Damage Reduction

[Longman]

The thing for me is, if you were going to use damage reduction, you should also be doing stuff like applying penalties to wounded characters, and having dexterity penalties for people wearing chain and plate mail, and other stuff that represents a similar level of crunch to damage reduction. And then, you really aren't playing basic any more.

I mean, if you are playing a game where people who normally have 80hp can function perfectly well with 1hp, you probably shouldn't be too worried about mechanical realism, right?

Personally I think AC and HP are fine, always have. It's just a simple and efficient way of resolving combat outcomes and you can try to imagine what happened in a realistic way, if you want.

[Delver]

I agree with that. I think that RPG's tend to have a Rules Creep or Feature Creep that grows until they become too bloated to function. Granted many folks like the "Crunch", but I'm finding that HP and AC are working well because most players are used to them and understand them. Again, my playing nowadays is almost exclusively PlayByPost, so speed and simplicity are king. Sitting around a table, more crunch is ok, sometimes.

Also, like Solo said, DR with exploding dice seems to work well. My "other" favorite system uses this mechanic, and fights are quick and deadly. However the tradeoff is weird situations where a character cannot get hit or harmed unless a dice explosion happens, and other balance issues.

Just my 2 septims, but my feeling is that fantasy role-playing gaming is done mostly in one's head rather than on paper. Describing a battle blow-by-blow is great. Telling about certain wounds or injuries is great. The underlying mechanic doesn't care. Use narrative to express "realistic" fighting, and keep the mechanics of the thing simple. And keep things moving!

[black1blade]

If the combat was "realistic" each round people would roll loads of attack for both attacking, defending parring ect.

[Qualitymix]

Well this has been a fantastic conversation, and I really appreciate evervybodies input. You've all convinced me to simply stick to the core rules. Thanks! I feel better equipped to explain this mechanic to my players now.

[spaceLem]

DR works surprisingly badly in D&D, and games with increasing HPs. It leads to lots of cases where there are more hits arriving, but which do 0 damage, which is boring. Plus AC is a good match for armour like plate, when faced with piercing and cutting weapons.

What I suggest, if you want to have both, is to note that AC 11 is unarmoured, so if you hit that, you hit the person, but if it's less than their armour AC, then it's hit the armour, so apply damage with DR. If it's above the AC, you've bypassed the armour, no DR. You might choose to say magic boosts the unarmoured AC.

Example: three orcs seeing at the fighter in chain, hitting ACs 10, 12, and 17. The 1st misses completely, the 2nd hits but the armour absorbs 2, the 3rd bypasses the armour and does full damage.

This system will end up with players receiving more damage, so bear that in mind.