Lord Aerthos Pendragon's page

This thread branches off from this one because I'd like to focus discussion in this thread to a proposal by Jason Nelson that seemed to get skipped over. Again, this idea was proposed by Jason Nelson and I feel it has a lot of merit and deserves more discussion. (Some paraphrasing has been done, but otherwise this concept is un-altered.)

The biggest problem with the armor system is that medium armor sucks. It is a poor choice for any class that wears armor. I would favor...

1. Get rid of the chain shirt.
   
2. If you can't bring yourself to drop chain shirt, then drop padded armor and reduce the AC bonus of light armors by 1 (i.e. leather is +1, studded is +2, chain shirt is +3).
   
3. If we must keep a speed penalties for heavier armors, change it to -5 ft for medium and -10 ft for heavy.
   
4. Increase the AC bonus for all medium armors by 1.
   
5. Increase the AC bonus for all heavy armors by 2.
   
6. Tie shields to armor type, as follows...
   
   
   
   • Buckler is light armor, +1 AC
     
   • Light shield is medium armor, +2 AC
     
   • Heavy shield is heavy armor, +3 AC
     
   • Tower shield is an exotic heavy armor, +6 AC
     
   
   
7. Create a helmet entry that gets factored into Armor Class and get enchanted seperately.
   
   
   
   • An open-faced helm is medium armor. +1 helmet bonus to AC, -1 to Perception checks (-2 if not proficient).
     
   • A great helm is heavy armor. +2 helmet bonus to AC, -2 to Perception checks (-4 if not proficient).
     
   
   
8. Add a concept of a "vital AC bonus". The principle of the light-fighter is that he's hard to hit, but once you hit him you're getting metal on skin. The heavy fighter, once you hit the AC, you still have to punch through the metal.
   
   
   
   • Light armor gets +0 AC vs. critical confirmation rolls.
     
   • Medium armor gets +X AC vs. critical confirmation rolls.
     
   • Heavy armor gets +2X AC vs. critical confirmation rolls.
     
   
   

Adding DR to armor as a part of the core rules would help a lot too. I would suggest something along the lines of...

DR = 1/2 armor bonus + enhancement bonus

Even without the changes proposed above this would be huge, as now that +1 Hide Armor is (+4 AC, DR 3) vs. a chain shirt (+4 AC, no DR).

I would also suggest that DR scales as follows...

• DR/magic for non-magical armor
  
• DR/adamantine for magical armor
  
• DR/- for adamantine armor
  

Should shields count in this argument? Sure, why not. We can exclude bucklers if we like.

Now our doughty warrior in +5 Full Plate and +5 Heavy Shield not only gets a +20 AC bonus but also DR 10/adamantine. Which is comparable to or better than what the monsters he's fighting at that level (you could easily afford this rig by early double digits if not before - it's only about 52K) will have.

If we implemented the helmet rule, add a +5 Great Helm (bumping the price to 77K), now we're at +27 AC and DR 13/adamantine.

What do you think? Is this a reasonable fix to implement?

Please change Track back to a feat and give the Ranger a bonus to it. Tracking is supposed to be something that is unique to the Ranger, and now it's something that's open to all.

I'm all for other classes being able to find tracks. That's a simple Perception check. But being able to accurately track a creature for a distance and discern things from those tracks (number of creatures, for instance) should be something special.

So please, change Track back to the way it was in 3.5. I never saw any issues with it, and never heard complaints from other players about it. I proposed a similiar thing for the Rogue's Trapfinding ability in this thread and will bring this issue up again once we get to the Feats section of the playtest.

Is this product even still available? I'm not sure because I was looking through the Pathfinder products, and there isn't any price listed, and the title link doesn't even work! :(

I've heard great things about this and want to check it out, and likely purchase a copy... but I don't know what the status of this product is.