PHB Armors in 3.x

[phindar]

Leather- the beginner thief, and most of my characters keep a back up set for pajamas.
Chain Shirt- Yeah, this is the goto for my roguey-types.
Hide- My last fighter started off at first level and was too broke to afford anything but Hide. In the background I said I took it off a dead hobo.
Breastplate- I play a lot of Medium Armor fighters.
Full Plate- Yeah, when you go Heavy you might as well go all the way.

I'm not wild about the way 3.x does armor. I'd rather the Armor/Max Dex/ACP went into a formula that determined the price, and then let you describe it however you wanted (within reason for the armor type). There's no need for every set of scalemail to be identical.

 

[Voadam]

I put down leather, studded leather, chain shirt, breastplate, half-plate, and full plate, though thinking further on it I think I had a 1st level dwarf fighter with scale mail and a 5th level hobgoblin champion (AU) with either splint or banded mail, though I can't say for sure off the top of my head.

 

[lukelightning]

Lighten up, Francis.

Nothing he said was invalid. He raised some very important points. I think D&D should be flexible enough that a character isn't penalized for his crazy idea of wearing scale instead of a chain shirt.

Armor could be turned into 6 types, something like

Half leather (leather, or hard leather cuirass)
Full Leather (full body protection)
Half medium (chain shirt, scale shirt, elven glamourweave monkeyhairmail)
Full medium (breastplate, full chain armor, Rhodanian Tooth-Scale)
Half Heavy (ok, that sounds weird....)
Full Heavy.

Ta da! Then the actual description of the armor would be just fluff.

 

[hong]

Nothing he said was invalid.

Did I say it was?

 

[Darklone]

The houserule section contains thousands of threads how to change armors...

My favorite:
- medium armor doesn't inhibit movement speed and grants DR 2/-.
- Heavy armor does inhibit movement speed and grants DR 2/-.

Cut the proficiencies down. Clerics e.g. ... light armor. Make medium armor something worthwhile.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Leather: Cheap and lightweight.
Studded Leather: See above.
Chain Shirt: The best armor until mithril.
Hide: The pre-wildshape druid's friend.
Chainmail: Reasonably priced, readily available, decent.
Breastplate: The best armor after mithril, good beforehand.
Full Plate: The only heavy armor worth having.

 

[Jedi_Solo]

Leather/Studded Leather - For the low level sneaky types
Chain Shirt - Almost everyone ends up here eventually. Especially when mithral becomes available.
Breastsplate - Early level plate mail before you can purchase the real thing and for those few classes that are allowed Medium Armor abilities without Heavy Armor.
Full Plate - If you're going to be in heavy armor...

Everything else usually isn't as good as these for the price.

 

[pawsplay]

There are two problems with the armors in D&D.

First of all, there are too many. Hence, there is a need to differentiate too many things that aren't that different.

Second, they are from many different eras. The reason scale kind of sucks is because it's not as good as other armors. It was essentially replaced by chainmail and (briefly) by banded mail. There are some cases where it was developed into a technologically competitive quality armor (the Japanese and some of the Dark Ages Mediterranean nations did it), but in such a case, it's functionally identical to banded armor or plate mail, becauese the scales are riveted or linked together.

Scale mail, as such, is just a bunch of scales on a backing. It's heavier than studded leather, which is very similar (except inside out), not as tough or flexible as chainmail, not as articulated or durable as banded, and no match at all for plate. It's an obsolete armor, just sort of hanging around. And this being D&D, it's not restristricted to ancient, undead warriors. It has to have a price. Thus, some down on his luck fighter ends up buying this crappy, anachronistic armor because it's crappier and therefore cheaper, and thus one of the starting fighter packages in the PHB ends up with scale mail, even though nobody in the game, or the setting, would otherwise wear it.

It's like the khopesh; it was originally included, I think, just to give something for mummies and jackal demons to wield, but then it was in the chart, so someone decided it should a useful, viable weapon. But in reality, a khopesh kind of sucks, since it's basically a narrow bladed axe, or a a really dull, easily bent sword.

Scale mail: not your friend.

 

[lukelightning]

Scale mail, as such, is just a bunch of scales on a backing. It's heavier than studded leather, which is very similar

I have never seen a picture of studded leather armor that is remotely like it's description. Every picture always has sparse studs, like a handwidth apart. Network TV's Tara's bedazzled vest would provide better protection.

 

[GilaMonster]

Studded leather - My mid-high level ranger wore magical studded leather right until the campaign came to an end
Chain shirt - My current character, a mid-level cleric, wears enchanted mithral chainshirt. She doesn't have the strength for anything heavier and she's not a melee combatant.
Breastplate - Another cleric, this time devoted to a deity of war and specialising in longbow. I started with breastplate because of a high dex. I was planning to upgrade to mithral plate once I could afford it.