Armor and Damage Reduction

[MedievalMan]

I have no idea if this concept has been discussed before here. But I thought I would share a few thoughts I had on the matter. One thing that has always really bothered me about using armor as DR is that characters and monsters still get a bonus to attack rolls. Which without armor providing a bonus against such increasing attack bonuses necessitates the inclusion of clunky defense by level mechanics. I pondered this issue for some time the other day when I came to the conclusion that the simplest thing to do would be to drop increasing attack bonus' and just have all characters roll against an AC of 11 to hit. The problem then becomes what to do about monsters as they have a naturally higher AC. The solution, of course, was to exchange the monsters bonus to AC and instead convert it to a bonus to DR. I have roughed out some ideas and presented them below.

Non-progressive attack rolls and Armor as Damage Reduction.

Armor now counts as damage reduction. Damage reduction works as thus, whenever a character takes damage from any non-magical, non-elemental (fire, cold, electricity, etc) source they reduce said damage by the amount listed under their DR. Thus if a character has 2 DR and is struck for 3 points of damage he would only take one point o damage after applying his DR (3-2=1).

Armor now counts as damage reduction as displayed on the table below. Shields still increase a character armor class as normal, as they are used more for blocking than damage mitigation. Characters still apply their Dexterity modifier to their armor class as well.

Armor Type : Damage Reduction
No Armor : 0
Leather Armor : 2
Chain Mail : 4
Plate Mail : 6

Characters and monsters no longer have a base attack bonus. Attacks work as normal but characters and monsters do not add their base attack modifier. They still add their strength or dexterity bonus as normal., and monsters who get a bonus to damage from high strength may add that bonus to their attack rolls as well. All characters and monsters have a base AC of 11. Monsters, rather than having a higher AC, instead now have a DR rating. Their DR rating is equal to the difference between their normal AC and 11. Fighters add +1 to their attack rolls as a class feature.

I know its a little rough at the moment. But I feel like this idea has some real potential in making armor as DR a viable concept. So what are your thoughts on this idea?

[Dimirag]

I like it more this way that the alternate d20 way used on Conan, MasterCraft, etc.
You can replace the BAB by a Damage by Level mechanism, meaning that higher BAB equals more damage and it allows for faster opponent dispatch.

I will make a Damage by Level sometime for my house rules which will be something like for X BAB the damage dice goes up by one die type.

[MedievalMan]

That would work out well. Maybe we can collaborate that rules change with these here. Because honestly under my rules above it would be nearly impossible to hurt a dragon in most cases, they have something like 10 damage reduction on average which is nuts, but entirely believable from a game world view point.

[Dimirag]

Other way of using the BAB is leaving as it is, and also using it as a AC bonus (which would become a Defense Class).

I like the idea of BAB as they represent combat prowess, you can give fighters a +2 and clerics/thieves a +1 and increase it at a very little rate.

If you want to go nuts make this combo:
1-Smaller BAB.
2-BAB improves DC (defense class).
3-Armor reduces DC (unless its natural).
4-Damage increase by level.

So suppose a Level 1 warrior could have:
+2 + STR to hit To Hit
11 + DEX - Armor + shield + BAB DC
normal weapon damage
armor DR (damage reduction)

at level 6 he could have
+4 + STR to hit To Hit
11 + DEX - Armor + shield + BAB DC
+1 die weapon damage
armor DR (damage reduction)

[SmootRK]

When one looks at AC mechanic, Armor, Hit Points, and other "Parts" of the game in isolation, outside of the context of the rest of the game, one can easily pick the individual mechanic apart and detail how "it is not realistic".

So Yes... some really wacky unrealistic stuff there.

However, I will only say that the game as a whole needs to be considered. The word is "context", within the context of the game mechanics as a whole, the game works quite well. So well, that the essentials of the game have held intact since the 1970's. We might roll a different die here and there, or use ascending values instead of descending here and there, add more stuff, take away other stuff...

... but the bulk of the core of the game works exceedingly well 'as a whole'.


That all said, Armor Class in combination with Hit Points does a great job in its abstraction to deal with game play. And, I say this when even I use a DR mechanic as well (in my Barbarian quasi-class). A DR system works well as an extra perk for certain classes, monsters, or even as an extra quality layered upon a magic armor. But, I don't think it needs to be applied to all armors across the board.

I am done with my soapbox,
carry on then

[Dimirag]

I agreed that the AC system works perfectly along with the HP system for the game itself.
An alternate armor/damage/HP system could work for a different "game feel", maybe a "brother game" where armors are rare or characters wearing it are scarce.
For these games one can simply ad a "level/class based AC" and keep the same feel as the original, but if one is looking something different (probably making that each HP lost really "hurts") this idea is not bad, it will change radically the "fee" or maybe even the "flow" of the game, but as I said, if thats what you want... go ahead!

[MedievalMan]

Well leave are disagreements aside then. Once I get this polished and tested I am sure I will be able to make a better case for myself then I did above. However, Smoot, I respect your opinion on the matter and understand what your saying. I just feel that with proper testing and experimenting I can come up with a viable alternative to the age old stand-by of AC/AB/HP.

this gives me an idea. Need to think on this...

