D&D 5E Any One Have Variant Armor Rules?

[Zardnaar]

Look at it this way. Remember the old 3E Paladin that was a bit MAD due to ideally wanting a decent strength, con, cha and wisdom score but the Pathfinder one and 5E ideally can get away with str, cha and con as ideal scores (dex in 5E works as well no multiclassing though).

Barbarians can get away with medium armor (on the front lines) because they are keyed off 3 abilities, fighters, wizards and Rogues are more or less keyed off 2 abilities (primary and con).

Most classes like a 14 con yes? Things like Valor Bard work best with 2 14s and 2 16s preferably higher. A lore bard can get away with high charisma and 14 con/dex. A Valor bard is going to struggle with those scores. And then you realise you may as well play a lore bard stealing eldritch blast/fireball/hex and destructive wave and deal more damage than the valor bard anyway even if that valor bard rolls 4 18's.

We roll 4d6 so medium armor is used a bit more and if my PCs roll an 18 they might do something like play a Mountain Dwarf Wizard in medium are over another race with 19 or 20 intelligence. Often character class is chosen based on those rolls. I got a 16,14,13 Ima fighter, I got 16,17,18 and a 14 I'm a bladelock (or gish).

The gish concpet is mostly a failed concept in 5E due to MAD and the default array-just play a Paladin or Fighter1/Bladelock X and have some fun instead of sucking (Valor Bard, Bladesinger, Bladelock, some clerics).

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

[MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION], I'm just going to respond to your last post with a general statement, rather than go point-by-point through it;

You appear to be stating that "efficient charbuilds" and "optimized" mean aiming for as many things as possible at their maximum possible values. I fundamentally disagree with this, and find that what is efficient and optimal is for a character to be good enough (a thing which is subjective, and is heavily influenced by campaign specifics) at as wide a variety of things as is possible.

Which is why medium armor can be seen as an end goal, not a "transitory state" as you see it.

 

[CapnZapp]

[MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION], I'm just going to respond to your last post with a general statement, rather than go point-by-point through it;

You appear to be stating that "efficient charbuilds" and "optimized" mean aiming for as many things as possible at their maximum possible values. I fundamentally disagree with this, and find that what is efficient and optimal is for a character to be good enough (a thing which is subjective, and is heavily influenced by campaign specifics) at as wide a variety of things as is possible.

Which is why medium armor can be seen as an end goal, not a "transitory state" as you see it.

I can certainly agree that good enough <> minmaxing.

I've already said that "i'm gonna use medium armor" can be a well-functional thing. For style, for coolness, even for "I really don't care as long as my AC is good enough".

But when we (you, me, the OP) talk about "end goals" that refers to something else.

The fact you might not want to have that discussion should not mean you should repurpose the OPs complaint and aims just to be able to say you're right.

You can always say "my end goal is..." and add pretty much anything. That doesn't mean it's relevant to the complaint at hand.

Please don't start a discussion about what "efficient charbuilds" and "optimized" means. Nobody has time for a discussion where "optimized" means "making the most pancakes", Aaron.

Just accept that a minmaxer has much less use for medium armor, and let's move on.

---

We've been on a side track, Aaron, so I haven't had the time to say that I actually don't think the system is broken nearly enough to warrant a fix. Sure medium armor is the red-headed stepchild of armor categories, but since there still exists definitive use cases (both as until something better comes up, and as more long-term equipment) I don't think it's worth the effort just to somewhat increase that usage.

Sure armor usage isn't an ideal 33%, 33%, 33% spread (for some value of "ideal"). But it isn't 50%, 0%, 50% either. Whether it's 50%, 10%, 40% or some other value I really don't care. It's something that sees use.

I'm fine with that. Adding a third maximum would be a rather big change to the core of D&D. I don't think it's worth it - there are bigger fish to fry.