D&D 5E Armor in D&DNext

[Arytiss]

I'm wondering if, perhaps, there may be armour abilities, such as some form of damage reduction involved with regards to the Heavy armours. We don't actually have any information on the armours, other than what we can derive from the names, and Adamantine has traditionally been a source of DR.

Just something to think about.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I wonder if they just cut n pasted the 3.5 armor table and did a very basic pass on it just to be able to include something in the rules for the DMs (for buying/selling and whatnot)... but which they haven't even attempted to get them up to speed yet?

As has been said... they've been working more on getting the base mechanics right, which is why the monsters are wonky, and the armor/weapon/equipment charts don't make a whole lot of sense (both in numbers and in pricing).

That's going to be the big headache of this whole process... them sending out bits and bobs of rules info they haven't done passes on yet (but which DMs need to run their games), and the DMs then turning around and sending most of their survey points about those bits and bobs.

You almost wonder if they end up HAVING to send out the character creation rules sooner rather than later, since so many players are already trying to reverse engineer the stats and pointing out things which are "errors" based on what we were given (even though there might be hidden rules we haven't been given yet that make the pregen character numbers correct.) They'll get sick of all the "corrections" the players keep sending them, since we don't have all the information necessarily.

 

[jasin]

Upping armors by +1 would keep them in-line with a light armored/high dex character to a point, but eventually dex bonus will outpace armor.

You're assuming Dex bonus increases, and that doesn't appear to be the case.

 

[trancejeremy]

This might sound crazy, but perhaps, it's not meant to be "balanced"?

Believe it or not, not all armor is created equal. Maybe they are trying to make armor act like it does in the real world, not arbitrary game mechanics?

 

[mlund]

Well barring the exotic armors it seems like Light, Medium, and Heavy armors are designed around AC parity for High, Medium, and Low Dex characters.

Someone with an 18 Dex can get to 18 with mundane light armor
Someone with a 14 Dex can get to 16 with mundane medium armor
Someone with 10 Dex can get to 17 with mundane heavy armor, but suffers speed penalties.

So the High Dex character sticks to Light Armor because he doesn't get better with Medium Armor.
The Medium Dex character uses Medium Armor with a 1AC sacrifice if he doesn't want the movement penalty (or can't use Heavy Armor proficiently).
The Low Dex character uses the Heaviest Armor he or she is proficient with.

Light Armor, High Dex, Heavy Shield looks a little silly, but I don't think many dex-based classes are going to be trained in using shields.

Other than Dragonscale everything looks to be OK in terms of scaling AC.

It seems like heavier armor and shields ought to give you Disadvantage for things like sneaking, swimming, or climbing.

- Marty Lund

 

[edhel]

This might sound crazy, but perhaps, it's not meant to be "balanced"?

Believe it or not, not all armor is created equal. Maybe they are trying to make armor act like it does in the real world, not arbitrary game mechanics?

Exactly! Armor also shouldn't be a class feature. Knights rode horses and wore armor because it was efficient, not because they are knights. D&D thus shouldn't have class features that limit certain armor to only knight-types and give them abilities to summon horses.

I agree that ringmail is stupid and the armor chart needs some tuning but pricing can be as wonky as it was IRL unless there's a fantasy reason why this isn't so.

 

[Evenglare]

The armor table doesn't make sense at all. My solution? I think it might be good to add some sort of damage reduction to heavy armors. Thoughts?

 

[Neonchameleon]

This might sound crazy, but perhaps, it's not meant to be "balanced"?

Believe it or not, not all armor is created equal. Maybe they are trying to make armor act like it does in the real world, not arbitrary game mechanics?

If they were trying to do that then they did a really bad job. Heavy armour was simply better - people only didn't wear plate on the battlefield because they couldn't afford it. And it's incredibly well distributed so the idea you simply lose your dex bonus to the point that someone in a chain shirt can be harder to score an effective blow on is silly.

 

[Savage Wombat]

I think they quick-and-dirty ported the armor from 3E. Make sure to mention it in your playtest responses. Heavy armor proficiency should not be a net drawback.

 

[Sunseeker]

I agree that the heavy armors should all go up by one point to make up for getting no dex mod. Likewise, prices need to come down, low-level players aren't going to be able to afford to gear up, I mean...unless the game just says "you get this stuff for free when making a character."

I do like adding the base 10 that everyone normally got into the armor though. I think that makes more sense and makes armor more valuable, but also makes your choice in armor more personal.