Armor and Equipment in RPGs

[Derren]

Some threads in the D&D and Pathfinder forum I recently read showed how different the expectations of the workings armor and also general equipment progression is. Out of interest I want to hear from you what you prefer and if there is a broad consensus about it or if the opinions are mixed.

Armor

One complain from the latest D&D playtest is that light armor users can get a better protection than someone with heavy armor and shield while also having less disadvantages. But even when this is fixed, in recent D&D editions light armor users were always able to be nearly as hard to hit/damage than heavy armor users. The protection newly generated characters had were most of the time equal as long as the armor was matched to the dexterity score of the user.
Personally I think such systems are a result of the popularity of swashbuckler characters like Jack Sparrow or even Indiana Jones. Such archetypes are very easy to emulate when you can keep up with the protection of frontline fighters while wearing no armor or just very little at all.

On the other hand there are the heavily armored knights. People in plate armor, sometimes also with a shield, who are immune to many forms of attacks. At least that is the expectation of many players. And it is also not all that unfounded in history either as unless you had specially designed weapons, getting through plate armor in combat was quite tricky. In most RPGs there is also a downside to wear heavy armor. They often tend to be slower, have troubles doing some actions because the armor hinders them, the armor itself is expensive and not socially appropriate in many situations. And because of all those limitations, some born out of the urban myth that plate armor did turn knights into lumbering hulks hardly able to stand or walk, people expect characters wearing heavy armor to be much better protected than people without.

What is your opinion on this divide? Should light armor protect as good, or nearly as good, as heavy armor or should heavy armor offer much more protection than light armor no matter the situation?

Equipment progression

This ties a bit into the armor debate but can be expanded to include all equipment or rather the statistics of characters. Again in the playtest package there were different tiers of armor for people to progress through. You had regular leather, dragon leather, etc. so basically the same system as in 4E where you kept your armor type but made it stronger by trading it for one with more prefixes.
Some people were not too happy with that money is used for progress and rather wanted only a skill progression for characters, meaning that the armor or general equipment do not change over time but that the character gets better with inherent bonuses.
If you answered that heavy armor should always be better than light armor above, then there is a third type of progression. Like the first type presented here it is a money progression, but instead of buying the next prefix you buy the next heavier type. Your leather armor turns into chain, your chain into plate, etc.

Again I ask on your take on this. How much should money be used for progression and how much skill? And how should equipment get better, if at all, by getting better versions of the equipment you have or by getting better types of equipment?

 

[Janx]

ah, ye olde fast and light vs. slow and heavy armor debate...

I agree with your observation that most fiction portrays the heroes with normal clothes being hard to hit and kill, and seldom taking serious injuries. That sets the bar pretty high for unarmored heroes compared to commoner NPCs at least.

There's also the myth of the slow heavy plated knight who can't get on his horse by himself. That's been lately disabused by the modern jousting league when the ex-football players took over. Put big strong athletic guys in heavy armor and they can wear it with little difficulty.

So I'm OK from a balance standpoint, that errol Flynn may be able to stand toe to toe with Sir Lancelot. Their ACs and BABs are sort of equal, if you will.

The main problem with that is, Sir Lancelot paid a crapton of gold for his plate armor, and Flynn just wore his PJs. There's an imbalance of "earning" the high AC that both get.

So I can see sliding the advantage scale back to heavy armor guy, just because he spent earned resources (nobody starts D&D at level 1 with plate armor for a reason).

This would also support the logic that the heavy armor doesn't make him a schmuck

 

[pming]

Hiya.

What worked fine in older editions doesn't work in the newer ones primarily due to the numbers inflation. Back in 1e, a +3 to hit was HUGE...now in the PF/3e/+ edition, a +3 is pretty common.

So, what I would suggest is some sort of "armor save" thingie. Maybe something like how leather armor worked in 1st edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay; when hit, you roll a 1d6; on a 1 or 2, you get your 1 point of armor (re: subtract 1 point of damage). That's how I remember it anyway. Maybe have some sort of "damage threshold" for heavy armors. So if you took less than X damage, you could make a check to see if the armor absorbed it; so, you might have "Banded Armor (DT: 5)". If you took 5 or less damage, you roll 1d6, and on a 1 or 2, you take no damage at all.

Something along that line. That way the system still used the AC as intended, but it gives a little bonus to the heavier armors in that there's a chance of taking no damage from 'wimpy' attacks (re: a knight in full plate v. shovel and pitch fork wielding peasants).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[sheadunne]

They serve different purposes but in D&D it's the same stat: AC.

Light and Mobile equals hard to hit
Heavy and Plated equals hard to damage

There's no difference in D&D, although some have argued for one raising AC and the other giving DR. Other than UA it hasn't seem to gather much traction.

 

[Salamandyr]

I've got a lot to say on this subject but no time to say it in right now. I hope to come back to it. For now, I actually like classic D&D's Leather, Chain, Plate levels (before they got muddied up) as common representations of

Light armor--basically protects chest, head, and gloves or guantlets.

Medium armor--covers three quarters of the body. Hauberk to the knee, helmet and gauntlets, possibly vambraces.

Heavy-- cap-a-pied, you're pretty much protected from head to toe.

