Is there much (if any) incentive for a heavy armor user to increase Dex above 12 outside of Reflex save or skills?
Is there much (if any) incentive for a heavy armor user to increase Dex above 12 outside of Reflex save or skills?
Ranged attacks are really, really useful against enemies faster than you. But other than that, not particularly much incentive to pump it.
Nope, you pretty much got it. Since Heavy Armor pretty much accounts for all your armor, there's really no reason for PCs that use it to boost it outside of skills and reflex saves. And since Full Plate's bulwark trait lets you add +3 instead of your dexterity mod to reflex saves, you're kind of incentivized to dump Dexterity in favor of other ability scores. Unless your character concept is "super stealthy guy who sneaks around in plate."
Which I mean, hey, go for it if you like.
ranged weapons. gimping DEX means any ranged backup weapon efficacy goes down the drain.
fighter/paladin archers have just as much reason to wear heavy armor for better AC, assuming they meet STR req. (or Dwarf)
even other classes with lesser armor proficiency can grab heavy trained early on until other proficiencies outpace it.
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Is there much (if any) incentive for a heavy armor user to increase Dex above 12 outside of Reflex save or skills?
If you use my House Rules changes, there is a line in there that changes the motive for dumping Dex because of armor's Dex cap.
Increased Proficiency in Armor has additional benefits. At Expert, the Dex cap is raised by +1 and any armor check penalty is reduced by 1. At Master these benefits increase to +2 , and Legendary is +3.
This goes for all armor types, including Light, but my rules cap PC's inherent stats at 20 (+5). Magic can still raise it higher, but you can only buy up to a 20. This means it tends to favor medium and heavy armor wearers most, if they keep their Dex up.
Reflex Saves are really important. They might not be as important as Fort, Will, & AC, but with 4 stat boosts, people who can afford to put one of those in Dex should.
As well as wanting a success to reduce X by 1/2 X, you want to turn critical failures into failures to reduce 2X down to X, a much bigger swing of damage.
One good rule of thumb is to try to get it so you only critically fail on a 1 (bosses excluded as they're built to exceed your norms and get that extra damage to keep up with a party of adversaries & action economy.)
Funnily enough, if your class turns those critical failures into failures already, then there's less reason to bother.
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Is there much (if any) incentive for a heavy armor user to increase Dex above 12 outside of Reflex save or skills?If you use my House Rules changes, there is a line in there that changes the motive for dumping Dex because of armor's Dex cap.
Increased Proficiency in Armor has additional benefits. At Expert, the Dex cap is raised by +1 and any armor check penalty is reduced by 1. At Master these benefits increase to +2 , and Legendary is +3.
This goes for all armor types, including Light, but my rules cap PC's inherent stats at 20 (+5). Magic can still raise it higher, but you can only buy up to a 20. This means it tends to favor medium and heavy armor wearers most, if they keep their Dex up.
I was actually going to make a thread questioning this very rule until I came across this one, and let me just say, I love this houserule. I don't like the idea that by level 20, half the party has just elected to put their magical armor in the bin because they've had the opportunity to increase stats -so- much. Dexterity is eventually going to snag a couple of those increases, even if you want it to be a dump stat. I want the epic fighter to still be decked out in runic, magical armor by the end, but this system discourages that slightly when it renders heavy armor more irrelevant. This house rule goes a long way towards nudging in the other direction without being game-breaking. Definitely going to test at my table.
Are you guys with the armor houserules going to increase the AC of other creatures too?
How will you tell what effect your change has had on the game and whether it's been good or bad?
It seem to me Champions already had the notable advantage w/ AC (alongside Monks) and now they'd be even better. Was their AC too low before? What was it that Paizo missed?
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Is there much (if any) incentive for a heavy armor user to increase Dex above 12 outside of Reflex save or skills?If you use my House Rules changes, there is a line in there that changes the motive for dumping Dex because of armor's Dex cap.
Increased Proficiency in Armor has additional benefits. At Expert, the Dex cap is raised by +1 and any armor check penalty is reduced by 1. At Master these benefits increase to +2 , and Legendary is +3.
This goes for all armor types, including Light, but my rules cap PC's inherent stats at 20 (+5). Magic can still raise it higher, but you can only buy up to a 20. This means it tends to favor medium and heavy armor wearers most, if they keep their Dex up.
It gives too much importance to Dexterity in my opinion. It is already a very nice attribute. But if it's necessary to max Dexterity if you want to max AC, you force everyone to max it all the time. Even Champions have to increase it every 5 levels.
Agreed, this makes literally every character require at least +3 Dex at 20, whereas before heavy armor users could do without if they want to spend the ability bumps elsewhere. It also means heavy armor AC (and medium to a lesser extent) will go from being slightly ahead light armor wearers to being well ahead. It will definitely imbalance the math of the game by a lot to give a subset of frontliners a +3 bonus to AC that stacks with other bonuses, and will limit the variety of builds (say bye to the heavy armor fighter with wisdom and charisma who could intimidate, only physical + wisdom now unless he wants to take significantly more damage than the other guy who maxed Dex).
