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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5705123" data-attributes="member: 996">OK, last one for now...Armor.  Armor has been an annoyance in D&D since the beginning.  At first, armor was just too good.  You got your platemail and your shield and your high dex and you were /really/ hard to hit.  What armor your class could use was an absolute, and one of the few, clumsy balancing factors in the early game.   3.0 finally 'fixed' that by giving heavier armors a limit to how much DEX could add to their protection - but it still created these various corners where the best AC came at a certain DEX/armor combo... and it still put a lot of character in heavy armor all the time, which was a little genre-inapropriate for fans of loin-cloth wearing barbarians and chainmail bikinis... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />4e took it's own, more abstract stab at fixing armor.  It's kludgy, but it works as far as it goes:  Light armor takes a stat bonus (higher of DEX or INT) to AC, heavy armor doesn't.  As heavy armor gets better magically, it also gets 'masterworked' to keep ahead of the rapidly rising DEX/INT of the light armor characters.  4e also had to throw out any rules discouraging having armor worn at all times, though, because heavy-armor characters were just /too/ dependent on being armored to survive without it.A possible solution:  Further abstract armor down to three types:  light, heavy, shield.  And, of course, 'none.'Light:  +2 ACHeavy:  +4 AC, -1 moveShield:  +2 AC, -2 DEX checks.Then, just allow the character's best stat mod to add to AC.  OK, it's a bit of a stretch, but it's simple.  You could rationalize it - DEX lets you dodge, STR makes you better at parrying, WIS spots attacks, INT formulates defensive strategies, CHA bluffs the other guy into being too cautious, CON keeps your defenses up as the fight progresses.Armor helps, but it's not the be-all and end-all of defense.  Going heavy armor and shield accumulates some penalties (as well as costing proficiency - however you handle that, feats or features or whatever).Though it'd be shades of 1e, you could make armor usage a function of class, or allow characters to take only one armor proficiency 'feat' over and above what their class gives them.  Or, if not using feats for proficiency, some classes could have some sort of higher 'cost' for gaining added proficiencies...</blockquote>

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