Chain Shirt - too good?

[Balthasar]

Ironwood fullplate ?????

I think the class you were looking for was Fighter...it's in the PHB under 'F'.....

lol

 

[Endur]

chain shirts are pretty common

Chain shirts are pretty common in my campaign. But part of that may be because there are a lot of people who multi-class for at least one level of Ranger.

Personally, I wear full plate and I have no regrets whatsoever. Especially every time I see one of the chain shirt people knocked unconscious.

Tom

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

As I see it, the chain shirt is good armor if you're sneaky and have a 16-18 dex. Once your dex goes past 20, you're generally better off with leather armor.

A Mithril chain shirt is good armor (better than leather all around)until your dex hits 26 and then it starts to lose some of its luster. A mithril breastplate is better than mithril chain mail until your dex hits 22.

If you don't have much of a dex bonus (dex 13 or lower), IMO you're better off buying fullplate and finding some other way to increase your movement. (Mounts are good for when you're not in a dungeon crawl situation). Adamantine fullplate is advantageous for loading up on special armor abilities and still having a +3 enhancement bonus to armor or if you end up in an antimagic zone. Mithril fullplate is good if you're thinking of boosting your dex to 16 or so.

So that really leaves several types of worthwhile armor:

For Dex monkeys: Mithril breastplate (assuming the character has medium armor proficiency), Mithril chain shirt or bracers of armor depending upon dex. If mithril isn't available, choose between leather (dex 22+), breastplate (dex 16), chain shirt (dex 18-22), and bracers depending upon dex.

For tanks: Breastplate (dex 16) or Fullplate if mithril isn't available. (Breastplates have some advantages in lower weight, lower Armor Check penalty, higher touch AC and ability to run 4x in return for 1 point off of normal AC; this will sometimes be a worthwhile trade). If special materials are available, Mithril (dex 14+) or adamantine (dex <12 or = 12 or special abilities desired) fullplate.

So, without special materials, there are 4 types of potentially worthwhile final armors (leather, chain shirt, breastplate, fullplate). If special materials are allowed, there are still 4 (mithril chain shirt, mithril breastplate, mithril fullplate, adamantine fullplate).

The problem is that the breastplate is a marginal choice for either a tank or a dex monkey. For the (low level) dex monkey, it can offer a slightly higher AC than the chain shirt in return for reduced movement. For the high dex tank, it offers a host of marginal benefits in return for a slight decrease in AC.

I'm not certain that this is a real problem. It may lead to a certain degree of sameness but I've yet to hear anyone complain that all the high level fighters and paladins seem to be wearing full-plate. (And if you restrict the availability of mithril, there's good reason for high dex characters to wear a couple types of armors).

 

[Christian]

A mithril chain shirt costs roughly the same as +1 leather, for a better AC, or +1 studded leather for the same AC but superior MDB, ASF, and weight.

A +1 mithril chain shirt costs about 1/2 of +2 leather (for a better AC), or less than 1/4 of the cost of +3 leather (for the same AC) or 1/2 the cost of +2 studded leather for the same AC but superior MDB, ASF and weight.

You get what you pay for ???

Hey, yeah! And +1 Full Plate and +3 Banded Armor have identical armor bonus, max dex, and armor check penalty, and the full plate is only slightly heavier, which is generally irrelevant since they're both heavy armor. But +1 Full Plate costs 2,650 gold pieces, and +3 Banded Armor costs 9,400 gold pieces!!!

Full Plate armor is broken.

 

[Nifft]

Someone in a campaign I play in just got Darkwood Breastplate (functions as breastplate, but counts as light armor).

Superior materials rule!

-- Nifft

 

[jontherev]

Someone in a campaign I play in just got Darkwood Breastplate (functions as breastplate, but counts as light armor).

Superior materials rule!

-- Nifft

"Items not normally made of wood or only partially of wood (such as a battleaxe or a mace) either cannot be made from darkwood or do not gain any special benefit from being made of darkwood."

Barring a house rule, your armor is just expensive junk. It didn't occur to anyone that wearing wooden armor would be rather inefficient? Darkwood is meant for spears and shields and stuff like that.

My personal fave is the Mithril Chain Shirt of Nimbleness. With the +8 max dex bonus, it's better than being unarmored until you get a dex bonus of at least +14 (AC-wise). But, if I were playing a straight fighter or paladin type, instead of a rogue, I would probably go with fullplate.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

"Items not normally made of wood or only partially of wood (such as a battleaxe or a mace) either cannot be made from darkwood or do not gain any special benefit from being made of darkwood."

Barring a house rule, your armor is just expensive junk. It didn't occur to anyone that wearing wooden armor would be rather inefficient? Darkwood is meant for spears and shields and stuff like that.

I'm kinda assuming they cast iron wood on it, or had it enchanted with iron wood.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Hey, yeah! And +1 Full Plate and +3 Banded Armor have identical armor bonus, max dex, and armor check penalty, and the full plate is only slightly heavier, which is generally irrelevant since they're both heavy armor. But +1 Full Plate costs 2,650 gold pieces, and +3 Banded Armor costs 9,400 gold pieces!!!

Full Plate armor is broken.

Actually IMO it is. I don't like having a list of a bunch of armors if mechanically there are only 3 people will take. I ahve house rules on this that have so far worked out and have let players take the armor they visualize on thier character without a mechianical penalty for it. Though one player has comlained that the armors have become too generic now.

 

[jontherev]

I'm kinda assuming they cast iron wood on it, or had it enchanted with iron wood.

Casting Ironwood wouldn't help. Armor is still not "normally made from wood".

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Actually IMO it is. I don't like having a list of a bunch of armors if mechanically there are only 3 people will take. I ahve house rules on this that have so far worked out and have let players take the armor they visualize on thier character without a mechianical penalty for it. Though one player has comlained that the armors have become too generic now.

And this is different from previous editions of D&D how?

1&2e, there were only three worthwhile types of armor: leather (because rogues couldn't wear anything better), elven chain (because elven multiclass mages could cast spells in it), and plate mail.

Now we have four which is an improvement on this from your perspective (more variety is better).

Historically, it's worth pointing out that the variety of armor types was largely a function of cost rather than effectiveness.

Japanese Samurai all tended to wear a certain type of armor (which changed as technology advanced).

In Europe, 12th century knights wore chain mail.

By the 15th century, they almost universally wore full-plate if they could afford it.

By the 16th century, half-plate was more common among the ruling class (as the increasing effectiveness of firearms required the breastplate, etc to be heavier and greaves were discarded due to weight considerations).

In the 17th century, breastplates, guantlets, and helmets were about all that was left of upper-class armor.

During all this time, there was a certain amount of variety in the types of armor worn by the hoi polloi because they couldn't afford the armors that were generally acknowledged to be the best and made do with what they could afford.

This kind of development seems well represented in D&D. Starting characters who favor heavy armor often start with chain or scale mail, buy splint or banded mail next, perhaps stopping at half-plate, until they can afford full plate. Once characters can afford the best armor, there's a lot less variety. The same is true of high dex characters (although they tend to favor chain shirts, leather armor, studded leather, and breastplates until they can afford mithril chain shirts or breastplates).