Certain types of armor are never worn.

[Wolffenjugend]

D&D is not designed with historical accuracy as any major priority.

Umm, what about the Vikings Handbook, Crusades Handbook, Celt's Handbook, et al? Or even Unearthed Arcana, which introduced a library of historical weaponry. I've been playing D&D for a long time and it's always been based (however loosely) off of historical reality. Sure, there are spiked chains and two-bladed swords and all sorts of other unhistorical items, but there's far more longswords, spears, and plate armour. When D&D was created, all armours were not equal. It was a big thing to get plate mail. Why would anyone wear scale mail when there is chain shirt? Because you might have only found scale mail. It's about what's available, not what's optimal.

Sure, 3.5 has done a much better job of balancing things in general. But to think that leather armour is only present in the game so that rogues will have something to wear is, um, well, silly...

 

[WARPED1]

But it's not based on historical accuracy. Those books are published for the simple use of flavor. I see lots of members here seem to be missing the point of the D+D rulebooks. It says somewhere in there "these rules are by no means complete. DM's may pick and choose what works best for them." That embodies the spirit of the game.
It's a fantasy role playing game, not reality-in-a-book, so just use what works for you, change what doesn't!

 

[Pagan priest]

Actually, those books were an attempt at historical accuracy. In some cases, accuracy was passed for playability, but over all, they were not bad. (I have the Celt source book and A Mighty Fortress rennaisance source book.)

 

[Felon]

Moving into one-handed weapons, the trident and flail are generally inferior to the longsword, battle axe, and warhammer. (They may be useful for corner cases like the warrior who wants to be able to throw his primary weapon or the warrior focussed on trips or disarms but those are not most warriors). In the two handed category, the greatclub, halberd, and heavy flail play second fiddle to the greatsword and greatclub. Among the exotics, the gnome hooked hammer and dwarven Urgrosh are strictly inferior to the Orc Double Axe and Double Sword.

Your assertion here is that some weapons are inferior to others because they do slightly less damage in exchange for some other benefit like disarm bonuses or the ability to do double damage when set against a charge. That's a rather subjective statement.

Admittedly, most of the suboptimal weapons (although not the greatclub) have unique advantages that may be interesting to some characters--trip/disarm bonusses or double damage when set against a charge for instance, but, IME, these are very rarely sufficient to make the weapons optimal. (Trip weapons are probably the only ones I think sometimes worthwhile).

The difference between 1d6 and 1d8 or 1d8 and 1d10 is not monumental, and IME the special qualities you've just mentioned come in quite handy if a fighter has a sufficient grasp of tactics to do more than just roll to hit every round.

But more to the point, none of this proves that the weapon system isn't designed to be well-balanced with a wealth of viable options in mind, so the analogy does not "break down" as you claimed. At best your assessment simply proves that the designers didn't bat 1000, which is true enough. But with the armor system, they struck out completely.

The weapons may be balanced so that there is no clear winner but there are pretty clear losers in most situations. I don't see how this is that different from the armors.

It's different because with armor there are clear winners, and worse, there are far more losers than winners. There isn't a wealth of viable options here.

The same is true of scale mail vis a vis a chain shirt. For a mounted fighter with a 16 dex, they end up with the same AC either way. The only differences are 50gp, the ability to sleep in the chain shirt (but lets face it, realistically, most people would not want to sleep in their armor anyway), manueverability (not very relevant if the character in question is primarily a mounted combatant), and one point of armor check penalty (which would be relevant when quickmounting or dismounting).

Why the heck would someone NOT want to sleep in light armor when they're in the middle of the wilderness or some hellacious dungeon? It may not be real comfy, but it beats waking up in the middle of the night and having to fight off some monster in your jammies. And the mounted character doesn't always get the option to ride his horse in every fight.

I think you misunderstand what claim I'm rebutting. I'm rebutting the claim that the armor system is bad and that, under it, there is no reason for armor types other than chain shirts, fullplate (and, depending upon who's making the claim, leather, studded leather, or breastplates) to exist.

That the armor class afforded by the lesser armors is not always significantly worse than that afforded by the better armors is certainly relevant to the question of whether there's a reason for them to exist.

That depends upon what you think it's countering. There are a lot of different semi-interconnected claims floating around in this thread and lumping all arguments against any of them together is bound to distort the argument. That characters might be apathetic about upgrading their defenses does nothing to counter the claim that there are clear optimal armors. It does, however, go a long way towards countering the claim that no PC or NPC above 3rd level has a reason to own/wear suboptimal armors.

They don't have a reason to, other than apathy. And when they fail that Dex-based skill check and die because of that -1 armor check penalty that they didn't care about, I'll bet they're bound to kick themselves (once someone points it out to their detail-overlooking arses ).

It seems to me that the grounds of the great armor complaint--the claim that armor types can only justify their existence if they are proven to give the optimal armor class for very broad classes of high level PCs in the circumstances of a standard dungeon crawl--is highly dubious.

Well, if they're not advantageous, there's no point in any character having them unless they're too poor to afford them--and for the fifth time now, let it be pointed out that the poverty arguement was already allowed for in the first line in the first post of this thread.

