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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1307884" data-attributes="member: 3146">What I don't understand is why "obvious optimal choices" make 3.x armor poorly designed.To some degree, at least, obvious optimal choices reflect reality. In the era of Beowulf and the sagas, the heros tended to wear a mail shirt or byrnie--the best armor available. In the high middle ages and early renaissance, everyone who could afford it wore fullplate because it was the best armor available. In the Norman/Crusades era, chain mail was the best armor available and that's what everyone wore--except those who started experiementing with adding plates to it (which I would classify as Splint Mail). Later, when gunpowder weapons began to become effective, fullplate became too heavy to be effective and so the most expendable parts were jetissoned resulting in halfplate (the only real gripe I have with the armor table is half-plate which probably should have a +1 or +2 max dex bonus and no more armor check penalty than fullplate). In ancient Greece, the heavy infantrymen all wore bronze breastplates and greaves. In Japan, the samurai class generally all wore the same kind of armor too.In nearly every historical period, the choice of armor has been identical among those who can afford it based upon the availability and effectiveness of the armor. Why anyone would want a world in which leather armor was as good as a chain shirt and scale mail as effective as a breastplate is beyond me.If you want a different flavor than the rules currently offer, that can easily be achieved by altering the availability of armor (for instance, a crusades era setting might have chain mail, splint mail, leather, padded, hide, brigandine (Arms and Equipment guide or just use Scale Mail stats), and studded leather armors. (The chain shirt is left out because the high max dex and good AC would make it optimal in an era where it was historically obsolete). A slightly more advanced society might have developed the breastplate. And PCs travelling to the strange island across the sea might run into warriors wearing banded mail. The someone invents fullplate and everyone wants to get a suit but only a few armorers can make it.If you don't want to bother with altering availability, you could just eat the one or two points of AC that taking the flavor you want will cost. At worst, a rogue loses one point of AC by wearing studded leather over a chain shirt and a fighter two points of AC by wearing banded instead of fullplate.The world where there is no difference between scale mail and a breastplate seems far less desirable to me than the one where there is actually a reason why people might choose one over the other.</blockquote>

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