Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 703433" data-attributes="member: 3051">Wow, that's what I already do, glad I'm not the only one.  Except it's more than just a flat +2.Heavy armors give DR (Hardness/5)/-.  Steel, for reference, has hardness 10, giving DR 2/-.Medium armors and large/tower shields give DR (Hardness/10)/-.  It stacks, of course, and all fractions get rounded down before adding.These only apply if the armor actually remains heavy/medium; a Mithril BP won't get any DR, because it's now a light armor.  In my mind it's not really a true "breastplate", it's more like "mithril chain shirt that protects as well as a steel breastplate would."  (Think LotR)Why does it scale with material hardness?  Well, for one, it helps it scale with level.  DR 2/- isn't much at high levels, but presumably by that point you'll have access to better materials.  For another, it's not just that the armor is absorbing the blow, it's that the wielder consciously USES the armor to absorb blows.  Some strong guy attacks me with a huge sword; with a large shield, I'd worry about it breaking so I'd try to turn the attack into a glancing blow instead of an outright block, or maybe I'd try to sidestep or something; if my armor was virtually unbreakable I could just let it hit straight on.Besides, it helps keep things interesting.  Wearing heavy adamantite plate (Hardness 30?) would give DR 6/-; not something to sneeze at.To help offset this, most materials now have various "material bonuses" that now stack with magical weapon enhancement.  "Fine Steel" is the analog of 3E Masterwork and gives a +1 attack bonus, while adamantite becomes pretty significant.The only people hurt by this sort of balancing are Monks (since they won't use physical weapons but now face higher DR), but we've heavily modified Monks IMC so it's not an issue.  The 3.5E Ki Strike modification (bypasses DR 5, bypasses DR 10, etc.) seems perfect for this sort of system.The important point, as others have pointed out, is that this gives physical armors a benefit that isn't duplicated by Bracers of Armor or Shield+Mage Armor.  It always annoyed me that a pure caster could have a consistently high AC, that worked against incorporeals, that didn't fatigue you, and that wasn't obvious to casual observers, and yet STILL gave the same effect.</blockquote>

Verification