible. While I like armor as DR in theory - the system would need to be designed with it from the ground up. Pathfinder wasn't. It doesn't work at all.
Do you happen to know if there are any house rules around that implemented DR that is better then the rules in the Books?
Do you happen to know if there are any house rules around that implemented DR that is better then the rules in the Books?Don't.
The unchained defense/DR rules are horrible. While I like armor as DR in theory - the system would need to be designed with it from the ground up. Pathfinder wasn't. It doesn't work at all.
My DM and I played around with armor as DR some time back. In Pathfinder, the main issue we found is that a lot of creatures are designed to be scary because they have a lot of smaller attacks. That means that by picking up a set of Full Plate, you can actually be immune to something significantly higher CR than you are, just because it doesn't have any attacks that break your DR. Basically, to make it work, you have to reconsider a lot of Bestiary entries to make sure the CR still works at all.
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My DM and I played around with armor as DR some time back. In Pathfinder, the main issue we found is that a lot of creatures are designed to be scary because they have a lot of smaller attacks. That means that by picking up a set of Full Plate, you can actually be immune to something significantly higher CR than you are, just because it doesn't have any attacks that break your DR. Basically, to make it work, you have to reconsider a lot of Bestiary entries to make sure the CR still works at all.
This. It makes the game much more about a few bigger swings, with the exception of pummeling style/clustered shot.
Except against monks (who would be about the only class with halfway decent AC), accuracy becomes all but irrelevant - damage is all.
Damage and/or DR should be much more random and less static damage to make armor=DR work.
It simply doesn't work in Pathfinder. Trying to houserule enough changes to make it viable - and you might as well not play Pathfinder at all.
My DM and I played around with armor as DR some time back. In Pathfinder, the main issue we found is that a lot of creatures are designed to be scary because they have a lot of smaller attacks. That means that by picking up a set of Full Plate, you can actually be immune to something significantly higher CR than you are, just because it doesn't have any attacks that break your DR. Basically, to make it work, you have to reconsider a lot of Bestiary entries to make sure the CR still works at all.This. It makes the game much more about a few bigger swings, with the exception of pummeling style/clustered shot.
Except against monks (who would be about the only class with halfway decent AC), accuracy becomes all but irrelevant - damage is all.
Damage and/or DR should be much more random and less static damage to make armor=DR work.
It simply doesn't work in Pathfinder. Trying to houserule enough changes to make it viable - and you might as well not play Pathfinder at all.
How unfortunate. The real thing my GM and I are trying to find is a way for our tanks to be tanks outside of just a higher Hit Die. We just love Pathfinder so much we want to stick with this system.
How unfortunate. The real thing my GM and I are trying to find is a way for our tanks to be tanks outside of just a higher Hit Die. We just love Pathfinder so much we want to stick with this system.
You may want to see if you can draw some inspiration from the Sacred Shield Paladin archetype. I think they do a lot of great things there for tanking.
First, you've got your swift action Lay on Hands to yourself, so you can eat the damage without as much worry. After all, if an intelligent foe realizes he's not hitting you or is not getting passed your damage reduction, he's going to try to attack someone else instead. Especially if you're not doing enough damage to be an immediate threat.
Second, it reduces the damage your enemy does to your allies. This ties in with the first point -- when an intelligent foe realizes he can't hurt your allies but he can hurt you, then you suddenly become a better target. Especially if he realizes that you're the reason he can't hurt your friends.
Third, you get to apply your shield bonus to nearby allies. Once again, this ties back to the first point -- if the intelligent foe can't hit your friends to begin with because you're providing them a shield bonus, they become less enticing targets.
You may also want to look into the Arbiter class from the Thunderscape setting. They also get a lot of nifty things, like extra attacks of opportunity for each adjacent ally, which they can then use to attack an enemy that strikes one of those allies.
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How unfortunate. The real thing my GM and I are trying to find is a way for our tanks to be tanks outside of just a higher Hit Die. We just love Pathfinder so much we want to stick with this system.
I'm not sure how DR mechanically does that better than AC - though I admit it doesn't have quite the same vibe. A tanky fighter in fullplate can have far more swings aimed at him before he goes down than a wheezy wizard.
If you want to be tanky in an MMO sense - ZZTRaider's comments about Sacred Shield are relevant.