Bringing Back the Medium Armors

iwatt

First Post
Nobody uses medium armors. Medium armors get almost the same penalties that heavy armor, and no tradeoff. Every character I have made looks at 3 possibilities:

- Teapot (full plate and +1 dex, low mobility)
- Mithril Chainshirt ( good armor, high mobility, high dex)
- No armor (High dex, maybe padded)

In order to make medium armors an attractive posibility, i suggest the following house rules:

Light Armor:
In combat: Speed 30', run at 4x.
Outside of Combat: Speed 30'

Medium Armor:
In combat: Speed 30', can only run at 3x.
Outside of Combat: Speed 20'

Heavy Armor:
In combat: Speed 20', can only run at 3x.
Outside of Combat: Speed 20'

Has anybody used something similar? How has it worked out for you? Any obvious balance problems?

Basically, I want to return to Barbarian Hide armors and Dwarven Banded Mail from 2e. And chainmail. The Chainshirt never existed before 3e.
 

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looks good to me, but why have "outside combat" speed for Med. armor be 20 ft.? If I had a character in that system, I'd declare him in a state of permanent combat to get the 30 ft. move.

It wouldn't matter if you changed it to 30 ft, there's still the higher check penalty to make them less attractive. And the weight issue, and max dex bonus.
 

LazerPointer said:
looks good to me, but why have "outside combat" speed for Med. armor be 20 ft.? If I had a character in that system, I'd declare him in a state of permanent combat to get the 30 ft. move.

Any *sensible* DM would just laugh at you for such a statement, though. :)

Hmm. I don't know if this is enough to make medium armors viable. Frankly, except for the rare low-dex character (usually a dwarf), I don't see much of anyone using any armor in 3.5. And, as you said, they will max it out with plate armor if they do.

Perhaps if you just give the flat 30 ft. movement rate for medium armor it might be more attractive. Maybe. I'm betting none of my players would take it, though.
 

LazerPointer said:
looks good to me, but why have "outside combat" speed for Med. armor be 20 ft.? If I had a character in that system, I'd declare him in a state of permanent combat to get the 30 ft. move.

I agree. An outside of combat move penalty sounds too argument prone to me. Plus it won't have much affect outside of the per day travel rate and only if there are not other, slower, characters in the party.

Another thing. Since being Medium encumbered reduced your move to 20 ft. anyway, giving Medium armor a 30 move might not have that much of an effect since its weight alone could push weaker characters into Med Encumbrance. For example, a character with just a breatplate, heavy shield and sword would be Med encumbered if his strength were 12 or less. Strength 10 normals would be med encumbered with any medium armor. So, the result of changing the speed for medium armor would really only act as a benefit to high strength character. That could be a good or bad thing depending on your point of view.


Aaron
 

Aaron2 said:
Another thing. Since being Medium encumbered reduced your move to 20 ft. anyway, giving Medium armor a 30 move might not have that much of an effect since its weight alone could push weaker characters into Med Encumbrance. For example, a character with just a breatplate, heavy shield and sword would be Med encumbered if his strength were 12 or less. Strength 10 normals would be med encumbered with any medium armor. So, the result of changing the speed for medium armor would really only act as a benefit to high strength character. That could be a good or bad thing depending on your point of view.

It's been a while since I looked at the rules, but don't they have it so that *only* the encumberance level of the armor affects your movement rate? No matter how strong you are, plate armor has you heavily encumbered. No matter how weak you are, a chain shirt only gives you light encumberance.

I could be wrong on that, but it seems like I remember the designers describing it that way when 3e first came out...
 

L: Speed 30', run 4x.
M: Speed 30', run 3x.
H: Speed 20', run 3x.

All this presuposes enough strength to avoid encumbrance for medium or heavy loads.

I'd thought different combat and non-combat speeds in order to avoid fast long distance move. Haven't figured out if this is unbalancing. I think the above makes medium armors attraactive again.


So this is the finakl draft for my Newest House rule. Any other relevant issues?
 

Cyberzombie said:
It's been a while since I looked at the rules, but don't they have it so that *only* the encumberance level of the armor affects your movement rate? No matter how strong you are, plate armor has you heavily encumbered. No matter how weak you are, a chain shirt only gives you light encumberance.

There are two rules regarding armor and encumberance ...

"A medium or heavy load counts as medium or heavy armor for the purpose of abilities or skills that are restricted by armor. Carrying a light load does not encumber a character."

and

"If your character is wearing armor, use the worse figure (from armor or from load) for each category. Do not stack the penalties."

So being medium encumbered counts as medium armor for things like a Rangers virtual feats or a monk's abilities. The reverse, however, isn't true. A strength 18 character can be wearing full plate and still be only lightly encumbered. It makes no difference, however, since his move, max dex and check penalty are the same for being heavy encumbered anyway due to the armor. From looking at the table, the only time this matters is if you are wearing Hide armor. It has a max dex of +4 instead of the Medium Encumbrance's +3. In every other case, the armors penalties are as bad or worse than those for just being normally encumbered.


Aaron
 


never got to use it yet, but my idea (garnered from other enworlders) was to upgrade the medium and heavy armors ...

medium: +2 to AC, +50 gp

Heavy: +2 to AC, +250 gp, DR1 (not a whole lot, but great if you're a low level rich person).

split full plate into Field plate (DR1) and Full Plate (up to DR2 and another +250gp) ...

had a neat table (at home) that made it look fairly cool.
 

jstater said:
I was under the impression that characters couldn't run in heavy armor, only light or medium.

Their speed is reduced to x3 instead of x4, when running.
 
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