D&D 5E Armor in D&DNext

[Ultimatecalibur]

For those who have seen the the How-to-Play pdf of the playtest document, you may have seen the Armor section. With the exception of the Tier 4 armors, they seem to be balanced in the following way:

Tier X Light armor with Dex 16 = Tier X Medium armor with Dex 18 > Tier X Heavy Armor

I kind of see a problem with this considering that the prices are problematic as well.

Tier 2 Medium Armor and Tier 3 Light armor is cheaper than Tier 1 Heavy Armor
Tier 2 Light armor is cheaper than Tier 1 Medium armor
Tier 3 Medium armor costs the same as Tier 2 Heavy armor

What are you thoughts on this?

 

[slobster]

At first glance I share your unease. I also question the value of having the "tiers" of armor so closely spaced, price-wise. Why include 3 light armors when almost everyone will be able to afford the best of them at chargen or within 1 adventure? The worse 2 will be ignored for the vast majority of the game, but some characters will have to slog through a few fights with an AC penalty for no reason other than they rolled lower/had lower starting gold than another character.

What's the point?

 

[drothgery]

What's the point?

Deliberate new Coke plan to get playtesters to demand 4e-style armor?

(I don't really believe this, and don't have my packet yet, but it certainly looks broken, and it's really hard to think WotC hasn't done the math and realized this)

 

[dkyle]

Also, Studded Leather is strictly superior to Ringmail, in every possible way.

 

[Dour-n-Taciturn]

Are they considering proficiency pre-reqs? Maybe that will be in a later playtest, but those seem to work out if you have a large number of proficiencies; if proficiencies are not part of the rules or cover light/medium/heavy categories, then you end up with armor traps and auto-picks...

 

[dammitbiscuit]

It's all bringing back memories of 3.5, where everyone was in a Chain Shirt, or Full Plate, because medium armor sucked.

Sometimes breastplate got used, only because Mithril changed it to Light class armor, making it less .

 

[Kelvor Ravenstar]

Another point for the armor discussion is that in the current playtest of D&D next, there are magical armors and shields. Bringing back +1 shields gives another AC boost to players who wield shields (which is likely to be those proficient in them). So fighters and clerics have another source of bonuses to try and keep their AC's equal to the high-dex rogue, but it requires magic items to do it.

 

[Scribble]

Has anyone done the numbers to see how things work out for THESE particular pre-gen characters, as opposed to in general?

 

[Dragonblade]

The armor system is just wonky.

4e's elegant handling of light (stat mod + AC) and heavy armor (just AC) was really much better than this.

4e style armor is simple and elegant which fits in with the design ethos of DnDNext and it should be something both new and old school players can agree on.

 

[YRUSirius]

Could this be 'fixed' by upping all heavy armor by +1 or +2 AC?

-YRUSirius