Wow, I am very surprised that my thread has grown to the point where it needs to split off. I like the ideas seen above here!
Another idea.
4. Increase Max Dexdarity, or have incomberance alone effect it.
Even with a melee type starting out with a dex of 8 will find that over time with a +6 dex item they will out grow any heavy armor, but my average meleer has at least a dex of 12, so with a +4 dex item in the higher levels, I see no reason for getting heavy armor.
5. Have the armors go straight from 1-12 AC and leave it at that.
There is almost no satistical reason for Chain Mail any more past 1st level cost restrictions.
Thats is my two cent.
I think #2 is the minimum necessary requirement for improving heavy and medium armor.
Rules are already in place for speed reduction based on weight carried. Why armor use was considered to require separation from this system is something which has always puzzled me about the 3.x systems.
I like the other half of #2, as it provides some flavor, and provides a solid mechanical benefit.
I'm not sure about #1 and #3, as energy effects can get into the small gaps in the armor, and precision/critical damage likewise models placement of blows in vulnerable locations.
Personally, I like Jason Nelson's proposal to add AC/2 as general DR, to show protection of noteworthy vulnerable locations by the armor, which starts as DR/magic and improves as the armor is enchanted or made of more durable materials. The fortification armor property already exists for improving critical defense, and allowing it to reduce sneak attack damage might be a valid expansion of the property.
To more closely model actual heavy armor effects, I proposed a 10% miss chance. Heavy armor is made of case hardened steel in compound curves, even if unenchanted, and even if you can land a blow on the armor, being able to gain enough purchase to pierce or damage the opponent inside the armor is difficult. That 10% is just the armor's natural ability to render what seemed to be a meaningful hit null.
The problem I had with the "High AC characters..." thread is that it seems to assume that all characters (or at least all characters above a certain minimum level) have a super-high Dex, high enough to max out mithral heavy armor, for instance. That hasn't been my experience, though. In my current high-ish (level 12-13) game, there isn't any shortage of heavy armor wearers.
The problem I had with the "High AC characters..." thread is that it seems to assume that all characters (or at least all characters above a certain minimum level) have a super-high Dex, high enough to max out mithral heavy armor, for instance. That hasn't been my experience, though. In my current high-ish (level 12-13) game, there isn't any shortage of heavy armor wearers.
I am starting to think that the only way the game can be truly balanced is by eliminating the 15 ways you can assign stats at first level. If you are running the game with honest 4d6 x6 or with a 15 point build game balance is completely different than it is if you use modified rolling methods or 25+ point builds.
If there were a preferred build method with other methods being optional then determinations could be based on that preferred build.
The problem I had with the "High AC characters..." thread is that it seems to assume that all characters (or at least all characters above a certain minimum level) have a super-high Dex, high enough to max out mithral heavy armor, for instance. That hasn't been my experience, though. In my current high-ish (level 12-13) game, there isn't any shortage of heavy armor wearers.
Even that aside, mechanically some armors are useless and people don't get enough from them for the feat cost.
The problem I had with the "High AC characters..." thread is that it seems to assume that all characters (or at least all characters above a certain minimum level) have a super-high Dex, high enough to max out mithral heavy armor, for instance. That hasn't been my experience, though. In my current high-ish (level 12-13) game, there isn't any shortage of heavy armor wearers.Even that aside, mechanically some armors are useless and people don't get enough from them for the feat cost.
Oh sure. But that's different from saying "no one ever wears heavy armor".
Of all the possibilities given, some seem rather complex; others involve protection from magic, which seems thematically odd to me for some reason. Why not step on adamantine's toes a bit, throw a bone to the "armor should give DR, not AC!" crowd, and keep everything the same, but give medium armor DR 1/--, and heavy armor DR 2/--. That's not a big boost, but it sure makes chainmail noticeably better than a chain shirt! Let this DR stack with class feature DR for barbarians and fighters, and you've got a very simple, very minor fix for a very awkward rules dilemma.
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I'd like to see #2 for sure, in that it provides other advantages other than just high AC.
To go further out on a limb, I would like to see something like #1 where armor provides some type of damage reduction.
