The armors in the book are a subset of real world armors, and mostly are taken from the numerical interpretations generated back in 1ed and 2ed days.

The concept of "Armor Class" was that you would start at 10 (naked flesh) and work your way down to full plate + shield (0), with perhaps futuristic materials improving that further. So padded would be 9, leather would be 8, etc. Each armor type had a bit of text about it, but in general, there were no downsides to wearing better armor (exceptions included trying to hide or move silently in heavier armor). So *almost everyone wore their best armor*. Rogues would choose between leather and studded leather based on the fact that studded leather had a couple more penalties at sneaking around, but most everyone else would just be in whatever the heaviest armor they were trained in was.

For the most part, that was a pretty good system. The perceived weakness of it (one number between 0 and 10 to represent pretty much everything) did at least give you the benefit of actually properly representing superior armors as superior, while class restrictions put people in their stereotypical suits for their adventuring jobs.


Third edition added a LOT more things, but somehow managed to break this pretty hardcore.

First, 3ed added a "max Dex bonus". This is based on the largely ahistorical idea that you would be really wonky in armor. Some armors really are bulky and would be poor, but advanced armors (such as full plate) reached really great levels of maneuverability. The man in arms clanking around like some 50s robots are laughable caricatures, and probably sort of insulting to assume that you'd be less effective in the stuff that you'd be way more effective in.

Second, 3ed instituted a skill penalty for the heavier armors, which previously just effected the mostly-magic thief stuff. This one makes a LOT more sense, but the problem is that these skills aren't ones you would really use much, unless you are a rogue- once battle happens, "Balance, Climb, Escape Artist, Hide, Jump, Move Silently, Sleight of Hand, and Tumble" don't matter as much as they likely should. Many dungeons have spots where easy balance checks are the norm, and of course for stealth you don't use Hide and Move Silently. Tumble is the only one that shows up a lot. If this was meant as a tradeoff, it's not a very compelling one. However, the penalties range from minor to moderate, and are probably pretty realistic, even if they are compressed into one number (for instance, why would studded leather make you worse at balance?) Overall, this is a pretty good way of doing stuff.

Third, 3ed gave us slow-mo movement. This is the worst part about it. I'm honestly considering getting rid of it. Nothing in history suggests that over a short period of movement, that armors slows a man by 1/3. (exhaustion could come up in armored combat, of course, but this is something way sillier)

Fourth, 3ed did the excellent nod to reality by having an armor bonus seperate from the other bonuses (all bonuses have types now). This has both mechanical and simulationist benefits.


Finally, 3ed grouped armor into three categories: light, medium, and heavy. The penalties went up for each category, from nothing, to slow movement, and finally to slow movement and restricted run speed. In exchange, a lower Dex bonus was required to reach the top ceiling for AC, which was for ALL armor types either 18 or 19.


So, the game went from claiming that better armors are better, to claiming that an exceptionally agile historical person (Dex 18) would experience equal protection in the soon-to-be-ubiquitous chain shirt as they would in *all armor* except full plate- representing the best and most advanced armor ever made, and only for a small portion of time in Europe. And that the step up to full plate wouldn't be much of one, and that he'd really suck at running.


This, I think, is the issue. They pretty obviously chose the focal point to rotate around the stats they expected most players to be rotating around- the 10 to 20 range. 20 is the highest Dex you can start with by the stock rules, for instance.



As with most of the mundane stuff in D&D, we have two considerations. The first is game balance as regards lesser armor types: we want rogues to prefer leather, we want rangers to not be in full plate that often, we want Barbarians to wear hide, and we don't want the full casters in much armor at all. The second is reality: this is supposed to simulate real life in an abstract sense.

The first groups to bump into this problem were the ones that hand out extra stats. At low levels in my games, almost everyone grabs chain shirt pretty early- it offers a +4 armor bonus. A cleric in a low point buy game (or a low rolling game) will often "tank" his Dex, assigning a 7 to 12 into that score, depending. With such a clumsy man of the gods, of course he wants to be in full plate! That statement, of course, is a big part of the problem.

