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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5046287" data-attributes="member: 4937">No, of course not.  I thought I was one of the more famous 4e naysayers.  Oh well, keeps one humble.I've said from very early on that 4e was very carefully crafted to produce a particular play experience, which however enjoyable it might be, made it impossible to play D&D the way I'd played it for 20+ years across 3 editions.  Conversations like this only reinforce that belief. Let's talk about the "monk problem".  Through out 3e various writers attempted to 'fix' the monk such that it was balanced with the other martial classes as a front line combatant.  Likewise, lots of people on the house rules forums here would continually come up with house rules that allowed finese fighters wearing light armor to compete in melee on equal terms with heavily armored fighters.   And I continually pointed out that doing so would create a serious problem, in that not being heavily dependent on equipment was itself a very powerful advantage.  If you could obtain as high of an AC while wearing light weight, cheaper armor (or none!) which did not encumber or hamper you, and if you could dump stat strength and put everything into dexterity and still obtain comparable damage, then in fact you weren't building something that was balanced but instead something that was strictly superior.  A lightly armored mobile dualist character already had significant advantages over a heavily armored one.  Attempting to make it balanced such that it could compete in equal terms in melee combat meant that there was no situation where wearing armor (or wielding weapons) was an advantage.Errr... I cave.  I climb hills with backpacks on.  I know about squeezing through tight muddy passages, walking on slippery ground while carrying loads, and climbing up slopes as steep as ladders.  I do not encourage anyone to think that wearing armor or bearing loads is a disadvantage.  Wearing armor or bearing loads is a disadvantage in all sorts of ways as a point of fact, and not an opinion.  There is no need to encourage that opinion, it will just evolve naturally in any game where there is terrain and armor (or even just weight) is in fact a tangible thing.But I'm not the one actually doing this.  I'm not in fact the one removing the benefits of wearing armor from the game.  Armor just is, with its own benefits and drawbacks.From my perspective what you are describing is encouraging players to think that wearing armor provides neither advantage nor disadvantage, and that it is in fact no more than color.  What I'm seeing from you is that no character in fact 'wears armor', instead all that happens is a player marks an AC and its cause on the character sheet, and then is from that point freed from any obligation to remember that he is wearing armor.  This is what you seem to be calling 'balance'.  Further more, you seem to be suggesting that the DM is in fact thereafter under an obligation to ignore the existance of such armor as well.  The armor is not in fact tangibly in existance within the game world.  It exists only at the incidence where it impinges on the rules, and by your argument it have to be essentially not at all.  If wearing armor is to not be a disadvantage compared to not wearing armor, then the armor must perforce be weightless, insubstantial, form fitting, and stylish on all occassions.  It must not cost any more than equipping yourself in clothing.  It must in point of fact not be there, as no one at the table is encouraged or even allowed to think of it.I'm well aware of it.  I encourage you to do a search for 'celebrim' and 'monk' in the house rules forums if you think otherwise.I believe that the rules of the game world describe its 'physics'.  If the rules describe a world where not wearing armor is absolutely balanced against the wearing of armor, then I would postulate that one of two things are true:1) Heavy armor would never be invented on this world, as any benefit it provides could be had for less trouble just by doing something else.2) If the 'doing something else' has been recently invented, then it will in the long run obselete the wearing of armor and ultimately everyone will stop making and wearing armor.  Don't be suprised that if in a world were wearing armor provides you no more protection than not wearing it, all the denizens of that world begin to shun armor so there is no need to strip down or to dress up so to speak.</blockquote>

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