The armor issue origionates from overpowered "+level to everything" emechanic. After you get 10-15 levels, many things become insignificant, such as being trained vs untrained or having any expert-level equipment.
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Strongly disagree. The difference between someone having a 75% chance to hit you and a 40% chance to hit you (ie. a 7 point difference in AC) is night and day. A 75% chance to hit is also a 25% chance of getting a critical hit, while a 40% chance only has a 5% chance to critical hit (nat 20 only).
The effective difference in incoming damage is such that the person with 40% chance to be hit is taking less than half the damage of the one with 75% chance to be hit.
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At higher levels that 7 point difference can be less than a 20% to hit difference. A front level fighter should have a MUCH bigger difference than an unarmored wizard than that! Armor should be worth more than it is currently.Strongly disagree. The difference between someone having a 75% chance to hit you and a 40% chance to hit you (ie. a 7 point difference in AC) is night and day. A 75% chance to hit is also a 25% chance of getting a critical hit, while a 40% chance only has a 5% chance to critical hit (nat 20 only).
The effective difference in incoming damage is such that the person with 40% chance to be hit is taking less than half the damage of the one with 75% chance to be hit.
Can you math that for me? Because I can't see how that's possibly true right now.
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At higher levels that 7 point difference can be less than a 20% to hit difference.
Note that AC 10 and AC 17 against +4 attack is exactly the same as AC 40 and AC 47 against +34 attack. The 7 point difference has the same effect on the hit chances in both cases.
At higher levels that 7 point difference can be less than a 20% to hit difference. A front level fighter should have a MUCH bigger difference than an unarmored wizard than that! Armor should be worth more than it is currently.Strongly disagree. The difference between someone having a 75% chance to hit you and a 40% chance to hit you (ie. a 7 point difference in AC) is night and day. A 75% chance to hit is also a 25% chance of getting a critical hit, while a 40% chance only has a 5% chance to critical hit (nat 20 only).
The effective difference in incoming damage is such that the person with 40% chance to be hit is taking less than half the damage of the one with 75% chance to be hit.
How can those 7 points less than 20% hit? 7 points in a 1-20 scale is 35%, and depending on how much it was easy to hit you in the first place, up to 35% crit as well.
^he's right, anything higher than a +17 will hit both a 17 and a 10 in anything but a natural 1. And iirc you don't add your level to AC which means either your character is dependent on magic armor to not take hits, or is getting hit all the time.
What game are you talking about here?
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"Proficiency modifier" on pages 8 and 9 specify that you add your level -2 to things you are untrained in, your level to things you are trained in, your level +1 to things you are an expert in, etc.
Proficiency for armor works precisely the same as proficiency for skills or weapons or saving throws or spellcasting.
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I'm inclined to agree with the position that armor is represented as being too weak.
I'm a 1st-level Fighter in a breastplate with a shield and some Dexterity, and an entry-level basic Goblin is hitting me on a 12+.
Not good.
Feels too much like D&D 4e; it seems like everything in that game hit you on a 12+ if you were in heavy armor.
Comparing to the Goblin Warrior (which is what I think you were talking about), it would need a 14+ if you were using a heavy shield and had 20 AC because of it. The goblin would also likely die in 1 hit assuming you also had some strength (it's really easy to have both decent strength and dexterity in this system). I think getting hit 35% of the time is reasonable at level 1.
If you're comparing to one of the level 1 Goblin Commandos, 2 of those adds up to what is supposed to be a fight with significant resource investment so I'm not overly concerned about them being able to hit heavy armor + shield at a reasonable rate. Even they would only have a 40-45% chance to hit you.
Compared to the 50-60% chance any of those goblins would probably have to hit the rogue, heavy armor is looking pretty good. Especially when you consider that the Goblin Commando might have an increased crit rate against the rogue.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't feel like heavy armor at level 1 should make you nearly invulnerable to mundane threats at level 1. The rogue is ~50% more likely to get hit than you are and in some cases twice as likely to get crit.
I'm inclined to agree with the position that armor is represented as being too weak.
I'm a 1st-level Fighter in a breastplate with a shield and some Dexterity, and an entry-level basic Goblin is hitting me on a 12+.
Not good.
Feels too much like D&D 4e; it seems like everything in that game hit you on a 12+ if you were in heavy armor.
Comparing to the Goblin Warrior (which is what I think you were talking about), it would need a 14+ if you were using a heavy shield and had 20 AC because of it. The goblin would also likely die in 1 hit assuming you also had some strength (it's really easy to have both decent strength and dexterity in this system). I think getting hit 35% of the time is reasonable at level 1.
If you're comparing to one of the level 1 Goblin Commandos, 2 of those adds up to what is supposed to be a fight with significant resource investment so I'm not overly concerned about them being able to hit heavy armor + shield at a reasonable rate. Even they would only have a 40-45% chance to hit you.
