3.5 No Ac

[Ravyn Dawnbringer]

How would I adjucate this? I'd like to remove it from the game, use a save instead, and make all ac boosters into DR. Is that possible, and how would it be done?

Thanks for any help, what I have now is that:

Ac is gone. (Duh)
Reflex(?) is your new not got hit stat
Any armor is DR

But I think that Attack bonuses make this auto-hit territory. Hence the question

[CatharzGodfoot]

It's not really feasible because of the way damage and saves scale. You might be able to get by without actually rewriting the majority of the game, but it would still be a Herculean task with little direct payoff.

[Crissa]

Mutants and Masterminds does this. However, they have a bit of a scaling problem, as well.

Someone should do the math and give us a graph of acceptable scores in such a system.

-Crissa

[Maxus]

I think DR could work if it was a percentage scale, rather than a flat number.

Or, if some items (like armor) gave a percentage of reduction and others gave flat numbers on top of that.

The percentages should be things easy to figure on the fly, though. 10%, 50%, 90%...

Other numbers, like 25% and 75% reduction take a bit longer to figure on the spur of the moment. At least for me, they do.

[Calibron]

Cut a lot of the attack bonuses so that it scales with reflex properly and, as was suggested previously, make things like armor provide percentage based damage reduction. Alternatively, keep track of AC normally, but instead of having it cause creatures to miss you compare it to the attackers attack bonus and reduce damage based on their chance to hit; for example if they need to roll a ten to hit you reduce the damage by 50%, if they need a 15 reduce the damage by 75%, ect., ect.. If the AC is actually lower than the attack bonus perhaps give increased damage in a like fashion.

[Murtak]

Unless you are willing to rework the entire combat system and the save system and revisit every ability interacting with AC, damage, damage reduction, saves and flatfootedness (read: nearly all of them) - no, it is not really doable. If you are basically rewriting 3E from scratch anyway - yep, and it is probably a good idea.

[Crissa]

Oh, I like that one, Caliborn.

-Crissa

[Vebyast]

I like Caliborn's solution too (about AC reducing damage by a percentage compared to the to-hit).

As for the numbers to use, just make it equal to the chance of hitting. Hit on a seven or lower = 7/20 chance = 35% damage. Averaged over all attacks, characters deal the same damage, but you don't have to do attack rolls and you don't have to wait to roll that 17 or higher to do damage.

The only problem is that it makes the super-fragile dex character untenable. If you're only combat effective as long as the bad guy doesn't roll a natural 20 (at which point you get massively overkilled), then you'll be effective for on average ten rounds. Under this system, you might be effective for more like two or three, even through they're only dealing 5% damage.

[souran]

They actually published just such a system in Unearthed Arcana.

Basically, you are combining three of the alternate rules in that book. (attacker rolls all the dice, armor as damage reduction, static saves)

The way they recommended in UA was to use rolls against reflex saves as to hit rolls.

Recalculate the reflex save bonus to include deflection and dodge bonuses from AC. Shields also add their AC bonus to to reflex saves.
Armor does provide from reflex benefit as well, light adds +1 to reflex saves and medium/heavy add basically +2. They had a chart that broke it down by existing armor types but it all basically turned into the above.

The damage reduction gained by wearing armor was equal to
half The ac benefit rounded down. A +1 armor could either add one to AC or one to the damage reduction, but not both.

They had a way of recalculating monster acs, monster drs and fast healing.

I played with it a couple of times. You get hit more often, but hit for less. "Dodgey" characters are basically the same. The problems are that its a huge pain to recalculate this stuff for the monsters and that its possible to end up with some run away damage reductions.

