Okay I can see how any kind of armor would get in the way of spell casting and how the weight might exhaust one easily, but penalties seem stupid ridiculous high. Full plate has a -6, to give an example of how ludicrous that is, take into account that having a 1 in an attribute is only a penalty of -5. If you have no bonus to dexterity, full plate can make you worse off than the clutz who runs into walls and trips on his feet... And from all the modern anecdotal evidence that I've researched it is actually a lot more mobile than it's given credit for in certain circles, but at the same time people have given plenty of examples where leather and padded armor/clothing can be quite cumbersome. This all leads me to believe the simple way to abstract this is for armor in general to have the same penalty.
So anyway, would just making the acp a -2 for all armors, upset any balance?
|
So anyway, would just making the ACP a -2 for all armors, upset any balance?
Skills, IMO, are kind of a red-headed stepchild in 3.X/PF anyway, and I don't think that reducing the ACP checks to Dex skills would really do anything to meaningfully impact game balance.
Still, aesthetically, I'd prefer for heavier armors to be more restrictive than medium armors, so if I were to tinker with this, I'd go with 0 ACP for light armors, -2 ACP for medium armors and -4 ACP for heavy armors.
That would still be a fair savings from the actual numbers, but still keep the full plate-armored paladin sufficiently far away from the numbers of the chain shirt-wearing rogue to feel like the rogue isn't losing anything in the deal.
You might want to similarly look at the ACP numbers for shields, reducing them to ACP 0 for bucklers and light shields, ACP -2 for heavy shields and ACP -4 for tower shields, or something.
Is it 'realistic' that someone in full plate with a tower shield 'only' has a -8 ACP instead of a -16 ACP? Eh. There's nothing particularly 'realistic' about someone in full plate with a tower shield swimming at *any* ACP, so it depends on how far your disbelief is willing to suspend, I suppose. :)
(That being said, a wooden tower shield, even a metal-reinforced one, might make a halfway decent raft...)
Realistic is relative I suppose. I mean it's not like armor at anyway hinders an archer mechanically, though if it is as restrictive as it's made out to be it seems like reaching tiny little arrows with your gauntlets from your quiver on your back with your limited movement just doesn't seem feasible.
As far as swimming in heavy armor goes, I've seen videos of people (who were neither expert swimmers nor body builders) doing it so it's definitely possible. I wouldn't even really have a problem with a tower shield granted that it's on the back and not being wielded in the hand (although that should be more of a GM call on an RP moment).
If you want realism, heavy armour (especially full plate) would slow down stuff like moving and climbing a bit, but not much. But stealth (and probably swimming, but I've never seen anyone crazy enough to try that) should be utterly impossible. Metal armour makes an enormous racket.
So if you say that you can't swim or sneak in heavy armour, but everything else is a flat -2 or -4, that sounds fine.
So anyway, would just making the acp a -2 for all armors, upset any balance?
My image of medieval fantasy has people running around in full plate and doing heroic things. The brutal ACPs/speed penalties push people away from heavy armour and into DEX builds.
I did away from all speed and ACPs and suddenly armour existed in my game again.
The only negatives that came from armour was if its weight pushed you above your light load.
Honestly it helped rather than hurt the game :)
Right now, this is the only way that I would take heavy armor:
Be a fighter. Take Armor Expert trait (if at level 7 or below). Wear Mithral Full plate.
At level 7, you would have full plate that you can run around in like it's practically nothing.
AC: +9
Max dex: +5
ACP: 0
If there were changes made to make the ACP set for light/medium/heavy, I think it would make the different armors within each level become even more tiered than they currently are (for example, if heavy ACP was always -4, who would take anything other than full plate?)
It also would reduce the usefulness of the fighter's Armor Training, although I wouldn't mind seeing that replaced if there was an ACP change across the board.