Fighters -must- wear heavy armor

[Derren]

While everyone is happy about spell less ranger, a other information from Mearls gets overlooked.
Fighters are expected to wear heavy armor.

Apart from the thematical restriction it also says a bit about how armor will be balanced in 4E (no more Dex - AC balance like in 3E).

 

[vagabundo]

While everyone is happy about spell less ranger, a other information from Mearls gets overlooked.
Fighters are expected to wear heavy armor.

Apart from the thematical restriction it also says a bit about how armor will be balanced in 4E (no more Dex - AC balance like in 3E).

He also said it was easy to house rule this away, if you wish.

In my games all the fighter immediately go for the heaviest armour they can and pump their stat bonus's into strength or constitution. I don't see any change here.

We don't know anything about the dex-ac balance, he didn't mention it, and any inference is a leap to far IMO.

 

[FireLance]

It certainly looks like if you want to play a lightly armored fighter, you should play a rogue or a ranger.

This is starting to remind me of Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed split between the warmain and the unfettered.

 

[nightspaladin]

There was no balance in 3.x. If your Fighter wanted to max out their AC, they wore Mithril Full plate to maximize the dex bonus and Armor bonus. There was only one or two choices that mattered. Everything else was inferior stat wise.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Yyyyup.

Take into account that armor itself is the only source of permanent-enchant AC bonus in 4e, and I'm thinking that 4e AC is now plotted out as a balancing factor by armor type. Defenders, who need high AC, wear heavy armor. Strikers and leaders, who wade into melee to varying degrees, wear light to medium armor. And wizards (and possibly some strikers, like warlocks) wear cloth armor.

I'm thinking that if you want to play a light-armored melee warrior, ranger and/or rogue might be a better approach than fighter in 4e. Remember, those two carved up the swashbuckler and took his stuff.

I have a bit of trouble deciding how I feel about this. On the one hand, it seems weird to say, "My character carves through enemies with an axe in each hand. Clearly Ranger is the class for him!" But on the other hand, it makes sense that they'd want to parse out the martial-defender from the martial-striker, and the fast-and-dodgy fighter builds are definitely more "striker" than "defender."

 

[Derren]

He also said it was easy to house rule this away, if you wish.

That doesn't really mean anything. You can houserule away everything.

We don't know anything about the dex-ac balance, he didn't mention it, and any inference is a leap to far IMO.

He does imply that people with light armor will have less AC than people in heavy armor. In 3E this wasn't always teh case depending on the Dex.

 

[Gloombunny]

"expected to" and "must" are not the same thing at all.

Fighters in 3.5 are expected to wear heavy armor too.

 

[Khuxan]

That doesn't really mean anything. You can houserule away everything.

In 3.5 it was not easy to houserule away a fighter's heavy armor. Now it is. That's an improvement.

In most games, however, niche-protection means the fighter SHOULD wear heavy armor - if fighter is generic enough to cover any class that fought, we might as well adopt a True20-like system.

He does imply that people with light armor will have less AC than people in heavy armor. In 3E this wasn't always teh case depending on the Dex.

No. He implies that fighters with light armor will have less AC than fighters with heavy armor. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I think it is perfectly fine that a Fighter is expected to wear heavy armor. Heavily armored warriors and lightly armored warriors fall under very different archetypes and stereotypically use very different fighting styles. This expectation is nothing other than a statement of how they are not trying to shoe-horn every possible weapon-user into the same class like they did in 3E. Now, Fighters are heavily armored melee specialists by definition, and if you want something else you need to alter the fighter or look for a different class.

 

[vagabundo]

That doesn't really mean anything. You can houserule away everything.

Of course, but the import bit is the easily.

He does imply that people with light armor will have less AC than people in heavy armor. In 3E this wasn't always teh case depending on the Dex.

Without seeing how the system works we cannot comment really. There maybe still ways to build a lightly armoured fighter that is worth a damn, but it wont be the norm. Again, unless there is a significant preview article we will not know until release.