A Suggestion for Balancing Armor Types - Armor Based Stamina Regen


Pathfinder Online

Goblin Squad Member

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I've noticed, discussed with many other players, and seen posted a few times on this boards reference to the disparity between heavy armor and all lighter armors. While offering significantly increased protection, they have little in the way of drawbacks now that they give no movement speed penalties.

Because of this I would like to put forward a suggestion about bringing the different armor classes in line with eachother.

The Basic Premise

Increased stamina is introduced as a benefit of armor. Basically as armor becomes higher and higher quality it offers more and more stamina regen based on a scale like this:

Clothing = Huge stam regen bonus, no protection bonus
Light Armor = Large stam regen bonus , small protection bonus
Medium Armor = Small stam regen bonus, large protection bonus
Heavy Armor = No stam regen bonus, huge protection bonus

Here's the idea behind it. If you balance heavy armor purely through heavy armor penalties then that means that the difference between lower quality light armor and clothing and high quality light armor and clothing is far less pronounced than the difference between low quality heavy armor and high quality heavy armor.

By using a stam regen bonus you can put all armor types on the exact same power curve, but they just give their bonuses to different things.

Balancing This Bonus

The obvious / instant effect you're going to see from this is lighter armor classes, especially well geared light armor classes, throwing off way more abilities way faster, while heavy armor classes are stuck with the same amount of stam regen.

This is largely just going to balance out heavy armor which is currently insanely OP but there are a couple things that should be considered because of this.

1. As the only current clothing class Wizards will be working with a huge amount of stamina. An unfortunate side-effect could be wizards just sitting back and spamming the hell out of high stam cost abilties while ignoring low stam cost ones. The way to prevent this is an across the board increase of the stam costs of all arcane abilities as well as a buff to their effects. This will need a bit of testing and tweaking as raising say the damage by the same amount as the stam cost may prove to be OP.

This may make arcane spells a poor choice for wearers of medium and heavy armor and not as strong for users of light armor. This can easily be offset if roles such as the Magus are introduced by decreasing the stam cost of arcane abilities by a certain % per keyword in their armor feat.

2. Ranged and divine attacks are not dealt with in point one but are primarily used by medium and light armor classes. So they may need a lesser tweak to their costs and effects. This does lower the effectiveness of heavy armor ranged characters and divine casters but you could give appropriate roles such as crusader a reduced cost to such effects like described in point one.

Then again nerfing the ability of the heavy armor crusader to heal themselves as effectively as the evangelist and healer roles might not be such a bad thing.

3. Melee is used by both heavy armor and light armor classes. And currently the light armor classes wielding it are thee most underpowered roles in the game. I say keep it the way it is, anyone crazy enough to fight on the front lines in light armor deserves that kind or raw power. I would even increased the speed at which those classes can use melee attacks to enhance their ability to burn through all that stam.

Stam Regen to Protection Bonus Defensive Abilties

But what about monks? High AC rangers and rogues? Not all classes that wear lighter armor are glass cannons. Some of them can actually be quite defensive.

Correct! I'm glad you mentioned that!

So how could one create such a character in PFO? They could do it with the introduction of stam regen to protection bonus defensive abilities.

Basically these are defensive abilities which, along with the usual effect one would expect from a defensive ability have the effect "Trade 30% of your armor based stam regen for protection. You get X points of protection per stam regen lost."

Why 30? Because why would anyone play a heavy armor class if you could slot abilities that gave you 100% of their defense on any other character? 30% totals up to 90% if you use one of these abilities in every slot meaning while you can go very defensive with a light armor role heavy armor roles are still the kings of AC.

So you can go the glass cannon rogue who dies from a stiff breeze but hurls out insane damage. But you could also slot 1-3 of these abilities if you want to trade some of that raw power for survivability.

A Final Note on Heavy Armor

So as stated above heavy armor roles would still have the absolute most defense. The counter balance to that is armor check penalties. In the tabletop certain abilities such a stealth, fly, swim etc. are penalized while wearing armor. Those same abilities need to be penalized in PFO as they are implemented.

TL:DR

Make lighter armors give increased stam regen on the same curve as heavy armor gives increased protection. Put in defensive abilities that let them trade this for protection (at about 90% of the effectiveness as if they had just opted for heavier armor.) Adjust the cost and effective of arcane, ranged, and divine skills to make sure classes using them still need to manage their stam.

Goblin Squad Member

Andius the Afflicted wrote:

I've noticed, discussed with many other players, and seen posted a few times on this boards reference to the disparity between heavy armor and all lighter armors. While offering significantly increased protection, they have little in the way of drawbacks now that they give no movement speed penalties.

Because of this I would like to put forward a suggestion about bringing the different armor classes in line with eachother.

The Basic Premise

Increased stamina is introduced as a benefit of armor. Basically as armor becomes higher and higher quality it offers more and more stamina regen based on a scale like this:

Clothing = Huge stam regen bonus, no protection bonus
Light Armor = Large stam regen bonus , small protection bonus
Medium Armor = Small stam regen bonus, large protection bonus
Heavy Armor = No stam regen bonus, huge protection bonus

Here's the idea behind it. If you balance heavy armor purely through heavy armor penalties then that means that the difference between lower quality light armor and clothing and high quality light armor and clothing is far less pronounced than the difference between low quality heavy armor and high quality heavy armor.

By using a stam regen bonus you can put all armor types on the exact same power curve, but they just give their bonuses to different things.

