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Well, my views on SDC for living creatures are well known, but I think there might be a use. I suggest that if a creature has a natural AR and the attack rolls over it, it goes to the creatures HP. If the attack is under the AR, then it goes to the SDC. I feel like this is obvious and I should have thought of it before. I also feel like it's probably been suggested before, so I apologize if I'm covering old ground.

-Vek
"This depends on things without an AR being devoid of SDC."

No, just no. If a dragon has Natural AR in the form of plate scales then you aren't going to cut it. Most creatures do not have the SDC to take that kind of damage. This isn't a system where most creatures have thousands of SDC points.

I play that if you do not penetrate the Natural ar no damage is done, works well

This is part of why I prefer a damage reduction system for armor, rather than flat blocking.

I don't make the 'Natural AR' of some of the SN being & COM into the 'regular AR' as the OP does. It degrades the challenge those SN beings and COM are suppose to represent.

Well, I can see Drew's differentiation and since there is magic involved anything goes. But for normal creatures, I can't see why their tough skin, scales, or armor plates can take infinite damage whereas steel or treated leather piece of armor would have a limit. Perhaps all of these organisms are creating some sort of field around their armor that prevents it from taking any damage and that field ends when they die? That could explain why naturally tough skin would never take damage but would deteriorate when the creature is dead. But else, it doesn't make a lot of sense.

For example, if you were fighting somene in armor, you could choose to strike the armor and not try to bypass it. So, you'd just hit the armor as long as you don't roll a 1. And then the armor would take SDC damage. But if you face a Tusker and try to hit its leathery skin, you could never damage it. To me that seems ridiculous.

-Vek
"If you're worried about Dragons not having enough SDC, give them more SDC."

I think the game mechanics point of Natural AR is to make things harder to damage. If your character is going to take severe damage every time he is attacked, you won't live very long in most games.

Armour is broken in palladium when you get to high level
Full plate is less protective than cloth (is to a low level character) to a high level character. This is wrong, full plate is still a ***** to get through even knowing the weak points.
I changed the rules to be
Only your WP bonus and HTH bonus to strike count towards penetrating armour, other bonuses do not count unless they specifically state it. This shows the training to get through armour.
Metal Armour has a DR, hitting it with non-metal things tends to be pointless unless you are very strong (DR 5 - 10).
Creatures with Natural AR can have it from being especially tough (dragonscales), or being hard to hit so a direct hit is hard to do (wolves etc).
It works pretty well, and the party avoids those in full plate, because being trained to know where the weaknesses in armour are doesn't mean your opponent doesn't know about them and protect himself.

My default easy method is "Armor gives DR equal to its AR-4, and takes as much damage as it absorbs. With a critical, you can reduce your multiplier by 1 to ignore armor." AR is only used to determine DR.

So, if your armor has an AR of 11, it has a DR of 7. If you get hit for 5 points, you take nothing, and your armor take 5 points. If you get hit for 12 points, your armor takes 7 points (it's DR) and you take 5 points (12-7). If you roll a critical against someone with a 13 DR, you can either double your damage OR ignore their 13 points of DR... if you've got a 30 PS, you're likely going to go with the double damage, naturally.