D&D 5E Armor in D&DNext

[Libramarian]

I think plate armor should be removed from the game actually.

Real adventurers would never wear it, but for reasons that are probably impossible to capture in the D&D system. Plate dents and rusts; chainmail would be very attractive because it's virtually indestructible: as you walk around the chains slide over each other, polishing itself. Full plate doesn't restrict your agility much in short bursts of movement, but if you can't walk around for long distances with it on, because it's very fatiguing to have metal all the way down your limbs. Think wrist and ankle weights.

I think pre-UA AD&D had it right. Heaviest armor should be platemail.

 

[Drowbane]

Shields get short shrift in D&D, always have. For my games (5e or not) I am considering dropping their tiny AC bonus and instead giving them a percentile chance to simply block an attack. It works for Blur and Displacement.

Alternately, I am considering boosting Shield AC up higher than it has been traditionally.

 

[Libramarian]

Actually, it is most emphatically not an awesome possibility. I'm still very firmly of the opinion that Fighters should have the highest AC (as the developers' articles and columns have stated), and that that high AC should be achieved primarily through wearing heavy armour.

Yeah, but if AC parity is the price to pay for flatter system math and the lack of contrived "taunt" rules for the Fighter (to convince enemies to attack the untouchable guy with a super high AC), then I am willing to pay it.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Because knights in shining armour are not the only archetype for a fighter?

Put another way, why doesn't Conan wear full plate?

Because it's very expensive, a bitch to keep clean and rust free, heavy for long marches, and requires a pretty high level of technological development to get good plate armour.

And Conan actually does wear plate when he gets a chance and knows he's going into battle.

"Best" is not a synonym for "heaviest".

No. But that doesn't mean heavier doesn't help. Battlefied plate (as opposed to jousting plate) was incredibly good protection and not all that heavy while being incredibly well distributed. You can do forward rolls, backward rolls, judo rolls, and cartwheels in plate armour - I've seen it done.

As for the endurance factor, plate armour was about as heavy as a campaign infantryman's pack*. And if you were rich enough to afford plate then you were probably rich enough to afford retainers or pack mules.

* In both cases the weight was chosen with stamina in mind. And in both cases there tended to be weight-creep in peacetime.

 

[ArmoredSaint]

I think plate armor should be removed from the game actually.

Absolutely not! The "Knight in Shining Armour" is my very favorite fantasy archetype!

Full plate doesn't restrict your agility much in short bursts of movement, but if you can't walk around for long distances with it on, because it's very fatiguing to have metal all the way down your limbs. Think wrist and ankle weights.

The weight distribution of a well-tailored plate harness is better than that of "chainmail," which mostly hangs from your shoulders. Plate is well-distributed and self-supporting to a greater degree. It is much more fatiguing to wear mail for long periods than plate.

I feel that I speak with some authority on this issue: I own and participate in medieval combat re-enactment while wearing a set of plate that weighs twenty pounds more than D&D's typical set of fifty-pound plate. I also own a great deal of mail of varying qualities. I would much rather wear the plate all day unless it's terribly hot out.

 

[Gargoyle]

Just like there should be reasons for a fighter to want to use different weapons, there should be reasons for them to want to use different types of armor. I want to see fighters wearing plate, scale, leather, and even no armor.

The problem is that basing their decision of what armor to wear solely on one stat, AC, eliminates the decision making on the part of the player. They will always choose whatever gives them the highest AC, so there really isn't a choice, except when generating ability scores.

Damage disadvantage to those hitting heavy armor seems like a good solution at first, but you always have to consider what happens when the bad guys wear it. It seems like giving such an ability to heavily armored foes would be logical, but it also makes many monsters more complex, and having it on both sides of a battle could slow things down.

DR has the same implications as damage disadvantage. Dragons, iron golems, and other heavily armored foes should have DR if the guy in plate gets it, but the solution for monsters is, and should be, a slightly higher AC and more hit points. It's simpler and faster, with the same end effect.

Allowing a full Dexterity bonus for all armor types seems like a bad idea, giving no incentive for wearing a lighter type of armor for fighters or clerics, as well as making Dexterity even more of a "god stat".

So my thinking is to simply give whoever wears heavy armor a slightly higher AC than medium armor, no bonus to AC for Dexterity, and a bonus to maximum hit points, say +3 to +5. Feats could improve this bonus. Taking off the armor reduces your maximum hit points, and wouldn't kill you if you only had a couple of hit points left.

I chose not to call this "temporary hit points" because I don't really care for maximum hit points going up and down during an adventure. It's additional bookkeeping, but with armor modifying maximum hit points, there really isn't much bookkeeping. Armor tends to stay on most of the time.