Balancing This Bonus

The obvious / instant effect you're going to see from this is lighter armor classes, especially well geared light armor classes, throwing off way more abilities way faster, while heavy armor classes are stuck with the same amount of stam regen.

This is largely just going to balance out heavy armor which is currently insanely OP but there are a couple things that should be considered because of this.

1. As the only current clothing class Wizards will be working with a huge amount of stamina. An unfortunate side-effect could be wizards just sitting back and spamming the hell out of high stam cost abilties while ignoring low stam cost ones. The way to...

This is actually very similar to how Ultima Online worked back in the day; I liked it a lot.


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I would go the other way around, having heavier armor slow down stamina regen. Then you don't have to rebalance attack costs or anything.

Also, this is being discussed on the Alpha forum as well, for those with access: Armor Balance/Unbalance


Add in some fall damage, too. I really liked RPGs backintheday when you'd spec armor and it would have like Def and Magic Resist, and for the most part (except for some outliers) light armor gave you more magic resist. So, in a way, we should also be focusing on something deeper like how each armor resists each attack type.

So, heavy armor would be more suited to going in and fighting, and might resist arrows a bit better, too. An ideal light armor would be high resist to arrows (pierce?) and magic. Then really take a hit from swords and blunt.

I still want to see, with the ranged balance, a system where a person in light armor can possibly be faster, even if like lvl 8 light armor gets light armor speed bonus 1 feat or whatever. Nothing huge, either. But so that in a foot race a character could outrun a fighter in heavy armor.

In these games, speed is obviously most important, so maybe it could be a sort of sprint feature. I think that's what is going to balance the game more or less. Stamina helps, too.


Good ideas Andius.

In PvP, Speed + HP = #winning. Since Heavy Armor reduces the hit to your HP, to balance it you'd need to have it hit speed.

If they tie the ability to sprint to stamina and/or stamina regen, I think that would go a long way to balancing some of this stuff.

By making Heavy armor have a negative or null effect on stamina regen, you inherently gimp a heavy armor player's ability to sprint.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

I'd like to see more active defensive feats, rather than passive. Give the monks an "attack" feat (or an expendable) comparable to the shield feats, and give monk armor feats a hefty reflex bonus instead of physical resistance.

It bothers me that so many people are expecting all of the defenses to be passive.

Goblin Squad Member

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DeciusBrutus wrote:

I'd like to see more active defensive feats, rather than passive. Give the monks an "attack" feat (or an expendable) comparable to the shield feats, and give monk armor feats a hefty reflex bonus instead of physical resistance.

It bothers me that so many people are expecting all of the defenses to be passive.

What do you mean "so many people?" Most people I talk to don't even understand what a "feat" is. Let alone if it's active or passive.

:-)

Goblinworks Executive Founder

I mean that the discussion is heavily dominated by discussion of passive effects as though those effects were the only ones possible; it was suggested that monks should get a bonus for wearing clothing armor and be able to passively exchange it somehow.

The more appropriate way would for there to be a ki focus expendable ability Iron Body that provides meaningful Resistance, combined with larger Defense bonuses on lighter armor; +20 reflex might not be enough, but that needs to be tested at levels that haven't been reached outside of internal testing.

Goblin Squad Member

Monks, rangers and rogues can all be built to have a high AC which is a passive form of defense and is best represented by a protection bonus.

@Spitfire, the problem with attempting to balance it with penalties is that leaves characters in low grade cloth/light armor too powerful or high grade cloth and light armor too weak.

To get the full benefit of heavy armor's protection you need the best heavy armor possible. That's why I balanced it out with an opposing bonus to lighter armors. To get the full effect of that bonus you need the best light armor possible. It's far easier to balance that way.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

I don't think there's a sane monk build that has a high flatfooted AC. The highest I can do offhand is 25 with unlimited budget and medium creature (10+5 clothing armor/bracers+5 amulet of natural armor+5 deflection+2 force shield)

In heavy armor, add 13, 8 form +5 plate mail replacing the +5 clothing, and a +5 shield replacing the ring of force shield.

Sure, high DEX and dodge bonuses are possible, but they are not pasive defenses, even though they don't consume an action to implement.

Goblin Squad Member

They are passive in that the player does not have to take any action to receive them. They may represent movement and dodging but a TT monk, rogue, or ranger does not need to spend all their actions maintaining their AC. Neither should a PFO monk, rogue, or ranger.


Andius the Afflicted wrote:

@Spitfire, the problem with attempting to balance it with penalties is that leaves characters in low grade cloth/light armor too powerful or high grade cloth and light armor too weak.

To get the full benefit of heavy armor's protection you need the best heavy armor possible. That's why I balanced it out with an opposing bonus to lighter armors. To get the full effect of that bonus you need the best light armor possible. It's far easier to balance that way.

That is very counter intuitive. Thank you for pointing it out.

Edit: Although, I suppose you could also do it such that the stamina penalty is a flat penalty across all tiers and +'s. That *might* work. Dunno. I am too foggy of mind to think about it right now.

Scarab Sages Goblin Squad Member

I like a lot of aspects of this idea very much.

Armor-based speed effects need to be calibrated very carefully. If you're in a party, you want the whole party to move together, more or less. A few Alpha versions ago, when heavy armor had a big speed penalty, everyone else reached mob camps several rounds ahead of the supposed front-liners.

A 0.5 to 0.75 meter per round difference might be large enough to provide a bonus in melee, but small enough to keep the party grouped up when they're on the move. The extra stamina regen of lighter armor would allow rogues to scout ahead a little bit by sprinting (after the sprinting stamina burn enters the game).

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