Awfully Alarmed About Armour

[GX.Sigma]

I've just realized something--armor proficiency is determined by class, and, looking at the theme system, it's unlikely there'll be any armor proficiency feats. This actually works perfectly--heavy armor can be way better than light armor, it's just that most people can't wear heavy armor.

Then the fighter can be cool because he wears the best armor, because the best armor is actually the best armor.

 

[Aluvial]

This is one area where I feel strongly that D&D should resemble reality, in that wearing armor in combat is always preferable to not wearing armor in combat. The only people who should ever willingly go into combat without armor are people who cannot wear armor at all, or people who need to go without armor when they're not in combat.

Even if you have a Dexterity of 20, your Armor Class should be better in heavy armor than it is in light armor. Thus, if you absolutely must penalize Dexterity for wearing heavy armor, the amount of penalty-- for any near-human level of Dexterity-- must be smaller than the amount of difference between the AC granted by the best 'normal' light armor and the worst 'normal' heavy armor.

Let's go with 20 Dexterity, since that's our assumed PC maximum. That's +5 to AC. Now, assuming-- for the sake of argument-- that a man in heavy armor shouldn't be able to get any benefit from his Dexterity... that means that a full suit of chainmail needs to be at least five points better than a simple chain shirt. That doesn't make sense to me, I don't think it makes sense to anyone else, and it makes chainmail too damned good for people with no Dexterity bonus.

On the other hand, if Light Armor is no penalty, and Heavy Armor restricts the bonus to half your Dexterity bonus... then the minimum difference only has to be 2 points. Which makes a little more sense, with a chain shirt being only half of a full suit of chainmail and probably being made of lighter chain.

Then, the only way to have a better Armor Class fighting in light armor versus the equivalent heavy armor is to have superhuman Dexterity-- at least 22-- in which case, it actually might, possibly, make a little sense.

Can you give what you are thinking about in a chart? I'm having trouble understanding what AC heavy armors would have.

Aluvial

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

In 3rd and earlier editions when attributes were more frequently assigned by dice rolls, 18s were far more rare and 20s unheard of (if not impossible, depending on race). Having a 16-18 in Dexterity was pretty good for a rogue in 3rd, and 14-16 pretty good in 1st/2nd. The armor modifiers in 1st/2nd for high Dexterity were also lower, I think just getting you a +1 at 13, +2 at 16, and +3 and 18.

Don't recall Classic off-hand, but in AD&D, the AC adjustment for an 18 DEX was -4 (the equivalent of +4 today)-- assuming that each point less than 18 was one point less, that meant your first AC bonus kicked in at 15.

But in AD&D, heavy armor also didn't stop you from getting your Dexterity bonus to AC. If you had 18 DEX, you got a -4 to AC in your birthday suit (AC6) and the same -4 to AC in platemail (AC-2).

The problem really isn't stat inflation. The problem is the misconception so many people have about the degree to which heavy armor limits your movement in combat. You may not be able to run as fast or jump as far as you could in a track suit-- which is already well reflected in the rules-- but it certainly doesn't keep you from putting either your shield or your blade in the path of an oncoming attack, and the heavy armor gives you more options for ways to block attacks with your superior reflexes and agility.

 

[Fenes]

In Next, though, you don't actually "need" a magic weapon. At least not until you come across a monster that has damage reduction and the wizard/cleric can't kill it with spells alone. Beyond that, there's no actual need for one in order to stay up to date. It's great to have one and I expect a lot of arguments to break out when one pops up, but they're not to be expected like they were in 4e.

Playing a character that hits 5% worse is not ok.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Can you give what you are thinking about in a chart? I'm having trouble understanding what AC heavy armors would have.

Sure. I'm eliminating medium armor for the simple reason that, with heavy armor being 1/2 DEX, there's no conceptual space between light and heavy.

Light Natural Armor:
Soft Leather: 12 + DEX

Light Metal Armor:
Brigandine: 13 + DEX
Hauberk: 14 + DEX

Heavy Natural Armor:
Lamellar: 15 + 1/2 DEX

Heavy Metal Armor:
Full Maille: 16 + 1/2 DEX
Field plate: 17 + 1/2 DEX
Jousting plate: 18 + 1/2 DEX

Thus, if your Dexterity is less than 18, your AC is always better in Full Maille than in a simple Hauberk-- you break even at DEX 18 because 14 + 4 and 16 + 2 both equal 18, and at DEX 20 you have a 1 point advantage in light armor.

You would need a Dexterity of 26 (+8) for a Hauberk to break even with Jousting Plate, at AC 22, and a Dexterity of 42 (+16) for fighting naked to break even with Jousting Plate at AC 26.

Compare that to the current rules, in which a character with a 20 DEX-- which is supposedly within the extreme range of Human capability-- gains no benefit whatsoever from wearing standard chainmail.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Playing a character that hits 5% worse is not ok.

Hmmh...

only if hitting is REALLY needed to have some effects other than doing damage.

If you hit 5% less with an at-will. No problem. If you miss all your encounter or dailies: ouch.

Also, if you gain real bonuses to hit, and don´t have to keep up with the curve, there is a point where you hit well enough to perform ok.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Sure. I'm eliminating medium armor for the simple reason that, with heavy armor being 1/2 DEX, there's no conceptual space between light and heavy.

