Quote:
Originally Posted by Pursuivant
Passive defense was a good general idea which broke down in specific instances.
The idea was that due to hardness of armor and/or angle at which an attack hit there was a chance that an attack would "slide" or "bounce" off the armor rather than digging into the material and penetrating. On a low tech level, this was the difference between a helmet with smooth, sloping surfaces (e.g., a 14th century Bascinet helm) vs. one with flat angular surfaces (e.g. a flat-topped Great Helm). On a high tech level it's the difference between an armor piercing shell which hits hardened tank armor sloped at 60 degrees vs. one which hits the same thickness of armor at a perfectly right angle.
|
I use a house rule (from TBone) where a hit by zero or one is a glancing blow, and deal half damage and doubles DR. A simple fix is that some armors (those smooth, sloped pieces) might instead triple or quadruple DR. I seem to recall a 3e rule where massive damage reduced PD, which multiplying DR handles nicely. Even quadrupled, DR 3 isn't going to do much against a tank round.