I've given up on DR in D&D, and accepted AC, but I agree, Rule of Cool + ease of play. If they model the game economy that money is scarce, magic items are scarce and special, then mundane equipment should have decent options. Which plate tries to be, but fails. For 5k my medium armor wearing guy won't have a speed penalty OR disadvantage, for the cost of 1 AC, and the same price. Mithral plate should cost double regular plate, but remove the speed penalty.
Right now the pricing on armors is wacky.
Splint is 500gp for AC 17, -5, and Disadvantage
Banded is 750gp for AC17, and Disadvantage
Hello, no speed penalty was a paragon level magic item property in 4th, that's WAY too good for only 250gp more. They should make Splint mail cost 200gp and Banded 1k, or at least increase the price disparity a bit.
Same thing for mithral plate. I just don't see anyone paying 5k for plate when mithral is just a tiny bit more expensive and you get to keep your speed. If you're blowing 5k on armor, why not 6? Or conversely, why not skip out on spending the extra 4k and just stick to banded. I don't want a silly arcana check to resize armor permanently, that was so silly in 4e.
What I'd like to see is fun gameplay, where you can have something to spend your money on as you go up in levels. Scale I feel is too cheap at 50gp, it should be 100gp at least. I want there to be a good reason starting adventurers are only able to afford studded leather or chain, to have a reason to go back to town and spend some of that gold. That's a really integral part to any D&D game to me, spending money to buy better gear. Right now Next is really lame in that department. You can afford any weapon you want, very decent armors, for less than 1/2 of your starting gold.
The price of a greatsword is waaaay too cheap!! I own a bastard sword and it cost me 300 clams, is that equivalent to 350gp? Obviously there is no relation, but if you told me my starting gold was 3x the price of a sword, I'd say why are adventurers starting out so rich? Why are they giving away so much? I know, this is a DM override dial, but I just don't think any of these costs makes sense compared to what they should be worth.
I want there to be several grades of sword, at least a masterwork version, that costs 10x as much and boosts the damage die by 1 step (not! just a +1, that sucks and doesn't scale). A magic weapon would be masterwork + an extra +1 to hit. That way, masterwork items create a sink in the economy because there are no magic item shoppes (nor should there be). A masterwork greatsword would be 2d6, same as the default one in Pathfinder, that didn't seem to break the game, and you can buy it by level 2 since it's expensive. I don't want a repeat of 4e where you've all this loot bag and you can't sell any of it, or if you do you get a fixed price dictated by some politburo down at Wizards HQ instead of the DM or some sensible economic theory. Ahhh, just thinking about how 4e ruined magic items for me is giving me a headache. Let alone plate armor costing 50gp. I should have known right then...this game doesn't even try to model a low-magic game that has interest for treasure hunters.
D&D to me has many components, but there HAS to be a good reason to get loot bags...to buy better gear! Sure, that sounds like a silly trope, but it's a classic for a reason. Why can't we have a game economy that is fun? I know it's a playtest, but still. Just eyeballing the costs for the mithril plate vs normal plate shouldn't have been published like that. Why put prices at all? I didn't realize this in my playtest survey, but it bugs me if they don't get mundane equipment costs right from the start. Fine, dial the starting gold to taste, but there should be meaningful tradeoffs and steady upgrades. I just don't see anyone buying splintmail, ever.