Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
The Spatzworld Exotic Material System
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 3322178" data-attributes="member: 3051"><p>It's a fair point, and it's how I expect most people to react. In my mind, Full Plate would be only for those people who wanted AC at all costs. There's even some historic precedents; armies that tried to outfit all of their troops in heavier armors stuck with the equivalent of splint/banded or half-plate, and it wasn't because of the cost; you weren't helpless if you fell off your horse, for one thing. And, you could actually MOVE a little.</p><p></p><p>But also remember, you can only get that point of DEX AC if you actually have the DEX to begin with. If one of the benefits of masterwork is an increased MaxDEX, and several exotic materials pump that up further, sooner or later even half-plate will exceed the DEX you have. For someone with a DEX in the 10-12 range, Full Plate will almost always be better.</p><p></p><p>The best example of this are the Medium armors; there's Scale (weakest AC/DR, but +4 MaxDEX), Chain (better DR than Scale, but only +3 MaxDEX), and Breastplate (better AC than Scale and lower ACP/SF than the others, but +2 MaxDEX). Sure, if you've got an 18 DEX and are level 1 you'd rather use Scale than BP, but once you get into the Mithral range, only someone with a DEX in the mid-20s would be able to take advantage of the extra MaxDEX of Scale.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>What I mean is, I want the price my equation spits out to be approximately 5-10x the base cost. It'd be easy enough to force the value to a certain number, but I'd rather not do that. The problem is that since the PHB "masterwork" was a flat cost addition, changing it to a multiplication really skews people towards the light armors again, which is exactly what I don't want. So, it needs to be more like 10x at the low end, and 5x at the high end.</p><p></p><p>For Weapons, at first I was just doing that sort of multiplication (x10 for Fine Steel weapons), but in the first post of this thread I mentioned a way of knowing how many pounds of material a weapon needed, so it's much better now; before, everyone would go for the cheap weapons; if a Falchion is 75 gp and a Greatsword is 50gp, previously they'd cost about the same as masterworks; but if some material multiplies these by 300, do you really want to pay an extra 7500gp when you don't have to?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>When I say Fittings, I'm also talking about the padding you wear under the armor, the gloves you wear if you don't have gauntlets, etc.; it's all the stuff that doesn't directly protect, and ends up being about half the final item's weight (heavy armors have 24 lbs of "Fittings").</p><p>But if you're still talking about the Fittings for mundane materials, and you're right, it'll still be relatively cheap. What happens when you make a suit out of pure Adamantine? You can't just use simple leather straps and iron buckles to hold the plates together, because they couldn't stand up to the sort of beating the much harder material is designed to take. And is someone going to use simple cloth padding underneath a breastplate made from Dragon scales? No, it'll be correspondingly fancier. So I want the cost to scale up accordingly.</p><p>Also, the Fittings are the only things that depend on the wearer's size, in this system, so I wanted there to be a tangible decrease in cost for a smaller race. It doesn't have to be a huge change, but I want a non-trivial cost.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Spatzimaus, post: 3322178, member: 3051"] It's a fair point, and it's how I expect most people to react. In my mind, Full Plate would be only for those people who wanted AC at all costs. There's even some historic precedents; armies that tried to outfit all of their troops in heavier armors stuck with the equivalent of splint/banded or half-plate, and it wasn't because of the cost; you weren't helpless if you fell off your horse, for one thing. And, you could actually MOVE a little. But also remember, you can only get that point of DEX AC if you actually have the DEX to begin with. If one of the benefits of masterwork is an increased MaxDEX, and several exotic materials pump that up further, sooner or later even half-plate will exceed the DEX you have. For someone with a DEX in the 10-12 range, Full Plate will almost always be better. The best example of this are the Medium armors; there's Scale (weakest AC/DR, but +4 MaxDEX), Chain (better DR than Scale, but only +3 MaxDEX), and Breastplate (better AC than Scale and lower ACP/SF than the others, but +2 MaxDEX). Sure, if you've got an 18 DEX and are level 1 you'd rather use Scale than BP, but once you get into the Mithral range, only someone with a DEX in the mid-20s would be able to take advantage of the extra MaxDEX of Scale. What I mean is, I want the price my equation spits out to be approximately 5-10x the base cost. It'd be easy enough to force the value to a certain number, but I'd rather not do that. The problem is that since the PHB "masterwork" was a flat cost addition, changing it to a multiplication really skews people towards the light armors again, which is exactly what I don't want. So, it needs to be more like 10x at the low end, and 5x at the high end. For Weapons, at first I was just doing that sort of multiplication (x10 for Fine Steel weapons), but in the first post of this thread I mentioned a way of knowing how many pounds of material a weapon needed, so it's much better now; before, everyone would go for the cheap weapons; if a Falchion is 75 gp and a Greatsword is 50gp, previously they'd cost about the same as masterworks; but if some material multiplies these by 300, do you really want to pay an extra 7500gp when you don't have to? When I say Fittings, I'm also talking about the padding you wear under the armor, the gloves you wear if you don't have gauntlets, etc.; it's all the stuff that doesn't directly protect, and ends up being about half the final item's weight (heavy armors have 24 lbs of "Fittings"). But if you're still talking about the Fittings for mundane materials, and you're right, it'll still be relatively cheap. What happens when you make a suit out of pure Adamantine? You can't just use simple leather straps and iron buckles to hold the plates together, because they couldn't stand up to the sort of beating the much harder material is designed to take. And is someone going to use simple cloth padding underneath a breastplate made from Dragon scales? No, it'll be correspondingly fancier. So I want the cost to scale up accordingly. Also, the Fittings are the only things that depend on the wearer's size, in this system, so I wanted there to be a tangible decrease in cost for a smaller race. It doesn't have to be a huge change, but I want a non-trivial cost. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
The Spatzworld Exotic Material System
Top