Armor Check Penalties-How do they affect your game?

[Tinker Gnome]

Do PCs that wear heavier armor in your game shy away from skills like Balance, Climb, Jump and Swim even if they are class skills because they know they will be wearing Heavy Armor which will give them an Armor Check Penalty. Or do they just sink tons of ranks into the skill so they can be effective with it?

 

[Thanee]

Yes, mostly characters with heavy armor will not learn many skills with an ACP. In some cases, they will raise the skills high enough and maybe even get magical bonuses to still have them at a useful level.

The only characters from the core rules, which regularily wear heavy armor are clerics, fighters and paladins and all of them have almost no skillpoints, anyways. so it's rarely a problem.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Goolpsy]

we never have any problem with it... our players normally put ranks in thier class skills.. even when wearing armor... if you are gonna swim.. take of the suit.. and if you cant.. well at least u have a chance now...

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

I find that characters that don't have a lot of excess skill points to spend don't bother trying to counterbalance armour check penalties. They just concede that if they're required to make a Balance/Jump/Swim/whatever check, they're screwed. It's come up a couple times where the terrain has wrecked havoc with the party for this very reason (it's amazing how effective a 1-foot-wide bridge can be ).