Armor Penalty to Spot or Listen?

[exempt]

I've seen several homebrew sets of rules for diffrent types of helmets. While I'm not too keen on having a seperate AC for the head, I have been thinking of imposing the armor penalty on Listen and Spot.

I know, all the rogues and rangers in the crowd are saying, "Do it! Do it!"

And it would leave the PCs open to more surpise -- simply because the majority of monsters don't wear armor.

Any thoughts?

 

[CRGreathouse]

[sarcasm]

Yes, heavy and medium armor are way too popular. Let's tone them down...

[/sarcasm]

You know, there really aren't rules for helmets in 3E - armors are "packaged" with or without helmets. (3 have helmets, IIRC) Why bother?

 

[Crothian]

Unless you are somehow incourageing people to wear mediium and heavy armor, and allowing some sort of great bonus for wearing a helmet that you need the minus to listen and or spot checks to counter said bonus, I'd strongly urge you not to do this.

However, if your games are pretty much the same as everyone's and no one wears these types of armor except NPCs (cause for some reason NPCs don't realize what medium and heavy armors do to people), then go ahead and use this rule as it doesn't really effect anything, anyway.

 

[hong]

However, if your games are pretty much the same as everyone's and no one wears these types of armor except NPCs (cause for some reason NPCs don't realize what medium and heavy armors do to people), then go ahead and use this rule as it doesn't really effect anything, anyway.

That's interesting. In one campaign I'm in, the party is actively searching for NPC fighters to play the tank role. We all started out as lightly-armoured rogueish types, so we've only got one (maybe two) real frontline fighters in the party.

 

[Crothian]

That's interesting. In one campaign I'm in, the party is actively searching for NPC fighters to play the tank role. We all started out as lightly-armoured rogueish types, so we've only got one (maybe two) real frontline fighters in the party.

It was actually a bit of sarcasm with actually facts from games in it. Few Pcs wear Medium and Heavy armor because they see it as more of a hindrance then a help. However, NPCs seem to wear it as often as anything else. And while they are under the same rules as everyone else, within combat it doesn't seem to hinder as much as many people think. My next character I plan on making a full plate mail using fighter to see how it works. My only characters up to know have been a fighter/rogue and a bard. So armor heavier then light never made any sense.

 

[hong]

It was actually a bit of sarcasm with actually facts from games in it. Few Pcs wear Medium and Heavy armor because they see it as more of a hindrance then a help. However, NPCs seem to wear it as often as anything else. And while they are under the same rules as everyone else, within combat it doesn't seem to hinder as much as many people think. My next character I plan on making a full plate mail using fighter to see how it works. My only characters up to know have been a fighter/rogue and a bard. So armor heavier then light never made any sense.

I don't think there's anything wrong with medium/heavy armour either, so long as you know what you're in for. The downsides are the armour check penalties, and the slow movement rate. The check penalties would be iffy if you kept wanting to hide and do sneaky things, but a straight-up tank wouldn't be doing that much. The movement rate might be a more substantial drawback, but again, tanks don't usually need a lot of mobility (unlike, say, monks or swashbuckling types).

The fighter in our group is beginning to curse his lack of armour, I think. He's a rogue/fighter/master of chains and wears a mithril breastplate, which really ate into his expenses.

 

[Thorvald Kviksverd]

I've posted some rules for helmets that you may, or may not, have seen...

Helmet Rules

Basically, helmets don't add to normal AC; instead, they add to AC when confirming a critical with a threat roll. Penalties apply to various skill and spell-failure (verbal) checks.

 

[exempt]

[sarcasm]

.....


You know, there really aren't rules for helmets in 3E - armors are "packaged" with or without helmets. (3 have helmets, IIRC) Why bother?

Sorry, I thought I was posting on House Rules. [/sarcasm]

I was looking for suggestions, and as I pointed out, doing what I suggested would give persons/creatures with low armor penalties an advantage. Thus, it's unbalancing. Thus, I'm looking for suggestions. In other words, if you were to impose an oh-so "unrealistic" (insert sarcasm tags) armor penalty to Listen and Spot checks to that knight who is wearing a great helm with three pencil holes to look out of, how would you retain game balance?

 

[CRGreathouse]

I was looking for suggestions, and as I pointed out, doing what I suggested would give persons/creatures with low armor penalties an advantage. Thus, it's unbalancing. Thus, I'm looking for suggestions. In other words, if you were to impose an oh-so "unrealistic" (insert sarcasm tags) armor penalty to Listen and Spot checks to that knight who is wearing a great helm with three pencil holes to look out of, how would you retain game balance?

First, to do so you'd need the infrastructure: rules for adding or removing helmets to/from armor. Next, you'd have to increase the power level of the heavier armors, especially medium armors. Finally, you'd need a way to distinguish between various helmets' effect on hearing. An example follows:

Normal head protection comes in three types: metal "caps" like the standard chain shirt's cap, "typical" helmets, and gret helms. For simplicity's sake, these are called light, medium, and heavy helmets.

A light helmet does not typically add to combat ability unless you are attacked from above. It provides a stackable +1 armor bonus (which cannot be enhanced by magic) of +1 vs. missile weapons fired from more than 2 range increments away (ballistic weapons). It also adds this bonus to your AC when you are attacked by an opponent at least one size category larger than yourself when on foot, or larger than your mount when mounted.

Medium helmets are like light helmets, but also add their bonus against critical confirmation checks.

Heavy helmets provide a +2 bonus agaisnt ballistic weapons and larger oppoents, as well as +1 vs. critical confirmation checks.

Light helmets give a -1 penalty to Listen checks; Medium helmets give a -2 penalty on Listen checks and a -1 penalty on Spot checks; Heavy helmets give a -3 penalty to both Spot and Listen checks.

***************************************************************************************

An alternative system follows:

Helmets provide a stackable +1 armor bonus to AC (which cannot be increased by magic). Armors that normally come with a helmet (chain shirt, breastplate, and full plate) give one less point of protection each; their total bonus includes the helmet bonus. Helmets give a -2 penalty to Spot and Listen checks.

Since this weakens havier armors, all heavy and medium armors provide an additional point of protection. Thus, chainmail gives a +6 armor bonus, full plate gives +8 (or +9 with helmet), etc.

***************************************************************************************

A system you design could be more or less complicated than either of these systems. The points I'm trying to make:
* These systems change the balance of a pre-existing system, and should be playtested before being used - chainmail, for example, has the potential to offer a +7 bonus to AC.
* Even the more complex system adds little to the game, and both require effort to implement. If it's worth it to you, though, that's great.

 

[Spyritwind]

Although I don't see anything wrong with adding house rules to helmets I'm not sure what this would accomplish besides realism. Let me explain.

Fighters and paladins being the most likely candidates to wear heavy armor have so few skill points and neither spot or listen is a class skill for them so they are not likely to have much of a spot or listen bonus anyway.

Characters with these skills as class skills are typicaly limited to medium, or light armor anyway and will more likely have skill ranks in one or the other. All this will do I think is make the tank of the party even more deaf and blind. If the party is realying on the rouge or ranger to notice danger these characters will still be able to do that anyway.

I'm not sure if it's official or unofficial, but I think the creators didn't want to make an issue of helmets so as to allow characters the choice of whether or not they wanted to wear one based solely on looks.

Improving defense vs criticals, or other AC bonuses based on certain situations doesn't sound too bad though for the differences in spot and listen.