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Plate is comparable to Hide with a starting 20. Scale is comparable to Hide with a starting 18, or Leather with a starting 20. Arguing about these starting conditions is nit-picking for the sake of argumentation. I started with even AC. I could have done this with any number of configurations (such as Chain vs. Hide + starting 16 or Leather + starting 18). I then demonstrated that these characters had unequal scaling as they progressed in levels, and that the masterwork armors presented in AV evened out the scaling. Since the problem is with the scaling, the starting conditions don't actually matter; what matters is the relative change.
And yes, I got level 12 and 14 confused. The core of the argument remains sound.
OK, I'm going to state the following, and you guys can show me where our disconnect is:
Without MW armor, there's an eventual and gradual increase in AC for light armor wearers that gets severe in the epic levels.
With PHB MW armor, there's an eventual and abrupt and severe increase in AC for everyone that more-or-less keeps everyone on a level playing field.
With stealth-errata MW armor, there's a gradual increase in AC for heavy armor wearers that starts at mid-heroic and doesn't smooth out until mid-paragon, where it's more of a slight bias to the heavy armor wearers.
If you feel that heavy armor should consistently provide better AC than light armor, then you have to use the masterwork armor rules.
If you don't use the Masterwork rules then you are weakening classes like Paladin and Fighter who depend on armor as a class feature.
I think that the Defender PC's will have more fun if they have advantages that make them important. If the strikers and controllers need to be protected, then the defender can shine. If the strikers and controllers are too high in AC, then the defender just becomes a guy who contributes but gets pushed to the second tier of importance.
Instead of defenders, they would just be meat.
Your contention is basically that the defender should not just have a top-notch AC, but an AC that's better that of the other roles; they are weakened if their AC is not better than everyone else. What does that contention entail for defenders that aren't designed to wear heavy armor, (and by extension, heavy MW armor) , such as the swordmage and warden?
I think a defender should have a top-notch AC, but not necessarily one that's utterly unattainable by anyone else. And that's represented in my party, where the defender does indeed have the best AC as a result of his choices. Beyond that, defenders have a suite of advantageous class features that make them effective in their roles as defenders. AC isn't the only or even the main criterion--not IMO anyway.
Im currently playing a ranger who wears plate. When I saw what ac light armor will get me in later levels I was a little pissed that I spent 3 feats to lower my ac.
Plate should grant better ac then any other armor because its a clear tier format, each one being harder to obtain than the last. I understand what you are saying about having an unobtainable ac but I think that makes sense. Swordmages and Wardens have other abilities and more mobility that make up for the fact that they will get hit more than a paladin, who has very few abilties to lower the amount of damage he takes, and less mobility too.
Without the MW rules, an archer ranger and maybe even a trickster rogue will pretty much always have a better ac than your tank.
If thats ok with you then fantastic, you can just ignore the mw rules. But that is what those rules are trying to correct, and I think its a reasonable try at that.
Im currently playing a ranger who wears plate. When I saw what ac light armor will get me in later levels I was a little pissed that I spent 3 feats to lower my ac.
Plate should grant better ac then any other armor because its a clear tier format, each one being harder to obtain than the last. I understand what you are saying about having an unobtainable ac but I think that makes sense.
The tiered armor feat progression serves those classes (like say, the cleric or sorcerer) who have armor proficiency options that could be improved upon without sacrificing an AC bonus (be it Dex, Int, or a class feature) that they may have. Now, your ranger is a nimble skirmisher--it makes perfect sense to me that he can dodge and weave around attacks and thus have as good of an AC as a guy in full plate.
Clearly, you don't agree, and feel that strapping on they heaviest armor a given character can wear should be the best option bar none. In other worlds, old-school D&D. Fair enough. To each their own. But that doesn't indicate anything's broken by letting the ranger have a top-knotch AC in hide armor.
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Swordmages and Wardens have other abilities and more mobility that make up for the fact that they will get hit more than a paladin, who has very few abilties to lower the amount of damage he takes, and less mobility too.
