D&D 5E Magic armor and special materials

[Kalshane]

I agree that flavorful magic items are a lot more fun (and the fact that 5E allows weapons and armor to be magical without having a plus at all opens up a lot of possibilities.) I'm currently running a converted Rise of the Runelords and every generic +whatever item listed in the AP is either removed completely, or converted into something more interesting. The party still has a lot of magic stuff (this is Golarion, after all) but there's only like two items that only give a static bonus (and one was purposely sought out and purchased by the PCs.)

 

[76512390ag12]

Of course, magical items have always been possible with no bonuses.

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[TheLoneRanger1979]

Nah i don't think they do. Not chainmail at least. It might actually give raison d'être for some categories. I mean, here we are in a dungeon, just slayed our first dragon and among the loot there it shines, a nice enchanted chainmail, with rubies and emeralds, a rare item at that......and the only people in the party that could use it, have no reason for doing so. Not a mechanical one at least. By the time rare items start showing up, virtually anyone could afford a full plate armor from the nearest blacksmith and will be better protected by it. So should we just sell it? Might as well put in gold, platinum and gems instead. However, if we gave it some special properties to along its armor enhancement (such as the special material properties), for some players it just might provide the incentive to sacrifice some AC for some other added effect (mobility, damage absorption, negating disadvantage). And it's not like we even start approaching the 20AC of your local dragon. As others have mentioned, it's quite easy to sky-high your AC through other means if the player really wants it....

Just a quick cautionary note to add to the others: magical AC enhancing armors are probably going to play havoc with Bounded Accuracy in this edition, depending on your game style and the work the DM is willing to put in. Hit Points and Damage are the scaling markers of combat prowess in 5e, with attack bonus somewhat less so. And AC even less than that. This is what makes hordes of lesser opponents somewhat of a threat: They can still hit, but their lesser damage and the greater hit points of the PCs allow them to absorb to a large degree unless gained up on. Shooting AC too high returns to previous Edition's flavor of ignoring the 'lesser trash' as if they are gnats. Unless, of course, that is what you want. I mean it is still an issue in 5e if the level difference is to great, but is at least somewhat mitigated.