The second groups were the ones that play pretty strictly by the char creation, but allow item purchases or requisitions at cost as a matter of course. The +stat items are not out of line in terms of power, but by their cost they become extraordinarily beneficial to grab your primary attribute ASAP. In games that let players largely customize their wealth-by-level table into an actual character that a DM will allow to play, they run into this problem just as surely. However, here you see an opposite thing occur: instead of the Chain Shirt (best of the light armors), the Breastplate, made of Mithril, dominates. This is because of a clause that lets it be light armor, changing it from the best of the medium to the superduper best of the light armors.


The overall feel is that almost no one fucks with full plate, and those who do get essentially no benefit from it, compared to the lesser armors- their benefit is basically that they had to pay less stats, so usually their third or even second best stat will be a bit higher (no one loses their prime stat, all methods allow you to max that). The cost, of course, is waddle-speed-ahead, on top of the extra costs you pay in general. And no one messes with non-mithril medium armors either.


Players are almost always in the Chain Shirt / Mithril Breastplate business. Here's what you LOSE for these two, compared to full plate:

Chain Shirt loses 4 from armor bonus
Mithril Breastplate loses 3 from armor bonus.

That's your cost. Here's your gain:

Chain Shirt gains +3 to Max Dex bonus. If your Dex is 12-, this is no benefit. At 14, you are only behind full plate by 3. 16 -> behind by 2. 18+ -> behind by 1.
Mithril Breastplate gains +2 to Max Dex Bonus. If your Dex is 12-, this is no benefit. At 14 -> behind by 2. 16 -> behind by 1. 18 -> tied. 20+ -> ahead by 1. This is a bit unfair: one is mithral, the other is not.
Mithril Breastplate versus Mithril Full Plate! Aha! If your Dex is 16-, no benefit. At 18 -> behind by 2. At 20+ -> behind by 1.


Chain Shirt and Mithril Breastplate both count as light armor. Your move is 30, not 20. You can sleep in the armor, and never have to look up rules on "Don Armor", or maintain a second set of armor to sleep in. You run at x4 instead of x3. The final penalty is alleviated if the full plate is also mithril. The second to last is alleviated if, for some reason, you took Endurance, or are a ranger, in which case you can sleep in mithril full plate. You also weigh less.

With Chain Shirt, your penalty on "stuff" is -4. With full plate, -6. These, at least, are similar. Mithril Breastplate has -1, and mithril full plate, -3.

YOu can see that there's less rules to know with the light armors. The benefit, maybe, is about 2 AC, give or take. You are much more likely to die do to not moving out of something due to the passive snare of the heavy armor- something most characters figure out early.




Buffing the Armor

Generally, I think that the light armors are done right. The only possible exception is the beloved Chain Shirt, which could be a dash too strong. There's not many rogues picking studded leather, which seems a bit unfortunate- but, at least at early level, it's not because of the bonus, it's because of the penalty. Most level 1 rogues in most games don't have a Dex of 22, which is required to fully use the leather armor. So rogues are picking the effective +1 to hide / move silent over the +1 to AC. That's just fine. So, lets assume that light armor is right where it should be.
Padded- Max 19 with Dex 26.
Leather- Max 18 with Dex 22.
Studded Leather- Max 18 with Dex 20.
Chain Shirt- Max 18 with Dex 18.
Mithril Scale Mail- Max 19 with Dex 20.
Mithril Chainmail- Max 19 with Dex 18.
Mithril Breastplate- Max 20 with Dex 20.