This is all pretty subjective. IME, paladins are fine. They certainly have as much damage mitigation as a swordmage. And fighters...geez, they are so fine. But at least we seem to be able to agree then that defenders as a group don't necessarily need a better AC than every other class in order to fulfill their role.
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Without the MW rules, an archer ranger and maybe even a trickster rogue will pretty much always have a better ac than your tank.
If thats ok with you then fantastic, you can just ignore the mw rules. But that is what those rules are trying to correct, and I think its a reasonable try at that.
I don't have a big beef with the PHB MW rules, so I'll probably introduce them in an appropriate fashion. I'm on the fence with the stealth-errata MW. Clearly, as every bit of math here has shown, it just swings the pendulum in the favor of heavy armor weaerers until the light armor wearers can play catch up with their ability score increases.
After looking at the phb mw rules once more Id have to agree that those should cover any high level disparity due to ability scores.
But factoring in your idea about how ac should be all near the same level. Would you allow as dm a ranger to just take one feat to get plate instead of 3? I mean if its all near the same level then why would a ranger have to take 3 feats to get similar ac. Or would you just say "tough luck" because they are doing something thats not "smart" according to the rules that you consider reasonable.
Im seriously not trying to attack you, but it seems foolish to take feats to get better armor if they all give similar ac bonuses in the end.
With PHB MW armor, there's an eventual and abrupt and severe increase in AC for everyone that more-or-less keeps everyone on a level playing field.
So, is your claim is that regardless of armor type, regardless of feats taken, that the AC should always be about the same for all of the PCs?
Or are you talking about the AC boost with +4 armor in the PHB? If so, what's your point about it?
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Originally Posted by Felon
With stealth-errata MW armor, there's a gradual increase in AC for heavy armor wearers that starts at mid-heroic and doesn't smooth out until mid-paragon, where it's more of a slight bias to the heavy armor wearers.
This is why I am looking at you as if you grew a third eye. Compared to Light Armor, there is no gradual increase in AC for Heavy Armor. Compared to the PHB there is, but the PHB has a big dip in AC for Heavy Armor from mid-heroric to mid-paragon. The reason for the gain is to fix the faulty dip.
Look at the chart. With the stealth errata, the ACs always stay within one of their original delta between light and heavy armor.
With the stealth errata, there are 7 levels out of 30 where the heavy armor has a slight edge here. If a DM is worried about it, he can always hand out magical light armor at a slightly earlier level to balance it out.
Without the stealth errata, the light armors dominate heavily in mid-paragon to the point that there are 13 levels out of 30 where the light armor is better, even 2 better (instead of just 1). This is a lot more severe of a problem to address.
The stealth errata is what keeps everyone on the same playing field, not the original rules.
Assuming a starting 18 AC stat for the light armors:
Cloth = AC x
Leather = AC x+2
Hide = AC x+3
Chain = AC x+2
Scale = AC x+3
Plate = AC x+4
For all intents and purposes, there are only 3 ACs here (almost nobody uses just cloth) until people take shields or armor proficiency and then it jumps to 6different ACs. So yes, the PC in Plate and Shield should have an AC 4 higher than the PC in Leather. The PCs in Scale should have an AC 1 higher than the PC in Leather.
It's a balance/fairness issue and the reason WotC changed it.
__________________ The first sign of a broken rule is when someone suggests that the way to stop it is by readying an action.
Clearly, as every bit of math here has shown, it just swings the pendulum in the favor of heavy armor weaerers until the light armor wearers can play catch up with their ability score increases.
Only clear in your mind. The math illustrates differently.
The math here shows that the MW rules keep the two types of armor equidistant apart (most of the time) based on where they are supposed to be.
__________________ The first sign of a broken rule is when someone suggests that the way to stop it is by readying an action.
If the fighter/paladin are supposed to jump into the melee and absorb attacks then either they need tons of HP or a higher armor class to limit the damage.
The strikers (and lightly armored defenders) tend to have mobility on their side. As you note, the lightly armored AC is still quite decent for most encounters.