[Murtak]

Ok, so let's give this a test run. Sample characters:

Krush, 5th level Half-Orc Barbarian (all stats while raging)
dex 14, str 26, +2 Axe, +2 Chain shirt
attacks: +15, d12+14 (+17 on a charge)
old AC: 16
new AC: 12, dr 3

Spike, 5th level elf rogue
dex 22, str 16, +1 rapier, +1 shield, +2 mithral chain shirt, cloak of resistance +2, weapon finesse
attacks: +10, d6+4 (+3d6 sneak attack)
old AC: 24
new AC: 25, dr 3

Plate, 5th level human fighter
str 16, dex 12, full plate +2, shield +2, waraxe +1, improved toughness (dr 2), dodge
attacks: +9, d8+4
old AC: 24, dr 2
new AC: 16, dr 7

Sample monsters
Troll
attacks: +9, d6+6; +9, d6+6; +4, d6+3 (+rend)
old AC: 16
new AC: 16, dr 2

Babau
attacks: +12, d6+5; +12, d6+5; +7, d6+2 (+2d6 sneak attack)
old AC: 19
new AC: 21, dr 2

Pixie
attacks: +5, d6-2 (+special arrows, +spells)
old AC: 16 (+invisibility)
new AC: 17 (+invisibility)

and, just for fun, Great Wyrm Red Dragon
old AC: 41
new AC: 14, dr 19



Conclusion: WTF? The pixie gets boned by universal damage reduction, rogues are suddenly harder to hit and gain damage reduction on top of that, while knight types basically get fucked. DR 5 is a laughable trade for 8 AC, even at level 5. Increase levels and it is only going to get worse, with specialized characters easily attacking for 100 damage on a single blow and suddenly hitting 95% of time instead of 60%. What's worse, this precisely increases the power of those builds that were already powerful.

On the upside, this should help to take care of those pesky under-CRed dragons.

[RobbyPants]

The thing I hate about the UA DR variant is that type of flat-out trade of AC for DR just begs to make people Power Attack bait.

DM: Here you go! 5 points of DR for 5 points of AC! Now you get attacked. The guy takes a -5 penalty to hit using Power Attack and deals + 10 damage!

Player: Hmmmm.... Can I have my AC back?

[Roy]

The thing I hate about the UA DR variant is that type of flat-out trade of AC for DR just begs to make people Power Attack bait.

DM: Here you go! 5 points of DR for 5 points of AC! Now you get attacked. The guy takes a -5 penalty to hit using Power Attack and deals + 10 damage!

Player: Hmmmm.... Can I have my AC back?

Even more so than they already are you mean?

[RobbyPants]

Yeah, but the direct 1:1 trade off makes it obvious. At least before hand, people could pretend like it's not an issue and hope the DM didn't notice the monster's high attack bonus (security through obscurity, per se).

With this trade off, you pretty much have to see the implications.

[souran]

Not that it makes a lot of differance but your characters are still not calculated correctly.

Ok, so let's give this a test run. Sample characters:

Krush, 5th level Half-Orc Barbarian (all stats while raging)
dex 14, str 26, +2 Axe, +2 Chain shirt
attacks: +15, d12+14 (+17 on a charge)
old AC: 16
new AC: 12, dr 3

Dex 14 = +2, +2 Chain Shirt (adding +2 to damage reduction) = +3 DR/+1 AC +1 reflex save

So his actual "Reflex AC" is +4, assuming you use the "attacker rolls all dice variant his ac is 14, his DR is 3.

Spike, 5th level elf rogue
dex 22, str 16, +1 rapier, +1 shield, +2 mithral chain shirt, cloak of resistance +2, weapon finesse
attacks: +10, d6+4 (+3d6 sneak attack)
old AC: 24
new AC: 25, dr 3

Dex 22 = +6, Shield +1 (I think this requires a feat) +2, +2 Mithral Chain shirt = +3 (putting all the defense into increasing AC), Cloak of resistance +2 (everybody should be wearing these now)= +2 reflex = +4

Reflex Bonus = +17 "Reflex AC" = 27, DR = 1

Plate, 5th level human fighter
str 16, dex 12, full plate +2, shield +2, waraxe +1, improved toughness (dr 2), dodge
attacks: +9, d8+4
old AC: 24, dr 2
new AC: 16, dr 7

Dex 12 = +1, Full Plate + 2 = +4, Shield + 2 = +4, Reflex = +1 Dodge +1
DR = Ful Plate + 2 = 6, Toughness = +2 = +8
DR = 8 "Reflex AC" = +11/21

Conclusion: WTF? The pixie gets boned by universal damage reduction, rogues are suddenly harder to hit and gain damage reduction on top of that, while knight types basically get fucked. DR 5 is a laughable trade for 8 AC, even at level 5. Increase levels and it is only going to get worse, with specialized characters easily attacking for 100 damage on a single blow and suddenly hitting 95% of time instead of 60%. What's worse, this precisely increases the power of those builds that were already powerful.

