Awfully Alarmed About Armour

[Votan]

Yes, I suspect it is too much to hope that the final armor rules will be great, but it would be fantastic if shields could become a viable option again.

 

[Stalker0]

Yes, I suspect it is too much to hope that the final armor rules will be great, but it would be fantastic if shields could become a viable option again.

To me 4e made it happen. +2 to ac and dex saves, no magical scaling of the bonus. Thought it worked great

 

[drothgery]

To me 4e made it happen. +2 to ac and dex saves, no magical scaling of the bonus. Thought it worked great

That, and no 2-for-1 power attack and 1.5x strength bonus to make two-handed weapons awesome or extra attacks to make dual-wielding awesome (for the most part; many ranger powers and some others gave extra attacks).

 

[GX.Sigma]

Mike Mearls commented on the armor thing yesterday:

mikemearls comments on AMA: Mike Mearls, head of D&D Research and Design at WotC
mikemearls comments on AMA: Mike Mearls, head of D&D Research and Design at WotC

We're completely re-working armor. We're bulking up heavy armor, giving medium armor a better definition, and slightly pulling back on light armor.
Heavy armor allows no Dex bonus but has a high base value. Heavy armor always gives disad on attempts to be stealthy.
Medium armor has +2 Dex max or no Dex allowed. It sits below heavy armor. Classes like the ranger and barbarian are proficient with it. Some medium armors give disad on checks to hide or move silently. Basically, if you play a ranger or barbarian, you can either junk Dex and take a "heavier" medium armor or take a lighter one that lets you be stealthy.
Light armor allows full Dex and has no stealth drawbacks.

In answer to my question of why not allow heavy armor the Dex bonus:

The key is to strike a balance between low Dex characters and high Dex ones. One of the tricks to class design is to allow players to feel like they can ignore a stat if they want to focus on the class's strengths. It's a little irritating if a fighter needs high Str, Con, and Dex, or if the high Dex light armor guy has a better AC than the fighter.

So basically, a heavily armored fighter will have better AC than a high Dex light armor guy, and medium armors have various combinations of Dex bonus cap and stealth disadvantage.

 

[Derren]

Wait, when it is "irritating" when the high dex guy in light armor has more AC than the heavy armor guy, why are they not allowing Dex in heavy armor so that they at least reduce the divide instead of making it bigger by capping dex in heavy armor?

 

[ArmoredSaint]

Wait, when it is "irritating" when the high dex guy in light armor has more AC than the heavy armor guy...?

Well, for me, it's irritating every time that happens.

 

[Gorgoroth]

thanks!

The key is to strike a balance between low Dex characters and high Dex ones. One of the tricks to class design is to allow players to feel like they can ignore a stat if they want to focus on the class's strengths. It's a little irritating if a fighter needs high Str, Con, and Dex, or if the high Dex light armor guy has a better AC than the fighter.

This is great news. I mean, I like there to be medium armor in the game, because that way your dex bonus, if you're a ranger or a barbarian who would actually *want* to be able to hit something with an arrow sometimes, the chance to benefit from that stat and still have decent AC. I'm fine with grabbing an extra feat to use plate armor when I become the King, and sit on my throne.

The one downside to their solution is that if you happen to have a high dex, and use plate armor, you can't benefit from it at all. Which means the same guy in light armor or plate, while he may have a bit better AC in plate over light armor + his high dex, will not be any better off than some slow fat guy in plate who can't dodge a slow-moving train to save his life.

But that's the price we pay I guess for a compromise. It would be nice to have an "agile plate" enchantment for this case though. No Disadvantage on dex checks, and maybe a max 1 dex bonus to AC added on. That would be pretty sweet while keeping AC inflation down.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

The one downside to their solution is that if you happen to have a high dex, and use plate armor, you can't benefit from it at all. Which means the same guy in light armor or plate, while he may have a bit better AC in plate over light armor + his high dex, will not be any better off than some slow fat guy in plate who can't dodge a slow-moving train to save his life.

I would argue that is a side effect of overmodeling Dex -- these peculiarities are bandaids to keep the problem under control, not the underlying problem.

 

[dammitbiscuit]

It would be nice to have an "agile plate" enchantment for this case though. No Disadvantage on dex checks, and maybe a max 1 dex bonus to AC added on. That would be pretty sweet while keeping AC inflation down.

The problem is that each additional point of AC you add is more powerful than the previous. Therefore, giving people with the best AC possible a way to raise their AC 1 point higher yet means that such characters should do everything in their power to get it.

If an orc hits you on 11-20, 1 point of AC reduces incoming damage by 10%.
If an orc hits you on 17-20, 1 point of AC reduces incoming damage by 25%.

Long story short, with your proposal, ALL heavy armor wearers who know what they're doing will have a 12 dex, no exceptions.

 

[Votan]

The problem is that each additional point of AC you add is more powerful than the previous. Therefore, giving people with the best AC possible a way to raise their AC 1 point higher yet means that such characters should do everything in their power to get it.

If an orc hits you on 11-20, 1 point of AC reduces incoming damage by 10%.
If an orc hits you on 17-20, 1 point of AC reduces incoming damage by 25%.

Long story short, with your proposal, ALL heavy armor wearers who know what they're doing will have a 12 dex, no exceptions.

How is this different than all heavy armor wearers having a 10 dex when you cannot stack dex with armor at all? Or an 8 if penalties are also eliminated?

This is not a big issue if the range of dex bonus is small (like AD&D where god-like dex was six points). But in 3E, it is quite possible to get +10 dexterity armor class increases, which make the light armor fighter often end up with the higher dexterity.

So I guess the real issue will be how the math ends up scaling in the long run, and that we do not have any solid information on yet.