Armour Dilemma: Am I Wrong Here?

[D'karr]

''BULLET TIME''? Q'est-ce que c'est ''BULLET TIME''?


Wait wait wait -- izzat s'posed to be a Matrix ref? Izzit actually part of the 3e rules? Still .


[Edit: Oh. I think that I get it. Jesus, my head hurts; need sleep. Need sleep bad.]

Well I guess that I don't have to explain it then... LOL

Get some rest.

 

[Caliban]

Of course with your restricted move, youre taking more attacks. And are almost forced into a stand-and-deliver strategy because youre not fast enough to run away.

I play a dwarf. He already has a restricted move, the minor slow down from the armor is a non-issue.

As for mithril, its in the game as being commonly available. Even if you play it isnt, a simple chain shirt gives half your armor value for none of the cost.

Yes, and a 4 point difference in AC can be huge. I can attest to this from personal experience.

For a 10-14 DEX character youre still better off going with lite armor and gettting DEX bonus items. Especially at the high end of that category where even Mithril Full Plate will lose you up to two points of AC from DEX bonus.

The Dex bonus items are far more expensive than magical full plate, and can only give you a +3 to your AC over your normal Dex.

18 Dex
Dex +6 item = 36,000 gp.
Mithril Breastplate = 4,000 gp +
---------------------------------------
Just over 40,000 gp for a +12 AC bonus.


12 Dex
Full Plate +5 = 26,650 gp
--------------------------------------
26,650 gp for a +14 AC bonus.


The low dex character has a higher AC, at about half the cost.

And if he's using a point based character creation (as my PC did), then he's got points to spend on other stats besides Dex.

And even if you assume Mithril Full Plate (and a 14 Dex), then you get a +15 bonus for 35,000 gp. Still less than the other guy, who hasn't even spent extra money on armor enhancements yet.

The Light Armor Dex Monkey pulls ahead at the higher levels when you have a LOT of money, so that he can have his +5 Mithril Breastplate and +6 Dex item, and a +5 Mithril Buckler or whatever.

But even then, the Heavy Armor guy has spent less money on his AC, giving him more to spend on other items, like his weapons, or rings of Protection, or Cloaks of Resistance.

An effective Heavy armor character is built much differently than an effective Light Armor character, but can be just as effective.

In system where you have limited funds and limited stat points, it gives you more options, especially at the low to mid levels where your resources are most limited.

Heavy Armor does have it's drawbacks, but it doesn't uniformly suck. If you build a character who can handle the drawbacks, it's the most cost effective way of raising your AC against normal physical attacks.

You misunderstand, I wasn't accusing you of being verbally abusive. I was commenting on you accusing me of supporting verbal abuse.

You are right, I did misunderstand. But you do seem to be taking the side of the player who was verbally abusive, and complaining about NPC's who use effective tactics. (Vampires who stage night attacks when it's harder on the players? OMFG!!!)

 

[Henry]

(MODERATORLY VOICE)

One thing I have noticed over the past couple of pages is the fact that some responses are getting MUCH hotter towards one another. Let' please go back to a more civil tone - this is about fusangite's request for opinions on this session of his campaign, not about skill at insults.

Thanks.

(/MODERATORLY VOICE)

 

[Elvinis75]

I think that you ask what we would have done with the situation.
After a while into the battle you could have had the duke haste a couple of fighters to run back and help the PCs into their armor and better yet he is evil right? He could tell them that he needs them now because their friends are dying on the field of battle. The second might get them into battle with the armor disadvantage. At the mininum the first gets them involved and having fun. Or better yet have the duke open a portal that sucks them all out of the room and have the situation forced on them.
Note: If you use this tactic you as the DM will get what you wanted but will have to live with the fact that the PCs might –ssed off that their characters lost/died/lost levels …etc.

 

[fusangite]

Well, Scarbonac, please try to take it down a notch.

