Awfully Alarmed About Armour

[Ridley's Cohort]

If we care about realism...

There is no fundamental reason that shields should have a number of opponents limit and Dex not have the same.

There is a practical limit on how many potential attackers you can keep you eye on, somewhere in the ballpark of 2 or less. To everyone else, you are flatfooted, and need to bank on luck and armor.

That is a big reason that armor was so valued. Even if you were the rare specialized and seasoned combatant with the exotic tricks to adequately handle a better equipped man in a fair mano-a-mano fight, in messier combats there were going to be people chucking javelins at you from where you were not looking. Is AC 10 really such a great idea?

 

[Njall]

...and evil humans?

Not sure I see your point. Evil humans, drow and so forth are NPCs. Since monsters in DDN don't seem to use the same creation rules PCs use, they get whatever AC is right for them while wearing whatever armor the setting considers appropriate for them. Creating a functional, balanced armor table's got nothing to do with NPCs, as only PCs will end up using it, and NPCs will use it as a benchmark at best.

 

[Njall]

IRL, the Dex 18 guy in heavy armor, of course.

Not sure I agree. IRL, the guy in heavy armor has to keep up with its weight for the entire length of the fight. In some fights, against certain ( a large chunk of, actually ) opponents, that may prove a definite disadvantage.
AC in D&D represents your average defensive capabilities against a pretty wide range of enemies. Sure, in a duel the guy in plate's AC is better. Against some other threat, when wearing 15+ kg of metal is not as useful as it tires you out and limits your FoV to boot, I'm not so sure he's got the better AC.
Since ( thankfully ) the game doesn't differentiate between "AC vs large" and "AC vs medium", "guy in heavy armor is harder to damage in a duel than unarmored guy" does not translate directly into "he's got the better AC ( over the course of the adventure, against a variety of foes )" in game terms.

 

[Derren]

Not sure I agree. IRL, the guy in heavy armor has to keep up with its weight for the entire length of combat. In some fights, against certain ( a large chunk of, actually ) opponents, that may prove a definite disadvantage.

You have a very skewed view of armor. A soldier today carries much more weight than someone in full plate which is also not distributed as well as the armor. And they do not drop from exhaustion after half an hour of battle.

If you want to go for defense there is no way around heavy armor. Someone with high dexterity but no armor will still have a big disadvantage to someone with well made full plate. Especially when the one in armor is also dexterous. You only wear no/light armor when you can't afford heavy one or when a other value is more important than protection (speed, stealth, ease of travel, etc.)

My proposal:
High dex light armor no shield = no dex heavy armor no shield < High dex heavy armor no shield = High dex light armor with shield = No dex heavy armor with shield < High Dex heavy armor with shield.

 

[Njall]

You have a very skewed view of armor. A soldier today carries much more weight than someone in full plate which is also not distributed as well as the armor. And they do not drop from exhaustion after half an hour of battle.

If you want to go for defense there is no way around heavy armor. Someone with high dexterity but no armor will still have a big disadvantage to someone with well made full plate. Especially when the one in armor is also dexterous. You only wear no/light armor when you can't afford heavy one or when a other value is more important than protection (speed, stealth, ease of travel, etc.)

My proposal:
High dex light armor no shield = no dex heavy armor no shield < High dex heavy armor no shield = High dex light armor with shield = No dex heavy armor with shield < High Dex heavy armor with shield.

Modern soldiers don't drop from exahustion, but they're not fighting in melee all the time either. Also, I've never claimed that they'd "drop from exhaustion". I merely said that carrying around 20+ kg of steel will tire you out and slow you down eventually, and this, in turn, will make dodging and parrying ( as well as attacking ) more difficult over an extended period of time. Usually, it doesn't matter, because if you're fighting someone that can't get through your armor you can just not care and keep hacking; when a single blow can snap your neck, or send you flying, though, being slower can ( and will ) make a difference.
I agree that heavy armored combatants should have the advantage against human sized, armed opponents in a duel. However, that's not the only thing AC simulates in game terms.
How good does wearing plate armor do you against something the size of a gorilla? An elephant? A dragon? You're trying to apply real life experience to a game that assumes fictional, but very realistic threats, the kind of threat that a trained, armored combatant never faced.
Did big game hunters ever wear heavy armor? Because half the fights, in D&D, are closer to a fight with a rampaging mammoth rather than your average duel, and AC needs to keep that into account.

 

[Derren]

How good does wearing plate armor do you against something the size of a gorilla? An elephant? A dragon? You're trying to apply real life experience to a game that assumes fictional, but very realistic threats, the kind of threat that a trained, armored combatant never faced.
Did big game hunters ever wear heavy armor? Because half the fights, in D&D, are closer to a fight with a rampaging mammoth rather than your average duel, and AC needs to keep that into account.

