D&D 5E Lets Talk about Medium Armor

Hi everyone. I'd like to talk about medium armor, and possibly about improving it. 4E got rid of the concept of medium armor and just had lights and heavies. Some armor was just flat out better than others, but proficiencies were given out by armor and not all at once. 3E had varied max dex bonuses, allowing everyone to aim for roughly the same 17-18 AC (with full-plate and padded being special).

5E is ... different. Light and Heavy Armors line up pretty well on their own. Studded Leather is the basic light armor (it's cheap enough that you could have it at first level) at 12+Dex AC. Chainmail is the basic heavy armor, for 16 AC.

For a light armor wearer starting with 16 Dex (doable for dex fighter, ranger, and rogue, and more warrior inclined light armor casters), this is AC 15 compared to heavy armor's AC 16. The light armor wearer can boost their Dex twice, ending with AC 17, while the heavy armor wearer can upgrade their armor twice, ending with AC 18.

That's good. That's balanced.

What about medium armor? Well, a medium armor wearer needs a Dex of 14 to maximize their AC, which can be doable with standard array but really limits options. Chain and Scale are the baseline medium armors. With a 14 Dex, Chain is AC 15, and Scale is AC 16. Scale comes with stealth penalties, just like heavy armor, so the comparison is good here. Medium armor gets to upgrade once, to 16 or 17 AC accordingly ... but that's it.

So, not only does Medium armor require you to make Dex a secondary or tertiary stat (which limits character options in my opinion), but it ends up having lower AC than light armor or heavy armor.

I feel like medium armor needs 2 boosts. I feel like the distinction between "light medium" armors that don't penalize stealth, and "heavy medium" armors that do penalize stealth aren't really utilized. I've personally never seen a character proficient in stealth who wasn't a dex focused character, so medium armor wouldn't benefit them anyway. But maybe I play with power gamers.

I'm not sure where the balance point should be. Medium Armor proficiency is paired with shield proficiency generally speaking, but shield use comes with its own hand things. I feel like medium should be an all around improvement over light, and heavy should be an improvement over medium. I'm not sure "disadvantage on stealth" is really in the same category as "+1 AC" to be balanced against it. I'm not sure "you don't need to invest in Dex" is also a "point" in favor of Medium armor, as investing in lower Dex still comes with its own penalties.

So, where do you think Medium armor should be? Should medium armor always be +1 AC over light? Should heavy always be +1 AC over medium? Should "disadvantage on stealth" be worth +1 AC? Is 14 Dex too must to ask for medium armor wearers?

Lets look at the classes:

Barbarian: Medium armor or Unarmored Defense
*Bard: Light armor (valor has Medium)
Cleric: Medium armor (life, nature, tempest, and war have Heavy)
Druid: Medium (likely limited to Hide and special Scale)
Fighter: Heavy
*Monk: Unarmored Defense
Paladin: Heavy
*Ranger: Medium
*Rogue: Light
Sorcerer: None
Warlock: Light
Wizard: None
*stealth as a class skill

These are all ACs that are close enough in the same ballpark that more often than not things like shields, magical armors, spells, and other class features and abilities that affect or change AC render any attempts to make some sort of universal "balanced" chart for the three levels of armor pretty much moot.

If Clerics wear medium but feel they need some points of AC, they can use a shield, raise their DEX, cast Shield of Faith on themselves, etc. etc. Druids can cast Barkskin for an AC of 16 if an extra point or two of AC matters to them or just Wild Shape and take the extra pool of HP to be their "better armor". And Rangers will probably have the 2 points of DEX to start with and could take the Defense fighting style if it really mattered. So at the end of the day, the Medium armor PCs will have a certain group of numbers for their AC, and it'll be in and around the heavy armor wearers and in and around the light armor wearers. It all works itself out in the wash and nothing I don't think needs to get too noodly on. But that's just me.

I really wish that medium armor was a point higher than light or heavy armor, given that it requires both proficiency and a high score to benefit. If light armor tops out at 17, and heavy armor is AC 18, then IMO medium armor should be AC 19.

Of course, I also wish that a fighter-mage would gain enough benefit from versatility to make up for the lack of specialization. If an enemy has high AC but bad saves, then the ability to target one rather than the other should compensate for not being able to hit either one as hard.

