D&D 5E What potential problems are there with this medium armor fix?

[thethain]

Don't forget that with the feat Medium armor master, it hits the Same AC as full plate while having no penalty to Stealth. Making it super-armor. Granted this does require planning as it means you need 16 dex and a feat.

I always assume medium armor is for those who get into melee but are not necessarily focused on it. Clerics for example might get into melee range to heal, but probably didn't end up with 15+ strength (and much less likely to have 20+ dex) as they focus on Wis and Con. Also the penalties for not having 15 strength and wearing plate isn't exactly monumental. -10 speed will prevent you from chasing or running away. But that's about it, especially if you consider the relative ease of using a mount (~100 gold for riding horse, or 400 for warhorse, compared to the 1500 for plate)

Hitting 14 dex is pretty easy, compared to hitting 20 dex to reach 17 AC with Studded Leather. Especially at lower levels.

 

[Hillsy7]

If you wear medium armor, you add your Dexterity or Strength modifier (your choice), to a maximum of +2, to the base number from your armor type to determine your Armor Class.

Generally speaking, the only main issue is you've nerfed Barbarian Unarmoured Defence until Con gets up to 20 - most every Barbarian now is going to default to Medium Armour and Low Dex (they might add Dex back on for saves tho). Conan is no more. But generally speaking, meh, not too much of an issue.

As far as monsters go, of the 22 medium armor wearing statblocks in the MM, 15 of them are unchanged. Four of them gain +1 AC, two of them gain +2 AC, and one (the ogre) gains +3 AC. That seems to fall within reasonable tolerance--other than the ogre, and I could just say what they are wearing is mechanically studded leather. And importantly to me, the guard statblock--one of the most common statblocks in my games--remains unchanged.

With bounded accuracy, mucking about with AC is always an issue for monsters and balance. and if fully a third of potentially affected Monsters see a rise, that could be a problem. Doubly so if they are mainly low level grunts who need the armour boost. For example, A CR 2 Ogre has AC 11 for a reason. That cranks up to AC 14 and that's a significant boost with 59 HP. I mean realistically you could lob that at a 5-man Level 1 party....If average attack damage is, say, 1d8+3 and average attack bonus is +5, that means you're averaging (60%*7.5) 4.5 damage per turn instead of 5.625. That might not seem much, but that's 14 attack rolls vs 10. With buffs, healing, maybe someone knocked unconscious.......could be a couple of turns of combat.....

Basically, I'd increase CR of those monsters accordingly, or ignore the medium armour buff for them.

Appendix: The Problem with Medium Armor

The question as to whether or not Medium armour does it's job depends on who can use it, and who might multiclass/burn a feat to get it.

Straight off the bat you can narrow it down who has medium, but not Heavy: Barbarian, Ranger, Knowledge Cleric, Valour Bard, Druid. So who benefits from it existing, currently.

Barbarian doesn't really. With +3 in CON (likely) you're starting at 13 anyway so Unarmoured Defence coupled with resistances covers the unlikely event first few levels you find a breastplate. Plus you get to play Conan.
Ranger and Valour Bard probably benefits non-thematic builds. Traditionally, these classes lean towards Dex (light armour) over Str and are both melee (have a primary attack stat), but if you want a STR build with a non-sucky AC Medium armour is there for you.
Knowledge Cleric benefits traditional themes. Clerics are thematically STR melee, and tend towards casting anyway, so Medium is a cheap AC buff.
Druid is a caster, so a cheap AC buff is useful.

Of the Light Armour characters, realistically burning a feat or multiclassing only works for really wonky Rogues, Monks and Bladelocks (i.e. people who've clearly taken the seriously subverted choice for character/thematic reasons). Bards and Blastlocks could get cheap AC hikes, but the cost of a feat is expensive. So probably multiclass dips of Druid/Cleric I'd expect. They'd then fall under Druids (medium armour casters)

OK, so currently out of STR Bards & Rangers, knowledge Clerics, and Druids (including medium armour casters), who gets hurt by current Medium armour rules?

Druids & Clerics benefit - They are unlikely to hike to Dex over 15 because of an attack stat necessitating Light Armour, therefore you get better armour for free. Anyway, being full casters, you're hanging around out back anyway. This is good stuff and allows you to focus on other stats other than WIS. The alternative is Light Armour and being wedded to huge DEX, or accepting a terrible AC. All options are viable because of medium armour: Scale mail (basically locks minimum AC to 14/15....decent compared to other casters).

Therefore, the only people who lose out are non-traditional melee characters - STR bards and Rangers who want to drop DEX below 14. And I would ask the questions, is this a) a major problem, and b) warrant a rule change. In both cases, I would answer: Probably not.

Unless you plan on taking Dex above 16 as a second stat (to the detriment of other social stats or CON), then having Medium Armour in the majority of cases is better than not having it. Therefore it serves it's purpose for existing - as a gap blocker for certain classes. I can see how, if you are making the choice to pump DEX for combat optimal reasons, it might nark a bit. But if you're only concern is combat optimisation (oh I'm sorry - I meant "Progressing your character normally".......) are you really taking sub-optimal choices such as a melee STR Ranger anyway???

