Fighters -must- wear heavy armor

[Derren]

Face it, 3E assumes heavy armor on a fighter just as much as 4E presumably will. 3E fighters are expected to put their best stat in Strength and their second-best in Constitution, and rely on armor to give them AC.

I don't see it that way. Non of the 3E fighters class abilities (Ha!) or fighter feats requires the fighter to use heavy armor. Feats like Weapon Finesse on the other hand make sure that a Dex focused fighter does not suck (much more than a Str focused one). The difference between a 3E full plate fighter and a chain shirt fighter are about 20 HP (or 1-2 points of damage) vs 10 ft more speed.

 

[Derren]

double post

 

[vagabundo]

In 3.5e not getting into the best suit of armor you could afford would mean you were subpar, usually.

I would prefer that the classes be a little more focused. If fighters are assumed to want the best armour they can get and you want a mobile fighter type, then we need a new class for that. Or a feat/power combo that would allow it. For me fighters always want amour and usually a shield, it is only the oddballs that don't.

Again, this is a personal preference. I like that this is spelt out in the class.

 

[Jack99]

I just think its funny that people cheer because rangers are made more open but in the same post it is revealed that fighters are made more confined.

Maybe it isn't funny, because they aren't more confined. Quite the opposite. In 3.5, if you had good dex, you were more or less forced to wear light armor in order to get the best AC possible. In 4e, you can wear any armor that fits your Vision(tm) of your character. You can still wear light armor and have a high dex mobile fighter, but he won't have as good as AC the high armored one. That isn't confining, imo. It's having to make a choice, whereas the benefits of light armor far outweighed those of wearing heavy armor in 3.5.

So in the end a 18 Dex chainshirt fighter had the same AC than a 10 Dex fullplate fighter and was faster. In 4E it seems that the chainshirt fighter is at least not expected to work.

You are comparing apples and oranges. You need to give them the same dex if you want to compare.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Wow, so in your game only heavy armor exists?

In my games, heavy armor usually exists, and is worn by most Fighters (and Clerics). During the night, most Fighters in our campaigns rely on a light armor (no penalties for sleeping in that), and off course at lower levels, they rarely have heavy armor.
Barbarians, Rogues and Rangers usually use lighter armor, but I think I have seen some Barbarians wearing Mithral Full Plate to get the max AC...

Why do all people who argue against "lightly armored fighters must be houseruled" somehow think the fighter must reach the AC of a heavy armored one when being naked?

Well, that's the only thing that Mearls addressed - if Fighters are not wearing heavy armor, you might need a house rule granting them an AC Bonus. He doesn't say that any of their other abilities/powers require heavy armor, but they need a high AC to be effective in their Defending role.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

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

Here's the quote: "The one stumbling block is that the game expects fighters to wear heavy armor, but you could get around that by building a simple house rule (a fighter in light armor gets a flat bonus to AC to make up the gap)."

How is that ANY harder to do in BECMI, 1E, 2E, or 3E? In any D&D game, if you want to say "fighters in light armor are also good," you can just give them a flat AC bonus in lighter armor. Simple. Easy. In fact, 2E did have this with the Swashbuckler kit. So I don't see "You can house-rule a flat bonus" as some visionary innovation.

In 3E, you could have easily invented a feat "light armor training" that gives +1 or +2 AC in light armor. What 3E did instead was to offer advantages for the lightly armored fighter such as Spring Attack, faster movement, and Tumble (yes, even as a cross-class skill). You could build a fighter who, while not as able to withstand direct attacks, was very good at reducing the number of attacks he would take. Which, IMO, is how a lightly-armored fighter should work.

Now, I concede that mithral fullplate was a colossal mistake, and was compounded by 3E's horrendous advice of "If it's under the town's price limit, you should be able to buy it." Still, everything in the DMG is included in the campaign at the DM's discretion, so it was a mistake easily fixed.

 

[Wolfspider]

It seems to me that house rules are now built into the system, as odd as that may sound....

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

This seems like a good change to me.

In 3.5, fighters don't wear heavy armor because the hit to your mobility and possibly your max dex bonus usually makes it a bad choice, and the difference between a chain shirt and plate is only 4AC. True, heavy armor can have DR, but the amount is very small and doesn't scale with level. DR 2/- doesn't matter much when the monster smacks you for 60 damage.

I ran Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil with a tactically minded, fighter-heavy group, and they all came to the conclusion that staying in light armor was their best option, for this reason.

I would like to see the 4E rules make heavy armor the best choice for someone who is sufficiently strong and sufficiently trained in its use. After all, if we look at what soldiers who were wealthy and well trained did historically, well, they wore the heaviest armor they could afford, generally.

Ken

 

[Aristotle]

This doesn't seem like such a big deal to me. While I have always wanted to do a swords and sandals homebrew setting, where a shield was your primary and sometimes only armor, most generic games I've played in has seen the Fighters drooling over increasingly bulkier armors.

If you want to play a lightly armored skirmisher... you want to play a ranger. Everything points to them getting two weapon fighting, and the fighters not having it available (at least for now), and it sounds to me like this edition might see the ranger as a much better archer than a fighter ever could be. A change from 3E where a fighter could load up on ranged feats and outclass a ranger with a bow. You no longer have the spells and odd divine flavor getting in the way either.

I'm thinking of the fighter as the infantry, front line, warriors and the rangers as the special forces, strike and run, warriors. Rogues, I think, will come off more as the combat capable spy.

 

[shilsen]

It seems to me that house rules are now built into the system, as odd as that may sound....

Or, depending on perspective, more variants and options are provided with the system.

Which, for me, is a damn good approach to have.