Why should someone choose heavy armor or even medium armor over light?
Dex is a stat most fighting PCs will try to raise to at least 14 from the get go in PF2 and it's rather easy to do so and getting to dex 16 by level 5 is trivial. Once you do that there's no reason for your PC to wear medium or heavy armor. The item bonus to AC you can gain from a studded leather armor is +2 and the Dex cap is +3 So you get to 15.
No medium armor can give you a better aggregated bonus to AC than a +5 yet their check penalty is -2 (against the -1 from studded leather), they all reduce speed by 5ft (light armor never does that and it's a huge drawback as you can't hit what you can't reach), bulk is heavier (2 for all medium armors vs 1 for light armors), medium armor generally costs more than light armor. All things considered it's rather clear how you'll be better off investing (less) in light armor than in medium armor.
Heavy armor is comparatively even worse. Yes Full plate gives you +6 to AC but you can't get any Dex bonus, it's consioderably costier, it's rarer it penalizes you more and it makes you even slower. Plate can reduce some slashing damage but again the benefits of light armor considerably outweigh those offered by its heavy counterpart.
So, unless there's something I'm not seeing I think there's really no inherent mechanical reason to favor heavy armor or medium armor over light (or, even better, no armor at all if you are a monk). If that's the case I think this was not the right choice. I agree with the concept of heavy armor being costier, bulkier and slowing you down but I think those disadvantage should be be lessened by some sort of payoff, chiefly more AC.
As things stand now in PF2 heavy (and medium) armor is presented as being more prestigious than light armor (costing more, being rarer, requiring training to wear) yet mechanically it appears to be worse. This is a discrepancy between the rules and the game's background that I think need to be rectified somehow.
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The benefit is being able to invest less in dexterity because you have other thing you want to do with your skills.
If I'm a champion, and I want to invest in strength (to hit things), charisma (for DCs), and Con + Wis (for saves and survivability) being able to leave dex at 10 is an advantage.
The system is: light and medium armor gets you to +5, heavy gets you to +6. Which armor you choose affects how you allocate skill bonuses to strength versus dexterity. If you're already prioritizing strength, medium and heavy armor is good.
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Heavier armor is great if you don't want to (or can't afford to) invest in Dexterity. Remember, a PC that meets the armor's Strength requirement no longer takes any check penalties, and can reduce the armor's speed penalty by 5 feet.
Medium and heavy armor are also the only types of armor that can benefit from armor specialization effects, so Champions and Fighters will be getting more defensive benefits out of their heavier armor, beyond just the net +1 to AC that heavy armor grants.
Most tanks will take Con instead of Dex, Dex does add into most armor but yes not all and limiting. Light armor doesn't get any Group benefits, very limited material options and I think there more proficiency increasing benefits for med/heavy armors then there are for light between all the classes.
Some thoughts:
A. If you meet the str requirement for the armor the Armor check penalty goes away completely and the speed penalty is reduced by 5ft (so no penalty for medium and -5ft for heavy). Anyone who is going to be wearing heavy armor will be able to meet those easy to hit Str requierments.
B. Heavy armor gives more total AC with max dex +item bonus equalling 6 instead of 5.
C. Armor specialization for fighters and champions only applies to medium/heavy armor.
D. Dex lost initiative so it's much less painful to leave it at 10 now
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This is probably the best version of this game to wear plate mail in, I figure, since Bulwark effectively gives you a dex of 16 for purpose of most of the reflex saves you're going to make. Splint Mail and Half Plate are there to tide you over until you can afford better armor.
Having meeting the strength requirement lets you ignore ACP and reduce the movement penalty to -5 (which can be overcome by Unburdened Iron, Nimble Elf, Fleet, or Armiger's Mobility, among other things yet to be printed).
Check penalty is irrelevant once you meet the strength requirement for the armor. Speed penalty is reduced by 5 too, which means medium has no speed penalty and heavy ends up being 5 feet of movement for +1 AC, which is a fairly reasonable trade off.
You also claim Dex is a stat everyone wants, but that's not really the case in PF2 either. You definitely want whatever the maximum dex for your armor is, but past that while Reflex saves are nice, that's really all Dex gives you (and for those heavy armor folks plate gives you a bonus to reflex saves against damage anyways).
The problems in the OP only really apply to someone who has both low strength and low dex... so wizards who want to wear plate and dump both those stats are in a rough spot, I guess, sure.
I feel like Mountain Style makes the case for heavier armor. During the playtest, Monks were pretty squishy at low levels unless they had at least 16 dex. Because stat points are precious and monks are not explicitly a dex class, people might have allocations in mind that did not prioritize dex. But the consensus was Dex & Wis Monks were fine, Str & Dex monks were fine, but Str & Wis monks were not.