Houserule Alert:
One rule my old group used to use was that magic armor was inherently lighter and more versatile than simple masterwork versions.
1. Armor weight is reduced by 5 lbs per +1 enhancement bonus, to a minimum of 5 lbs.
2. Arcane spell failure is reduced by 5% per +1 enhancement bonus, to a minimum of 5%.
3. Armor check penalty is reduced by 1 per +1 enhancement bonus, to a maximum of 0.
4. Maximum dexterity bonus is increased by 1 per +1 enhancement bonus, to a maximum equal to the inherent armor bonus of that armor (if higher).
Apply these changes after determining the effects of any special materials.
Examples:
+2 chain shirt - AC 6, Max Dex +4, ACP 0, Spell Failure 10%, 15 lbs.
+5 full plate - AC 13, Max Dex +6, ACP 0, Spell Failure 10%, 25 lbs.
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Of all the possibilities given, some seem rather complex; others involve protection from magic, which seems thematically odd to me for some reason. Why not step on adamantine's toes a bit, throw a bone to the "armor should give DR, not AC!" crowd, and keep everything the same, but give medium armor DR 1/--, and heavy armor DR 2/--. That's not a big boost, but it sure makes chainmail noticeably better than a chain shirt! Let this DR stack with class feature DR for barbarians and fighters, and you've got a very simple, very minor fix for a very awkward rules dilemma.
Why not DR and AC?
Of all the possibilities given, some seem rather complex; others involve protection from magic, which seems thematically odd to me for some reason. Why not step on adamantine's toes a bit, throw a bone to the "armor should give DR, not AC!" crowd, and keep everything the same, but give medium armor DR 1/--, and heavy armor DR 2/--. That's not a big boost, but it sure makes chainmail noticeably better than a chain shirt! Let this DR stack with class feature DR for barbarians and fighters, and you've got a very simple, very minor fix for a very awkward rules dilemma.
I totally flagged your post! Oh wait. There is no way to flag a post as great idea, bummer.
Well I like the idea a lot. The question is, does Mithril Chain Mail (light armor) get you the same DR as regular Chain Armor?
Well I like the idea a lot. The question is, does Mithril Chain Mail (light armor) get you the same DR as regular Chain Armor?
I'll tell you where to stick your flag! ;) j/k
Seriously, the answer to your question would depend on how expensive it is. If the cost is significantly higher than adamantine chain shirt, I say, "why not?" On the other hand, if it comes out a lot cheaper, just tell the players, "sorry, mithral chainmail is light armor; no DR."
Why not DR and AC?
It would be. In this system, chainmail is +5 armor bonus to AC and DR 1/-. A chain shirt is +4 armor bonus to AC and no DR. Unless you mean jack up the AC values as well, above their current ones? I'm hesitant to do that, because armor training can already get them pretty high. Maybe +1/+2 for medium/heavy wouldn't be unreasonable...
The problem I had with the "High AC characters..." thread is that it seems to assume that all characters (or at least all characters above a certain minimum level) have a super-high Dex, high enough to max out mithral heavy armor, for instance. That hasn't been my experience, though. In my current high-ish (level 12-13) game, there isn't any shortage of heavy armor wearers.
Mithril heavy armor takes 16 dex to max. Aka 12, and a +4 item. It's not that unreasonable to have a 16k item when you have 88 or 110 thousand to play with. Though I'd say the point is a bit more take a mithril breast plate instead, and even if you aren't maxing the dex for it the fact you can still move at full speed makes it worth it. And you're going to be auto hit anyways, so why bother?
Now, you certainly 'can' use heavy armors at these levels. You just have to accept they suck horribly and you are only screwing yourself by doing so, likely ending up at best only having two more AC than the party mages. In other words, it's just like saying you 'can' shoot yourself in the crotch. Option is possible =/= option is good or recommended.
Mithril heavy armor takes 16 dex to max. Aka 12, and a +4 item. It's not that unreasonable to have a 16k item when you have 88 or 110 thousand to play with. Though I'd say the point is a bit more take a mithril breast plate instead, and even if you aren't maxing the dex for it the fact you can still move at full speed makes it worth it. And you're going to be auto hit anyways, so why bother?
