Passive Defense and 4e

[AlexanderHowl]

Of course, the 3e optimum was Heavy Plate with Deflect 5 and Large Shield with Deflect 5, which gave PD 18, if I remember correctly. I made the mistake of throwing a party against such a foe, it was not pretty.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Of course, the 3e optimum was Heavy Plate with Deflect 5 and Large Shield with Deflect 5, which gave PD 18, if I remember correctly. I made the mistake of throwing a party against such a foe, it was not pretty.

Eh, high point level 3e was about fishing for crits anyway.

[Plane]

I do like the idea of defenses and armor working together somehow, like maybe a partially complete parry somehow makes it less likely to pierce DR in 4e. Which I think T-Bone's "glancing blows" rules in Pyramid accomplish, since half the basic damage would mean less likely to get past DR.

If "misses by 1" don't happen frequently enough to be interesting, TB's rules might be tweaked somehow like maybe miss by 1 is 3/4 damage, by 2 is 1/2, by 3 is 1/4 ? Can't get too extreme though or misses will never miss.

[Varyon]

Something PD-like could still work well in 4e. Basically, if the bonus makes the difference in if you successfully defend or not, you still get hit but the attack suffers from a poor armor divisor. Alternatively, an idea I had some time ago would be for an "armor check" when a character is struck. A poor roll (or good roll, if the attacker is the one that rolls the dice) may result in the foe striking Armor Gaps/Chinks in Armor, while a good roll (poor roll for attacker) increases the DR of the armor against that attack (to represent hitting at a poor angle).

The system I came up with while working on a (now-largely-abandoned) damage overhaul was as follows. Roll 1d-2 (halve the result, rounding down, for flexible armor). On a natural roll of 1 (so result of -1), reroll 1d-6; on a natural roll of 6 (result of 4), reroll 1d+2. A roll of 0 meant normal DR, while lower or higher rolls reduced or increased DR by 1/2 SSR step (the progression would be something like x1, x1.2, x1.5, x1.7, x2, x2.5, etc) per +1. If the targeted location had Armor Gaps, a -5 or lower would hit them (reducing DR to 0). Armor and weapon design could interact with this - Fluting meant a +1 to the check; tailoring gave +1 (expert) or +2 (masterful), but the tailoring bonus couldn't boost the result beyond 0 (basically, it just made hitting gaps/chinks less likely); weapons that require a good angle of attack (axes, most swords, etc) also gave a bonus to the check, while ones designed to not need such (like one with a concave striking surface) might give a penalty. One could also take an attack penalty to make it more likely one would land a solid hit, or a defense penalty to make it more likely the foe would hit at a poor angle, but I never got a relationship I was happy with there. Note the above makes use of a variant of exploding dice - on natural roll of 1, reroll at -4; on a natural roll of 6, reroll at +4.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Plane

I do like the idea of defenses and armor working together somehow, like maybe a partially complete parry somehow makes it less likely to pierce DR in 4e. Which I think T-Bone's "glancing blows" rules in Pyramid accomplish, since half the basic damage would mean less likely to get past DR.

The stand-alone rule on my site is here. The idea, for those who want to re-introduce 'glancing blows' that bounce off armor a la 3e PD, is: a) first, define what such a blow is, and when it happens; and b) let DR handle the stuff about blows bouncing off.

It works out to this:

Definition:

• A graze is an off-center, glancing, fleeting, or other blow that doesn't strike "squarely".
• A graze occurs on an attack that just hits (roll succeeds by 0) or an Active Defense roll that just fails (roll fails by 1).

Main effects:

• Halve basic hits (as much of the energy slides on by).
• Double DR for the oblique angle (same effect as "sloping armor" on vehicles).

Miscellaneous effects (ignore if you like!):

• If the graze happened because of a poor TH roll, also give the defender +2 on Active Defense (as the attack is nearly a miss to begin with).
• If both attack and defense rolls yield a graze, apply both effects: 1/4 basic hits, x4 DR.
• Change impaling or piercing damage to cutting if that would be lower (same effect as "tip slash").

That's the rule. It makes for more "flesh wounds" that save even unarmored PCs, and lets many blows that would have penetrated armor "glance off" instead (without requiring adjustments, as PD required, to prevent cannonballs and falling pianos from comically bouncing off armor).

So I like it, though the above doesn't represent varying levels of PD (other than as created by varying levels of DR). There are some ideas for that in the text. Or, running with Varyon's thoughts, one could introduce a roll that varies the DR multiplier, with armor type/quality modifying the roll. That'd start bringing back the feel of varied PD!