 

[JonnyP71]

A combatant either focuses on Dexterity or Strength.

Hmmm, my own experience doesn't back that up... I've DMed a player who had a Silvan Elf fighter with Str 16, Dex 16, who wore Plate armour.

(we roll stats - he put his best 2 on Strength and Dex - my group are very much not powergamers/minmaxxers)

 

[Hillsy7]

If you still don't like the need for Dex 14, then you could increase all the AC values for medium armor by 1 and cap the Dex mod at +1 instead.

That's a bit of a false argument. You don't need Dex 14 for medium armour to be effective. You only need it to compare to a 18+ Dex Light armour character. As all classes with Medium armour have light armour, if you're Dex is 18+, you can just not wear Medium armour. No damage done. However, medium armour is better if you have Dex 15 or lower, because if you have Dex lower than that, Light armour doesn't magically improve your Dex, you just lose base AC.

Therefore, Medium armour does exactly what it's supposed to do.

 

[Hillsy7]

Light armor is the choice for dex-focused characters, heavy armor is the choice for str-focused characters, medium armor is the choice for strength-focused characters who can/need to afford a +2 modifier Dex (valor bards, strength-based rangers, barbarians...).

Or characters who don't focus on/have either.......I mean the frail wizened Druid, or fat old Knowledge Cleric is unlikely to have more than 12 Dex according to their character.

 

[jaelis]

That's a bit of a false argument. You don't need Dex 14 for medium armour to be effective. You only need it to compare to a 18+ Dex Light armour character. As all classes with Medium armour have light armour, if you're Dex is 18+, you can just not wear Medium armour. No damage done. However, medium armour is better if you have Dex 15 or lower, because if you have Dex lower than that, Light armour doesn't magically improve your Dex, you just lose base AC.

Therefore, Medium armour does exactly what it's supposed to do.

You "need" Dex 14 in order for medium armor to provide the same max benefit as light armor does. Which means the choice between a Dex and Str based character can turn on the Str-based character wanting a decent Dex, while the Dex-based character doesn't particularly want a decent Str.

(Leaving heavy armor out of the equation due to lack of proficiency or other other reasons.)

Do I think it's a big problem? No. But I do think studded leather is a bit too good relative to the medium armors, which detracts from the balance between Str and Dex.

 

[Hillsy7]

You "need" Dex 14 in order for medium armor to provide the same max benefit as light armor does. Which means the choice between a Dex and Str based character can turn on the Str-based character wanting a decent Dex, while the Dex-based character doesn't particularly want a decent Str.

Yes, this is basically the real argument - it's not that Medium armour doesn't do what it should (it does), it's that should you be choosing between a STR or Dex for a Melee character that doesn't have access to Heavy armour, but does have access to Medium armour. Again, looking at the only 3 classes this realistically affects (Ranger, knowledge cleric (sort of), and Valour Bard), is this really an issue?.......I'm tempted to say no. I like options, and I'm not a huge fan of dissuading build choices, but the measures required to find the +1 or 2 to AC to compensate feels a little excessive.

Oh - completely forgot that the main reason Rangers suffer is so they can go 2-weapon fighting. A simpler fix would just be to add the +1 AC to their fighting style for dual-wielding.

The problem with your fix is that you are giving a -1 AC to all Rogues, Warlocks, Light Armour Rangers, Lore Bards, and some low-WIS monks (do they exist?) in order to make these rarer build options viable. And in a game where bounded accuracy is important, that's a pretty big deal.

Now, that's not to say there shouldn't be a rebalancing of STR and DEX, that's a huge argument, often around how good athletics is.....but I, personally, think nerfing studded leather damages too much stuff to be a reasonable solution......

 

[Kobold Stew]

I have no problems with Medium Armor -- most characters I make chose it, even when they have heavy armour proficiency, because a breastplate or chain shirt work so much better in my mind's eye for day-to-day adventuring than a character clumping around in Plate mail all the time.

Wouldn't an even simpler solution be to cap the AC benefit from Dexterity of light armour at +4?

I think that accomplishes your goals.

 

[jaelis]

My initial comments were really directed at the OP, who evidently does feel that the Str/Dex issue is a problem. If you don't think it is, then there's no reason to bother.

That said, my personal feeling is that a light armored character should be a bit worse off than a medium armored one, with all else being optimized. IE, I think that proficient rogue in a breastplate should be at least as well off as a rogue in light armor, and half-plate should be better than that in terms of AC. But comes more from realism and the desire for proficiencies to always be useful, I don't find the Dex/Str issue to be significant in practice because most players don't worry about optimizing.

 

[Horwath]

The only time I've seen people complain about medium armor is in games with point buy. Since my group always rolls or uses an Array, medium armor remains a viable choice.

not much of an argument.

It still requires you to "burn" a 14 in dex. If your character is str based that is 14 that could have gone to con or some other stat.

No matter how you get the scores you still need investment of dex and still have lower AC than heavy armour. Also most of the time the same AC as light armour unless you want to give up stealth.

But having 14 dex, it's a shame to remove stealth from your options.

Maybe if medium armour master gave +1 to dex or give +1AC rather increased max dex for it.