Level Up (A5E) Removing medium armor and adding strength to all armors as minimum ratings.

[aco175]

@Minigiant I can see some of the shirt/mail combos being good is cities and for travel if there was a penalty for living in full armor. Some of my players take a chain shirt at some point so they can walk around the city with something on instead of full plate. Maybe more of a RP thing but the idea of wearing the shirt of chain mail instead of the whole thing is good. It might not be historically accurate to be able to upgrade like this, but works for the game.

 

[CubicsRube]

@CubicsRube - at first glance the one change I'd immediately make to your table would be to have Ring and Scale swap places.

Also, without any Dexterity limits on heavy armour this still doesn't do much to enhance Strength as a stat.

Can do. I just used the 5e standard grouping.

And correct it doesn't enhance strength as a stat directly. However, by reducing the dex effect on defense it requires having decent strength for heavy armors if you want a good AC.

This places the dex melee fighter in the range of dynamic skirmisher and the str melee fighter in the heavy defensive role.

 

[tetrasodium]

But what do we gain from making hide armor compete with scale shirts and full scale?

I'm not sure that I understand the question why would hide armor compare to cannith's desert explorer hide armor stitched with phase spider thread to dimensionally anchor you unless willing and grant misty step once per minute or blur 1/helr... not to mention why would it compare to the same studded leather frequently worn by mere bandits who obviously couldn't afford that hypothetical improved version.