I hate armor

[Ariosto]

The role of hit points has been pointed out, which is plenty familiar to me from older versions. (In 1e, a level 17+ fighter with a +1 hits plate-mail and shield automatically, barring weapon vs. armor type, dexterity, magic or other defensive bonus.) Getting another hit die plus constitution bonus every level in 3e is on average a boost.

If armor "stacks with" an innate defense bonus by level, then you get bigger numbers but armor is still important. It's actually more so in proportion as the base chance to hit is reduced: (+6 from armor) 90% = 1.5 x 60%; 60% = 2 x 30%; 35% = 7 x 5%.

A +4 dexterity bonus, of course, makes you as well protected when buck naked as Average Joe is when wearing a chain shirt or suit of scale.

To make armor irrelevant calls, I think, for a class different in that regard from the standard fighter.

 

[Aus_Snow]

That wouldn't have slowed down my last 3.5 arcanist- he wore Scale Mail, Lg. Shield and swung a Maul.

He had the Draconic Breath feat and relied on spells without somatic components.

Gah! Foiled again. :shakefist:

I'm of the opinion that only an idiot would venture forth into a place where he was likely to get hit by a sword or an axe without armor; however, a person wearing armor in town (in most situations) is just stupid. People will ostracize him. Merchants will refuse to do business with him. After all, he must expect a fight to break out, otherwise he wouldn't be wearing armor. That shows little respect for the townsfolk.

This really depends on how much of a 'bastard' (putting it mildly) the DM is being, or simply is in general. Also, the nature of the campaign setting, natch. If the DM is fairly reliably going to have undetectable ninja townsfolk flip out and slaughter you, or monster manual rejects erupt from random houses in broad daylight - or whatever else - then ah, you may as well wear your armour and heft your weapons around all the freakin' time. Besides, adventurers and other assorted psychopaths are probably expected to be walking armouries, tanks, and so on. And if they are (for instance) to be going about the business of defeating the great evils of the area, I don't think most townsfolk would begrudge them their tools and attire.

Plus, there is a point where the slight risk of combat is not worth wearing the armor all day, taking off to take a leak, sweating in it all day, being unable to scratch your nose, etc. Any dm worth his salt will nip that in the bud. And he'll start applying penalties for wearing armor all day, as well. Armor is a fine tool, when used properly. You wear it when you expect combat, not to the local whore house. Now if you hate armor that much, you should play in a campaign set after the advent of gunpowder. Guns pretty much make plate mail obsolete.

Or, if the *DM* has that much of an issue with PCs wearing armour, they could always run another type of campaign instead. Just sayin'.

Unless you're using a far more 'simulationist' (ugh) system, that is.

 

[amethal]

Having actually worn plate mail and climbed mountains, I would deem any attempt to climb mountains while wearing plate mail to be impossible.

Yeah, but you're like a 3rd level expert or something

EDIt - I see this "joke" has already been done. At least I gave you a couple more levels!

 

[amethal]

I think the objection is to the image of Joe Fighter kicking back in the tavern in full plate because if he takes it off kobold ninjas will leap out of his beer and attack him. This is a valid complaint.

I agree.

In the Sandpoint example mentioned earlier, the DM knows that the town is about to be attacked by <spoiler omitted>. The player is pretty sure the town is going to be attacked by something, because that's what happens in D&D.

The Sandpoint encounter is not designed to be one of those "challenge the party without their equipment" affairs, which is just as well since it is only the heavily armoured characters who are short on equipment anyway. No doubt the rogue is still wearing his leather armour, and the wizard has still taken the trouble to prepare her spells this morning.

The characters are all first level, so there's little or nothing the fighter can do to compensate for not having his armour and heavy shield.

In this situation I think the DM and the player need to work together to come up with a reason why the fighter is fully armoured. Maybe he has been hired to bodyguard a rich merchant during the festivities. Perhaps there will be a demonstration melee shortly in which a scratch team of visitors take on local militia members, carried out in full armour to reduce the risk of injury.

I'm glad this issue has been raised, as I can be better prepared should it arise in my own game.

 

[kitsune9]

Hi Ero,

You're not alone in that line of thought. I think there are some fantasy takes on making armor more of a DR issue than an AC and that classes then get a defense bonus. You should check those out and see if that's what your homegame needs.

Happy Gaming!

 

[Andor]

Armor is a fine tool, when used properly. You wear it when you expect combat, not to the local whore house.

Hey, if your PCs go to the whorehouse without protection, that's your buisiness, but you won't catch me recommending it.

Now if you hate armor that much, you should play in a campaign set after the advent of gunpowder. Guns pretty much make plate mail obsolete.

Depends on the firearms. Early matchlock and wheellock arms could be armoured against. Really it was not until the invention of the minié ball that armour truely became obsolete. Although as firearms improved the armour needed to defeat them became heavier and more unwieldy with the result that it kept shedding pieces until only the breastplate and helm were left.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

The use of short, crude, iron knives or delicate, decorative, silver-forged utensils employed as cutlery and existing distinct and separately from things like dirks, swords, maces, bows, is not restricted.

