Masterwork from Adventurer's Vault: Help Me Grock It

It occurred to me that the levels 3, 6, 11, 16, 21, and 26 might not be the best levels to hand out the next level of magic armor. So, I compared Leather Armor (+4 starting Dex) with Chainmail, both AC 16 at level one.



I was hoping that there would be some levels in which to hand out Light Armor earlier before handing out Heavy Armor to even out the small skew, but it doesn't work that way due to the fact that MW bumps the armors up by 2 or 3 depending.

So, the best I could come up with were levels 3, 7, 11, 17, 21, and 25. This worked out to be the same optimal levels for both Light and Heavy armor.

The average same level opponent to hit on Leather Armor here was 8.87 and the average on Chain Mail was 9.1, a difference of 0.23. Effectively, the heavy armor is +1 better on 7 levels out of 30 (compared to the core rules where light armor is +2 better on 2 levels, +1 better on 11 levels, and heavy armor is +1 better on 2 levels for an average of 8.87 vs. 8.43 or a difference of 0.44 in favor of light armor).

Throwing Armor Specialization into the mix at level 11 yielded:



The average same level opponent to hit on Leather Armor here was 9.5 and the average on Chain Mail was 9.73.


My conclusion is that the DM should hand out the next best magic armor near the end of levels 2, 6, 10, 16, 20, and 24 for use on the following level if he wants a curve that is as smooth as it can get with the revised rules.

Felon said:

OK, I'm going to state the following, and you guys can show me where our disconnect is:

Without MW armor, there's an eventual and gradual increase in AC for light armor wearers that gets severe in the epic levels.

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Correct. There's also a gradual decrease in player AC vs. monster hit rate.

With PHB MW armor, there's an eventual and abrupt and severe increase in AC for everyone that more-or-less keeps everyone on a level playing field.

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Specifically, the abrupt increases get the Heavy Armor wearers back to being comparable to the correct Light Armor + Stat configuration, and bring player AC scaling in line with monster hit rate scaling.

With stealth-errata MW armor, there's a gradual increase in AC for heavy armor wearers that starts at mid-heroic and doesn't smooth out until mid-paragon, where it's more of a slight bias to the heavy armor wearers.

Does that all seem to be the gist of the matter?

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The AV armors do a few things. First, they offer smaller bonuses earlier to Heavy Armor wearers, keeping them comparable to Light Armor wearers throughout instead of having them fall behind, abruptly jump even, fall behind, and abruptly jump even again, as KarinsDad's charts have been demonstrating.

Second, they offer benefits to some non-AC defenses (or in the case of Plate, minor damage reduction), in most cases at the cost of a point of AC, but in some cases for free. The "for free" armors are the only strict increase in power the AV masterwork armors create, and I'm honestly not sure why this was added. However, I think the benefit is minor enough and flavorful enough that I'm not overly concerned about it.

So, masterwork armor in general exists for two reasons: it compensates for the disparate scaling of AC for Heavy Armor vs. Light Armor, and it compensates for the disparate scaling of player AC vs. monster hit rates. The options presented in the AV generally either fill holes in the scaling fixes or present alternate options at the cost of a bit of AC.

t~

KarinsDad said:

It occurred to me that the levels 3, 6, 11, 16, 21, and 26 might not be the best levels to hand out the next level of magic armor. So, I compared Leather Armor (+4 starting Dex) with Chainmail, both AC 16 at level one.

I was hoping that there would be some levels in which to hand out Light Armor earlier before handing out Heavy Armor to even out the small skew, but it doesn't work that way due to the fact that MW bumps the armors up by 2 or 3 depending.

So, the best I could come up with were levels 3, 7, 11, 17, 21, and 25. This worked out to be the same optimal levels for both Light and Heavy armor.

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I think what you're getting at is that the goal of having player AC scale smoothly over time conflicts with the goal of having Light Armor and Heavy Armor users have their AC go up at essentially the same rate (using PH-II MW armor).