Medium armor is generally the crappiest. Zem's buff is to reduce the move penalty to 25 (this is currently in effect in my game as well). By rules, the price you pay is the 10 feet of movement, and the benefit is about one more AC, assuming your Dex is in the 14-16 range (depending). Hide doesn't really count- it's there to model hide armor. Obviously chopping up a dead thing and wearing it does in no way compare to what a civilization can produce. Notice that the "max achieveable" actually went DOWN from the expected 18:
Scale Mail- Max 17 with Dex 16.
Chainmail- Max 17 with Dex 14.
Breastplate- Max 18 with Dex 16.
Mithril Splint Mail- Max 18 with Dex 14.[/i]
Mithril Banded Mail- Max 19 with Dex 16.[/i]
Mithril Half-Plate- Max 19 with Dex 14.[/i]
Mithril Full Plate- Max 21 with Dex 16.[/i]

Heavy armor introduces the additional penalty of a run speed reduction. Since run is not that common (and x3 is often good enough), this is largely only a limit in that you cannot simply escape combat with it on.
Splint Mail- Max 16 with Dex 10.
Banded Mail- Max 17 with Dex 12.
Half-Plate- Max 17 with Dex 10.
Full Plate- Max 19 with Dex 12.

Ok, lets talk about a couple ideas.


(1)- Remove the run speed and move speed penalty *entirely*. There's no real historical basis for these anyway.
Ok, does that fix it? Well, go look above. Likely not. That's suprising! Perhaps limiting the penalty instead of removing it, and offering something else is the way to go.
(2)- Buff the other armors such that they have a bigger effect. As an example, lets just run through and add +1 to the AC of every medium armor, and +2 to the AC of every heavy armor. Since our task won't be done with just this, lets add +1 to the max dex bonus of all medium armors and heavy armors.
M:
Scale Mail- Max 19 with Dex 18. (5 AC, MD=4)
Chainmail- Max 19 with Dex 16. (6 AC, MD=3)
Breastplate- Max 20 with Dex 18. (6 AC, MD=4)
Splint Mail- Max 19 with Dex 12. (8 AC, MD=1)
Banded Mail- Max 20 with Dex 14. (8 AC, MD=2)
Half-Plate- Max 20 with Dex 12. (9 AC, MD=1)
Full Plate- Max 22 with Dex 14. (10 AC, MD=2)
(3)- What about DR? I'm a proponent of adding some DR to the heavier armors, but anything in excess of 2 can be gamebreaking at low levels. For now, I've gone with DR 1/ with the heavy armors.


Where does Samurai Armor fit into these? Should it be Great Armor, as in OA, a heavy armor with a baseline of +7/+2 (totalling the same as the historically superior full plate, but doing that by having a greater dex bonus)? Or should it be a medium armor?


Anyway, you guys can kind of see what direction I'm aiming for houserules buffing the heavier armors. But gimme your thoughts. Or don't!

Remove the speed penalty for high strength scores. I know this is sort of like another level of encumbrance, but this is pretty straight forward. If your strength is 14 or greater, take no speed penalty for medium armor and reduce the penalty for heavy armor to -5. If your strength is 16 or greater, take no speed penalty for any armor. I know you've read something about people in armor doing remarkable things, but the assumption is that those are seriously strong guys. If you find a wizard who lost his spellbook and just wants to live, he's going to be very retarded in full plate.

Here's something else you could add... your max dex bonus = max (listed max dex bonus {or increased value, but the point is it's on a table}, your strength bonus).

The problem is that it creates magic strength values. I would propose 15 and 17 instead of even numbers (I put pretty much everything that's not tied to a bonus on an odd number: so, for that matter, did the designers, check out the feats that require stats sometime).

With 15 and 17, how does it look then? Would a Str 18, Dex 18 fighter want to wear full plate yet? I would suggest that he would, and that's what I want.


I may go with Paizo's mithral. The only difference is simple: if you have mithral breastplate, it still counts as medium from the perspective of "are you proficient". It counts as light for all the *other* things though. Basically, instead of changing the armor's type, it instead gives you benefits as if it were one category lighter, but if you are (say) a bard, you won't be using mithral breastplate, you'll still be in light armor.

Scaling how much Dex you can bring over with Strength is pretty damned interesting. What kind of table would you propose, or would we just work with the Str bonus?