The tanks should be blunt force trauma. The rogues should be in-and-out of traffic. Both sides reduce damage taken by their own advantages. I feel like without the MW armor, the tanks are unilaterally disarming themselves.
My concern about every edition of DnD so far has been that the character classes do not differentiate themselves enough, so I like having the MW armor to further separate the tanks and the strikers.
A tough fight should put the party on their heels. The fighters should be scrambling to protect the squishy members and the squishy members should have reason to fear the math. A range of 30% to 70% on attack success should keep the armor meaningful but not overwhelming. Given the low monster damage output, the variation in AC will not automatically drop you into a TPK.
It occurred to me that the levels 3, 6, 11, 16, 21, and 26 might not be the best levels to hand out the next level of magic armor. So, I compared Leather Armor (+4 starting Dex) with Chainmail, both AC 16 at level one.
I was hoping that there would be some levels in which to hand out Light Armor earlier before handing out Heavy Armor to even out the small skew, but it doesn't work that way due to the fact that MW bumps the armors up by 2 or 3 depending.
So, the best I could come up with were levels 3, 7, 11, 17, 21, and 25. This worked out to be the same optimal levels for both Light and Heavy armor.
The average same level opponent to hit on Leather Armor here was 8.87 and the average on Chain Mail was 9.1, a difference of 0.23. Effectively, the heavy armor is +1 better on 7 levels out of 30 (compared to the core rules where light armor is +2 better on 2 levels, +1 better on 11 levels, and heavy armor is +1 better on 2 levels for an average of 8.87 vs. 8.43 or a difference of 0.44 in favor of light armor).
Throwing Armor Specialization into the mix at level 11 yielded:
The average same level opponent to hit on Leather Armor here was 9.5 and the average on Chain Mail was 9.73.
My conclusion is that the DM should hand out the next best magic armor near the end of levels 2, 6, 10, 16, 20, and 24 for use on the following level if he wants a curve that is as smooth as it can get with the revised rules.
__________________ The first sign of a broken rule is when someone suggests that the way to stop it is by readying an action.
OK, I'm going to state the following, and you guys can show me where our disconnect is:
Without MW armor, there's an eventual and gradual increase in AC for light armor wearers that gets severe in the epic levels.
Correct. There's also a gradual decrease in player AC vs. monster hit rate.
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With PHB MW armor, there's an eventual and abrupt and severe increase in AC for everyone that more-or-less keeps everyone on a level playing field.
Specifically, the abrupt increases get the Heavy Armor wearers back to being comparable to the correct Light Armor + Stat configuration, and bring player AC scaling in line with monster hit rate scaling.
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With stealth-errata MW armor, there's a gradual increase in AC for heavy armor wearers that starts at mid-heroic and doesn't smooth out until mid-paragon, where it's more of a slight bias to the heavy armor wearers.
Does that all seem to be the gist of the matter?
The AV armors do a few things. First, they offer smaller bonuses earlier to Heavy Armor wearers, keeping them comparable to Light Armor wearers throughout instead of having them fall behind, abruptly jump even, fall behind, and abruptly jump even again, as KarinsDad's charts have been demonstrating.
Second, they offer benefits to some non-AC defenses (or in the case of Plate, minor damage reduction), in most cases at the cost of a point of AC, but in some cases for free. The "for free" armors are the only strict increase in power the AV masterwork armors create, and I'm honestly not sure why this was added. However, I think the benefit is minor enough and flavorful enough that I'm not overly concerned about it.
So, masterwork armor in general exists for two reasons: it compensates for the disparate scaling of AC for Heavy Armor vs. Light Armor, and it compensates for the disparate scaling of player AC vs. monster hit rates. The options presented in the AV generally either fill holes in the scaling fixes or present alternate options at the cost of a bit of AC.
It occurred to me that the levels 3, 6, 11, 16, 21, and 26 might not be the best levels to hand out the next level of magic armor. So, I compared Leather Armor (+4 starting Dex) with Chainmail, both AC 16 at level one.
I was hoping that there would be some levels in which to hand out Light Armor earlier before handing out Heavy Armor to even out the small skew, but it doesn't work that way due to the fact that MW bumps the armors up by 2 or 3 depending.
