Medium armor fix

[Ancalagon]

Hello

Our group has come to the conclusion that medium armor is, well, a very mediorce choice. Let's compare the best light armor, a chain shirt, with the best medium armor, a breastplate.

The breastplate gives you 1 more AC BUT:

-weights 5 pounds more
-has one dex bonus less (3 instead of 4)
-2 more armor check penalty
-slows you down by 10 feet (if your speed is 30).

Would you use a magical item that gave you 1 AC but had all those penalties? Heck no!

The problem is of course that all those penalties make sense. But we sought a way to mitigate them. We (our gaming group) felt that the worse penalty was the movement one. So here is what we did.

-Wearing medium armor hinders runing, and you can only run at times 3 instead of times 4

-Wearing heavy armor reduces your base movement to 20 feet (from 30 feet).

So in other words, we inverted the movement penaly of medium and heavy armor. We feel that this makes medium armor a better (if still sub optimal) choice.

Coments?

Ancalagon

 

[Greylock]

I like.

I just got back to PnP after a long absence, and failed to notice this when I got gear for my current char. It's been bugging me. If I had been paying attention, I would put my guy in a chain shirt.

It's almost like chain shirt is under-penalised rather than scale or breastplate being over-penalised.

 

[Wolf72]

an idea I've been kicking around was to increase the armor bonus of heavy and medium armors.

medium armors would get a +2 to AC, and +50 gp. [a fair restriction would be a requirement to have medium armor proficiency, otherwise you only get the listed AC]

Heavy armors would also get a +2 to AC, and +200gp. Additionally Heavy armors would also get a DR1. [use restriction as above].

haven't got a chance to ever use it, but it looked kinda cool when I had in table format (next time I'm at my home computer I'll try to upload it ...)

 

[Malin Genie]

This topic has occured a number of times before, and to summarise some of the points/suggestions I have seen (while noting that the 'keep full movement but can't run' suggestion is a very nice one)

(1) Medium Armour becomes more attractive in campaigns where Mithril (or is it -al in DND?) Armour is available. Medium armour, if mithril, gives no movement penalty and only a small check penalty and a Max Dex that won't affect most players. Hence the +1 AC is offset by only minor penalties.

(2) Medium Armour does not penalise the movement rate of dwarves, and so can be a reasonable choice for, for example, moderate-dexterity dwarves, especially barbarians (who start with Medium but not Heavy Armour Proficiency.)

(3) Some suggestions I have seen for balance include
(a) DR 1/- for Medium (and DR 1/- or 2/- for Heavy) Armour
(b) Remove Chain Shirt from the game (so Light Armour only gives up to +3)
(c) Allow a "Medium Armour Proficiency" Feat (or similar) which allows armour to be treated as one category lighter (but does not stack with enhancements such as Mithril)

 

[Spatzimaus]

It's not that it's a BAD fix, and it's definitely a start, but don't stop there. The problem is, if you invert the penalties, medium armor becomes decent again but in my experience it won't be the light-armor types moving up, it'll be the heavy-armor types moving down.

The main flaw in D&D armor, in general, is that all it gives is an AC bonus which is identical, in practice, to the AC bonuses available through spells, items, DEX, etc., while adding new penalties. Solid, material armor needs some bonus that isn't available any other way.

IMC, we tried doing it like this:
Light/No Armor or Bucklers/Small Shields: 30' movement, x5 Run
Medium Armor and/or Large Shields: 25' movement, x4 Run, DR (Hardness/10)/Adamantium
Heavy Armor and/or Tower Shields: 20' movement, x3 Run, DR (Hardness/5)/Adamantium

(The complication came from Small races; we just said the 25' reduced to 17.5', i.e., for the 7.5' you can treat one 10' diagonal as a 5' each round)

"Hardness" is the hardness of the material used in the armor (Steel is 10, Adamantine is 30, etc.) Since most items are made from Hardness 10 materials, this is DR 1 for the medium and DR 2 for the heavy. Later in the game, when everyone's using adamantine this and mithral that, they'll be higher, but we've got a similar system for weapons so it all balances (hint: make masterwork bonuses stack with magic).

For movement penalties, use the most prohibitive category, just like with encumbrance; for DRs, they stack. So, a heavy armor and a large shield, both steel, is 20', x3 run, DR 3/Adamantium. In addition to the usual AC, of course.

 

[Staffan]

The main flaw in D&D armor, in general, is that all it gives is an AC bonus which is identical, in practice, to the AC bonuses available through spells, items, DEX, etc., while adding new penalties. Solid, material armor needs some bonus that isn't available any other way.

Remember that armor/shield bonuses are the cheapest AC bonuses available in the game. If you want a +8 armor bonus via bracers of defense, you're paying 64,000 gp for that privilege. If you instead get yourself a suit of full plate, it's only 1,500 gp - or 10,500 if you get a mithral version, which is easier to move in. For those 53,500 gp you're saving, you can get a +5 enhancement bonus, a 25% chance of ignoring crits, and resistance 10 to an element of your choice.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Remember that armor/shield bonuses are the cheapest AC bonuses available in the game.

They're the cheapest AC-bestowing ITEMS in the game, not quite the same thing. Spells are free. If you're a light-armor type, and the Wizard in the party can cast Mage Armor, you have two options:
1> Have him use one first-level slot to give you +4 for 1 hour per level
2> Spend 16k
I've got a high-level Psion with Ectoplasmic Armor (5th level, +10 Armor AC), and several people in my group ditched armor entirely in favor of this spell (a Bard and a Ranger).

Anyway, I still stand by my earlier statement: physical armors need some direct combat benefit beyond simple +AC, to counteract their drawbacks. I mean, compare drawbacks to Bracers of Armor:
ARMOR:
> Has an Armor Check Penalty
> Has a Max DEX
> Can slow movement
> Fatigues you if you sleep in it
> Doesn't affect incorporeal attacks
> Is almost always visible, making it impossible to blend in in a city
> Shields can be sundered, and tie up one of your arms (Bucklers are a special case)
BRACERS:
> Costs more
> Uses up a Bracer slot, which prevents you from using such awe-inspiring items as the Bracers of Archery.
> Are worthless in an anti-magic field, or when they're targetted with a dispel
> Couldn't be enchanted with armor special abilities... although I've seen a lot of groups who house-ruled that, too, after the splatbooks started adding alternate rules for that.

It's just not even close, in my opinion. All the people I see who wear physical armor do so either for style purposes, or for some special ability built into the armor.