Compared to the 50-60% chance any of those goblins would probably have to hit the rogue, heavy armor is looking pretty good. Especially when you consider that the Goblin Commando might have an increased crit rate against the rogue.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't feel like heavy armor at level 1 should make you nearly invulnerable to mundane threats at level 1. The rogue is ~50% more likely to get hit than you are and in some cases twice as likely to get crit.
You are missing something.
The armor + max Dex =7 for all armor. The rogue is limited to light armor and so is limited to a +6 until level 10. The fighter can get his +7, but will be wasting his dex stat at higher levels unless he sticks to half-plate. This is only a difference of 1.Sure the fighter can get another +2 with a shield, but this assumes that he is a sword and board fighter. That means he is giving up on a 2-handed weapon and over half of his class feats (2 weapon fighting and archery). Also, the rougue may well be able to get this +2 as well by using the take cover action. Cover and shield are both circumstance bonuses, so they do not stack.
I'm inclined to agree with the position that armor is represented as being too weak.
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Sure the fighter can get another +2 with a shield, but this assumes that he is a sword and board fighter. That means he is giving up on a 2-handed weapon and over half of his class feats
If he has a polearm the goblin might not even get to him. Buying a shield on level 1 does not mean you lose access to half your feats.
Being prepared for multiple encounters with different gear/fighting styles can be a thing.The fighter gives up 3/4 of his feats anyway by choosing the path he takes and well yes you have to decide in which fighting style you want to be great. 1 and 2 weapon defense comes later.
From my experience armor makes a huge difference, from level one to level 7 (range of testrounds I played so far). Especially in close combat where MAP plays a huge role.
The heavy armored paladin forcing people to attack him made hard encounters next to trivial.
And if you have a look at many of the playtest entries on these forums there is a pretty common theme for those groups that got killed due to a multitude of critical hits they thought shields and medium/heavy armor is bad and thus they died.
I've found even at higher levels (4 and 10), the difference between hitting and missing is still only 1-2. Even that small difference is significant.
And armor, I assume you're upgrading it as you level too, so that chainmail should be +2 chainmail, a +4 AC difference and +2 to saves as well! That's huge.
And then there are armor proficiencies for martial classes.
"Proficiency modifier" on pages 8 and 9 specify that you add your level -2 to things you are untrained in, your level to things you are trained in, your level +1 to things you are an expert in, etc.
Proficiency for armor works precisely the same as proficiency for skills or weapons or saving throws or spellcasting.
Yep, they really need to make that more clear in the rulebook.
I'm a 1st-level Fighter in a breastplate with a shield and some Dexterity, and an entry-level basic Goblin is hitting me on a 12+.
Not good.
Feels too much like D&D 4e; it seems like everything in that game hit
you on a 12+ if you were in heavy armor.
I've been saying it for awhile, a +6 attack bonus is too high on a level 0 creature. It should be +4, all creatures should have their attack bonus reduced by 2.
If you think being hit on a 12+ is bad, imagine being a wizard (AC 13), you're getting crit on 17+, 15+ if you're flanked.
I'm a 1st-level Fighter in a breastplate with a shield and some Dexterity, and an entry-level basic Goblin is hitting me on a 12+.
Not good.
Feels too much like D&D 4e; it seems like everything in that game hit
you on a 12+ if you were in heavy armor.I've been saying it for awhile, a +6 attack bonus is too high on a level 0 creature. It should be +4, all creatures should have their attack bonus reduced by 2.
If you think being hit on a 12+ is bad, imagine being a wizard (AC 13), you're getting crit on 17+, 15+ if you're flanked.
Had this situation pop up:
Wizard with +1 dex for 12 AC, boss at end of Doomsday Dawn part 1 had them grabbed (10 ac), used their 1-turn boost for +2, giving him a +12 to-hit. He crit on an 8 (65% chance), quite fun!
I'm a 1st-level Fighter in a breastplate with a shield and some Dexterity, and an entry-level basic Goblin is hitting me on a 12+.
Not good.
Feels too much like D&D 4e; it seems like everything in that game hit
you on a 12+ if you were in heavy armor.I've been saying it for awhile, a +6 attack bonus is too high on a level 0 creature. It should be +4, all creatures should have their attack bonus reduced by 2.
If you think being hit on a 12+ is bad, imagine being a wizard (AC 13), you're getting crit on 17+, 15+ if you're flanked.
Well it just gives you a target AC that you want to hit which is 16 and doable. Could they reduce it? Sure, I personally would like to throw more opponents at my party, however I can just make my npcs weaker then. The only reason that I see for generally reducing the attack bonus on low tier threats are multiple attacks, however then they need some other things to do as rolling thrice with no chances of hitting just wastes time.