Scalemail - Is There Ever a Reason to use it after 1st Level?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

101 to 114 of 114 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | next > last >>

Charon's Little Helper wrote:
As to loot - I always have a pack animal or 2 for such things when not playing Pathfinder Society.

It surprises me how often players DON'T do that!


Charon's Little Helper wrote:
Ze'Rehan wrote:
15-point buy. Not the best stats available for us. And the paladin took higher Int and Wis. Think the Dex was the 3rd best stat on that paladin.
Why? Those are the 2 least important stats on a paladin!

Indeed... The first time, I believe, the player has played one. He has said that he wishes he had read all the abilities of a paladin before making it now, and he would have done the stats completely different.

10 Char.....

But, live and learn, right? :-)


Glad I found this thread after searching for it.


Well, if we're dabbling in necromancy; I have no idea how this thread seemed to completely miss that if the DM (via random loot or hand-picking loot) gave magical scale mail, it may well be the best thing the party has => While not the most optimal, it's better than selling it for half price and buying something less good; at least until later.

This is before you even get to the argument about the availability of different armors of the same enchantment and whatnot or find people (who happen to be able to pay off a small army) who want to buy your hunk of armor so badly that they'd rather do that than retire 30 years early.


J-Rokka wrote:
in my experience, no. Everyone either jumps for chain shirts, breastplates, or Full Plate. after that, the rest become useless.

To the contrary, cheap and cumbersome armor retains a usefulness, if only to equip cheaply one's retinue, men at arms and less favored henchmen


Cold Napalm wrote:
Mynameisjake wrote:

Yeah, and everybody always uses a long sword. What's up with that that? Long swords should be removed from the game so people will be forced to use scimitars more often.

And great swords, too. They're way too popular. Why can't the great axe get any love? Players should be forced to use the great axe.

And come to think of it, I only see PC classes in my game. What's wrong with the expert? Or the adept? PC classes need a big ban hammer.

And don't get me started on the spells sleep and detect magic. Those get used all the time! Those should be right out as well.

Longswords? Are you kidding me? The prefered weapon of choice is the kukuri, scimitar, falchion and rapier. Those are mechanically the best options.

But longwords, likely for reasons dating back to OD&D or AD&D still remain the most common enchanted weapon, short of commissioning your own


D&D/Pathfinder are anachronistic, combining weapon and armor types from vastly different time periods that simply didn't coexist in the same time and place in actual history. Heck, "leather" armor as it's usually depicted in fantasy art is completely made-up. Soft leather is basically useless as armor and provides less protection than a thick layer of winter clothing, and hardened leather is heavy armor for all intents and purposes. If Pathfinder were realistic, full plate would be basically mandatory on anyone who wants to be in melee and no other armor would be used seriously. It's just that much better than the alternatives. It's not even a matter of fighting style or preference; the protective properties of full plate are simply so massive that the downsides hardly even matter and nothing else really compares.

But Pathfinder isn't about being balanced around realistic representations of armor, it's about letting people look cool in the armor style of their choice. And in this sense, the statting of scale mail fails, because no one wants to be using scale mail.


So, Pillars of Eternity has this really neat armor system that I want to share mostly to contrast Pathfinder's system.

So, in PoE armor is divided into about 10-12 different catagories ranging from Robes to Full Plate. Robes have an armor rating of 0 but also have a "action penalty" of 0 which means that a character in Robes has no cooldown between actions.

Every time you go up an armor catagory, you gain 1 point of armor and take a 5% hit to action penalty. So the rank 4 armor provides a 20% delay inbetween your normal attack pattern.

Armor, however, in PoE is purely an HP buffer and does not determine how difficult you are to hit. Instead, armor reduces the damage you take. Certain weapons are better at piercing armor than others, and if the weapon in question lacks too much armor piercing your damage is reduced massively.

Obviously this system works best in a CRPG setting, but it provides a look at another system that dealt with "there are a ton of different fantasy armor types, how do we make them all useful?" and the answer is "make them a scale of cost-benefit"


MicMan wrote:

In my opinion Scale Armor is in the game so that someone has a use for all these slain Dragons.

Historically D&D has been notoriously prone to get their weapons and armors wrong.

Scale Mail wasn't nearly as common as Chain Mail. While it was easier to manufacture than Chain Mail it used a lot more material. In the years between 100 BC and 1100 AD, when these two armors were used along to each other, material cost was everything and labor cost was nothing. Also Scale Mail, while offering a bit more protection (so should having +1 AC), is much more cumbersome (worse spell failure chance and max dex bonus) and should be more expensive.

On to the matter of swords.

In the terminology of the middle ages there were two broad types of swords: Short Swords and Long Swords.

Short Swords were wielded in one hand while Long Swords were wielded usually with two hands.

So you could roll Gladius, Spatha, Dussak, Scramasax, Viking type hew Swords and Norman to Knight to Renaissance one hand Swords into the Short Sword category and War Sword, 1.5 hander / Bastard Sword, Greatsword, Claymore and Bidenhander into the Long Sword Category.

It is accepted today that the Dussak (actually more a knive than a sword) marks the last "common ancestor" between Short Swords and curved Short Swords (Falchion, Scimitar and Saber), however some manuscripts roll even these into the Short Sword category.

If you want to see "historically correct Long Swords" used in a "historically correct" context see HERE.

plus for the same amount of material as Scale you could make the vastly better lamellar styles which actually protect against upward thrusts.


Yeah, but D&D/PF is mostly based on Western cultures, and for some reason lamellar is a hallmark of Eastern civilisations.


Klorox wrote:
Yeah, but D&D/PF is mostly based on Western cultures, and for some reason lamellar is a hallmark of Eastern civilisations.

which is odd, given the Viking era examples that have survived, in bog finds.


were those really lamellar, or scale?...
I don't know much about bog finds, beside bog bodies. and I thought most early Germanic (pre chainmail rediscovery) armor were ring mail, more than scale or lamellar types.


Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Klorox wrote:
Yeah, but D&D/PF is mostly based on Western cultures, and for some reason lamellar is a hallmark of Eastern civilisations.

One of the best tricks I ever found to making a setting feel different was changing what the most commonly found weapons and armour were - e.g. letting the players know from the start they were far more likely to see magic scimitars and lances rather than longswords and greatswords just because those were the local traditional weapons.


Klorox wrote:

were those really lamellar, or scale?...

I don't know much about bog finds, beside bog bodies. and I thought most early Germanic (pre chainmail rediscovery) armor were ring mail, more than scale or lamellar types.

depends on the era, certainly the Viking age finds at Snackgarde, Birka, Gnezdovo and Novgorod are lamellar, with thousands of total sections found at battle sites and othe graves (in separate pieces usually) the argument could be made that these were imported pieces from the Byzantine empire, and Turkic tribes, but either way it is almost as common as surviving chain armour from the same regions, and depending on how you view the Byzantine empire itself (European or something else) the use was wide spread with their Kataphtactoi for instance.

101 to 114 of 114 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / General Discussion / Scalemail - Is There Ever a Reason to use it after 1st Level? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in General Discussion