Not every knife is a weapons and, as previously noted, the laws are not enacted with the goal to eliminate all weapons within a city (an unrealistic goal), but to restrict weapons within a city.

Try stuffing a morning star up your pants, Ed. I think that you'll agree that asking people to check certain weapons at a city gate will accomplish the aforementioned goal.

LOL. No thanks! I thought you might let eating knives and such slide, but you didn't say so.

Why so angry with me, Ed? To your question, laws are in place that forbid the practice of combat magic in towns and cities, though there is little that can be done to prevent its use past a polite request. After its use, however, the full force of the law (including other spell casters) can be brought to bear upon an offender.

Not angry with you, per se. But it does annoy me when 'rules' are put in place that apply to one, but not the other. (To wit: The only differance between a fighter with a sword and a mage with a spell is that you can see the sword. So requiring the fighter to give up his sword while taking the mage's word that he won't cast a spell is simply shafting the fighter. IMNSHO.)

My point was that, unless you're playing a highly mucnhkin-ized character, killing the entire populace of a small town isn't a task easily accomplished. Further, if the legal penalty for murder is hanging and you kill the townsfolk for attempting to carry out the letter of the law, I'd argue that it's not the townsfolk who are evil — you are.

I knew that mentioning alignment was going to cause trouble, so I'll drop it.

Now, in modern law, one who commits murder may argue self defense before a jury. And if there were juries in my campaign settings, that might be a viable defense for breaking the law. At best you get to argue self defense before a council of town elders in my settings (usually, your fate is decided by a single man, such as a Sheriff ).

So, you may (or may not) get to argue self defense in one of my campaign settings, but it isn't a "Get Out of Jail Free" card and you can't automatically assume that the friends and neighbors of the guy you just gutted are going to go out of their way to help you — a total stranger — out.

I guess a lot of that just seems like common sense to me. That said, I have been accused of placing a premium on verisimilitude when I DM. When I DM, I also expect my players to think before they act. If you can't be bothered to do that, you'll burn through characters pretty quickly.

Actually, I agree with the intent of the way you're doing things, I just think you're overdoing it a bit. As for burning through characters, I started playing before AD&D came out, so doing so doesn't bother me much. Obviously, you've trained your players to not just kill everything in sight.

Oh, and with regards to the actual armor debate: I've always thought that it ought to act more to absorb damage rather than deflect it. Of course, real armor does both, so there ought to be some minus to be hit from it, but mostly it should subtract from damage taken. IMO.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Actually, Drizzt wears +4 mithril chain mail.

I'm of the opinion that only an idiot would venture forth into a place where he was likely to get hit by a sword or an axe without armor; however, a person wearing armor in town (in most situations) is just stupid. People will ostracize him. Merchants will refuse to do business with him. After all, he must expect a fight to break out, otherwise he wouldn't be wearing armor. That shows little respect for the townsfolk. Plus, there is a point where the slight risk of combat is not worth wearing the armor all day, taking off to take a leak, sweating in it all day, being unable to scratch your nose, etc. Any dm worth his salt will nip that in the bud. And he'll start applying penalties for wearing armor all day, as well. Armor is a fine tool, when used properly. You wear it when you expect combat, not to the local whore house. Now if you hate armor that much, you should play in a campaign set after the advent of gunpowder. Guns pretty much make plate mail obsolete.

Yeah, and as soon as the poor shmuck takes his armor off some ninja will pop out of his beer (as someone said) and attack him. That's the real problem. Now, if the GM doesn't do that, then wearing plate armor all the time is dumb.

And if the law allows it, there are those times when the adventurer is riding into or out of town to go to or come from an adventure site.

 

[jdrakeh]

Not angry with you, per se. But it does annoy me when 'rules' are put in place that apply to one, but not the other.

Sorry, I misread you a bit. As to not requiring a mage to relinquish memorized spells, the reason that this doesn't apply is because it can't actually be enforced within the rules of D&D as written short of either employing a lot of counter magic (an impractical solution in-game).

I could meta-game it, of course, but simply ruling that Magic Users can't cast magic spells inside of cities or towns with no in-game rationale would be game-breaking for most of the people I play with. It's arbitrary and non-sensical from an in-game perspective. I try to avoid that.

So, yes, the Fighting Man may be getting shafted with regard to carrying weapons, but as my parents told me many times when I was growing up "Life's not always fair." and my campaign settings aren't perfectly balanced to ensure that all things are equal for all PCs at all times.

If it makes you feel any better, in most of my campaign settings, magic actually is rare (instead of just being alluded to as such). This means that most normal people fear it — and that brandishing it openly will get you strung up in certain parts of the world.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

As I hinted at above, if you're really concerned about that kind of issue, you could introduce something like magebane- an achemical potion that dulls a spellcaster's ability to cast- or spellchords- enchanted ropes or other bindings that prevent hostile casting.

They seemed to work pretty well in the fiction I'm lifting them from...