My point is that some of what you say is campaign-depenedent. For instance, in the campaign I'm referring to:
- There aren't magic stores where you can buy whatever stat-boosting items you like. We currently don't have a crafting caster, either.
- We usually fight large groups of somewhat lower CR rather than a single foe with a huge CR, so being auto-hit by an opponent is rare. (We have a large party, so a big CR enemy tends to absolutely cream one or two characters before drowning in a sea of adventurers.)
- Likewise, since we usually fight large groups of somewhat lower CR, you usually don't have to run around the map trying to find an enemy to attack.
Maybe that's a bit unusual (although I don't think it's terribly unusual), but my only point was that the assumptions you're making (and they are assumptions, not "the way you're supposed to play and if you don't, you're doing it wrong") don't always apply.
At any rate, I've interrupted the conversation enough. Obviously some people see this as a problem, so I should let them speak. I certainly agree that I never see anyone wearing chainmail or half-plate, though.
Points 2 and 3 are not so uncommon. One big guy just gets out actioned and slaughtered easily. So you have to use multiple smaller guys, or one big guy and minions. However, the melee brutes are so much better at being melee brutes than you a few levels doesn't really matter, especially given that AC scaling speed is directly tied to wealth, and wealth doesn't start really scaling fast until the highest levels where you get auto hit regardless.
For example, there are some CR 8 and 9 melee brutes with to hits in the 20s. Throw them against stuff several levels higher, AC is still largely irrelevant.
Point 1 however invalidates the entire issue as not being able to visit a 'magic shop' means you, the melee are doomed to uselessness regardless of armor. Especially when along the same lines it means a lower chance of getting the things that give you some semblance of mobility and real defenses like Boots of Speed and Lesser Cloaks of Displacement.
Point 1 however invalidates the entire issue as not being able to visit a 'magic shop' means you, the melee are doomed to uselessness regardless of armor.
The uselessness of the melee folks in my party is debatable (some are more useless than others), but the fact remains that there are campaigns where the melee folks wear heavy armor and manage somehow; our party picks up loads of suits of magic plate, and not so many magic gloves or cloaks of displacement or whatever.
(I'm not one of the melee guys, by the way.)
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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Of all the possibilities given, some seem rather complex; others involve protection from magic, which seems thematically odd to me for some reason. Why not step on adamantine's toes a bit, throw a bone to the "armor should give DR, not AC!" crowd, and keep everything the same, but give medium armor DR 1/--, and heavy armor DR 2/--. That's not a big boost, but it sure makes chainmail noticeably better than a chain shirt! Let this DR stack with class feature DR for barbarians and fighters, and you've got a very simple, very minor fix for a very awkward rules dilemma.I think this is a brilliant idea (it counters most darkness spells).
Only thing I would add on to this fix would be that Mithril did not change the catagory of the armor and simply reduced penalties. So Mithril Chain Mail is still Medium armor it just has less of a skill check penalty and a higher max dex bonus. Those benefits are enough to make mithril desireable without breaking other parts of the game.
I think this is a must have change for mithril.
Only thing I would add on to this fix would be that Mithril did not change the catagory of the armor and simply reduced penalties. So Mithril Chain Mail is still Medium armor it just has less of a skill check penalty and a higher max dex bonus. Those benefits are enough to make mithril desireable without breaking other parts of the game.I think this is a must have change for mithril.
I agree; good call, Kalyth.
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If weapons give you crit ranges, perhaps armor should give you miss ranges in addition to normal AC bonuses?
d20
1 - Always miss vs no or light armor.
1-2 - Always miss vs medium armor.
1-3 - Almays miss vs heavy armor.
+1 to miss range with a shield.
It's not reliable, but at least it scales, and armor is still somewhat relevant after 10th level.
I dunno. Just brainstorming.
