Are there any good medium armors?

[kyloss]

Are there any good medium armors, And I mean good armors before you take special materials into account like a mitheral breastplate. I just cant justify the catagory as it stands for a maximum +1 to armour you cut your speed, and get a sizable penalty increase.
So in any of the published books, do the get any better or are they just a stepping stone on the way to heavy armours, or better light armours with exotic materials?

 

[Crothian]

just looking at the numbers there is no way to make them better without steppiung on the toes of heavy armor

 

[JoeGKushner]

Breast plate has always been the way to go in the games I've played in if you didn't want to go heavy armor.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Breast plate has always been the way to go in the games I've played in if you didn't want to go heavy armor.

I've seen some Breastplate lovers too, but it looks like he's asking why someone would choose the +1 AC (or sometimes +0) of Breastplate after penalties are considered. The answer is probably that someone is a dwarf

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

I've seen some Breastplate lovers too, but it looks like he's asking why someone would choose the +1 AC (or sometimes +0) of Breastplate after penalties are considered.

Well sometimes that +1 to AC will keep you alive but I’ve not really done a whole lot of medium armor loving in my time. (Just medium armor that is now light armor. )

 

[kyloss]

I was mostly asking for other armor types not listed in the phb that are medium, or maybe with a bigger than +5 bonus, maybe just a +6 something other than +1 better than a chain shirt for the fairly substatial drawbacks(except as Rystil mentioned for dwarfs)

 

[Sejs]

Medium armors are just dandy, particularly if you don't know how to use heavier armor, such as the case of a barbarian, or if you want to strike a mid-point between the awesome protective power of a silk nightie (light armor) and the sessile invulnerability of sitting inside an overturned dumpster (heavy armor).

It's also amusing to note that many people who wear light armor for the speed benefit, would end up being slowed down anyway by means of encumberance. Chain shirt, light wooden shield, longsword, dagger, shortbow, quiver of 20 arrows, and a backpack of generic adventuring essentials such as a blanket and some silk rope, and chances are you're starting to push toward that medium category rather quickly, depending on your strength. Just an observation.

 

[genshou]

Medium armors are just dandy, particularly if you don't know how to use heavier armor, such as the case of a barbarian, or if you want to strike a mid-point between the awesome protective power of a silk nightie (light armor) and the sessile invulnerability of sitting inside an overturned dumpster (heavy armor).

It's also amusing to note that many people who wear light armor for the speed benefit, would end up being slowed down anyway by means of encumberance. Chain shirt, light wooden shield, longsword, dagger, shortbow, quiver of 20 arrows, and a backpack of generic adventuring essentials such as a blanket and some silk rope, and chances are you're starting to push toward that medium category rather quickly, depending on your strength. Just an observation.

The problem with this is that such characters, if they should use this excuse and wear medium armor, might put themselves into the Heavy Load encumbrance category.

And then they try to justify wearing heavy armor, and the weight just makes them fall over. I've also seen this happen with Strength drain on a lot of rogues.

 

[tetsujin28]

The only medium armour worth anything is breastplate. Scale you buy because you can't afford anything better. Hide only exists to get a druid one more point of AC, or for a barbarian to buy Rhino Hide. If you don't use spells, don't have a DEX of over 14, and don't mind trading an additional armour check penalty for saving 50 mighty GP, then chain's your armour. Otherwise, it's junk.

 

[tetsujin28]

I was mostly asking for other armor types not listed in the phb that are medium, or maybe with a bigger than +5 bonus, maybe just a +6 something other than +1 better than a chain shirt for the fairly substatial drawbacks(except as Rystil mentioned for dwarfs)

You're not going to end up with anything over +5 made out of a standard material and still have it considered medium armour.

The various medium armours are based (somewhat) around a reasonable reality of supply. If you're outfitting 1,000 cataphractoi in suits of scale mail instead of chain shirt, that 50 gp you're saving per man (each of whom probably almost assuredly won't have an 18 DEX) can end up making a substantial difference (50,000 gp, to be exact). Elite palace guards? Do they really need full plate for 1500 gp per guard, or can they settle with half-plate at 600, or even banded or splint for 250/200? For 20 men, that can make a difference of 28,000 gp!

PCs are a completely different story. They're going to buy the absolute best protection that they can afford. A single high-level fighter can conceivably own a suit of armour that's worth more than an entire army of 1,000 men. PCs don't have to think about bulk purchases of armour. Unless you're running a really low cash game, all those suits of scale are going to be ditched the first time the fighters get themselves some cash. Maybe they'll buy a suit of chainmail, if money's a bit tight. If not, they'll get a masterwork breastplate, decide they'd like MW light armour instead, or make the graduation to heavy armour (splint costs the same as chainmail, and if you don't have a DEX bonus it's the better value).

So it's really that PCs don't operate on the same system of economics as the rest of the world.