Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="ForceUser" data-source="post: 974604" data-attributes="member: 2785">Tracking encumbrance is vital for 3E combat and an important distinguishing point between the heavy and lighter armors; ignoring encumbrance means you're ignoring the disadvantages of wearing heavy armor, which maybe - just maybe - might be one of the factors that folks keen on chopping heavy armors in this thread are overlooking while they eagerly swing the nerf bat. A character that is moderately or heavily encumbered takes penalties to movement and certain skills, and it's important to know just how much you can lift, carry or drag. Encumbrance has played a large role in many of our combats as characters have had to make decisions on whether to drop gear or continue to carry it and incur penalties. I've seen characters drop backpacks to fight then have those unattended items destroyed by area effect spells, or be separated from their packs by the flow of combat and lose all their food while deep in a dungeon, or take Strength damage from poison or troglodyte nausea and be effectively pinned by their own gear. This is exactly why you track encumbrance: characters with less than 12 Str really shouldn't be trying to wear heavy armor. And if he can wear it, bonus. So what?I just don't recommend fiddling with what classes get what armor. Could it be possible that maybe - just maybe - the professional game designers and legion of playtesters knew what they were doing? Besides, regardless of what level of armor a cleric gets to wear, there is an hour per level spell he's going to get that is going to ensure he often has fighter-like AC anyway: magic vestment. Take Extend Spell and, well, your cleric in his lg. shield & breastplate still has a rocking AC, making the whole "nerf hvy armor" change kind of irrelevant anyway since all he'll end up losing is up to 3 points of AC total (the difference between a breastplate and full plate), unless you want to swing the nerf bat on magic vestment. If you're looking to totally sh-tcan cleric ACs altogether, don't forget protection from evil, shield of faith, and dispel good/evil/law/chaos. God forbid the cleric should be able to stand toe-to-toe with foes so he can heal the front-line fighters during combat.Anyway.</blockquote>

Verification