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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ECMO3" data-source="post: 8453330" data-attributes="member: 7030563">You can't ignore encumbrance, but it is rarely an issue unless you are carrying a ton of rations AND you can't afford a pack animal.Sure there is less you can carry, but for a melee martial an 8 strength and half plate works just fine that vast majority of time.Even if you use the variant encumbrance rules it is rarely a bigger deal for a dex melee martial build. Heavy armor is "heavier" and your high strength character in plate is going to be hitting the "encumbered" limit pretty easy too until he is near the top of tier 2.Plate weighs 25 pounds more than half plate.  That alone takes 5 points of strength to even out.  On top of this, weapons that are going to take advantage of your higher strength will be heavier as well.   So if the high strength character wants to take advantage of the +1 in AC for heavy armor and the extra damage for heavy weapons he is not very far ahead in encumbrance at early levels anyway.So what? Stealth does not work well in heavy armor either.  At least with a dex build and medium you can "make it work" with a feat if you want to do that.   The claim was that a dex build needs to pump dex to keep up, that is just not true.  They are 1 point behind at level 1 and without feats will stay there.  If we limit ourselves to armor that does not cause disadvantage, then a breastplate is the best you can get regardless of strength and dex builds are actually ahead of strength builds in AC if that is how we are looking at it.I will also point out that regardless of the armor you wear and the feats you have, a higher Dex will always mean a better stealth than the same character with a lower dex.  If you are building a stealthy character a dex build is WAY, WAY better than a strength build in any armor.If you are using a shield there is no advantage to a strength-based melee character.  The small advantage in damage you get from using a non-finesse melee weapon is nullified if you go sword and board.No you are not behind.  Don't take the feat, wear half plate and your stealth is still BETTER than the strength guy in heavy armor.When you say this you are not comparing apples to apples, you are suggesting that the dex build needs to be stealthy but the strength build does not.More power to her.  To be honest that is what Rogues are for in our games ... and Barbarians if you have one.</blockquote>

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