I agree with you conclusion that the scaling is just not there. The problem is not quite as bad as your examples make it seem, however "rogue/finesse" type characters change so little that the system really does work out to benefit them more than other characters.

One thing to note from your sample characters is that EVERYBODY now wears a cloak of resistance. A "heavly armored" PC will have a cloak of resistance, a magical shield, and magic armor, possibly even forgoing a magic weapon (or using a hand-me-down from somebody more damage output oriented). Also lighting reflexes is dodge on steriods so your heavly armored guy actually looks more like

Dex 12, Cloak of Resistance + 2, Shield +2, Full Plate +1, Magic Weapon +1 improved toughness, lightning reflexes.

His "reflex ac" is then +16/26 with damage reduction 7. This is not so bad for a level 5 fighter

However, the scaling is terrible and so eventually "dodgy" characters become the only ones that can survive.

We found you could improve the system by REQUIREING that all +X Armor (except shields) added ONLY to Damage reduction (the players choice thing basically means abuse city). Additionally +1 AC was worth 5 points of damage reduction, +2 worth 10 etc. However, getting monsters right was still a gigantic pain in the ass.

I ran one adventure using armor as DR like this, recharge magic, bell curve rolls, and wounds and vitality. It was very interesting, but it took so much time to reconfigure the monsters that I later adventures we slowly started dropping all these optional rules.

It would be nice to see a variation on this that actually worked well and was fast to convert. I do not like D&D's "all or nothing" defense scheme. It creates an ambiguity between dodge characters and armor characters (they are mechancially identical) and all or nothing defense makes heavy armor characters less fun to play because when they get hit it seems like their armor was useless. Its much easier to feel like your "concept" is working if it has some element that is persistant.

Also, while I think that the system in UA is at least a good place to start house ruling your damage reduction convertion its not some end all and be all reference. Like I said its clear the system presented was unpolished and needed work but its a beggining.

[Murtak]

Not that it makes a lot of differance but your characters are still not calculated correctly.

Dex 14 = +2, +2 Chain Shirt (adding +2 to damage reduction) = +3 DR/+1 AC +1 reflex save

So his actual "Reflex AC" is +4, assuming you use the "attacker rolls all dice variant his ac is 14, his DR is 3.

Rage, -2 to AC.

Dex 22 = +6, Shield +1 (I think this requires a feat) +2, +2 Mithral Chain shirt = +3 (putting all the defense into increasing AC), Cloak of resistance +2 (everybody should be wearing these now)= +2 reflex = +4

Reflex Bonus = +17 "Reflex AC" = 27, DR = 1

10 base (in lieu of rolling) +6 dex, +2 shield, +2 cloak, +4 base save, +1 light armor = 25

Dex 12 = +1, Full Plate + 2 = +4, Shield + 2 = +4, Reflex = +1 Dodge +1
DR = Ful Plate + 2 = 6, Toughness = +2 = +8
DR = 8 "Reflex AC" = +11/21

10 base, +1 dex, +3 shield, +2 heavy armor = 17 - I missed dodge though, make that 17

I don't get how you got to your numbers, could you elaborate?

It would be nice to see a variation on this that actually worked well and was fast to convert. I do not like D&D's "all or nothing" defense scheme.

I certainly would like it - but I believe this is impossible without rewriting the system (including many abilities and all monsters) from scratch.

[souran]

Not that it makes a lot of differance but your characters are still not calculated correctly.

Dex 14 = +2, +2 Chain Shirt (adding +2 to damage reduction) = +3 DR/+1 AC +1 reflex save

So his actual "Reflex AC" is +4, assuming you use the "attacker rolls all dice variant his ac is 14, his DR is 3.

