D&D General The diminishing effectiveness of armour across the editions

[auburn2]

Thanks to mass production its not more expensive than any other props. Or do you think on TV they are wearing real armor?

Are you talking full plate or plate mail here? Actual full plate armor can't be mass produced, it needs to be custom made for the individual, making it far, far more expensive than other comparable props.

 

[auburn2]

Dex is way too powerful in 5E, there really isn't a good reason to wear heavy armor. With rapiers there's not even much of a reason to play a strength based character, even though I still do.

A lot of this is solved by rolling abilities, especially if you don't let people move scores around.

In most of my campaigns we use a custom ability rolling method based on 1E Unearthed Arcana where you have a pool of dice to use. You can assign a certain number of dice to each stat but once you roll them that stat is fixed and you only can take the highest three dice for the score. That increases the possibility of a high roll in that stat, but also means bad luck equals a low number in that stat and you can't just move that number to a dump stat. This leads to a lot of variability in a lot of different areas.

I don't like heavy armor on my characters, but that is mostly because of its affect on stealth. We have a PC Cleric with a 6 dexterity in a game I am currently playing though and yes she has heavy armor (chainmail and shield). Beign able to get heavy armor and not having to take a -2 to AC is a boon. She is totally servicible as a Cleric too.

 

[Oofta]

A lot of this is solved by rolling abilities, especially if you don't let people move scores around.

In most of my campaigns we use a custom ability rolling method based on 1E Unearthed Arcana where you have a pool of dice to use. You can assign a certain number of dice to each stat but once you roll them that stat is fixed and you only can take the highest three dice for the score. That increases the possibility of a high roll in that stat, but also means bad luck equals a low number in that stat and you can't just move that number to a dump stat. This leads to a lot of variability in a lot of different areas.

I don't like heavy armor on my characters, but that is mostly because of its affect on stealth. We have a PC Cleric with a 6 dexterity in a game I am currently playing though and yes she has heavy armor (chainmail and shield). Beign able to get heavy armor and not having to take a -2 to AC is a boon. She is totally servicible as a Cleric too.

Meh. I loathe rolling for abilities the end result is that some PCs are far more effective numbers-wise than others.

 

[Micah Sweet]

My issue with plate armor specifically is the cost. 1500 gp is not a small amount of bling for a low level character, and the result is an AC equal to the high Dex guy, with the added joy of disadvantage on stealth checks.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Are you talking full plate or plate mail here? Actual full plate armor can't be mass produced, it needs to be custom made for the individual, making it far, far more expensive than other comparable props.

Plate armour is basically specially curved sheet steel and although it needs to be reasonably well fitting it doesn't need to be form-fitting. You can have basic size categories and then you make the rondels (disks to cover the armpits), and the shoulder, elbow, and knee armour all overlap with the armour pieces either side so if the wearer is compact there will be a large overlap, and lanky a small one.

Actual historical full plate armour was frequently mass produced in batches of a thousand or more back in the mid 1400s. And now as then the hard thing to actually mass produce is chain because those links need to be manually closed (and riveted if you're doing the job properly).

The problem comes because even the best funded historical props department doesn't want to keep a thousand suits of plate armour around and most productions don't have the spare money or vision to retool an entire factory to produce nothing but almost identical plate armour for their actors. For a short run where we don't want to take over an entire factory a chain hauberk can be made by basically unskilled labour using drawn wire (cheap) in their bedroom (as many reenactors have done) and Hollywood can get away with butting rather than riveting the links, which makes it take about a third of the time.

Plate armour can be and actually historically was mass produced. It's just not economical to do so because outside Hollywood (and a few other productions like Game of Thrones) there's almost no demand, and Hollywood generally wants clothing to be expressive and thus seldom identical. And these days they'd probably just CGI on plate armour anyway.

 

[Horwath]

IMO

Going from being hit on a 19-20 to being hit on a 20 is nearly meaningless. Yea, you are a lot tougher but when your not going to die from attacks in either case it doesn’t really matter.

it’s much more important to go from being hit on 2-20 to being hit on 3-20. Why? Because It’s actually can extend your in combat life in real terms. The high Ac guy in either case doesn’t have to worry.

What?

going from 19 to 20 on d20 roll increases your effective HP by 100%. disregarding any crit mechanics

going from 2 to 3 on d20 roll increases your effective HP by 6%

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

What?

going from 19 to 20 on d20 roll increases your effective HP by 100%. disregarding any crit mechanics

going from 2 to 3 on d20 roll increases your effective HP by 6%

I think that the point they're making is that anyone who is only hit on a 19 or 20 isn't generally at risk to hit point loss through conventional attacks.
Outside of huge mob battles, most of the damage they take will be through non-AC mechanics like spells with saves.

 

[FrogReaver]

What?

going from 19 to 20 on d20 roll increases your effective HP by 100%. disregarding any crit mechanics

going from 2 to 3 on d20 roll increases your effective HP by 6%

I agree with those numbers. Now respond to my reasoning. Being hit on a 19 and being hit on a 20, in both instances you are not going to die from attacks pretty much ever. Thus that increase is never going to matter.

 

[Horwath]

I think that the point they're making is that anyone who is only hit on a 19 or 20 isn't generally at risk to hit point loss through conventional attacks.
Outside of huge mob battles, most of the damage they take will be through non-AC mechanics like spells with saves.

that is true, but in any way more armor you have more valuable is the next +1 to AC.

and that does not mean only mass battles. if you are frontliner and you have 5-10 battles per day, and you charge in 1st to soak any trigger happy campers in hiding, at the end of the day you WILL notice that +1 AC in amount of potions used or healer spell slots spent, or your own HDs for healing.

 

[FrogReaver]

that is true, but in any way more armor you have more valuable is the next +1 to AC.

and that does not mean only mass battles. if you are frontliner and you have 5-10 battles per day, and you charge in 1st to soak any trigger happy campers in hiding, at the end of the day you WILL notice that +1 AC in amount of potions used or healer spell slots spent, or your own HDs for healing.

At 19 to be hit you will be hit 6 times out of 60 attacks. At 20 you will be 3 times out of 60 attacks.

you might need 1-2 more low level healing spells and 1-2 more hit dice expensed. All such small resource expenditures that it really doesn’t matter. And that’s assuming you take the absurd amount of 60 attacks a day. Lower that to something more reasonable and the difference did negligible. When you take a really small number of hits then halving that number doesn’t do much.