Rather than give each type and material of armor a rating, I prefer to classify it by the amount it covers. This also allows for quick and dirty translation to other cultures and time periods...as well as avoids various kinds of fanboy wee-a-boo ism that trying to classify the relative protective value of full plate and, say, o-yori leads to.

I really hate 5e's "dragon leather" and such on the standard equipment chart.

And I want the "Knight in shining armor" to be the most protected, whether by being hard to hit (AC) or through Damage resistance

 

[Andor]

Like Sheadunne said D&D conflated two different concepts.

There are basically two different ways to mitigate damage in the real world and three in fantasy games:

1st is to avoid it completely by dodgeing, parrying or misdirecting your foe. In D&D this is a passive system like your dex bonus to ac and possibly wisdom as well if you have monk or swordsage levels, it can be boosted by actions like All-Out defense. If Hero it's also a passive system modified by your actions called DCV. In Gurps it's your active defenses like dodging or parrying.

2nd is the ability to mitigate the damage taken. In the real world armour does this by blocking the edge or point from making contact and dissipating the energy of the blow over a large enough are that it doesn't do any real damage (hopefully.) In D&D this is ignored for mundane armour or rather folded into the option 1 defense. It does show up as DR for Adamantine armour or the UA option. In Hero this is your PD and ED which can represent anything from natural toughness to a magic forcefield. In GURPS it's your armour's DR.

3rd (not real world) option is overcoming the damage by healing faster than they can kill you. In D&D this is Regen/Fast healing/Cure spells. Most RPGs offer similar options, although not all.

The fact that D&D conflates options 1 and 2 as been argued amoung gamers for about 40 years now. Welcome to the debate.

In the real world the argument againt heavy armour has never been the superiority of dodging. Armour is expensive, heavy, requires maintainence and is hot. That last bit is a huge factor that most games ignore completely. But in reality you don't have the option to ignore it and it does you no good to be arrow-proof if you die of heat stroke. Full plate is expensive to creat and hugely maintainence intensive, also something most games ignore, but was one of the real reason Knights had Squires. Simply keeping up all the gear was more than one man could do in the field. The heat and the expense was why the Romans and Conquistadors stuck to a heavy breastplate and helmet to protect the vitals and learned to admire scars on the arms and legs. Chain mail was also historically popular becuase it's much easier to field repair and can be cleaned by rolling it around in a barrel half-full of sand, labor intensive as hell to create however.

 

[Quartz]

A mechanic often forgotten is that different armours take different times to don. Watch The Two Towers and note how quickly Aragorn kits himself in chain versus how long it takes Gamling to dress the king in plate.

In 3E DnD, a big problem is the Bracers of Armour. They give all the benefits of armour without any of the drawbacks.

 

[billd91]

In 3E DnD, a big problem is the Bracers of Armour. They give all the benefits of armour without any of the drawbacks.

Well, they are a lot more expensive for largely the same benefit. That's 3e's solution to them being a bit better than the equivalent suit of armor. 1e's and 2e's solution was to make them pretty rare on the treasure tables compared to magical armors.

 

[Celebrim]

In general, heavy armor wearers should be able to get much higher protection than light armor wearers. If they cannot there is exactly zero reason to wear heavy armor.

Even when I implement systems where this is true, in general most of my adventurer type characters rarely wear heavy armor. The risks of heat exhaustion, drowning, fatigue, loss of speed, loss of footing when in rough terrain, and loss of mobility are just too great to accept if you are going in to the wild places of the world.

Then again, I have seen people maintain multiple sets of armor, one for daily use, and the other donned in war, in a dungeon with reliable footing, in tournaments, when mounted, etc.

In general, most equipment is found after adversity or taken from the bodies of your defeated foes. The idea that most of what you own is purchased is something I don't favor, so in a sense, money doesn't play a part in this transaction. There are some exceptions - a stout dragon hide might be made into a variety of useful armors but an NPC would likely need to be paid for the labor unless the character had expert craft skills. In practice whether you go up from leather -> mithril mail or scale -> dragon scale or leather -> leather +3 is to me pretty meaningless. People make trade offs in protection and mobility, generally trying to improve one or both depending on what is available. Plate isn't inherently better than padded, it depends on what you want and what skills your character has. Full plate +5 versus galvorn cloth padded +3 versus red dragon scale +2 might depend on the character and the particular preferences of player.

Frankly, my current party is 5th to 6th level, and are really darn happy to have things like scale +1 or masterwork mail. If the seem to be losing capability versus the threats that they face, I'll look into ways to provide them with more powerful options.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I'm OK with them ultimately being close, from an AC = Dex + Armor perspective. By close I don't mean the same -- Light armor's peak should be slightly below Medium which should be slightly below Heavy, and it should be harder for Light armor users to reach that peak than Heavy users (e.g you can buy a set of maxxed heavy armor for less than the special light armor that gives max AC). In return, Light armor users get different utility -- whether better stealth, faster movement, or the ability to cast in armor.

Shields have to be taken into account, too. Though there will be some Light armor users with shields, I suspect far more of them go without, and a higher percentage of Heavy armor users will opt for a shield which will increase the protection separation.

I do wonder if it would muck things up too much to give Medium armors DR 1 and Heavy armors DR 3, though.