Rage, -2 to AC.

Yep, forgot rage. But this would also be something that the system would need to revise. A -2 penalty to AC is much larger with the damage reduction having already reduced armor. Pretty much any spell that adds ac and anything that reduces AC is more powerful in comparison to before.

Dex 22 = +6, Shield +1 (I think this requires a feat) +2, +2 Mithral Chain shirt = +3 (putting all the defense into increasing AC), Cloak of resistance +2 (everybody should be wearing these now)= +2 reflex = +4


Reflex Bonus = +17 "Reflex AC" = 27, DR = 1

10 base (in lieu of rolling) +6 dex, +2 shield, +2 cloak, +4 base save, +1 light armor = 25

You gave him +2 mithril chain shirt. By the UA rules he can Either add +2 to AC or +2 to DR. The Shirt adds +1 to AC regardless. The rogue would be silly to add it to DR. So he has a

6 dex, +1 magic from shield, +1 shield, +2 cloak, +4 save, +1 light armor +2 magic armor = 27. The game plays better if you force him to have AC 25 Dr 3 instead of letting him pick to have AC 27 DR 1.

Dex 12 = +1, Full Plate + 2 = +4, Shield + 2 = +4, Reflex = +1 Dodge +1
DR = Ful Plate + 2 = 6, Toughness = +2 = +8
DR = 8 "Reflex AC" = +11/21

10 base, +1 dex, +3 shield, +2 heavy armor = 17 - I missed dodge though, make that 17

I don't get how you got to your numbers, could you elaborate?

Full Plate is +4 AC/ +4 DR. I had a friend remind me of this. Basically all other heavy armors suck but full plate they at least let not totally blow.

So for AC he has dex +1, Full Plate +4, Shield +2, Magic on Shield +2, Reflex +1, Dodge +1 =11

Thats also assuming that the fighter puts the +1 from his fullplate into DR.

I certainly would like it - but I believe this is impossible without rewriting the system (including many abilities and all monsters) from scratch.

On monsters with natural armor and other innate defense the conversion sends them all over the map in difficulty. The conversion works ok on humanoids who have to wear armor like the pcs, except that people with a high dex become much harder to kill than everybody else.

So, even if you like the conversion on the PC side (which has brutal flaws) the monsters have to be rewritten and rebalanced. while that may not be the same as rewritting the entire combat system, its such a huge effort that its equally not worth it.

[Calibron]

Not to be rude, but why is the shitty Unearthed Arcana armor as DR model even being brought up as anything but an example of what not to do, let alone being discussed so rigorously?

[Mask_De_H]

The realization of that little logical fuckup seems to have broken the board as well.

[Murtak]

Well, the more souran keeps adding the shittier the system seems. I will give it credit for not immediately departing the RNG though. At a glance, I'd guess it is workable for levels 1 to 6ish or so. If you were to write a system from scratch but wanted to keep most of DnD's mechanics intact you run into many of the same issues though. Keeping in mind that the goal is to distinguish between nimble, lightly armored and lumbering, heavily armored characters you will want to:

1. Ensure pixies, rogues, monks and duelists are hard to hit. That means their AC will probably need to go up.
2. Ensure anyone in platemail is easy to hit. The AC of knights, elephants and dragons will need to go down.
3. Ensure everyone is still on the RNG. Scratch that, this is DnD - ensure people don't leave the RNG too easily.
4. Ensure the platemail types take much less damage when hit. On average, if they get hit twice as often, they need to take half the damage.
5. Ensure this is not actually what happens in every combat, or the distinction will be meaningless. Basically armored characters need to be immune to pixies and such, and still take heavy damage from dragons. That means percentual damage reduction is right out.
6. Ensure this holds true for all levels. With damage going up by leaps and bounds this is not going to be easy.
7. Reevaluate abilities that fuck around with AC and DR. Touch attacks? Power Attack? Elusive Target? Keep in mind that AC is going to be much more valuable to nimble types and DR much more valuable to armored types that it used to. On the other hand, someone in full plate will probably not care about an AC penalty at all, no matter how large.