I like the idea of leaving it as medium or heavy for proficiency. I can't recall whether it's in there or not, but I would also increase the dex bonus of mithral.

With a variable dex bonus, yes, I just think it makes sense to have it the greater of the listed value or the strength bonus. It makes sense for a strong melee fighter to be wearing full plate, but it's not as clear for an archer. I understand part of that idea is because archers were not of the nobility and would therefore not have been able to afford plate armor, but it still stands to reason you need to be quite strong to be able to move about freely in that armor.

Oh, and a reasonable compromise for changing the speed might also be to give an init penalty for medium and heavy armor. It makes some sense. We still want to rogue in leather to be able to hit first. It's not as cool as weapon speed factors from 2nd edition, but I think in the vast majority of battles no one going to decide in that they are going to change into or out of their armor.

By the way, I think not being able to run in heavy armor is appropriate. I mean, look at it this way. Take twins. One wears leather and the other wears full plate. The one in leather tries to run away. Can you think of any reason why he shouldn't be able to get away? Maybe they're pretty evenly matched while moving about the battlefield, but once it becomes a situation of running, there's no way the guy in full plate can keep up for very long.

Added the rules for Armor in Caligo:

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=108&start=3

I got rid of the init penalty. I assume that ALL armor reduces your speed. I list a strength required for move 25, and a strength required for full movement, and a strength required for run x4. I don't scale AC with strength because that will have second order effects and would require us to playtest it with character generation. Comment on it here if you see anything silly.

I know its been a while since you had this discussion but what are your final rules? Is it what you linked to? I find the stock rules to be a little limited and they really dont make much sense. I am going to have my players look at this thread and see what they think. The paladin will be all for the change, I am sure (shifty bastard he is).

I like the table you linked to, Jon. I like how you included all the different armors from history. That was one thing that 2.5's Combat and Tactics did well

What about making a feat that allows a player to specialize in a type of armor, or group of armors, and they get the listed benefits you came up with? Otherwise its stock? It could allow a player to have their MDB be equal to what their Str bonus is to take into account that a strong person who practices often with heavy armors to reap the benefits of the heavy armor and his natural agility. Or it simply allows for them to have their full Dex bonus. Combine that with your modified table?

Also, what about adding in field plate like in 2nd ed? In 2nd it went Chainmail AC 5, Banded AC 4, Platemail AC 3, Field Plate AC 2, and Full Plate AC 1.

For 3rd it could be +9, MDB +2. Just a thought

I'm using that table, and I'm currently planning on using that guy in the next game I run too. I think those custom rules work pretty well for me.

"Field Plate" and "Full Plate"... it's hard to figure out exactly what they wanted to do when they made these armors. "Field Plate" appears to be what knights actually wore to battles, based on the description in the book, but it was clear that "Full Plate" was how essentially every game ran it. I get the impression- and this is just my educated guess now- that "Full Plate" was sort of the kind of armor you would wear to a joust, which actually DID have special armor just for it, with limited mobility, etc.


So you could really go two ways with "field plate"...

1)-
I would consider the "Full Plate" entry to be what knights wore in battle, and what adventurers would use, and if you wanted to mirror the really heavy one that we weren't supposed to use as the default (but we did anyway, because there were no rules against it in 2ed), I would come up with a "Jousting Plate" set. I'm not sure how you would model it.

2)-
HOWEVER- If you are like me, you liked the idea of a lighter version of full plate... there's not much room, mechanically. On my table, there's a bit of room for it, and I have it in the link. The normal version:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/armor.htm
Heavy armors go from 6 to 8, which isn't much room. Plus, since full plate is so ludicrously superior (in game we make a lot of noise about game balance- historically, full plate was more mobile than lesser armors), I wanted to at least have it be better, if not by the amount that it would be in life.

