AeroDm said:
When I wrote 'most' I was trying to imply 'full-plate' because such has been my experience. Should have been more specific...
Hence, most mid-level fighters have a -5 or worse armor check, and therefore couldn't expect to routinely charge down a flight of stairs (something I consider pretty standard fare).
Well, one might argue that this is a choice the players get to make. Personally, I always make lightly armored fighters specifically because of this. On the one hand, massive armor can be nice. But in the games I play, being able to move around the battlefield is *much* more important. (This might also factor in to why I've seen people in various threads be somewhat down on the abilities of the Monk class, but I've never had any trouble with them--if you're always fighting in tightly constrained spaces where movement isn't really an option, monks can't use their mobility to advantage. If, on the other hand, there's interesting terrain and room to move around, the trade of AC for movement can be quite worth it.)
There was another thread recently talking about how hard Jump checks are to make--and folks pointed out that the RAW aim for "realistic" checks for things like Jump. Hence, the heavily armored fighter is going to have a pretty hard time jumping without investing serious skill points and improving their speed. (Standard Jump check for a full plate fighter is going to be at -12, assuming nothing to offset the ACP: -6 for the plate, -6 for going down from 30' speed to 20' speed.) This is realistic: they can't jump to save their lives. If you want to make things more heroic for this skill, you should probably consider reducing the penalty for slower speeds (to -4, say), and lowering the DCs for checks. The full plate fighter is *still* going to have a hard time jumping, though.
Like I said, it's a tradeoff. Heavier is *not* always the best choice, even for tanks.
(Continued ramble: In fact, I do not believe that any character in a game I've played in has worn full plate, unless they were a dwarf (they don't get any slower) or a cleric (can speed themselves up, no spell failure, and god damn, but you need them to stay alive). Oh, or our current druid, who is mainly just excited that we found some dragonscale armor--and *he* is getting it enchanted so that it will add AC even when he's in animal form, which is his preferred state during a fight. In our experience, the massive array of tactics at a fighter's disposal is better used with lighter armor. If we had a paladin, that might change, since a paladin does not get a lot of feats, and a paladin's warhorse provides mobility in out of doors settings.)
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