[souran]

Look, the OP wants to see how this can be done. Basically we havve 1.5 existing rulesets for how to do this. We have the starwars rpg which has armor have a damage reduction component, and we have the UA model.

The UA model at least covers all basis. It mentions and offers suggestions on how to change existing resistances, fast healing, regeneration, monster DR and all sorts of other crap that just changing AC might not make you think of initially.

That said, I don't really disagree with Murtak. He argues that you would need to rewrite the combat engine. I think you need to rewrite and rebalance every non humanoid monster in the game. Now, you might decide that one of those was a less herculean task than the other, but I think we all agree that its probably a waste of time. Mostly this is a what happens if discussion.

1. Ensure pixies, rogues, monks and duelists are hard to hit. That means their AC will probably need to go up.

Look, we don't need pixies, rogues, monks and duelists to be hit LESS they are already hard to hit in D&D existing system. If they become too hard to hit then damage reduction becomes pointless.

What we really want, is for rogues, monks, duelists, and pixies to be THE SAME as now.

2. Ensure anyone in platemail is easy to hit. The AC of knights, elephants and dragons will need to go down.

Its not just heavily armored people we want to be easier to hit, its everything in the game. Basically we need to flip the games paradigm. In D&D if you are getting hit on a 10 or better you basically feel like you are unarmored. If we want to have meaningful damage reduction we don't want people missing more than about half the time otherwise when combined with DR combat will take ages.

3. Ensure everyone is still on the RNG. Scratch that, this is DnD - ensure people don't leave the RNG too easily.

Especially if we start using reflex saves as AC we want to make sure that fighter types exceed the growth in defense, rogue/cleric types match growth of defense, and wizards don't fall unhittably behind the growth of defense.

4. Ensure the platemail types take much less damage when hit. On average, if they get hit twice as often, they need to take half the damage.

Its not as simple as take half damage, its that armor has to be both a meaningful and EFFECTIVE choice. Adding to AC making yourself harder to hit is a proven strategy in d20 based D&D, if you take away AC gains from armor the Damage reduction has to really seem valuable. On the other hand you don't want armor to equate to invinciblilty. Its a giant pain in the ass to get correct.

5. Ensure this is not actually what happens in every combat, or the distinction will be meaningless. Basically armored characters need to be immune to pixies and such, and still take heavy damage from dragons. That means percentual damage reduction is right out.

Percentage damage reduction is also slow. The real problem is that a person in heavy armor needs to be the person you want the dragon to fight. That means he has be able to be hit by the dragon for meaningful amounts of damage. However, you also don't want the dragon one-shotting everybody else. This is VERY hard to get correct. As it is you would need about 20-30 points of DR against a dragon to be really decent armor. However, that means that attacks against lighter armored people start getting into not fair range.

6. Ensure this holds true for all levels. With damage going up by leaps and bounds this is not going to be easy.

Especially this. Also the other thing is that most magic spells provide a bonus to AC, if some of those don't become DR people will be unhittable and if they do get hit their dr will likely let them get hit for almost nothing. Combining the two can lead to a game where people can't be hurt except by save or suck.

7. Reevaluate abilities that fuck around with AC and DR. Touch attacks? Power Attack? Elusive Target? Keep in mind that AC is going to be much more valuable to nimble types and DR much more valuable to armored types that it used to. On the other hand, someone in full plate will
probably not care about an AC penalty at all, no matter how large.

its not just every feat that adds to AC or damage reduction, its every feat that adds to hit, to ac, to damage reduction, or just to damage.

Also, the problem is that DR is valuable only once you get it stacked high enough to start nearly negating hits but AC is still valuable to everybody. A really good fighter is looking for ways to BOTH decrease chance to be hit and to increase DR. The only thing better than making a hit deal almost no damage is to make it require a 20 AND reduce all damage to nothing.

