Passive Defense and 4e

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It was usually only a problem with magic; mundane armor and shield capped out at PD 8, ultratech armor sometimes had PD 6 but usually didn't combine that with a shield. However, plate with deflect-2 and a large shield with deflect-2 was PD 12...

However, the lack of PD from armor was a major problem in times and places where people didn't wear armor but still did violence to each other.

I discovered this very early in 1e when I took Gurps Horror 1e and tried to use it as a 20th Century sourcebook. I was trying to make a hardboiled PI named Roscoe Gatt as a sample character and his defenses were so low that he and everyone else might as well have taken AOA every Turn.

Martial arts 1e tried to patch this with new Skills but it wasn't really until 4e that there was a systematic solution and I beleive it was this unarmored combat problem that the developers were mostly trying to fix.