But that's not D&D; or, at the very least, it's not 5E. This is a game where everyone is expected to specialize in exactly one trick, and use that trick against everyone.

Medium armor ... you mean the very best armor in a very large number of cases? Nope, no improvement needed.

People seem only to look at the extreme cases while judging, when in truth there's a wide variety of cases and when you look across actual usage, medium armor is the best armor more than heavy armor is or light armor is.

Okay, first let's talk about ability scores and bell curves, including pseudo bell curves from the point buy/standard array method.

Starting characters usually have one 15-17, one 14-16, and then we're lookign at +1 and +0 mods with a -1 somewhere.

DEX is usually seen as a great ability score, as it affects many things. If your character isn't focused on it (rogue, ranged or finesse weapon wielder), you still likely have a +1 or +2 modifier in it with the exception of some heavy armor people who use it as a dump stat.

STR is only useful for melee weapon wielders, a subset of characters though it does include some melee clerics. It's a pretty safe bet that no other character is going to have a 15+ STR in the first two tiers. Heavy armor, when confined to the choices that take less than a 15 STR, lose out to medium armor with average expected dex. So heavy armor only wins for STR-based melee weapon wielders.

For Dex-prime characters - finesse and ranged weapon wielders, light armor will be the best. Medium armor can match it's AC, but at a higher costs and at disadvantage to stealth. Not huge deals, but still.

For everyone else, without the STR to wear heavy armor nor the dex focus, medium armor is the best armor for them. It gives the best AC.

What we have from this is that the group of people whom medium armor would be best (assuming they had proficiency in it) is larger than either the STR-prime melee combatants, or the DEX-prime finesse / ranged combatants. It includes all of the classes where wielding a weapon is not the primary thing.

Now, there's one more important point - medium armor does not need the ability score focus that light or heavy do. Light armor requires a heavy investment in DEX to be better. Heavy armor requires a smaller investment in STR (but that's a less useful ability score) and a greater investment in gold.

Conclusion:
1. If you rank the number of characters the three armor types are best for, Medium is best.
2. Medium armor requires lesser character investment to make it work, which is a good reason it shouldn't match/exceed the AC available to characters who do invest a lot.

It seems that medium armor is for the non-fighters that are not Dex builds. Like a cleric that is not a dwarf and gets heavy armor for free. This still allows Dex to be a tertiary stat and still get +1 or 2.

You can change the donning time for the armor to make it a slight bit better if you can take it off quickly in situations like a Saltmarsh campaign and if you are on ships.

I played a dex paladin and used medium(half plate) and shield. I had 16 dex and took the medium armour feat that boosts dex bonus to +3 to medium armour and removes disadvantage on stealth.

My AC was 20.

The crappy thing is, if I increase my dex to bring ost my attack rating, my defence doesn’t also go up. OTOH, I kind of feel that is balanced given people’s gripes about dex being the super-stat.

In short: I had to spend an ASI to make medium armour viable.

TaranTheWanderer said:

I played a dex paladin and used medium(half plate) and shield. I had 16 dex and took the medium armour feat that boosts dex bonus to +3 to medium armour and removes disadvantage on stealth.

My AC was 20.

The crappy thing is, if I increase my dex to bring ost my attack rating, my defence doesn’t also go up. OTOH, I kind of feel that is balanced given people’s gripes about dex being the super-stat.

In short: I had to spend an ASI to make medium armour viable.

Click to expand...

AC 19 wasn't viable? Viable?

Put a +4 Max Dex cap on Light Armor. Create a feat (Light Armor Master) that gives +1 Dex and removes the Max Dex cap and any Stealth disadvantage.

Blue said:

Medium armor ... you mean the very best armor in a very large number of cases? Nope, no improvement needed.

Click to expand...

Yep, you nailed it.

I think the 5e armor system is actually pretty elegant. Ascending armor proficiency is a class perk; characters will pretty much always wear the armor corresponding to their highest granted proficiency, unless they make a specific decision to focus on Dex for their early ASIs. And if you consider the bonuses to Init and Dex saves as more valuable than a point of max AC, you can always downgrade from heavy armor to medium armor to gain them.