[MedievalMan]

Alright here is version two of my idea.

Under this alternative combat system attack bonus has been removed from the game. All characters roll to hit using an unmodified D20 roll. In addition, armor class is changed as well. All characters now have an armor class of 11. Your Strength modifier is still applied to melee attack rolls and your Dexterity modifier is still applied to ranged attack rolls and armor class. Monsters may apply their bonus to damage as a bonus to melee attack rolls.

In this system wearing armor does not make it harder to hit a target, rather it provides protection against attacks that do hit. This protection is called Damage Reduction or DR for short. DR works like this, whenever you take damage from a successful hit you first subtract your DR from the damage rolled. Whatever damage remains afterwords is the amount of damage you take. Damage from spells automatically bypasses DR, as does damage taken from falling and from natural elements (such as fire or cold). Wearing armor provides characters with DR and monsters have their own formula for calculating their DR.

Armor Types and DR
Armor Type : Damage Reduction
No Armor : 0
Leather Armor : 2
Chain Mail : 4
Plate Mail : 6
*Shields still provide a bonus to armor class as normal.

Monster Damage Reduction
To calculate a monsters DR follow this simple process. First find the monsters normal listed AC then subtract 11 from that number. The remainder is the monsters DR. Note that some monsters wear armor and wield shields (such as most humanoid monsters) and this should be taken into account.

Fighter Attack Bonus
As a class feature under this system, Fighters gain a +1 bonus to attack rolls.

Bonus Damage by Level
All characters gain a bonus to damage based on their level this bonus depends on the characters class.
Fighter type characters gain a +1 bonus to damage per 3 levels, Cleric and Thief type characters gain a +1 bonus to damage every 4 levels, and Magic-User type characters gain a +1 bonus to damage every 5 levels. Monsters do not gain a bonus to damage based on their level.

[Joe the Rat]

You could save yourself a bit of time and just go with the mixed model from UA. Allows some deflection factor (which is a big part of what the big platey bits are supposed to do), while giving you some damage mitigation. go halvsies.

Unless DR has a minimum damage rule, reducing damage can nullify an attack as effectively as an AC bonus. Now the low damage roll is the lack of telling blow, not the low to-hit roll. Won't help much against a multi-die damage source, but those are the kinds of things that exceed the design parameters. Slings and arrows, not Stone Giants.There's a reason Bear-proof armor is still in the prototyping stage. A touch more realism on damage. A touch less cinematic heroism in the face of giant monsters, as they will mess your stuff up.

If DR allows minimum damage, tanking gets interesting. Death of a thousand cuts.

Something else to keep in mind is that we're still operating on the hit point abstraction. It's as much about endurance and concussions as bones and bleeding. (And this is where the old salts get into trouble. It's 3/4 luck and bruising, yet your natural recovery is like regrowing bones. But that's another topic.)

Playing with realism, keep in mind that at 6, plate mail effectively makes you impervious to war hammers, a weapon specifically meant to deal with opponents in plate armor.


An idea I've been playing with for DR is Dice Reduction. Landed hits aren't as painful, but something still gets through. By averages, stepping down a die size (10 - 8 - 6 - 4) is the equivalent to a -1, only with a more moderate range as opposed to a long 1 point (or 0 point) tail. You can set a minimum die, but that makes for interesting logic with small weapons. Damage typing might be something else to consider - armors providing DR against certain typed of hits, but not (or not as much) against others.

Something else to play with is nonlethal damage. If part of the damage redux is type conversion rather than total negation, your armor makes it more concussiony and less stabby. Knock outs and fatiguing are more likely to pull you out for a bit, and getting dehorsed in a joust won't take the better part of a week to recover from every time.

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making the levelling advantage damage based rather than attack based has some interesting implications. You start to be able to one-shot large, unarmored creatures. Basically skill and accuracy is in the damage roll rather than the to-hit.

[MedievalMan]

I have thought about assinging a few weapons the ability to penetrate different armors. It seemed rather anal, but it makes sense if realism is your goal (I am sort of half-realism here, more verisimilitude than anything else).

I figured at the very least hammers and maces + crossbows could ignore half the DR provided by armor. Those types of weapons are pretty universally good against the base armors presented in BFRPG. Chainmails great weakness after all is its inability to lesson a blunt blow. I read most medieval combat was more about just wearing your enemy out through a combination of extensive bruising and broken bones.

I toyed at one point with making DR based on dice rolls. So for a quick and dirty example chainmail gives 1d6+1 DR that roll after the other guy rolls his damage. It made combat take longer but it was interesting from a design point of view.

The only reason I don't want to go near halvies is then I have to butcher monster rules more to make them work. Thus I just went with a simple a AC to DR conversion.

The damage bonus by level was Dimirags idea, I just sort of put my own personal spin on it.

Man why does D&D style combat have to be so abstract. Makes it hard to inject any sort of believability into it, while still making it ridiculously deadly. I don't use the base rules for healing per night, but if hit points are such an abstraction why do I only heal 1 per night? Things like that make me wonder sometimes. Oh well, more thinking is the only solution I guess.