Edge Protection rules?

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by corwyn

My point was that your solution is well and good but my bard wishes he had more armour with every single hit and the wrestler can get double digit dr with no encumbrance. Barbarian is similar, but not quite so extreme. This makes it difficult to balance encounters that will challenge the meatshields while not killing the fragile PCs. Since I don't want to kill characters, it's a gm problem too.

Yeah, that's an interesting problem (especially the last sentence, trying to take responsibility for character survival) although unrelated to my point.

Good monsters for your scenarios are things that bypass armor (flaming skulls, toxifiers, horde pygmies aiming for the face) or threaten more than just HP damage (jellies, wizards with mind control) or will attack the wrestler preferentially over the bard and martial artist (anything, depending on how good player tactics are, which is why the goal of keeping player characters alive is potentially frustrating for GMs--you're taking responsibility for survival without really having control over survival).