With heavy armor giving a bonus to maximum hit points, fighters have more choices. Even if they have a decent Dexterity, they might want those extra hit points and go for heavy armor. But if they have a good Dexterity, they may choose to be more of a swashbuckler and go for leather and a buckler, or even no armor at all in certain campaigns without feeling like they are completely ignoring a class ability. It's a small perk, not a must have. Even low Dexterity fighters might want to stick with medium armor because of the speed penalty of heavy armor, and situations like pits full of water. (welcome back to old school dungeons!)

I'm sure they'll figure out something cool to do with heavy armor, but I'm hoping it will be something simple that encourages players making choices, as these type of strategic choices are what makes fighters fun for me.

 

[Rogue Agent]

Also, Studded Leather is strictly superior to Ringmail, in every possible way.

Not entirely accurate. If your Dex modifier is -1, then studded leather gives you AC 12 and ringmail gives you AC 13.

But, yes, for any neutral or positive Dex modifier studded leather is superior.

This appears to be the general point: The higher your Dex modifier, the more you'll benefit from lighter armor. The lower you Dex modifier, the heavier the armor you'll want to wear.

My read of the rules is that the goal is for most PCs to have an AC of 16 to 19, with magic pushing it up from there.

With that being said, the speed penalty to heavy armor makes it look like a really bad deal. If the idea is to essentially achieve armor parity, then they should drop the speed penalty for heavy armors. (It's not particularly realistic in any case.)

The problem is that basing their decision of what armor to wear solely on one stat, AC, eliminates the decision making on the part of the player. They will always choose whatever gives them the highest AC, so there really isn't a choice, except when generating ability scores.

Yup. It gets into that choice vs. calculation thing. If all you're doing is trying to maximize your success along one axis, there is no real choice: There's only the calculation of how you can best achieve that success.

The armor system we're seeing here seems to be primarily about making it so that different characters will have different calculations for the best armor (so that we see variation across multiple characters), but for any given character it boils down to pretty much pure calculation.

The solution would be to force an actual choice. Speed might be one way of doing that: Granting a +2 bonus to the heavy armor ACs but leaving the -5 penalty to speed intact makes the choice for heavy armor meaningful.

The question then becomes how you distinguish between light and medium armor. My gut says that medium armor should be the default and light armor should provide an incentive of some kind.

Of course, this still leaves a calculation "problem" between the different armors within light/medium/heavy. But that's always been a problem in D&D: Theoretically the price differences are supposed to be significant, but they really aren't once you get past character creation.

 

[variant]

The primary penalty heavy armor should incur if they are encumbered from not having high enough Strength to carry that weight. Other specific penalties for certain armors like the inability to swim or a minus to Stealth while wearing full plate could exist too. All armor should give full benefit from Dexterity to AC and none should give a movement speed penalty.

The balance between heavy and light just shouldn't exist. Someone in heavy should simply have higher defense than someone in light. There's already a balancing factor in that you need to be proficient in heavy armor.

If you want to keep AC closer together between light and heavy, add damage reduction and give heavy more DR than light armor.

 

[mach1.9pants]

If realism and balance were the goal giving the heavy armours a real high ac but then including all the real drawbacks would work. You cannot swim in plate & heavier armours, I would imagine climbing would be hard, no sleeping in it and long term endurance ( heat effects, jogging etc) would suffer.
However having the game run smoothly is an important point too! At the moment I think they have not got the balance right. I personally would like to see heavy armours the best at stopping you getting damaged. I also don't want to see 4e everyone has pretty much the same ac no matter what armour cos we will fudge the class features. But I also don't want to see older editions total squishy light armoured pcs.
I'd like a happy medium but I have no idea how to achieve it, hopefully the game designers will!

 

[Derren]

If realism and balance were the goal giving the heavy armours a real high ac but then including all the real drawbacks would work. You cannot swim in plate & heavier armours, I would imagine climbing would be hard, no sleeping in it and long term endurance ( heat effects, jogging etc) would suffer.

Here you are balancing combat benefits with out of combat drawbacks. That only works when the out of combat part of the game is equally important than the combat part.
We will see if this is the case in 5E or if combat is overrepresented or even the only thing that matters for the system.

Speaking of realism, the "problem" (not a problem for me, but many people here would disagree) is that if you go for realism there would be very few drawbacks for wearing heavy armor as those were well made and did not restrict movement by much. Going into combat without armor would be suicide though. That means everyone would use the best (heaviest) armor he can afford.

Just in case:
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqC_squo6X4&feature=related[/ame]