In particular, if the GM hands out better plus magic armor at the start of levels ending in 3 or 8, this leads to almost full equality between light and heavy armor PCs. Light armor is ahead by 1 at levels 21/22, Heavy Armor is ahead by 1 at level 13. The trouble here is that PCs have their ACs far quite far behind monster to-hit at certain levels if you do it like this.

Giving out magic armor at the start of levels ending in 2 or 7 has Heavy Armor ahead of Light Armor at levels 7,12,13, and 27, behind Light Armor at level 21, and prevents player AC from falling quite so far behind monster to-hit. Of course, GMs aren't going to hand out all better plus magic armor at once instance in any case, but you could see this as what the GM should be roughly shooting for.

Elric said:

The trouble here is that PCs have their ACs far quite far behind monster to-hit at certain levels if you do it like this.

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Precisely.

This works out to:



The problem here is that the curve is less smooth. It takes a nosedive to level 27 and does not self correct until level 28.

I think the better solution is to combine our two ideas to get levels: 3, 8, 13, 17, 21, and 25. The idea is to never get above 10 or below 8 for the same level monster to hits.



This results in the heavy armor have a +1 edge for 4 levels: 13, 25, 26, and 27. At that point, it's more or less white noise compared to the core rules.

And, handing out armor of these bonuses at the start of these levels is well within the DMG treasure parcel guidelines.

Personnally, in my home game, I got rid of the MW armor. I just sneaked them into the level progression. Along with the actual magical bonus, for that matter.

So, for example, if someone is wearing any quality suit of Scale armor, here is AC according to level:

1 : 18
2 : 19
3 : 20
4 : 21
5 : 22
6 : 23
7 : 23
8 : 24
9 : 25
10 : 26
11 : 27
12 : 28
13 : 29
14 : 30
15 : 30
16 : 31
17 : 32
18 : 33
19 : 34
20 : 35
21 : 36
22 : 37
23 : 37
24 : 38
25 : 39
26 : 40
27 : 41
28 : 42
29 : 43
30 : 44

And that's that. Level 18 with scale armor and a heavy shield = AC 35. If the suit of armor is actually an enchanted item, then you get the other benefits associated to it (Daily power, resistance, property, etc.). Saves me from drowmesh, godplates and other awful, awful names.

KarinsDad said:

I think the better solution is to combine our two ideas to get levels: 3, 8, 13, 17, 21, and 25. The idea is to never get above 10 or below 8 for the same level monster to hits.

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Of course, you start giving out better armors every 4 levels rather than every 5 at higher levels, because otherwise in early-mid epic levels AC is actually quite far behind monster to-hit, since Masterwork/ability score bonuses occur relatively late in a PC's career. This is one of the reasons why I suggested modifying AC a little bit in the "fix 4e's math" thread. The GM shouldn't have to change the rate he gives out armor relative to other magic items to keep the game "on target."

Edit: of course, both the magnitude of the problem if the GM doesn't change how he gives out armor, the difficulty of changing how to give out armor, and the size of my "fix" are quite small compared to the issues involved in to-hit/FRW defenses. So 4th edition using AV/PH-II MW armors does a pretty good job on its own here.

And, handing out armor of these bonuses at the start of these levels is well within the DMG treasure parcel guidelines.

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It's well within the DMG treasure parcel guidelines if PCs want basic magic armor, or something like Dwarven or Veteran's Armor at 1 one level above that. If a PC wants a higher level heavy armor (base level 4/5), and doesn't get special priority on higher level magic items as a result, he's giving up a lot of AC for it.

This is another thing I dislike about masterwork heavy armors: it tends to be best to have a vanilla set of armor to get the bonus on the armor's material sooner, rather than taking an armor with other properties. For example, Agile Armor, from AV, is often considered strong, but it's in general worse than vanilla armor 1 level higher until you hit level 30 (and there's no +7 vanilla armor to take), which means that you should typically just wait a level and get the vanilla armor instead.