Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

I know some games call it something like damage prevention, but I was first introduced to it as "soak" so that is what I am calling it. Anyway, has anyone ever thought about introducing this to Basic Fantasy? It could just be that some armor has a soak value that reduces incoming damage by the value. I think this could be great and could even spill over to magical buff spells that grant a +1 of soak, for instance. I just thought it was a good idea and thought I'd share.

It was talked some time ago in this post.

DR or Damage Resistance, a coveted effect in DnD 3.5 where I started. I've considered introducing it but the more I run BFRPG the less I miss the mechanics I'm used to which are not present. That said; it would be pretty easy to graft 3.5's DR into BFRPG with very little work since BFRPG is an OGL game and it's a very simple mechanic. Check out the 3.5 SRD.

It's sort of about narrative thinking as I see it. DR says a hit is landed and is then partially absorbed by armor, rage or whatever. The way I see it is if a character's AC is mostly Dex-based and an attack fails to "hit", they dodged, if it is mostly from armor/natural armor then their armor absorbed the blow and narratively that's how I present it since I comment on the nature of every attack whether it hits or misses. Therefore I find DR to be superfluous from a narrative standpoint and therefore a "bloat" mechanic I try to avoid. Not to discourage you from doing whatever you want but that's my two cents on the topic.