So, the best I could come up with were levels 3, 7, 11, 17, 21, and 25. This worked out to be the same optimal levels for both Light and Heavy armor.
I think what you're getting at is that the goal of having player AC scale smoothly over time conflicts with the goal of having Light Armor and Heavy Armor users have their AC go up at essentially the same rate (using PH-II MW armor).
In particular, if the GM hands out better plus magic armor at the start of levels ending in 3 or 8, this leads to almost full equality between light and heavy armor PCs. Light armor is ahead by 1 at levels 21/22, Heavy Armor is ahead by 1 at level 13. The trouble here is that PCs have their ACs far quite far behind monster to-hit at certain levels if you do it like this.
Giving out magic armor at the start of levels ending in 2 or 7 has Heavy Armor ahead of Light Armor at levels 7,12,13, and 27, behind Light Armor at level 21, and prevents player AC from falling quite so far behind monster to-hit. Of course, GMs aren't going to hand out all better plus magic armor at once instance in any case, but you could see this as what the GM should be roughly shooting for.
The trouble here is that PCs have their ACs far quite far behind monster to-hit at certain levels if you do it like this.
Precisely.
This works out to:
The problem here is that the curve is less smooth. It takes a nosedive to level 27 and does not self correct until level 28.
I think the better solution is to combine our two ideas to get levels: 3, 8, 13, 17, 21, and 25. The idea is to never get above 10 or below 8 for the same level monster to hits.
This results in the heavy armor have a +1 edge for 4 levels: 13, 25, 26, and 27. At that point, it's more or less white noise compared to the core rules.
And, handing out armor of these bonuses at the start of these levels is well within the DMG treasure parcel guidelines.
__________________ The first sign of a broken rule is when someone suggests that the way to stop it is by readying an action.
Personnally, in my home game, I got rid of the MW armor. I just sneaked them into the level progression. Along with the actual magical bonus, for that matter.
So, for example, if someone is wearing any quality suit of Scale armor, here is AC according to level:
And that's that. Level 18 with scale armor and a heavy shield = AC 35. If the suit of armor is actually an enchanted item, then you get the other benefits associated to it (Daily power, resistance, property, etc.). Saves me from drowmesh, godplates and other awful, awful names.
Last edited by Mal Malenkirk; 18th May 2009 at 08:54 AM..
I think the better solution is to combine our two ideas to get levels: 3, 8, 13, 17, 21, and 25. The idea is to never get above 10 or below 8 for the same level monster to hits.
Of course, you start giving out better armors every 4 levels rather than every 5 at higher levels, because otherwise in early-mid epic levels AC is actually quite far behind monster to-hit, since Masterwork/ability score bonuses occur relatively late in a PC's career. This is one of the reasons why I suggested modifying AC a little bit in the "fix 4e's math" thread. The GM shouldn't have to change the rate he gives out armor relative to other magic items to keep the game "on target."
Edit: of course, both the magnitude of the problem if the GM doesn't change how he gives out armor, the difficulty of changing how to give out armor, and the size of my "fix" are quite small compared to the issues involved in to-hit/FRW defenses. So 4th edition using AV/PH-II MW armors does a pretty good job on its own here.
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And, handing out armor of these bonuses at the start of these levels is well within the DMG treasure parcel guidelines.
It's well within the DMG treasure parcel guidelines if PCs want basic magic armor, or something like Dwarven or Veteran's Armor at 1 one level above that. If a PC wants a higher level heavy armor (base level 4/5), and doesn't get special priority on higher level magic items as a result, he's giving up a lot of AC for it.
This is another thing I dislike about masterwork heavy armors: it tends to be best to have a vanilla set of armor to get the bonus on the armor's material sooner, rather than taking an armor with other properties. For example, Agile Armor, from AV, is often considered strong, but it's in general worse than vanilla armor 1 level higher until you hit level 30 (and there's no +7 vanilla armor to take), which means that you should typically just wait a level and get the vanilla armor instead.
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