Suggestion: A collision is a hit

[FooWonk]

My base premises

I like the dodge proposal.

I like the PRR proposal.

I don't care for the AC & to-hit proposal at all.

I stopped playing Savage2 for DDO, because I like active combat.

Suggestion

Make AC a bonus to PRR of the armor being worn. This would result in potentially very high PRR ratings, but that's okay.

On a physics collision, that bonus would be decreased by the attackers to-hit + d20. A roll of 1 would still be a miss.

Get rid of grazing hits! They are unnecessary now as AC+PRR provide the exact same mechanic.

Why I like this suggestion

AC issues solved with PRR.

Better Armor is more PRR & more mitigation.

Higher AC is more potential mitigation, but not invulnerability.

To-hit scores directly bypass AC with no complex math necessary.

[Ape_Man]

No

[Skeald]

No

What he said - absolutly not - NO -

[FrozenNova]

"I stopped playing savage 2 to play DDO"
"Let's make DDO like savage 2"
What?

[FooWonk]

What he said - absolutly not - NO -

No is not a meaningful response. Please, explain the short-comings?

Here are some examples of how it would work:

Full BaB Tank
145 AC
60 PRR (~30% mitigation)

versus LoB with 115 to-hit (will reduce AC-PRR to 20 average)
-- 80 effective PRR (35% mitigation)

versus average epic melee's 90 to-hit (will reduce AC-PRR to 45 average)
--105 effective PRR (42% mitigation)

versus average epic non-melee 30 to-hit (will reduce AC-PRR to 105 average)
--165 effective PRR (52% mitigation)

No AC Barbarian -- would have to stick to big HP & DR or put on some armor.

15 to-hit PC wizard
versus Malicia
68 AC
0 PRR
40 effective PRR (21% mitigation, I'd suggest giving her high Dodge-%)

Rolling a 1 is still a miss.
Rolling a 20 is still a hit (bypasses all AC-PRR).

There's still a miss chance from Incorporeal-% & Dodge-%.

From a developer stand-point, there are two tunables. PRR can be adjusted based upon how much damage grazing should cause GLOBALLY. To-hits can be adjusted based upon how much grazing damage a monster should produce.

Really high-AC characters get incrementally smaller mitigation, which developers have stated as a goal.

We get our simple d20 system back; which is my goal.

[redspecter23]

At this point, they could have just kept the d20 system added in the PRR and dodge while giving everyone a permanent displacement effect and we'd have numbers similar to what we have on lama for damage mitigation in epics while maintaining the old d20 system and not having to switch to some curvy d?? system and still allow for high potential ac in the 1 to 20 leveling game. As a bonus our attack rolls wouldn't have suffered an indirect nerf as well.

So in short, the easy fix:
Add dodge %
Add PRR
leave d20 as is
assume everyone has displacement any time it's relevant
few minor tweaks

people get hit about the same as they do in epic on lama as they do on live and we get to keep d20.

[FooWonk]

"I stopped playing savage 2 to play DDO"
"Let's make DDO like savage 2"
What?

DDO melee combat was exactly like Savage 2. My melee characters hit on 2 whenever they're in my swing-box. End-game monsters hit on 2 whenever my characters are in their swing-box.

DDO is much more interesting game because of character builds.

There were characters with high-AC that broke content. Developers have stated that they want to fix that by having only incremental returns to mitigation. We can see this fixed with a monstrosity of complex calculus formulas and the math folks can explain limits to noobs OR we can see a fix that's simple and accomplishes the goal with subtraction and addition being the only math required.

[redspecter23]

High AC doesn't break content. An unleashed caster breaks content. I'm not saying that against you, but against the dev that you are quoting. Fixing AC in an attempt to balance anything is similar to putting a band aid on the scuffed knee of a guy who just lost his 3 other limbs in a horrible car accident. Perhaps deal with the biggest problem first.