Armor as DR and Defense Bonus, Take two

[The Winter King]

Did it ever bother you that armor in D&D makes it harder to hit you, rather than reduce the damage of an attack?

Me too.

As such, when I read Unearthed Arcana and saw the appropriate variant I jumped at it. But alas, it was not to be. For it was megafail, ungood, and all in all generally notfantastic. So I thought, and thought and this is what I came up with.

AC
1) Armor no longer applies to AC. AC is determined as a value equal to 10 + your defense bonus + all those other piddly little modifiers (dex, dodge, size, ect...)
2) Defense bonuses are different, they scale in a manner similar to BAB (1/2 level, 3/4 level, full level). I may be swayed on this, I also have an idea for making it like saves, good or bad where good is full and bad 3/4.
3) maybe change AC's name, as it no longer involves armor as its name would be misleading.
4) As Armor no longer applies to AC, there is no touch AC. To compensate, touch attacks receive a +5 bonus to hit. Flatfooted AC still exists.

Armor
1) Armor gives you DR/adamantine equal to its armor bonus.

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Same as UA so far

2) This DR increases by the armor's armor bonus for every 4 BAB or defense bonus you posses.

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This is the big bones of this. So at BAB or DB +5 you have double the armor bonus.

{table]Armor|DR at +0|DR at +5|DR at +9|DR at ++13|DR at +17
Light
Padded|1|2|3|4|5
Leather|2|4|6|8|10
Studded Leather|3|6|9|12|15
Chain shirt|4|8|12|16|20
Medium
Hide|3|6|9|12|15
Scale mail|4|8|12|16|20
Chainmail|5|10|15|20|25
Heavy
Splint mail|6|12|18|24|30
Halfplate|7|14|21|28|35
Full Plate|8|16|24|32|40
[/table]
As shown in the table the DR does get a little high and so it might need some reworking. Also I didn't list all armors as ones with the same armor bonus and category are essentially the same
3) Max Dex bonus is gone, instead armor will limit your max defense bonus.
Heavy limits you to Poor, Medium to Average, and Light armor to Full.
This way you trade off, high AC or Higher DR.


Natural Armor, Monsters, and You.
Armor doesn't apply to AC and neither does Natural armor.
For natural armor, look at the creatures BAB, and compare its natural armor to the DR values in the table above. Treat its natural armor as the armor its natural armor bonus is closest to.
If the creature already possessed DR, use what ever overcomes that DR. Otherwise use the following:
Adamantine: Constructs
Cold Iron: Fey, Outsiders, Elementals, Aberration
Silver: Shapechanger subtype, Magical beast, Monstrous Humanoid, Undead
Evil: Good subtype
Good: Evil subtype
Lawful: Chaotic subtype
Chaotic: Lawful subtype

Although given the number of special materials from splatbooks, a reduction of the number of Special Materials may be need.
Everything else is the same.

[Carl]

1. Your table has an error, listing Armour bonus instead of (presumably), DR at 0+ in the first column.

2. You mention defence bonus several times but fail to explain what this is.

3. Special material's are now useless.

4. Any other source of DR has just been rendered useless, (this is a general flaw of armour = DR).


In general i get the feel of a not actually terribly thought out system, unlike most attempts i see. And it does address a lot of the flaws. But it's going to keep falling afoul of the whole problem these always have. DR is something special in D&D3.5, it's just not meant to be handed out willy nilly or in these quantities, to the point this is rendering a huge range of things either very weak or totally ineffective. It works as a means to make good armour worth it, but needs a much larger overhaul of the full system to make it work imo.

[kinem]

How about this:

If an attack is good enough to hit your touch AC but not your armored AC, it still hits, but damage is reduced by twice your armor bonus.

If the attack does no damage, it counts as a miss for things like poisoned attacks.

On a natural 20 it always does full damage.

This weakens armor, so add +1 to armor bonus, or +2 if armor bonus is 6+.

For example, if your touch AC is 12 and you wear a chain shirt (normally +4 to AC, now +5), then on an attack roll of 13-17 the attack still hits but damage is reduced by 10. On an attack roll of 18, the attack would do full damage. On an attack roll of 12, the attack would miss completely.

[The Winter King]

Okay.
1)thanks for pointing that out
2)Defense bonus is a concept from uneathed arcana(which is all on the SRD). Basically it is a number that adds to your AC in much the same way that BAB adds to your Attack rolls. I haven't decided how to assign it to classes yet. At the moment I am thinking of just making it equal to BAB with few exceptions (Monk for one).

DR is not Special. Well its a Special Quality, which does make it Special, except damn near everything has special qualities. Many creatures with DR have either incredibly low DR, or DR/magic which is useless. I hate DR/magic. DR magic does nothing except say, "The villagers in this town cant kill it, but you can rediculously easily." Most of these creatures in the MM have DR10/something or other. An astral deval has DR 10/evil and is CR 14, a werewolf(1HD) has DR 10/silver and is CR 3.


Special materials will still have their role. Mostly because I am still trying to figure out how to handle natural armor. My current draft of natural armor basically goes, Natural armor equals DR/material. If creature has DR already replace adamantine with whatever overcomes its DR. That and assigning what overcomes DR by creature type.

An Armor Property under this system
Energy Resistance:gain energy resistance to the listed energy type equal to DR provided by the armor.

[The Winter King]

@kinem
Armor doesn't apply to AC. Therefore there is no touch AC. I should note that in the OP.

I think my DR is simply scaling to quickly, really

[kinem]

@kinem
Armor doesn't apply to AC. Therefore there is no touch AC.

WK, my proposal for how to handle armor as DR is completely independent of yours. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Scaling the DR is a very cool twist on the system, I think. I'm a bit curious why you went with every four BAB/BDB...just seems like every five would make sense, so it scales up at the same rate as characters get more attacks. Would also help tone it down some at the high end.

What does magic armor do in this system? At the top levels, a flat +5 DR is peanuts, but an extra +5 scaling might be a bit much, and more importantly might make light armor too good in comparison. Or does it still just go to AC?

On a similar subject, AC is already pretty easy to pump. It might be worth restricting some of the various magical bonuses, since now level (or a portion thereof) is being added directly.

[Yitzi]

Did it ever bother you that armor in D&D makes it harder to hit you, rather than reduce the damage of an attack?

Me too.

As such, when I read Unearthed Arcana and saw the appropriate variant I jumped at it. But alas, it was not to be. For it was megafail, ungood, and all in all generally notfantastic.

Just wondering what exactly is flawed about it.