Holmes & Cook: Armor Class

In his monster section, Holmes only has stats for four types of dragons (black, brass, red and white). Though dragons do not appear in Cook's monster section, he does include them in his wandering monster tables, including three not found in Holmes (blue, gold and green). While this is interesting in and of itself, one of the more intriguing discrepancies between Holmes & Cook on dragons is armor class. Holmes gives all dragons an AC of 2, whereas Cook gives them an AC ranging from -2 to 3.

This prompted me to look at the armor class ranges of all monsters in both editions. I discovered something very interesting: there are no monsters in Holmes that have an AC lower than 2. While there are eight monsters in Cook that do, they have an average of 18 HD and only two (the dragon turtle and the 16HD elemental) have a negative AC.

Further, in Holmes, the lowest AC found in the combat tables is AC 2. This emphasizes the reality that in Holmes there are really only four armor classes:

• No armor
• Leather
• Chain mail
• Plate

I say this because, what does one do with the bonuses of magical armor? If the lowest AC found in the game is AC 2 and one is armored with a +1 shield and plate +1, what good does all that magic do? The traditional answer in D&D to this problem is to continue out the combat table to include lower ACs; however, if one accepts the reality of only four types of AC, this leaves open the possibility of penalties to the attacker's roll.

Conceptually, understanding the shield and any magical bonus as a penalty to the attacker's roll transforms the shield and the magic bonus from being AC to being things the attacker must overcome in order to be able "to hit" the target AC.

In other words, if I were a 1st level character trying to hit an NPC wearing leather and carrying a magic +1 shield, I would normally hit on a '12' (according to Holmes); however, I would have to overcome the shield and the magic because I would be subtracting 2 from my roll. This penalty could be easily be understood and noted as a Defensive Bonus.

This implementation has a couple of consequences and a rather cool implication:

1. There can be major simplification of combat tables with only four types of AC.
2. There has to be a conversion of monster ACs that do not fall into these four types. For example, AC 4 becomes Chain/DB 1.
3. For those that want shields to play a larger role in D&D combat, this concept of shields giving a Defensive Bonus rather than affecting the AC allows for a greater range of bonuses than the meager +1 that normal D&D allows. These bonuses could be tied to size and/or material. For example:

Buckler +1DB
Small Shield +2DB
Large Shield +3DB
Tower Shield +4DB

I have yet to playtest such a system, but a imagine a major complaint might be the math. A reminder: there are very few bonuses in Holmes. Strength has no bearing on combat. Most encounters would require only the penalty due to a Defensive Bonus. For those so inclined, I imagine that implementing a house rule where rolling the exact number you need to hit (a 14 in the example above) would result in maximum damage or some kind of critical hit would give enough incentive that players would adapt very quickly.