D&D 5E Armor in Next

[NotAYakk]

Why enchant lower tiers of armor? Maybe the effort required to enchant Chain is lower than the effort required to enchant Banded. Maybe the civilization that enchanted the armor never developed Banded armor.

Heavy Armor proficiency is an advantage, so heavier classes of armor should be better than lighter classes of armor, at least at the job of protection.

Within the class, the various types of armor are not interchangeable in their use. In 3e, armor prices where for the most part low and flat. In 4e, base armor type prices where even flatter (with plate at a cheap 50 gp), where your access to better armor was controlled by armor-specific proficiencies. In AD&D, field and full plate existed, which where mundane armor that was expensive enough that lower end magical armor could be cheaper than it.

In the playtest packet, higher end mundane armor is basically "magical" in quality. The top tier of each armor type uses fantasy materials to provide its protection. Saying that it should be worse, somehow, than lower armor in the same type would be like saying that +2 armor should have a disadvantage to make getting +1 armor instead tempting.

Now, the lighter armors are probably too cheap in the playtest packet, resulting in characters being able to bump themselves up a step on the lower-tier armor (ie, the "+1 leather" equivalent is cheaper or compatible in price to unenchanted heavy armor in the playtest, for a 2e/3e/4e explanation). That may not have been wise.

Really, having a 0/1/2 yard per round reduction in your speed, together with stealth disadvantage for medium/heavy armor, is probably enough. Someone in light armor with max-character dex should have the same AC as someone in heavy armor, and the +2 movement and lack of stealth disadvantage should be sufficient payoff you get for having your high dex.

 

[tlantl]

I kind of like medium and heavy armor to give DR.

I also like for the armor to absorb those hit points and as they accumulate the armor degrades at a rate of 1 ac point for every 10 hits.

Armors could have hit points of their own and when exhausted the armor is ruined. These hit points could be repaired any time before the armor is destroyed at a cost determined by the value of the item.

I know a lot of people don't want to add things to track and I can see their point. The thing is I keep track of everything that happens during combat anyway so it costs me nothing to add this to my game.

I already know who got hit how many times and the damage they took when they were hit, why can't I just note the damage to armor at the same time.


I noticed that the developers are thinking about the better armors being an upgrade for players as they advance having to repair armors might work toward this in a way since the cheaper armors will be cheaper to maintain.

Ser knight might have to invest in a chain shirt for those times when his big bulky armor is in the shop or waiting to go to the shop because Ser knight wasted his last pile of booty on a new horsey and a place to keep it.

I personally like to keep the party hungry for gold. they always seem to need it for one reason or another. AD&D made this easy by imposing all manner of tithe tax and costs you'd like. I still use most of them but getting players to pay for training was a futile effort.

I'd love for training costs to come back. Training centers, adventurer's guilds, schools, colleges, etc. Hours of role play and adventure right there. All without swinging a single weapon.

What I really hate is armor classes starting with double digit numbers.

 

[Dausuul]

I dunno. I hear the desire to have valid, non-cost-related reasons to wear chain or scale instead of plate... yet at the same time, I've never heard such a reason that didn't seem horribly contrived to me, and that's probably because in real life there was no such reason. In real life, plate was better than chain and scale, period. If you could afford plate, you wore plate. End of story.

Here's an idea: Leave mundane armor the way it is, but have the AC of magic armor be set by the magic rather than the armor. In other words, magic chain mail and magic plate armor of the same power level grant the same AC. Then mundane armor stays realistic (and DMs who want to run gritty, cash-starved campaigns can make the players work for better gear), but PCs at higher levels can use what suits them.

 

[nightwalker450]

How about the fact that ridiculously expensive armor only handicaps 5% of the classes (using 4e as class list)... So unless they plan on balancing by making the rogue buy more and more expensive thieves tools so he can perform his trade, and the mage needs to buy more and more expensive spells with each level this is just another kick to the fighters.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I dunno. I hear the desire to have valid, non-cost-related reasons to wear chain or scale instead of plate... yet at the same time, I've never heard such a reason that didn't seem horribly contrived to me, and that's probably because in real life there was no such reason. In real life, plate was better than chain and scale, period. If you could afford plate, you wore plate. End of story.

Here's an idea: Leave mundane armor the way it is, but have the AC of magic armor be set by the magic rather than the armor. In other words, magic chain mail and magic plate armor of the same power level grant the same AC. Then mundane armor stays realistic (and DMs who want to run gritty, cash-starved campaigns can make the players work for better gear), but PCs at higher levels can use what suits them.