It ignores corner cases like the fighters and clerics I described, low level (poor) characters, NPCs with very limited resources, NPCs with limited access to high tech armors (like fullplate or even chain shirts in some cases), NPCs with equipment priorities not in line with dungeon crawling, and any cost/benefit analysis of animal barding (where cost is a far more significant factor and max dex is a far far less significant factor).

Limited resources, limited access, limited cost/benefit all boils down to slight variations on the poverty arguement which was already allowed for in the first line in the first post of this thread (OK, so now that's six ).

 

[Felon]

Umm, what about the Vikings Handbook, Crusades Handbook, Celt's Handbook, et al? Or even Unearthed Arcana, which introduced a library of historical weaponry. I've been playing D&D for a long time and it's always been based (however loosely) off of historical reality.

All ancient history from a time when "balance" was a concept very few people--especially those working at TSR--had any real grasp on, and there was nobody with a clear vision of what the priorities in D&D should be (other than a way to make money off of dumb ol' gamers who will buy anything dangled before them). I've been around a while myself and I can safely say that 2e was certainly NOT about providing a variety of viable options for player characters.

Sure, there are spiked chains and two-bladed swords and all sorts of other unhistorical items, but there's far more longswords, spears, and plate armour. When D&D was created, all armours were not equal. It was a big thing to get plate mail.

This is the logical fallacy known as "arguing to tradition" (i.e. "this is the way they've always done it, so that's how it's supposed to be"). It's not valid because what they did in previous editions they should correct in current editions if it's not well-designed, which it isn't if there are only a couple of viable armor options for the vast majority of characters.

Why would anyone wear scale mail when there is chain shirt? Because you might have only found scale mail. It's about what's available, not what's optimal.

<deepsigh> Again, this is just another take on the poverty arguement, which was already accounted in the first line of the first post of this thread. That's seven </deepsigh>

Sure, 3.5 has done a much better job of balancing things in general. But to think that leather armour is only present in the game so that rogues will have something to wear is, um, well, silly...

Well, most rogues can certainly do better with masterwork studded leather or chain shirt if that's what you mean.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

It's different because with armor there are clear winners, and worse, there are far more losers than winners. There isn't a wealth of viable options here.

A wild overgeneralization. I certainly see cloth, leather, studded leather, chain shirt, chain mail, breastplate, full plate in real play. Occasionally banded and halfplate. That is 7 of 12 "winners" and a couple runner ups. Your claim that there are more losers than winners is contradicted by my experience.

For those of us who do most playing in the levels 1-8 the theorectical optimizations do not necessarily apply -- money is scarce and the whims of DM generosity will wildly skew the optimization landscape. Characters level 10+ have a lot more cash on hand and can be expected to usually have more optimal equipment choices.

I am quite happy with the armor features as listed in the PHB. My main complaint is that mithral, if easily available in the campaign, does skew the results.

Why the heck would someone NOT want to sleep in light armor when they're in the middle of the wilderness or some hellacious dungeon? It may not be real comfy, but it beats waking up in the middle of the night and having to fight off some monster in your jammies. And the mounted character doesn't always get the option to ride his horse in every fight.

Weight limits. I can say that from first hand experience. Started a long adventure with MW full plate and chain shirt handy for the odd situations. With 14 Str and a lean selection of adventuring equipment & backup weapons I was too close to the edge of my weight limit. That became obvious after I failed a save vs. poison and collapsed on the floor, unable to drag myself even 5'. I had to ditch a shield and backpack to even raise my sword and attack at all. If you attack me at night I am wearing cloth from now on.

 

[Felon]

A wild overgeneralization.

Sure it is. That's because it's already been elaborated on several times already throughout this thread.

I certainly see cloth, leather, studded leather, chain shirt, chain mail, breastplate, full plate in real play. Occasionally banded and halfplate. That is 7 of 12 "winners" and a couple runner ups. Your claim that there are more losers than winners is contradicted by my experience.

And why do they wear that armor exactly? It's probably either the reasons already addressed: apathy or the poverty. The simple fact that you see it by itself doesn't mean they're not suboptimal. People make suboptimal choices (usually passively).

For those of us who do most playing in the levels 1-8 the theorectical optimizations do not necessarily apply -- money is scarce and the whims of DM generosity will wildly skew the optimization landscape. Characters level 10+ have a lot more cash on hand and can be expected to usually have more optimal equipment choices.

And from looking at the DMG (page 54) it's pretty easy to see that an 8th-level character who can't afford a set of full plate is in a campaign that sharply deviates from the game as writ in the core books, at least in regards to wealth accrual. Not that there's anything wrong with that, naturally, except that you shouldn't expect that discussions on ENWorld boards should be taking individual folks' homebrew campaigns into account, right? In a campaign that sticks to the the core books' principles, characters should be able to afford any basic armor by about 4th level.

But at any rate, that all goes back to the poverty arguement once more...'round and 'round we go.

Weight limits. I can say that from first hand experience. Started a long adventure with MW full plate and chain shirt handy for the odd situations. With 14 Str and a lean selection of adventuring equipment & backup weapons I was too close to the edge of my weight limit. That became obvious after I failed a save vs. poison and collapsed on the floor, unable to drag myself even 5'. I had to ditch a shield and backpack to even raise my sword and attack at all. If you attack me at night I am wearing cloth from now on.

Again, that probably goes back to the nature of the campaign you played in, because relatively cheap magic items (like handy haversacks) exist specifically to help you lug stuff around.