Armour as DR

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Draco_Argentum
Duke
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Armour as DR

Post by Draco_Argentum »

I'm interested in coming up with a system for armour granting DR rather than AC. An AC bonus could still be given to some armour but it would need to be smaller than in the current system.

As a starting point here is the Armageddon 2089 DR system:
"Every type of weapon has an Armour Piercing (AP) score. If a character is struck by a weapon whose AP score equals or exceeds the DR score of his armour then any DR provided by the armour is completely ignored, allowing the weapon to do its full amount of damage. If a weapon is listed as having an AP score of 0 it will be affected by all DR scores. Weapons listed as having no AP score at all will ignore any and all DR and always do their full amount of damage."

The on/off nature of DR makes it simple. But, since one point of AP makes a big difference in damage, it could be a balence problem.

Weapons will keep their current damage amounts. Enhancement bonuses would get added to DR. Obviously DR would need to stack with the barbarian class feature.

Unfortunately I'm stuck on figureing out reasonable values for the DR of armours and the AP scores of weapons. Does anyone have any ideas on how much DR is the bare minimum to be useful? How much is going to be so much that some characters will be shafted?

[Edit] Removed enhancement bonuses getting added to AP. [/Edit]
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fbmf
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Re: Armour as DR

Post by fbmf »

I actually took the time to research the question I asked over at cross thread at Nifty, and lo and behold it is covered in the UA.

Frank's analysis was as follows:


Armor as DR

Interestingly - this screws armor users hard. The dR it gives out is small and weak, and the reduction in AC is massive. Consider the Cleric in Platemail who before was being hit by CR 5 opposition only 25% of the time. Now he's being hit 45% of the time - an increase in the amount of damage he's taking of 80%. However, he takes 4 points off of each attack - which if CR 5 enemies were doing only 9 points of damage per hit would break even. CR 5 enemies do a lot more than 9 points of damage per hit so this is a net tremendous kick in the balls to armor wearing people.

The behind the curtain on this shows really bad math. They compare a 25% relative reduction in damage per hit to a 20% absolute increase in hits per attack to show that a Fighter is pulling ahead. Apples to Nuclear Reactors my friend - the actual math is that you just had a relative increase of between 40 and 400 percent of hits per attack and are recieving 3/4 of the damage per hit - which means that you are looking at at least a 5% increase in the damage per round that you are taking from that Ogre.


Game On,
fbmf
Draco_Argentum
Duke
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Re: Armour as DR

Post by Draco_Argentum »

Exactly, thats why I'm thinking about this first rather than just coming up with some numbers like the UA crew did.

As it stands I'm probably stuck with AP reducing DR rather than the all or nothing version. I also think enhancement bonuses probably shouldn't increase AP after all so it scales better.
Username17
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Re: Armour as DR

Post by Username17 »

If you give AP numbers and DR to everyone, and have the AP reduce the DR - you are just having all weapons inflict extra damage to compensate for the DR you are giving people.

-Username17
Draco_Argentum
Duke
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Re: Armour as DR

Post by Draco_Argentum »

I wouldn't let size effect DR or AP, the damage difference is enough IMO. I don't think differentiating between attack types would be good, too much complexity.

Note that there is no reason why medium armour has to reduce speed to 20, 25 is probably a better option. Leaving 20 for heavy armour without the loss of run multiplier. I'm suprised I haven't thought of that before.
Draco_Argentum
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Re: Armour as DR

Post by Draco_Argentum »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1081216982[/unixtime]]If you give AP numbers and DR to everyone, and have the AP reduce the DR - you are just having all weapons inflict extra damage to compensate for the DR you are giving people.


Thats correct. The main advantage of all or nothing AP is that it avoids this to an extent. The problem with it is that damage as a function of DR amount is highly discontinuous.
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