Sure you might consider it a problem if the game does away with softening the blows but it doesn't make the game less intuitive.
It does, armor reducing the damage of a penetrating blow is a perfectly intuitive concept. If you discount this concept, you end up with full plate armor softening a penetrating blow just as well as robes (i.e. not softening at all) which is unintuitive nonsense.
A newbie player still knows that they need a heavier armor for more protection, and that unarmored targets are vulnerable.
Except unarmored targets are not necessarily vulnerable in DnD: a pajama tank can be harder to hit than a full-plate wearing warrior.
Lack of DR is an acceptable sacrifice when it comes to making a combat flow more smoothly. A lot of realistic rules are sacrificed in all cases.
The argument is about which system is more intuitive and less abstract. Armor not having DR increases the degree of abstraction and reduces the degree of intuitiveness. That's how things work in reality and that's how anyone at least somewhat familiar with physics, be it in theoretical or hands-on practical capacity, expects things to work.
It would only get unituitive if lighter armors offered more protection, or just as much.
Which can absolutely happen in DnD and does not happen in PoE, because the protection offered by armors in PoE is tied to DR instead of Deflection - PoE's analogue of AC.
A game assumes that a character isn't just dodging the blows, but also has to parry and block some.
The game assumes that the character can do both or either, which means that he doesn't necessarily have to parry or block anything and can just dodge. You can literally break down AC into components: dexterity bonus, dodge, natural, armor, shield, deflection, etc. You can create a character that will not have any armor, shield or deflection AC components, a character who is literally fighting bare-handed without even being some kind of monk with magically enhanced arms, a character who relies purely on dodging blows based on his AC breakdown, and yet a strength-based attacker will have his to-hit bonus derived from strength against such a target - something that makes absolutely no sense. In PoE, there is no such problem, because Accuracy that is not boosted by magical equipment is not derived from might, but from training (class, abilities, talents, level) as well as Perception - an approach that is both logical and intuitive.
No it doesn't. It says so in the manual (AD&D 2dn edition).
"When making an attack, a character is likely to close with his opponent, circle for an opening, feint here, jab there, block a thrust, leap back, and perhaps finally make a telling blow. A spellcaster may fumble for his components, dodge an attacker, mentally review the steps of the spell, intone the spell, and then move to safety when it is all done. It has already been shown what drinking a potion might entail. All of these things might happen in a bit less than a minute or a bit more, but the standard is one minute and one action to the round."
What is displayed on the screen in an RPG game is also an abstraction that helps player communicate what is going on in the game. I mean when you play any RPG and you see character take mortal blows every turn you don't simply assume that since that is what the game is showing you it means that your PC is able irl to simply get pierced in the heart by the sword multiple times and still stand? Game shows him getting hit, but these aren't mortal wounds he's getting.
This only strengthens my argument: actions not being depicted as 1:1 reduce intuitiveness (a player would expect for things to happen the way he sees them) and increase the degree of abstraction (an animated blow simply denotes a whole set of actions the player cannot see). There is no such problem in PoE: an animation of a blow is just that - a single blow.
Reminder: we are not talking about the mere presence of abstraction in either ruleset, because both rulesets have nothing to do with simulation, we are comparing the degree of abstraction present in both systems.
An event where a character is so skilled he can strike an opponent in a way it prevents him from making an attack is abstracted as winning an initative and bringing your foe to 0 HP in that case. In later editions disarming strikes cover that.
No, that is nonsense, you do not need to kill your opponent to interrupt them. In fact, you don't even need to damage them: a simple shove of sufficient strength can interrupt a sword swing, throwing the target off balance and even proning them. PoE accounts for such a realistic outcome, DnD does not.
In later editions disarming strikes cover that.
Disarm, Trip and other disabling martial maneuvers are not an equivalent to interrupts, because any blow should be able to interrupt, not just specialized disabling maneuvers which are also present in PoE.
Interrupting a melee strike isn't really more intuitive because this is something that really doesn't happen in real life or in literature. You don't see stories about fighter who just "interrupted" their opponents attacks, making them unable to take a swing the entire fight. Adding interrupts to attacks simply adds another gamey situation, that isn't really abstracting anything that should be happening in game world. In fact it would be baffling for a nowbie to find out that his guy cannot attack once in 5 minutes because he just gets interrupted.