Well, plate was expensive to get, but it was also expensive to maintain. So I wouldn't mind balancing by cost if the balancing was both buying and some kind of simple maintenance--like every month and every time you go on an adventure, pay N gold, or your armor degrades until repaired. That neatly stops the "1st level fighter finding a suit of plate" issue. He can store it for later, when he has the money to keep it operational. (The costs of repair wouldn't realistically be that high, but then maybe the more common plate found in D&D campaigns is made by a process that requires more maintenance.)

As for the magic value, I rather like that idea, and would extend it to all magical protections, thus removing the need to deal with special cases for shields, rings, etc. "Magic" is just another category of defense, that doesn't stack with anything but itself. Probably has simulation issues for a lot of people, though if different kinds of AC (dodging via Dex, armor, magic, etc.) had some modest, separate properties, those could be reconciled without stacking.

 

[Mengu]

I'd be happy with two kinds of armor that have a game mechanical impact, light and heavy. The rest is all cosmetic. I don't need armor to be simulated any more than that. But if people want a historically accurate representation of every kind of armor, with game mechanical tweaks, fine... Just don't make price a balancing factor. That dictates a style of play I really don't care for.

 

[NotAYakk]

We could have other properties.

DR is a bit dangerous, because it changes a kobold that deals 1d4-1 from being a threat-en-mass, to being utterly powerless even in near-infinite numbers -- while it barely changes the threat of a 2d6+2 damage attacker. A computer game like Starcraft managed to make armor-as-DR work only by being extremely careful with every single units DR and damage per hit. In a game where we are trying to make level 1 kobolds be useable en-mass against level 20 players, giving players access to DR is ... probably not doable.

Temporary HP, or soak, is doable.

As an example, every suit of heavy armor might let you roll a HD a reaction to absorb damage from an attack, with any leftover roll being able to be used to soak further damage until the start of your next turn.

That would allow heavy armor to have an AC bonus that isn't as extreme, yet still be mechanically interesting compared to medium or light armor.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Temporary HP, or soak, is doable.

As an example, every suit of heavy armor might let you roll a HD a reaction to absorb damage from an attack, with any leftover roll being able to be used to soak further damage until the start of your next turn.

That would allow heavy armor to have an AC bonus that isn't as extreme, yet still be mechanically interesting compared to medium or light armor.

If I'm going to that kind of trouble, I'd just as soon give each armor some "hit points" that add to the hit point total of the character, with heavier armor giving more than lighter armor. There are several ways that can be ruled to come off, and modules would support those variants. (The simplest way is that it comes off first or last, depending upon whether you treat the early damage as being wounded or simply wearing you down. Coming off first I think has more advantages than would first be apparent.)

For simplicity, I would not have such damage affect the AC of the armor, by default. That becomes another "realism" module if you want to use it. When your armor is really beat up, it still deflects blows. But until you get those hit points "repaired," it can't soak any more.

This sounds counter-intuitive on first blush, but I think it actually fits the D&D abstractions of armor and hit points a lot better than normal DR.

As a bonus, this provides another method of "healing" for low-magic games, in that repairing armor is something that skilled characters can do. You can also have spells from non-traditional healers that do this. But it can only go so far, since armor would be a fraction of the total hit points (more at low levels, less at higher levels, even with magic adding to the hit point totals of armor). It also opens up some nifty options for different shield usage.

The net effect is that a fighter in plate isn't much threated by a small pack of kobolds in isolation. He'll kill them all before they get any kind of real blow through his armor. But the soak isn't infinite.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

While I agree, that for players, having best armor types for a higher cost is not optimal, it is very important for world building:

Bandids that can´t afford good armor are less protected than knights who can afford better armor.
So while I think there could be a mechanic that makes inferior armor useful later on, there need to be trash armor for very cheap costs. Something every lowly militiaman can afford.

 

[Green Knight]

Magic armor also becomes an issue. Why would anyone ever bother making magical chainmail when plate armor is just flat out better? Since all permanent items are assumed to be rare and precious now, I can't see anyone "wasting" an enchantment on anything but the best type of armor of its category, and to me, that's a problem. D&D's history is full of examples of magically enchanted leather, chainmail, etc.

Probably because magical armor isn't made solely for the use of Fighters and Paladins. Let's say that Clerics are limited to chainmail. If that's the case then that right there is a good reason why chainmail would get enchanted, so that Clerics could have a suit of magic armor. Leather is enchanted because it's all Rogues can wear, hide is enchanted because that's all that Barbarians can wear, etc. So long as there's a class which is limited to wearing a particular type of armor then there's no reason for there not to exist an enchanted suit of that particular armor.