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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mneme" data-source="post: 5682172" data-attributes="member: 59248">Indeed--the two big unmentioned feat tax/oops classes are the Swarm Druid and the con Shaman.   The shaman has basically two choices: Cowardice (try to stay out of combat, lout of LoS of enemies, etc) or heavy armor proficiency.The swarm druid has no options at mid levels that preserve her full class features/mode of operating, but one can build a viable swarm druid.  Unfortunately, the way you do it is to give her a decent but not great con (probably balanced con/dex out the gate) and then always bump your AC stat, not con.  Lame, but lets you have a reasonable AC and some useful resistance and riders.  I suppose another reasonable (ish) build is to paragon hybrid druid and warden, taking swarm druid and warden's armored might for your hybrid talent feats, and letting you use con for both AC and resistance.  But this just gives you MAD for your attacks.Regardless, though, if you look at the actual classes in the game, it's clear that most of them are roughly balanced against the rest, without regard to implement vs weapon (that gulf has closed, if not entirely, pretty close to same) and heavy armor vs light (fighters and paladins actually have worse AC than optimized wardens, swordmages and barbs, but they arguably have more broken class features and options--although a Paladin of Corellion can have a completely ludicrous AC).   As such, it's not arguable by any -sane- poster that stripping heavy armor wielders of their armor doesn't hurt them badly -- in almost the same way that stripping weapon users of their weapons hurts them much more than stripping implement users of their implements; and in a way that is dispurportional to any perceived difference between the classes.  You can't do anything to a wizard out of the box that's equivalent to knocking 15+ points of AC off an epic paladin, or making a barbarian go from using a gouge with an accompanyting feat chain to hitting things with a chair (or worse putting him in a situation where he can't find a two handed weapon.On the other hand, having the occasional undergeared fight/adventure is a lot of fun in concept -- and if you can make it fair, execution.  So what's to be done?  After all, the problem isn't really that you can make a level-3 or worse fight a challenge for some classes by denying them gear in the storyline -- it's that you -can't- do the same for other classes, and that the classes that are hit are hit so hard.  So..Hitting them less hard:  Summoned armor (as backup armor), of course.  In a game where players know that this is an issue, the players should spend some attention making sure they have summoned armor for "sleep wear" that's converted from their old armor, or that's comissioned at -1 to -2 (or so) below their normal armor's bonus.  The nice thing about summoned armor (or better, Imposter's Armor, which is both better and heavy only) is that it's always at the minimum cost for that level of enchantment, so it's pretty cheap, and while it's "uncommon", you should really treat it as if it's common or make it findable if the players are going to need sleepwear in the campaign.  For weapons, the best approach is an open hand to improvised cover, weapons, and actions to let players cover somewhat for being out of their element.Hitting the light armor wearers where it hurts: if the campaign frequently (or infrequently, but frequently enough to be an issue) forces the heavy armor wearers out of their comfort zone and/or forces the weapon users to make do, it's only fair to also provide situations that disadvantage light armor wearers.  Introduce terrain that is free to walk on if you're wearing heavy armor, but that requires a skill roll if you're wearing less protective garb to not get hurt (acids, hot rock, that kind of thing).  Re-introduce limited anti-magic (a little goes a long way) -- zones of antimagic will make all implement users except monks and assassins have to scramble to find a way to be relevant, just like the fighter does in the sleepwear or kidnap scenario.  Monks and assassins are an issue (assassins less so, as a lot of what they do is magic), but then, neither class is over the top.</blockquote>

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