Yes, armor was sometimes worn when hunting boars. Now imagine they would hunt something more dangerous. And don't forget that the downside of heavy armor in a hunt is the noise. When your prey doesn't flee from you armor becomes even more viable.
Arms and Armor in Renaissance Europe | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Against an gorilla? Saves you from its bite and claws. Heavy armor can save you from being impaled by an elephant and the claws of a dragon would also have a bit of trouble to penetrate heavy armor. At least more trouble than killing an unarmored person. Also, plate mail would protect you from glancing hits by its fire breath.

 

[Njall]

Yes, armor was sometimes worn when hunting boars. Now imagine they would hunt something more dangerous. And don't forget that the downside of heavy armor in a hunt is the noise. When your prey doesn't flee from you armor becomes even more viable.
Arms and Armor in Renaissance Europe | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Against an gorilla? Not so much. Heavy armor can save you from being impaled by an elephant and the claws of a dragon would also have a bit of trouble to penetrate heavy armor. At least more trouble than killing an unarmored person. Also, plate mail would protect you from glancing hits by its fire breath.

A boar weights about 90 kg, I'd say it's a human sized threat.
A bear can reach 800 kg, IIRC.
An elephant, up to 5000 kg ( according to wiki, the largest elephant ever weighted like 10000 kgs).
A piercing blow from something with that mass will just pierce through your armor, and if it doesn't, it will send you flying. Wearing steel might protect you from a glancing blow at best, but it will make dodging blows and moving around way more difficult, and, again, wearing a helmet, especially a closed one, does limit your FoV quite a bit. That's expecially significant when you're facing a large opponent, because they can (and will ) attack you from the side way more easily, and a single blow can end the fight outright.

 

[Derren]

An elephant, up to 5000 kg ( according to wiki, the largest elephant ever weighted like 10000 kgs).
A blow from something with that mass will just pierce through your armor, and if it doesn't, it will send you flying.

No. A elephant weights a lot, but it can't use all that power to attack you unless it tramples you and then armor would be useless. But when hit by its trunk or tusk armor will protect you while the unarmored guy will be impaled.
Also, the FoV in armor wasn't that limited as you seemed to believe.

You constantly forget or ignore that heavy armor was used in warfare for centuries. That means that the art of crafting armor was very sophisticated and that armor simply worked on the battle field which includes giving you are good enough FoV to participate in combat, duel or mass and didn't tire you out so much that you were unable to fight after a short while.

And comparing a hunt with a fight with a dragon is silly. People didn't wear armor in a hunt often because they required stealth and because the prey was not that dangerous (but could still kill if you had bad luck). A fight against a dragon on the other hand would not be a hunt but war which means the full equipment would be used.

 

[Njall]

No. A elephant weights a lot, but it can't use all that power to attack you unless it tramples you and then armor would be useless. But when hit by its trunk or tusk armor will protect you while the unarmored guy will be impaled.
Also, the FoV in armor wasn't that limited as you seemed to believe.

Even if he doesn't use all 5000 kgs, he'll still send you flying. Besides, we're not talking elephants here, we're talking intelligent, sometimes armed opponents as big as elephants. If people didn't bother wearing heavy armor against elephants, that can't use all of their mass, I doubt it would be much use against something that can.

And yeah, a helmet severly impairs your FoV. Do try sparring with a helmet up. Wearing a boxing helmet, for example, is a significant disadvantage in terms of FoV, and, while I've never sparred with a plate helmet up, I'm quite confident that this restricts your FoV way more than this.
Usually, that's not a problem because the protection it offers offsets the risks, but against something that's big enough to one-shot you anyway? Not so much.

 

[Derren]

Even if he doesn't use all 5000 kgs, he'll still send you flying. Besides, we're not talking elephants here, we're talking intelligent, sometimes armed opponents as big as elephants. If people didn't bother wearing heavy armor against elephants, that can't use all of their mass, I doubt it would be much use against something that can.

People didn't bother to wear armor when hunting elephants????

Which people do you exactly mean? The neandertals who hunter mamooths or the 19th century colonials with fire arms? You know that there was a distinctive lack of elephants in europe during the medieval age. And So far I have found no account of how people in India hunted elephants. But this picture shows them using shields when hunting Rhinos. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RhinoHuntBabur.jpg
But I have no idea what armor they used in India at that time.

So an elephant sends you flying. Guess who survives better. The one in armor which absorbes a lot of the blow and protects him from debris when he lands or the naked guy.
You really should watch the videos I posted in the spoiler on page 5.

About the FoV I rather trust the guys who did wear such helmet when they say that they have a good FoV.