Light Natural Armor:
Soft Leather: 12 + DEX

Light Metal Armor:
Brigandine: 13 + DEX
Hauberk: 14 + DEX

Heavy Natural Armor:
Lamellar: 15 + 1/2 DEX

Heavy Metal Armor:
Full Maille: 16 + 1/2 DEX
Field plate: 17 + 1/2 DEX
Jousting plate: 18 + 1/2 DEX

Thus, if your Dexterity is less than 18, your AC is always better in Full Maille than in a simple Hauberk-- you break even at DEX 18 because 14 + 4 and 16 + 2 both equal 18, and at DEX 20 you have a 1 point advantage in light armor.

You would need a Dexterity of 26 (+8) for a Hauberk to break even with Jousting Plate, at AC 22, and a Dexterity of 42 (+16) for fighting naked to break even with Jousting Plate at AC 26.

Compare that to the current rules, in which a character with a 20 DEX-- which is supposedly within the extreme range of Human capability-- gains no benefit whatsoever from wearing standard chainmail.

I guess these values are a bit too good for heavy armors. I wuld add in medium armors. Then I would lower all those armor values for your heavy armor by one point and add in heavy armor that is one point better than your given values:

Organic armor:
leather: AC 12+dex
hide: AC 14+1/2 dex (better than leather with dex 14)
Lamellar: AC 16

Metal armor:
Brigandine: AC 13+dex
chain shirt: AC 14+dex

Scale armor: AC 15+1/2dex
Breast plate: AC 16+1/2 dex

Field plate: AC 17
Full plate: AC 18
Jousting plate AC 19

This way, with a shield, you could go up to AC 21, which seems appropriate

Medium armor and light armor will allow for AC 20 with high dexterity. But medium armor is the armor of choice for people with 12-16 dexterity, that don´t want to be encoumbered.

 

[Fenes]

Hmmh...

only if hitting is REALLY needed to have some effects other than doing damage.

If you hit 5% less with an at-will. No problem. If you miss all your encounter or dailies: ouch.

Also, if you gain real bonuses to hit, and don´t have to keep up with the curve, there is a point where you hit well enough to perform ok.

As far as I understand the DDN concept, you don't get "real bonuses" to to-hit. Any real bonus will be much more valuable then. And the higher you need to roll, the more important it is. If without it you only hit on a 17 and with it you hit on a 16, then it means your average damage per round just got up 25%.

 

[Drowbane]

Armor does not make you harder to hit, if anything it slows you down and makes you easier to hit. What it does do is absorb some of the impact of a blow and/or turn a direct hit into a glancing blow.

With the focus on flat math I believe that armor should provide some minor Defense boost and some amount of DR based on how heavy your armor is. Or perhaps by armor type vs weapon type (Chainmail is nigh useless vs bludgeoning and piercing, but makes slashing weapons less useful, etc).

Shields could be a straight up % to deflect a blow, and maybe keep its piddly AC boost it has traditionally had. Makes you harder to hit, and can even turn a "hit" into a miss on %. example: Buckler 5% + 1% per level (cap 25% at level 20), Medium Shield 10%, Tower Shield 30%... whatever, those numbers are merely illustrative at this point. The point is that when it comes to shields... size matters.

This % to miss worked fine for spells such as Blur and Displacement for years, and would bring shields up to the usefulness they should be. To build on this, perhaps if/when you successfully block outright your shield takes the dmg (1/2 what you would have? 1/4? full? other?).

edit: in AD&D armor class did not improve nearly as much as in later editions, and back then you could wear Full Plate and you still got your full Dex mod to AC.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

As far as I understand the DDN concept, you don't get "real bonuses" to to-hit. Any real bonus will be much more valuable then. And the higher you need to roll, the more important it is. If without it you only hit on a 17 and with it you hit on a 16, then it means your average damage per round just got up 25%.

I know how to calculate dpr...

but if you only hit on a 17 anyway, you can´t really call it dpr...

Character classes, that should contribute well should probably hit more than 50% of the time. And there the effective dpr does not go up a lot.
On the other hand, if you try to apply a stunning effect that is wasted if you miss, missing 5% more often can be a real pain...

And it was actually said, that you get bonuses to to hit. And any bonus you get is a real bonus. Explicitely in one of the recent articles. A fighter most surely gets class based bonuses to to-hit. But it is not expected in the math. Which means, a class like the wizard will still be able to hit and defend himself in combat later on. But a fighter will hit most monsters quite often. Which will be taken into account in his personal advancement table and calcualted in the fighter´s expeted dpr per level.

If you look at the numbers you will notice, that the default assumtion seems to be hitting at 55%:

Leather armor with no bonus and proficient weapon with no bonus cancel each other out. So you are at a point, where hitting 5% more often is nice, but not gamebreaking if you hit 5% less often.
In the worst case you attack with a +2 bonus against AC 16. Which should not happen, if you are expecting to be in combat once in a while.

So mor realistic is attacking with a +5 bonus against AC 16. In the worst case. Here another +1 bonus would be about 10% increase in dpr. Which is noticeable, but not gamebreakingly so.

So if this should be another: if you don´t put a 20 into your main stat or you are screwed argument, you are wrong.