Uh-huh. So, someone can just fly down out of the sky, in the middle of the night, walk into an unlocked, unguarded ducal palace completely unchallanged, get to the Duke's bedroom, rouse him from his rest and immediately get him to zip off into the late-night sky so that Super-Duke can save the day?

Well, I've repeatedly stated (a) the palace is guarded; (b) the guards had standing orders to allow the characters to see the duke.

In addition, (a) the duke was not in his bedroom; (b) the duke was not resting; (c) the guards were not ready to let the sorceror in but his statements in the 12 seconds after his arrival (including his intimidate and diplomacy rolls with a +4 charisma bonus) were sufficient to cause them to follow him into the chamber where the duke was meeting with another person rather than engaging him in combat, in case he was telling the truth.

And how do you know so much about Mugabe?

I accidentally walked up to his house when I was wandering through the streets of a residential neighbourhood in Harare in 1992 and inadvertently walked up to his house; I was subsequently stopped by men with machine guns.

Okalie-Dokalie, then, I'll need a complete break-down of all actions taken, transcripts of the discussions with times taken down for each, several scale maps of the area (showing where the vampires' tower is in relation to the PCs' house and the ducal palace, and indicating heights of buildings, particularly those between flying characters and their destinations, conditions of streets and lighting for same), a complete list of all spells cast and level(s) of caster(s), magic items used, modes of movement and exact rates of speed for each mode and character.

So, in other words, you don't actually know that what I've stated is impossible under the rules. You have decided that I must be breaking the rules because I'm doing things differently than you would. As you know I'm not going to do anything of the kind; however, you cannot argue that it is clear I'm violating the rules at the same time as you argue that you lack sufficient information to determine which rules I'm violating.

You misunderstand (not that I'm surprised at that); what exploded? What purpose did it serve other than to alert the characters that something was going down? From your descriptions, there were no spells cast that would make a ''horrible explosion''. Wall spells and enchantments don't go ''ka-boom''. So what went ''ka-boom''? Had one of the guards eaten a bad triple-bean chili burrito for lunch and then got too close to one of the walls of fire?

BTW, fire-wielding vampires seems just plain wrong to me (like a Tenctonese using water-balloons filled with seawater).

Actually, Lightning Bolts make exploding noises and I'll note, vampires do not have a special vulnerability to electricity. Sorry to disappoint.

So, did this come up at the big meeting? Super-Duke was down with this plan of using the clerics of the NE Gawd of Undead? Or did he even know about it? How smart was he, anyway,a nd how did he manage to get to be the Duke? Did he deserve to be Duke, or would the average 6-year-old be a decent replacement?

In case you haven't picked this up from my synopsis of episodes 19-21, the duke is, himself, evil and, in fact, a patron of the darkness god. In fact, his brother is the god's high priest; however, unbeknownst to the duke, his brother has allied with the vampires in the hopes of succeeding him to the ducal throne. Thus, while the duke thought he was placing the only mainstream clerics friendly to his interests in charge of the defenses, he ended up placing people even more hostile to his power in that position than if he'd let the sky god clerics who volunteered do the job.

One of the major themes in my campaign is the internal squabbling between different evil factions. The previous season was a race between two different evil factions (1 led by the duke, the other by foreign invaders) to control the opening of a planar gate beneath the city. To give you a better sense of the duke's nature, his family name is Vichy.

The guy who yelled at you was being a jerk (and now I begin to wonder just how big an explosion that actually was), but it starts to sound like the rest of them are on the low side of Epsilon Semi-Moron. I think that I'd dump them all at this point and take up writing bad poetry and masochistically-posting it at Portal Of Evil as a hobby instead.

I have to ask, what is it that I've said to cause you to take such an increasingly hostile tone about me and everyone I associate with. People miss the obvious all the time -- especially when they're overwhelmed with details and new developments coming at them from all quarters.

Haste helps with the speed of fly spells? Where does it say that? Is it in the errata and I just missed it?

Haste can be used to increase a character's speed by providing him with an extra partial action per round. Perhaps, after asserting your intellectual superiority over me and my friends, you might want to consider how such a piece of information escaped your notice.

