Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Abstruse" data-source="post: 5941101" data-attributes="member: 6669048">I can debate the films all day long...doing so would really derail the thread though. Keeping it in game terms, though, mithril has always been a special quality material and, excepting 4e, has always been something that was very special and very rare even if it wasn't enchanted. It's stated in the books (if not the movies) that the mithril shirt Bilbo got was worth more than the entire Shire. But...crap, I'm debating the books and movies again and not rules...I agree that statistically speaking, someone in heavy armor is going to get hit with more criticals in proportion to total successful attacks due to their higher AC, but that also makes logical sense. Let's analyze historical armor (and no, I'm not going to get into the DR discussion...I hate it and no amount of convincing will make me like it, at least for D&D, so any discussion is a waste of everyone's time since it's an irrational opinion rather than a fact-based conclusion).Heavy armor's protection is more complete than lighter armor. Scale mail and plate mail both protect in a similar fashion, by using overlapping metal plates of varying sizes with padding underneath. The overlapping plates mean that there are few places that are vulnerable to attack, as it's difficult to find an area the plates don't cover. There are a few more exposed areas, but it's not easy to get to them, like under the arms. The padding under the armor absorbs the impact from blows and spreads it over a larger area, thus causing less trauma and turning what would be a debilitating or even fatal blow into mere bruises and turning something that would be painful into a very minor annoyance. Because of this level or protection, most blows aren't going to land solidly enough to do a lot of actual damage (either from wounds or fatigue or whatever your personal view of what HP represent happens to be - also not getting into that debate).However, the few hits that are strong or precise enough to do damage are more likely to do more damage. Because it's so difficult to get in between those plates or to punch through the armor itself, any specific wound is going to be more likely to be a seriously damaging one. The plate can completely turn away a glancing blow from an arrow, but a straight-on shot is going to punch straight through and possibly hit a vital organ. A thrust from a rapier or slice from a longsword is likely going to just bounce off the overlapping plates, but if it hits a weaker joint or slips in between those plates, it's going to be more likely to be a blow that seriously injures the armored combatant if not disable them by seriously injuring a joint.Meanwhile, on an opponent wearing lighter armor like leather or one with more gaps like chain, it's far more likely that an attack is going to slip through that protection. Neither one spreads out impacts as well as the plate armor since they're not rigid enough to absorb the energy. Also, there are going to be more unprotected or lightly protected areas that are less critical that can be hit with a well-placed blow. Heavy armor is going to have more protection in the shoulders and lower abdomen (where the armor doesn't have to be as flexible or can be made flexible enough with multiple layers showing few gaps) than lighter armor (which is going to have the same amount of protection). Those areas contain fewer vital organs or areas that would completely disable an opponent if struck.That means that (assuming a +3 attack bonus and an AC of 18 on the heavily armored opponent and AC of 13 on the leather armor wearing one), that it makes perfect sense that more hits would be criticals on the former. The opponent in the lighter armor is going to take twice as many hits (50% of all attacks total), but since there are more gaps in the armor, it's less likely that any one successful hit is going to hit a vital area (10% of all hits). Meanwhile, the heavily armored opponent is going to shrug off attacks in more places and take fewer hits (25% of all attacks total), but it is far more likely that any successful attack is going to strike somewhere important (20% of all successful attacks).TL;DR: Lighter armor has more places you can successfully attack, while heavier armor has fewer but they're more likely to be places you don't want to get stabbed.</blockquote>

Verification