So mountain style was created as an option to enable monks with lower dexterity. So you can have a dwarf monk who starts with 18 Str, 16 Wis, 14 Con, 12 Int, 10 Dex, and 8 Cha (or 10 Int, Dex, and Cha) who is perfectly serviceable, and indeed will eventually sport one of the highest ACs in the game if they increase their dexterity to 14.
As others already pointed out, medium and heavy armor is for those chars that don't want to max dexterity for various reasons. For example the warpriest I am playing in our Age of Ashes campaign will never have more than dexterity 12 (going for strengh, constitution, wisdom and charisma instead), so medium armor ist just perfect.
What they said.
Plus, as Squiggit noted, they are a trap for Wizards (et al) thinking how wonderful it is to cast in armor now. The feats & Str needed are investments better spent elsewhere.
And AC isn't king of defense any more. It's more egalitarian. :)
Maneuvers are typically against Fort (so Con).
Many touch spells now lack an attack roll, going straight to a save.
And most minions are capable of hitting you so AC mitigates damage more than prevents any (which a huge AC could do in PF1). That means you need that Con for hit points since you will get hit.
Also, mobility is huge if you can cost your enemy actions and attacks that debuff or steal actions are valuable defensive options.
And there's Shield Block.
Lots more variety than PF1.
You still want high AC, especially in the more mobile PF2 where it's hard to avoid enemies and you need to narrow your enemy's opportunity to crit.
It's just you need those other things too, so leaning into one aspect at the cost of several others is risky.
And proficiency makes the bigger difference over armor type in the end.
(I see these issues with these mage-based melee gish builds that take such efforts to get heavy armor/high AC, thinking that's enough while the rest of their defense marks them for maiming.)
Cheers
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AC seems indeed strange in this edition. Considering that the average level 1 frontline AC is 18 and players and monsters alike got somewhere in between +7 and +9 to hit, thats at least 50% to hit for the first and 25% for the second attack. Which means that will get hit at least once for 62,5% every round if the enemy can do two attacks.
And as the attack and defense mechanisms are level based I assume that this fact will not change by much as long as you fight enmies that are on or near your level (and you have the correct magic items equipped and are a class thats has a notable increase in armor proficiency).
And while I personally dislike a "no matter what you do*, monsters will hit you for >50% chance every round" concept I will probably have to live with it.
* (yes I am aware that you can buff and debuff by use of skills and magic, so my statement is not entirely true when you go away from the "baseline" stats)
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@everyone: Thanks for the answers I somehow missed the "strength" entry in the armor section of the CRB and I was convinced that the listed Str values were meant to be the requirement for wearing armor not to decrease or avoind penalties. Things make more sense now.
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Yeah, aside from relatively low STR investment needed to negate ACP/5' speed reduction
(low investment VS max DEX necessary to compete vs Medium AC) which more than covers higher Bulk of Armor,
Heavy Armor *is* best AC in game, evem for max DEX characters (until 17th-20th level w/ magical stat boost).
Proficiency discrepancies are another factor, but max-DEX Archer Fighter/Paladins probably want Heavy Armor if they can meet STR req,
although that's plausible they DON'T meet STR req at low levels, but do at mid-high levels where they can switch to Heavy Armor.
(potentially switching back to No Armor at 20th level where it can nominally pull ahead of Heavy, see below)
Besides ArmorSpec which people mention, Medium and Heavy are also pre-req for Fortification Runes which negate Crits.
The core role of AC is negating damage, which Fortification helps: mitigating damage spikes from Crits seems especially nice IMHO.
And only Medium and Heavy does it. Heavy's AC superiority is clear, but even Medium has value just for that reason,
Even -1 AC might be acceptable trade for Fortification (e.g. 20th level max DEX build vs Heavy, or earlier vs Medium).
With all benefits of Med/Heavy Armor coming with lower stat requirement vs max DEX build, freeing up CON/INT/WIS/CHA as you may want.
Heavy Plate is most onerous, but un-necessary if you would otherwise get 16+ DEX for non-AC purposes, and of course Mithril reduces STR req.
- Medium and Heavy armours gain the benefits of armour specialisation. Heavy granting higher resistances.
- Medium and Heavy armours are almost always more durable than light armour when it comes to armour destroying effects. (which while not common doesn't seem to be as uncommon as it used to be)
- Medium and Heavy armours have access to powerful special material armours like orichalcum and the like.
- Medium and heavy allow a character to invest those dex increases elsewhere, something that most characters can happily do now that perception is initiative and much harder to increase.
- Medium and Heavy armour might have different specific magical armours that you want. You cannot get a studded leather armour of command for instance.
- Heavy armour is always going to be a max bonus of 6, and will keep it as the highest value AC.
If proficiencies are the same, heavy armor tends to win AC wise it seems. They've done a great job in streamlining armors to have same-ish score across the board. With exception of master/legendary armor, trained medium/heavy is at most 1-2 points behind a min maxed dex character, so it's not the end of the world if you go that path.