The problem I had with the "High AC characters..." thread is that it seems to assume that all characters (or at least all characters above a certain minimum level) have a super-high Dex, high enough to max out mithral heavy armor, for instance. That hasn't been my experience, though. In my current high-ish (level 12-13) game, there isn't any shortage of heavy armor wearers.Mithril heavy armor takes 16 dex to max. Aka 12, and a +4 item. It's not that unreasonable to have a 16k item when you have 88 or 110 thousand to play with. Though I'd say the point is a bit more take a mithril breast plate instead, and even if you aren't maxing the dex for it the fact you can still move at full speed makes it worth it. And you're going to be auto hit anyways, so why bother?
Now, you certainly 'can' use heavy armors at these levels. You just have to accept they suck horribly and you are only screwing yourself by doing so, likely ending up at best only having two more AC than the party mages. In other words, it's just like saying you 'can' shoot yourself in the crotch. Option is possible =/= option is good or recommended.
I ended up doing this exact same way in my game. I didn't focus on dex, but I kept on trying to eleminate the speed penatly and armor check penalty, and after a while it just seemed better to buy a Mithril chain shirt, as it was near epic and had a +5 dex book and +6 item, with the +5 bonus and armor effect, and also have bracors of armor 8.
The only thing 'mithril does not reduce type category' does is create a 1 - 1 = 0 situation. In other words, you have one valid option and you take it away, so now you have none. Aside from further screwing over melee this serves no purpose whatsoever.
If weapons give you crit ranges, perhaps armor should give you miss ranges in addition to normal AC bonuses?
d20
1 - Always miss vs no or light armor.
1-2 - Always miss vs medium armor.
1-3 - Almays miss vs heavy armor.
+1 to miss range with a shield.It's not reliable, but at least it scales, and armor is still somewhat relevant after 10th level.
I dunno. Just brainstorming.
That seemed like a good option to me as well. Considering that 20% miss chance is a level 2 spell, I thought that giving half of that to armor seemed reasonable. Tying it into the normal attack roll mechanics provides actually a fair bit more, as it would allow effective stacking of a cloak of minor displacement with whatever additional missing mechanism armor adds.
+1
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Even that aside, mechanically some armors are useless and people don't get enough from them for the feat cost.
Medium Armor, IMO, is a complete hose. You go from the +4 Chain Shirt as Light Armor to the +6 Splint or Banded Heavy Armor. Medium totally gets the shaft.
A Chain Shirt should be +3 armor bonus and Hide Armor should be +4. Banded / Splint should be swapped to Medium Armors.
That would change the dynamic so that Light armors would be +1 to +3, Medium would be +4 to +6, and Heavy would be +7 or higher, and only include Half-Plate and Full-Plate at the outset.
A Chain Shirt or Breastplate could also have the option to be used with an armor-enhancing item, such as an Armored Kilt or Dastana, which would likely be a popular way to enhance the Chain Shirts lower armor value (or the Breastplates, which would still be +5, but no longer the pinnacle of Medium Armor, which would be the +6 Banded or Splint armors).
Regardless of all that stuff, in a game with non-metal armored Druids, the core equipment list *needs* to have some non-metal options other than leather, such as scaled hide, bone, wood, etc. as well as some mid to high level 'darkwood'/'duskwood' armor that is near metal equivalent (-1 AC, unless enhanced with ironwood) but lighter, like mithral for druids. I'm pretty peeved whenever I write up a Cleric with a Chain Shirt and realize that he's both faster *and* better armored than my Druid in her Hide Armor...
Giving all Medium Armor DR 1/- and all Heavy Armor DR 2/- sounds like an awesome and really quick and easy fix to make armor more attractive. It also nicely simulates how a plate-armored knight might shrug off goblin attacks, but be less apparently 'invulnerable' to an ogre's swings.
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Even that aside, mechanically some armors are useless and people don't get enough from them for the feat cost.Medium Armor, IMO, is a complete hose. You go from the +4 Chain Shirt as Light Armor to the +6 Splint or Banded Heavy Armor. Medium totally gets the shaft.
A Chain Shirt should be +3 armor bonus and Hide Armor should be +4. Banded / Splint should be swapped to Medium Armors.
I don't think that effectively weakening light armour is the solution. I don't mind if medium armour's expanded and that pushed heavy armour to higher AC bonuses, though.
