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Feb 10, 2012 -- 5:56AM, Whatinthewampa wrote:

Saga is superior, in my opinion, in almost every way, except economically.  There is no profession skill, so you can't earn money based on a skill check any more.  However, that is just a small complaint, and there are many houserules to fix that. 

Hey, funny you should mention that.  Robshanti just a few days ago suggested a skill challenge to take care of that in my GM Questionnaire thread:

community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...

Feb 11, 2012 -- 1:37PM, RyuAzai wrote:

I think I want to make a quick house rule that tackles armor. I really don't like how it goes into Reflex Defense.  I might just switch it to Damage Reduction.  Ex. Any benefit that would go into Reflex Defense, is instead given to Damage reduction.

Play around with this idea to see how it is. I just really dislike the idea of armor making you dodge better, then taking a hit.  Plus with the bonus from Dex, and your level into your Reflex defense(And the dex limit on heavier armor) I believe it could balance itself out.

The rules are typically talked about in the Senate and to a lesser extent in the Paraxeum.  If you search the forum with a bunch of the terms you just used you can probably find where we've talked about houseruling armor before.

The only houserule I'd use with armor is to change the rule that you MUST use your armor's bonus instead of heroic level to calculate Reflex Defense (unless you have the Armored Defense talent) to you may use your armor's bonus OR one half of your heroic level, rounded down, to calculate REF Defense.  The effect is minor because you still need to invest in Armor Specialist talents (especially AD) to really use armor but it makes it less crippling.  I also houserule the Armor Mastery and Second Skin talents by dropping AD as prereqs; AD is often useless early when these talents could be most helpful and the character will still need AD eventually if he wants to continue to enjoy the use of these talents.

Now changing armor from increasing REF Defense to providing DR has been talked about many times.  It has its benefits but also its drawbacks.  As REF Defense armor "appears" to be to be an all-or-nothing benefit because you either take damage or you don't; the problem with this view is that you need to consider that hitpoints represent a lot of things and also note that a "miss" with the attack doesn't always mean a "clean miss" and could represent things like armor deflecting a shot or even a "flesh wound" that deals no major damage.  With DR characters will get hit more often but what comes into play here is how much damage they'd get hit with; against DR 10 a hold-out blaster in nearly worthless but to a high level hero using Burst Fire and a heavy repeating blaster against you armor is just a minor inconvienence.  Armor as DR also make lightsaber FAR more powerful then they probably should be for a game unless you really want everyone to be using one.

To but things in perspective both increasing REF Defense and providing DR will lower the average damage a character takes.  With an increased REF fewer attacks will hit for damage and thus lower the average damage.  With DR the number of attacks that hit doesn't change but each attack should do a little less damage which lowers the average damage.  While both things lower average damage switching to DR isn't really so simple because it also messes with a bunch of other things.  Movement on the CT depends on damage taken that exceededs FORT/Damage Threshold and when things are hit or miss this can happen more often but if damage is always reduced then overcoming DT becomes a lot harder.  If the only change you make to 'trooper armor is to alter the +6 armor to DR 6 then that means a character's attack would need to do an extra 6 points of initial damage to overcome the target's DT.  Under the RAW to kill a Stormtrooper with one shot you need to hit REF 16 and deal 12 points of damage (which meets the DT and drops character to zero hp) but switching to DR you only need to hit REF 10 but now need to deal 18 damage (pre-DR) for the same effect; a low level character may have a hard time hitting REF 16 but the 12 damage isn't out of reach but while they may hit REF 10 they'll have a hard time getting the 18 damage to "kill" one and will take a couple of shots just to drop one to zero hitpoints.

Feb 21, 2012 -- 4:22PM, awaypturwpn wrote:

Feb 11, 2012 -- 1:37PM, RyuAzai wrote:

Thank ya! And on another note I wanna say thanks to everyone. You are never sure going into a new forum what the community will be like, but wow the response to my questions was amazing. Everyone was incredibly friendly and I got the answers I was looking for .

I think I want to make a quick house rule that tackles armor. I really don't like how it goes into Reflex Defense.  I might just switch it to Damage Reduction.  Ex. Any benefit that would go into Reflex Defense, is instead given to Damage reduction.

Play around with this idea to see how it is. I just really dislike the idea of armor making you dodge better, then taking a hit.  Plus with the bonus from Dex, and your level into your Reflex defense(And the dex limit on heavier armor) I believe it could balance itself out.

I wouldn't say that armor makes you "dodge" better. I'd say it's more like it turns a glancing hit into a non-hit. Thinking back to an old copy of the Star Wars Visual Dictionary I got when I was like 10, that's exactly the discription that storm trooper armor had, and I was like, "oh that makes sense why they were able to just mow down all of Leia's dudes on the Tantive IV while suffering minor casualties." The idea is you need to be more accurate when attacking a target with armor. The heavier the armor, the fewer blows you're actually going to land on a target. Hits or shots must be precise when attacking a heavily armored target, and I really like the way Saga handles this concept. 

I'd be super careful applying DR to all armored targets. There are specific high-level and otherwise costly talents that give you DR with or without armor, and it's nowhere near as good as what you're suggesting in most circumstances.

All things considered, I find that the rules for armor are actually quite balanced. I hope with a little bit of mind-wrapping you'll come to that conclusion, too.

I agree in general, but I think that with heavier weapons like starship weapons and E-webs, the thickness of the armor won't matter much.  Same with lightsabers.