Is heavy armour still the Cinderella?

[delericho]

Heavy armor is disfavored mostly due to stat bloat (+6 Dex item, high point buy, etc)... with no stat bloat, heavy armor looks to be very useful.

Exactly. I have used 28-point buy or a strict 4d6-drop-lowest generation scheme throughout 3e, and have seen no shortage of heavy armour (well, full plate) users. Under such schemes, Fighters (and Paladins, and Knights) tend not to have so many high scores to spare that they can afford to drop one into Dex - they're generally better off favouring Str, Con, and maybe Cha, ahead of it.

At high levels, we did see quite a lot of mithral full plate instead - adding a +4 or +6 Dex item added quite a lot to AC then. And, of course, the Barbarians used it exclusively as soon as they could afford to.

 

[Quartz]

I've seen three major reasons for heavy armour to not be used:

Penalties to skills and movement through added encumbrance.
Negation of abilities like Evasion.
Buffs: take your Dex 12 fighter and give him a +6 Dex device and wearing full plate makes little sense. Remember that wizard can craft an item of +6 Enhancement at 12th level.

 

[green slime]

Huh?!

Can't be many Dwarven fighters in your campaign.

IMC, the Aasimar Paladin and Dwarven Fighter both use Adamantine Fullplate. The Spike-Chain-wielding Barbarian/Fighter/Ranger/Rogue/Psychic Warrior runs around in mithral breastplate, and gets walloped by spells targeting his Will save.

 

[Steely Dan]

Actually I have seen many characters in mithril fullplate, because it just looks better in the imagination of their players

I saw every barbarian in 3rd Ed doing that so they could still retain their extra movement.

 

[delericho]

Buffs: take your Dex 12 fighter and give him a +6 Dex device and wearing full plate makes little sense. Remember that wizard can craft an item of +6 Enhancement at 12th level.

Sure, at a cost of 18,000 gp and (perhaps more importantly) 1440 XP. This is hardly a trivial expense.

And remember: a 12th level Fighter is assumed to have 88000 gp worth of gear. So, if 36000 of that is tied up in Gloves of Dexterity +6, that's a whole lot less that he has available for his weapon of choice, armour, shield, and other gear. It's usually better for the Fighter to invest in Full Plate +3, spend the rest on an Animated Shield, and then magic up a greatsword for all his Power Attacking needs.

(Of course, if the DM gives out more treasure than would be indicated by the Wealth-per-Level guidelines, or uses a more generous generation scheme than the standard point-buy, heavy armour is much less useful. But that's not really a flaw in the system as such.)

 

[Set]

Actually I have seen many characters in mithril fullplate, because it just looks better in the imagination of their players

While all of my Fighter types have stopped at +X Mithril Chain Shirts (valuing mobility to avoid full attacks over AC), I did have one character in Mithril Full-Plate. A Warlock with Battle Caster and Fell Flight. He looked pretty cool hovering up there in his full-plate, flinging Eldritch Blasts around.

 

[DeusExMachina]

One thing we can detremine int his thread is that mithril was an oft (ab)used material for armor. It always seemed to me like the whole "counts as one lighter type of armor" was a bit overpowered...

 

[Seule]

I believe that Heavy armor is penalised by the broken multiclassing rules for combat types. If you are a melee fighter you probably want a level of Barbarian (and Extra Rage). If you have that level of Barbarian, heavy armor cuts your speed in half, which is a big sacrifice.
Fix that problem (preferably by making barbarian a culture rather than a class) and you've made heavy armor more appealing.

--Penn

 

[NaturalZero]

One thing we can detremine int his thread is that mithril was an oft (ab)used material for armor. It always seemed to me like the whole "counts as one lighter type of armor" was a bit overpowered...

When a specific armor (mithril fullplate) is completely ubiquitous, it clearly shows that the balance is off. I, for one, would not shed a tear if mithril was removed from 4E. At least they could make specific mithril armors that are better balanced with the others.

 

[Voss]

With the removal of "medium" armor, I suspect that heavy armor will get a bit better, especially the special "masterwork" armors.

I mean, sure, Fullplate removes your Dexterity/Inteligence mod from your AC/Reflex, but if speed penalties are only one or two, and Mithral makes the armor count as "light," then I would say that there has been an improvement.

This seems fairly important, regardless of mithral. A heavy armor character can use int and dex as dump stats and still have a competitive AC, and benefit in the stats that actually matter to his class. The paladin for example, doesn't seem to have any inherent use for either stat, beyond boosting reflex and init.

(Of course, that raises another issue, where classes who use two 'paired' stats are actually suffering from the 4e form of MAD, since they are investing stat points that don't actually benefit them)