New Armor Types

[Ferghis]

The only one that seems remotely interesting is Barbed Armor for brawlers:

Barbed: A suit of barbed armor or a barbed shield is covered with spikes and hooks designed to injure creatures foolish enough to grab at it.
While you wear barbed armor or wield a barbed shield, a creature takes damage equal to 2 + onehalf your level when you escape that creature’s grab on your turn or when that creature escapes your grab. If you wear barbed armor and carry a barbed shield at the same time, the creature takes this damage only once.

This is better than the feat that does Dex mod damage when someone escapes your grab (possibly unless you've maximized Dex, which is rarely the case for a brawler).

The other properties don't seem worth a proficiency slot.

 

[Mengu]

Tough armors are rather unimpressive. Thinking of last session, I think I critted PC's 4 times, two of them were by minions, one of them was by a power that did no damage, and one was by a skirmisher who was rolling some bonus dice with CA, which was the only painful crit. Players don't typically like wasting feats on stuff they don't have much control over, like enemy crits.

Splintmail is all right I suppose. I can imagine some people who like to focus on a singular aspect, maybe a Dwarf Resilient Battlemind with Toughness, Psionic Toughness, Swift Recovery, Dwarven Durability, Disciple of Stone, etc. could pick up Splintmail too. It's just another feat that does more of the same.

My favorite things about Scale Armor, are the lack of skill check penalty, and removal of speed penalty with specialization. So Splintmail just looks like an all around downgrade to me.

One thing we haven't seen yet, are the paragon specialization feats for these new armors. It suddenly becomes a 2 feat investment, but if there is good stuff in there, some of these could become more worthwhile, though the preview isn't exactly inspiring me to be hopeful.

 

[DracoSuave]

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (New Armor)The two properties are kinda mediocre. There's one that basically gives you a pool of temp HPs at the start of a fight which equals out to somewhere around Toughness or lower... You're better off with Toughness, though, for the bonuses to surges and max HP.

Domination Blackguards would take this over Toughness in a cold second, probably after Disciple of Stone.

And do people even take Toughness anymore in a world where feats can increase your surge value directly?


EDIT: Well, see, now that I bother to read it doesn't give you Temp HP so disregard that. It's still pretty decent, having damage reduction for an attack in a turn is hardly bad.

It's one of those things you don't take instead of Toughness, but WITH Toughness, or any other defensive feat, including those that give THPs. Cause it stacks with all that. And that all adds up.

In fact, durable may be -better- than toughness. Defender's job is to make the party's healing surges more efficient over combat, and durable is available in hide and scale, making it directed towards every defender not named 'Paladin' or 'Knioght'.

Damage that never happens is better than damage that you need to spend a healing surge for. Durable is = 2 or 3 + 2 X enhancement bonus hit points of damage that never happened per combat, where toughness is equal to 1.25 hit points of damage per surge spent that never happened at heroic. At +1 enhancement bonus, this means that in order for Toughness to be equal to durable, you must have spent 4 healing surges as your average per combat.

In paragon, assuming +3 enhancement, that comes to 8 hps vs 2.25... so again toughness comes ahead at 4 surges per battle.

At the highest level of epic, with +6 enhancements, that's 15 hps vs 3.75. Again... it's -equal- at four per battle.

So, no Toughness is NOT better or even equal to superior armor unless you're going through a certain number of surges per combat. And even then, you're better off with Disciple of Stone and Swift Recovery than Toughness.

 

[Spatula]

Oh, well, the same reason they've done anything the past year: desperate apeals to nostalgia.

Bringing back splint, in particular, is just absurd. It was always a bad armor, and it's exceptionally a-historical, even by D&D's paltry standards. Just silly to resurect, especially as a somehow superior armor. Weird, the lenths they're going to for nostalgia. Especially as /no one/ who actually remembers getting stuck with 'splint mail' is going to be nostalgic for it!

Yeah, it's more than a little odd to bring back the armors that nobody used (aside from studded leather and full plate) as superior quality armor.

 

[phoffman]

What I want are more wondrous magic items. [Instant Fortresses, Opulent Cubes, Mirrors of Life Trapping, Beads of Force, ect.]

And the ability to make our own Magic items work with the DNDinsider Character builder would hit the spot.

 

[DracoSuave]

What I want are more wondrous magic items.

THIS. OH GOD THIS.

That'd bring back some of the 'magic items should be magic' magic. Cause... well... they just do such odd and interesting things.

 

[Mirtek]

Domination Blackguards would take this over Toughness in a cold second,

Except that it doesn't give temp hp, just something that has a similar effect

 

[pnewman]

In fact, durable may be -better- than toughness. Defender's job is to make the party's healing surges more efficient over combat, and durable is available in hide and scale, making it directed towards every defender not named 'Paladin' or 'Knioght'.

Damage that never happens is better than damage that you need to spend a healing surge for. Durable is = 2 or 3 + 2 X enhancement bonus hit points of damage that never happened per combat, where toughness is equal to 1.25 hit points of damage per surge spent that never happened at heroic.

But Toughness also increases the distance between 0 and negative Bloodied (i.e. dead) by 2.5 points per tier. The armor doesn't do that.
The armor might still be better at higher levels but I think Toughness
is probably better at low levels, especially at first level.

 

[the Jester]

Huh. Interesting and all right, but... worth a feat? I dunno about that.

 

[Njall]

Meh, not impressed. Superior armors cost a feat, grant situational or negligible bonuses and add more fiddly bits to track. Maybe there'll be more feat support for them in the book, but from what I've seen, they don't look like something that would improve my game.