I am pretty keen on Armour gaining DR, though (and wherever it starts, I'd like to see it able to go pretty high with right materials and enhancements; you'll presumably still get autohit by the Tarrasque, but maybe it won't kill you in a round or two).
Dragonhide armors. There's your druid option. Assuming you don't just Wild Shape it.
Edit: Making the miss chance be in the attack roll and not separate actually results in a slightly lower overall result.
If you have 2 normal miss chances this means all attacks have a 39.2% chance of auto missing as they must get 21 or better on a percentile (80% chance), then 21 or better on a percentile again (80% chance, or .8 * .8 = .64), then a 2 or higher on the attack roll (95% chance). .64 * .95 = .608 = 60.8% maximum chance to hit aka 39.2% auto miss.
If you have one normal miss chance and one auto miss on a 4 or lower you instead just get the .8 * .8 part, assuming the enemy would miss anyways on a 2, 3 or 4 (in some cases, namely after vicious debuffs it can happen). If not, still less. Even so, a 64% maximum chance to be hit is worse than a 60.8% maximum chance to be hit assuming you are on the receiving end.
If it added 4 numbers of auto miss aka 5 or lower auto misses instead you get 60% maximum hit chance which of course is a straight 40% miss chance with that armor + lesser displacement cloak. Which is roughly comparable to but slightly better than the first example. However this one is more conditional as it is possible a 2-5 would miss you anyways. Not that likely, but possible. That's likely good enough to compensate for eight tenths of a single percentile and then some though, and that is enough.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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I'd like to see #2 for sure, in that it provides other advantages other than just high AC.
To go further out on a limb, I would like to see something like #1 where armor provides some type of damage reduction.
Houserule Alert:** spoiler omitted **
I actually love your spoilered rule, and it makes absolute sense with the PF intention of making higher-plus items actually mean something. Yknow, have some purpose other than +1 [foo] + MagVest.
Even that aside, mechanically some armors are useless and people don't get enough from them for the feat cost.Medium Armor, IMO, is a complete hose. You go from the +4 Chain Shirt as Light Armor to the +6 Splint or Banded Heavy Armor. Medium totally gets the shaft.
A Chain Shirt should be +3 armor bonus and Hide Armor should be +4. Banded / Splint should be swapped to Medium Armors.
Medium armor is useful in a few situations:
1) 1st level, before you can afford heavy armor.
2) Barbarian with Fast Move; especially a dwarf barbarian, who has a speed of 30 ft in both light or medium armor.
3) The character has a restriction on what armor they can wear (i.e., druid). The poor effectiveness of non-metal armor (unless dragonhide or ironwood versions of metal armor) in 3.x core is somewhat mitigated in Golarion with the hide shirt (90 gp, +4 armor, +4 max. Dex, -3 Armor Check, 20% Arcane Spell Failure, 25 lbs, Medium).
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I actually love your spoilered rule, and it makes absolute sense with the PF intention of making higher-plus items actually mean something. Yknow, have some purpose other than +1 [foo] + MagVest.I'd like to see #2 for sure, in that it provides other advantages other than just high AC.
To go further out on a limb, I would like to see something like #1 where armor provides some type of damage reduction.
Houserule Alert:** spoiler omitted **
Thanks, Jason.
We played with it for the duration of 3.0, but sort of phased it out when 3.5 came around. Don't know why. But you mention something that I didn't catch - it equates armor enhancement with weapon enhancement in that it does something more and makes it interesting.
At the same time, I think it presents a very real positive step for heavy armor wearers. With a set of +5 mithral full plate and a decent Dex you can actually get a better AC than the rogue in +5 mithral breastplate.
The other thing that caused my group to enjoy it was that it is incredibly easy to figure out, and changes none of the existing rules in the game.
I think this need som kind of change too, but I really can't point a valid option.
In my games we use Armor as DR (actually, only half the bonus), but full plate still seems not that much. Maybe the numbers just needed to go up and remove the effect of mithril things becoming lighter...
Anyway, as I said, I can't point a valid option...