Armor Problems

[Votan]

In D&D 3.x there appear to be only two types of armor:

Chain Shirt (+4 AC, +4 Dex, move 30, small armor check penalty)
Full Plate Amror (+8 AC, +1 Dex, Move 20, large armor check penalty)

Everything else seems wildly suboptimal. For example, a Breatplate gives +1 AC for a reduction in speed of 10 over the Chain shirt. All other medium armors give worse bonuses.

Is this ideal?

Should armor be reworked to actually have trade-offs and variety?

 

[ValhallaGH]

It all depends upon what style you want.

Do you want all players to favor either light shirts of chain mail or heavy suit of full-coverage steel plates? If so then stick with the existing rules.
Do you want all armors to be equal, with an equal chance of consideration given the drawbacks and benefits of each suit? If so then you'll need to do some reworking.

The designers wanted everyone to be in full plate or light armor; as a result, these armors are mechanically superior, much like the longsword and greatsword. Heck, full plate is the only heavy armor that's worthwhile; the only other heavy armor that sees real use is banded mail at the levels when plate is unaffordable. Breastplates, easily the best medium armor, are only worthwhile when built with special materials that make them light armors.

If you want a different style then you will need different mechanics. Armor check penalties, maximum dexterity limits, speed reductions and arcane failure chances can all be tweaked to make various armors more or less appealing than they currently are. You can even introduce new mechanics, such as initiative penalties or reflex penalties, to supplement various design choices; you could remove the maximum dexterity limit from all armors but impose a penalty to initiative or reflex saves equal to (for example) the base AC bonus of the armor.


In the end, whether or not a change should be made is dependent upon what your goal is. For certain goals, changes are necessary while other goals require no alteration at all.

 

[Darklone]

In an old campaign, I gave medium armors DR 2/- and heavy armors DR 3/-.

Didn't really help to make people wear medium armors.

Edit:
What I would like to see: Three different kind of armours (light, medium, heavy). Light armor for skirmishers, medium armor for non-combatants (clerics and stuff), heavy armor for real fighters.

I want to see rules that make these groups wear their armors with flavor.

 

[Stalker0]

There is a couple of exceptions:

1) At low levels you can't afford those armors (especially first). I often wear a cheap medium armor at that point.

2) Npcs might not always wear the good armors.

But in general pcs are going to wear the good stuff, and there's 2 two armors that are good in core (and the mithral breastplate of course)

 

[Votan]

In an old campaign, I gave medium armors DR 2/- and heavy armors DR 3/-.

Didn't really help to make people wear medium armors.

Edit:
What I would like to see: Three different kind of armours (light, medium, heavy). Light armor for skirmishers, medium armor for non-combatants (clerics and stuff), heavy armor for real fighters.

I want to see rules that make these groups wear their armors with flavor.

I wonder if it wqould make more sense to jsut make the description of the armor "Flavor"? Medium armor is a Breastplate or Mail or Hide or . . .

Otherwise, you need to introduce mechanical differences (other than armor XYZ sucks) to make picking anything else worthwhile after about level 3.

Medium Armor needs to have something inherent to it that is better than Heavy Armor. A graded speed penalty might work (and simulate a Knight on a Horse rather well -- they need to be moutned becuase otherwise they aren't moving). But it might not be brutally realistic.

 

[Darklone]

Well, there is the running difference for heavy armors. But running doesn't come up often enough to be important (considering the usual flying).

My first change would have been: Fighter and Paladin as the "knight" classes heavy armors, all others maximum medium armors.

And yes, I would love to see proposals for mechanical things making these three classes of armors distinction worthwhile.

 

[Darklone]

Soo. This is more than just an armor change, it's something I always wanted to do. Give me fire about balance problems please.

Hitdice changes:
- for the classes:
Spellcasters (wizards, sorcerers, clerics, druids): d6 / level.
Roguish types (ranger, bard, rogue, monk): d8 / level.
Fightertypes (barbarian, fighter, paladin): d10 / level.
Barbarians get DR 1/- at level 1 already but I might also keep the d12... nice against spells.
- Con mod to hitpoints is halved (added up, then rounded down, e.g. Con 16 means 3 extra hitpoints for two levels.)

Armor changes:
There are three types of armors: light, medium, heavy.
- Light armors: no movement penalty, no arcane spell failure, hardly any skillcheck penalty, highest possible dex bonuses to AC.
Classes proficient: All except wizards, sorcerers and monks.
- Medium armors: no movement penalty, ASF, some skillcheck penalties, pretty low Dex bonuses to AC.
Classes proficient: Barbarians, Bards, Clerics, Fighters and Paladins.
- Heavy armors: movement penalty, high ASF, high skillcheck penalties.
Classes proficient: Only fighters and paladins.

I think about making the AC bonuses of medium and heavy armors similar, but grant different heavy armors some DR X/bludgeoning (platemails) or /slashing (chainmails)...

 

[Phlebas]

Re; Darklone - Restrict Heavy Armour proficiency to Fighter & Knight (& Paladin if you really want them in your campaign)

Everyone else can buy it as a feat (if they want it) - means medium armour is back in fashion for a lot of non-combat specialists (eg clerics) and that'll help add flavour

another way is to get very tight on encumbrance - even magical armour has a weight and doesn't fit conveniently into Hewards Handy Haversack..

or you could roleplay - make the heavy armours restricted to certain factions (eg Knights of the realm, imperial nobility etc) and make wearing plate in public a pain in the backside - it also makes being knighted for services to the king a lot more valuable when it gives you the right to wear plate....

 

[Darklone]

Hehe. See above. Glad that evil minds think alike again.

I simply removed the movement penalty of the medium armors and changed a little bit who wears which armors. Just like you said: Turtles get heavy armor prof, the others not.

Oops, one thing I should add. Dex cap.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Lighten up the Dex Cap and armor penalties for most armor and generally just make sure they vary a bit more than they currently do. I think It's already been mentioned but drop the movement restriction on medium armor.