Increasing the Dex cap and also limiting the amount of Dex you can get is a thing you can do, but I really don't see why. Wouldn't want to play a rogue or swashbuckler in that game though.
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I want the epic fighter to still be decked out in runic, magical armor by the end, but this system discourages that slightly when it renders heavy armor more irrelevant.
But it doesn't. Heavy armor is never irrelevant. Actually the opposite, it's always the best choice if you have proficiency in it since it has a higher total AC than light, medium or explorer's clothing can achieve.
Even a Dex based fighter is going to be better off in half plate or splint if they can manage the bulk and ACP.
All Samurai's house rule does is increase everyone's AC at higher levels and make Dex more important. Neither of which are necessarily good things.
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I was actually going to make a thread questioning this very rule until I came across this one, and let me just say, I love this houserule. I don't like the idea that by level 20, half the party has just elected to put their magical armor in the bin because they've had the opportunity to increase stats -so- much. Dexterity is eventually going to snag a couple of those increases, even if you want it to be a dump stat. I want the epic fighter to still be decked out in runic, magical armor by the end, but this system discourages that slightly when it renders heavy armor more irrelevant. This house rule goes a long way towards nudging in the other direction without being game-breaking. Definitely going to test at my table.Is there much (if any) incentive for a heavy armor user to increase Dex above 12 outside of Reflex save or skills?If you use my House Rules changes, there is a line in there that changes the motive for dumping Dex because of armor's Dex cap.
Increased Proficiency in Armor has additional benefits. At Expert, the Dex cap is raised by +1 and any armor check penalty is reduced by 1. At Master these benefits increase to +2 , and Legendary is +3.
This goes for all armor types, including Light, but my rules cap PC's inherent stats at 20 (+5). Magic can still raise it higher, but you can only buy up to a 20. This means it tends to favor medium and heavy armor wearers most, if they keep their Dex up.
Cool! Let me know how it goes, in PM if not in a thread.
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Agreed, this makes literally every character require at least +3 Dex at 20, whereas before heavy armor users could do without if they want to spend the ability bumps elsewhere. It also means heavy armor AC (and medium to a lesser extent) will go from being slightly ahead light armor wearers to being well ahead. It will definitely imbalance the math of the game by a lot to give a subset of frontliners a +3 bonus to AC that stacks with other bonuses, and will limit the variety of builds (say bye to the heavy armor fighter with wisdom and charisma who could intimidate, only physical + wisdom now unless he wants to take significantly more damage than the other guy who maxed Dex).
Increasing the Dex cap and also limiting the amount of Dex you can get is a thing you can do, but I really don't see why. Wouldn't want to play a rogue or swashbuckler in that game though.
The frontline fighting types are supposed to be harder to hit. If everyone from the robed wizard to the champion in plate armor have nearly the same AC, that destroys most of the concept of a front line, especially now that most monsters don't get attacks of opportunity. The wizard and rogue could be the front liners. But by capping Dex bonus (and all stat bonuses) at +5 as a max PC bonus, even if they do get it that high, they still need to get Master or Legendary in their armor proficiency. The Champion is the only class to get to Legendary in armor. Most of the others only get to master at late stages in the game (13th-17th levels or so), assuming the game even lasts that long.
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They clearly don't have the same AC.
Champions and Fighter have Heavy Armor Proficiency for +1 to AC.
Champions go to Legendary, frontliners to Master, casters to Expert.
So, at the end of the game, the Champion has +5 AC compared to casters. The Fighter has +3. Most frontliners have +2. The Barbarian has +1. Not at all the same AC when even the lowest AC character has an equivalent AC.
And then, you can consider the difference in hit points.
The wizard and rogue could be the front liners.
Super and nobledrake have it covered but as an aside.
A rogue who uses melee weapons is going to be on the frontline already.
And if someone wants to pour the resources and effort into making a frontline wizard, so what?
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Exactly, DEX is still a good Stat for plate users with the normal rules. It's important for ranged attacks, Reflex saves (bulwark doesn't cover all), and some skills if you want to cover the Dex skills yourself. In this position it is competitive with other stats but not a must-have, which is ideally where all the stats would be all the time. If you add AC bonuses on top it simply becomes too good, and this is on the characters who wanted Dex the least before.
Raising frontliner ACs and adding a million other buffs via houserules will inevitably lead to power creep of encounters so they stay interesting. And if your houserules leave some builds behind unintentionally, like the rogue, swashbuckler, or any other light/unarmored frontliner, they start falling behind enough to feel really bad to play. The base game is very well balanced compared to previous editions' base games, and making modifications without careful evaluation of consequences will change that.