Nonsense, interrupts are both representative of real combat and are an intuitive mechanic. I already provided an example: a swordsman being shoved mid swing, losing his balance and stumbling or even falling prone (prone as a possible effect of interrupts was added in Deadfire). Or a swordsman being hit mid-swing by a mace straight to the head. Or a swordsman being hit to the armored chest with a polearm and being literally pushed back by a non-penetrating blow. The examples one can envision are endless. A competent spearman or halberdier can literally shut down an opponent's offense by keeping them unable to attack by threat alone, not to mention by actual blows. There is nothing "gamey" about interrupts, they represent the reality of combat. Not having this mechanic increases the degree of abstraction and reduces intuitiveness of the system. PoE wins again.
D&D and most RPGs combat is on higher level of abstraction and doesn't cover such miniscule details. There's nothing counter-intuitive about lack of after barrier performance. In fact if you cover "after-barrier performance" you should also cover armour damage and fatigue.
But PoE does cover such details, because PoE is not DnD. Moreover, plenty of other RPG systems cover after-barrier performance. One of my favorites is Mordheim, a system that is even more advanced than PoE with even more fragmentation of defense into separate layers and is one of the few TB systems that actually approaches something at least somewhat similar to simulation of actual combat:
Note the separation of physical defensive layers: Dodge, Parry (includes blocking with a shield), Melee resistance (represents deflecting properties of the target that passively reduce attacker's chance to hit without the defender needing to block or parry). And of course, any blow that manages to penetrate defenses and inflicts damage has to contend with armor absorption which represents the after-barrier performance of the blow:
Another example of a game system that will include similar depth (including after-barrier performance) is the upcoming Swordhaven: Iron Conspiracy. Or we can also remember Age of Decadence. Or even Fallout 1. Truth is: plenty of RPG systems include mechanics to account for after-barrier performance of the penetrating object and/or blunt force trauma, because it is, in fact, absolutely intuitive.
Not having a representation of after-barrier performance is absolutely unintuitive for reasons I already described: an object that penetrates armor will not deliver equivalent tissue penetration and/or blunt force trauma compared to the case of an unarmored target. This is simple, observable real life behavior that is completely intuitive.
Armor damage and fatigue are indeed something that can be added to improve the depth of a combat system and reduce the level of abstraction, but remember: we are merely comparing the degrees of intuitiveness and abstraction in two different systems. PoE not having such mechanics does not make it worse relative to DnD, because DnD doesn't have these mechanics either. Note that in this case I mean fatigue and armor damage from mere fighting and not from supernatural means like spells - something that both systems actually have.
It only provides an explanation because it was forced to do so to accomodate the rules. Aumaua are big and tough which is why they get +2 might, makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that their posture is linked to their magic power as well. Gounteld of ogre might grants you +2 might. Are ogres really such spiritually developed creatures? They must be because of the ruleset. That means that logically in this world hitting the gym makes you develop your spirituality further, which doesn't really make any sense. It only works because the copyright holder said so. And he could just as well link charisma and HP and just say that joyful characters laugh in the face of death, which is why they're so hard to kill.
Regarding the player prejudices. When making a fantasy game ruleset that is 99% based on existing fantasy tropes (down to just copy-pasting majorit of the classes from D&D 3rd edition) people won't like when their favorite archetypes aren't supported. For over 50 years wizards were scrawny dudes, relying on their intelligence instead of might. If the game doesn't really accomodate this archetype why include the class in the first page? If Obsidian didn't want for people to come into their game with their own set of expectations they shouldn't have copied so much from D&D.
No, it provides an explanation, because that's how the system is designed to work in order to meet certain goals. There is nothing preventing Aumaua or Ogres from casting magic which they in fact do in the game.
Hitting the gym helps you cast stronger spells, because might is a cumulative attributive that includes both physical and spiritual strength and spell damage scales from this cumulative attribute, meaning it scales from both. Thus, by increasing your physical strength you increase your Might, but nothing in the game states that you are increasing your spiritual strength by hitting the gym - that is your fallacy.
And it doesn't matter what people like and what prejudices they have: no system is obligated to bend over to whatever tropes and cliches people have in their heads. If people don't want to fucking read the rules and lore, discard their prejudices and perceive the system the way it was meant to be perceived instead of the way they would want it to be, then those people are fucking morons.