In response to Numion's

I'm even a little confused that fusangite was content that a large part of his gaming group missed an encounter he'd prepared so meticulously and with time.

Where did you get the sense I was unconcerned? Such a thing has never before happened in my campaign; surely my resort to this forum in the first place is indicative of my concern.

 

[Caliban]

The thing is, the PC's were never forced to sit out the fight. At any time they could have stopped putting on the heavy armor and joined their comrades.

3E has always been about choices, and the consequences thereof.

I really don't see why the DM should alter things so that the characters don't have to deal with the outcome of their decision.

It isn't just about the PC's. It's also about the DM's storyline and game world. The PC's are supposed to be major players, but if they choose to take themselves out of the action, that's their choice.

 

[Elvinis75]

Caliban,
Forced to sit out of the fight is all realitive.
If a PC has a belief that he can't win or that he will lose so much in the battle that it isn't worth fighting in he changes the situation. They were forced to sit out of a session for a long period of time because they made a choice that matched their characters.

These three needed to get into combat to destroy the vampires and thus getting hit is the issue and the lesser AC was almost guarenteed to be a killer.

Should the DM alter game mechanics? No. Should he get the players involved yes. There were plenty of actions that the DM or other could have taken to get them involved that didn't break the rules. (See my last post)

It is always about the PCs over the time/plot line when it comes to active play or not. Making or it this case allowing characters to sit around for the entire session because they are making a valid decision isn't right. Making a bunch of PCs sit around is not in the spirit of the game. Enforce the rules and let the PCs play.

 

[Zub]

I think the problem here is your timeline was way too tight. 40 rounds is only 3 minutes! You hear an explosion, half the party decides to investigate and return with the news of what happened while the other half dons their armor. 3 minutes is not an unreasonable amount of time for this to take place. Think about what the second group of players had to do. They had to run outside to the middle of town, take stock of the situation, then run back to give the first group, the low down. Is it unreasonable to think that process could have taken about 3 minutes?
I feel that you should *not* have started ticking off the rounds until the party was back together or until they got involved in the fighting.

The guy who verbally abused you was out of line though.

Zub

 

[Caliban]

Caliban,
Forced to sit out of the fight is all realitive.
If a PC has a belief that he can't win or that he will lose so much in the battle that it isn't worth fighting in he changes the situation. They were forced to sit out of a session for a long period of time because they made a choice that matched their characters.

They were NOT FORCED. They CHOSE to sit out. You can't say they were forced if it was their choice. It's one or the other.

These three needed to get into combat to destroy the vampires and thus getting hit is the issue and the lesser AC was almost guarenteed to be a killer.

Then they should have prepared for a night attack. They knew they were dealing with vampires.

Should the DM alter game mechanics? No. Should he get the players involved yes. There were plenty of actions that the DM or other could have taken to get them involved that didn't break the rules. (See my last post)

Why is it the DM's responsibility? The PC's were perfectly capable of getting to the fight whenever they wanted to.

They failed to plan appropriately, they failed to take precautions, and they failed to act like heroes.

Thus, they got to sit out the fight.

It is always about the PCs over the time/plot line when it comes to active play or not. Making or it this case allowing characters to sit around for the entire session because they are making a valid decision isn't right. Making a bunch of PCs sit around is not in the spirit of the game. Enforce the rules and let the PCs play.

They made the valid decision to sit out the fight.

It is apparently what they preferred, or they would have chosen otherwise. Either that, or looked for a better solution.

 

[Darth Shoju]

yes!

I wholeheartedly agree with Caliban. The players took themselves out of the fight. They had lighter armour they could have put on. They had Negative Energy Protection, Restoration, Searing Light and turning ability. They wouldn't have had to fight all of the vampires at once, and they knew this through the meta-gaming the DM was allowing them. They made their decision and they have to live with the consequences (which weren't even that bad; they missed one combat-of their own choice-and still got XP!)