[Murtak]

Where are you getting your notion of people getting unhittable from? If you don't raise armor class for anyone (which you said you don't want to do), you don't actually introduce any new issues, do you? You might be delusional enough to think that getting too much AC was ever an issue in 3E, but really, while (barely) feasible, that takes so much resources, it is a dumb idea, because tons of attacks outright ignore armor.

If you want to worry about anything, worry about getting scaling DR just right. Worry about armored characters not caring about setting their AC on fire anymore. Worry about reflex save boosters getting silly (the Kensai's Withstand ability comes to mind). Worry about stacking the existing sources of DR on top of the new DR from armor. Those are actual issues.

People suddenly getting so much AC they are unhittable, when AC only goes down, is not going to happen.

[Ravyn Dawnbringer]

Thank you all for putting some thought into this, I figured I'd have a pile of work ahead of me. So to clarify, what I am looking for is that (1) The speedy types (Rogues and the like) feel speedy. Not like run fifteen times around the world speedy, like the kind that always manages to not be where they were when you attacked (Seems like high AC to me.) While the Paladins and Fighters get hit, they just don't give half a damn.

If DR percent is ruled out, then what else is there for fighters? How easy is it to stack DR into crazy town currently? (From what I've read, it's very odd. Like DR stacks, except when it doesn't.)

AC. How often are AC-targeting attacks hitting the speedy type characters (assuming they are built to be competent in combat) currently?

On that note, on this forum, do we use the WBL in the DMG or from another source? I'd like to know so that I may do some basic tests without looking like a fool

[Murtak]

If DR percent is ruled out, then what else is there for fighters? How easy is it to stack DR into crazy town currently? (From what I've read, it's very odd. Like DR stacks, except when it doesn't.)

Heck, just assume all DR stacks. The issue is not stacking. The issue is that damage grows by leaps and bounds in DnD and the leap points are not fixed. This makes figuring out how DR a character should have rather hard.

AC. How often are AC-targeting attacks hitting the speedy type characters (assuming they are built to be competent in combat) currently?

0% to 90%. I'm sorry, but that is almost a serious reply, at higher levels at least. Please keep in mind that in DnD "speedy type" and "full plate armor" sometimes go hand in hand.

[Calibron]

Due to wildly divergent damage values coming from both monsters and PCs there is no possibility of getting any flat number damage reduction to scale properly at absolutely any level without also completely reworking damage and hp; which means at the very least re-writing both a core mechanic and the entire monster manual. I assume this isn't something you particularly want to do.

Since you're goal is to more or less arbitrarily make "speedy" characters and "tank" characters "feel" different mechanically, a fairly common desire which I don't personally understand, you're going to have to make fairly arbitrary rules changes. Simply have speedy characters function more or less as normal or have them function off Reflex and give out class bonuses to Reflex; for more tankish characters you have a couple options that boil down to largely the same thing:

Arbitrarily assign every tank class a percentage based damage reduction as well as a small flat damage reduction; for simplicity's sake only use the flat DR to completely ignore weak sauce pinpricks that can't penetrate it, don't combine the two or most people will take forever to figure out how much damage they actually took and will start suffering from math burnout halfway through the second or third combat.

Assign percentage based DR according to Fort saves and give tank classes class bonuses to Fort. Overall this is probably a bad idea and would be very hard to balance.

Do the thing I said before about percentage based damage reduction dependent upon what would be chance to hit under normal rules, but only use it for classes that get access to medium armor, or classes that get heavy armor, or any class or monster you arbitrarily consider to be a tank rather than a speedster. Also give a small flat DR to either everyone or just the tankish classes so they'll be invulnerable to damage from pixie arrows if that's something you feel is necessary.

This is as close as you'll get to getting a different mechanical "feel" from those two different ways of ablating damage without generating a completely new system out of whole cloth; the rules as they stand aren't designed to be able to support this, so trying to retrofit existing systems to function this way without seriously screwing something else up and making even more unnecessary work for yourself is nearly impossible.

Souran, please fix the space time continuum so that this thread isn't so annoying to read.

[Murtak]

If you assign DR percentages you end up with one character getting hit twice for 9 points of damage and another once for 18 points - how does that make the characters feel different?