So my heavy armors range from 7 to 10. However, I don't even use the 9 space. I just have 10 reserved for full plate, and then the other heavy armors fight in the 7 to 8 range. The other important number is what you can TOTAL to, when you add the max dex bonus in. I have full plate totaling at 12, samurai great armor at 11 (a bit generous, but Dex 16 would be a lot rarer than Dex 14), and then under that everyone totals out at no more than 9.

You will note that I have field plate in there- I assume he's a stripped down version of full plate, missing some of the bulkier pieces, and with more weak points to aim for, as period fighters were trained to do in Historical European Martial Arts. I'm not sure that this imaging of Field Plate is historically accurate, but it doesn't strain my imagination to assume that someone would find a use for it. The reasons you would wear it over the other +7 AC guys are many: Splint is more restrictive (splint totals to 8), and banded, tied at 9 with it assuming you have a Dex of 14. Additionally, while a Strength of 17 is needed to halve the penalty (move 25) for banded and splint, only a Strength 15 is needed for Field Plate (Full Plate needs Strength 19). Since most fighter types will get ALL of these numbers, the amount of strength needed to move at NO penalty is 21 for splint and banded, a pretty massive 25 for full plate, and a nice 19 for field plate. So if you have a strength of 19,20, or 21, and the cash (and PCs always have cash), you'd strongly consider field plate, a heavy armor option that doesn't weigh you down- at 21, you'd consider splint and banded, but those guys really shine because their cost is lower. Splint apparently being a shitty version of banded, the only people in my game world are basically guards in towns where every penny is pinched, and perhaps those who slew the guards.

I do NOT have platemail- this is largely because I'm pretty sure there's no such thing. The descriptions given in the PHB and the arms and equipment guide just don't cut it much for me, and I couldn't really come up with a description to put it back in the matrix, so I didn't.

How is it working? Well, for my NPCs, it works pretty well. The ones dressed in full plate normally move around at movement 25, which is better than the 20 in a normal game, much more mobile. The few bad guys that were in the lighter armors tend to get away with a movement of 30, which is nice. But the PCs? I have a pixie sorcerer who wears a robe, a cleric who worships the only god in my game that emphasis avoiding damage with insight, so he has the monk AC and wears no armor, then I have a dwarf, but he's a fucking wizard because sure why not, and finally two things that are at least part fighter and carve shit up with swords- but both wear light armor and each have a dex that's like 18 inches long.

Ultimately, the Dex thing is the problem that I didn't solve. The idea that there's a "max dex bonus" is ahistorical, and was sort of pushed in there to get people to wear the lesser armors, instead of just picking up the top thing that their class allowed- with 3ed allowing much freer multiclassing, you'd have a lot of rogues in full plate unless there were disadvantages to that, and making everything work like wizards ("your shit doesn't work in armor, sucka!") would probably have been lame.

I gave people a motivation to run medium armor- they don't need as large a Dex, and a decent strength will let them wear it and still move at full speed. But Keichi and Alenka, with very strong Dexes, don't need that deal- they wanted the Dex for other reasons.

I gave people a motivation to run heavy armor- it's not TOO hard to move at 25, and eventually even 30, the AC bonus is definitely larger (none of the light armors total more than 8, but the heavies get to 9 and up), and I also put a DR 1/- in there. But no PCs use that, and the few enemies that have, haven't had the DR matter yet.



So as a playtest of these armor rules, my campaign is limited. But, I don't dislike the rules, or think I haven't given enough sweets to the medium and heavies. I just think that when the players imagined their characters, none of them wanted to wear the full plate, so no one built a guy to do that. I mean, Keichi and Alenka both COULD put on really heavy armor, but given their stealth talents, it would seem unwise. At least they have something baiting them into it- both would experience a slightly better AC and a dash of DR, and by stock rules I think they'd both look at the armor and say "oh, that does LITERALLY NOTHING for me", and that's what I wanted to avoid. Instead they say "that would defend me more, but at a price I'm not wiling to pay", and I'm ok with that.

Also, unlike Jon, my family comes from folk who learned their letters at least enough to read the bible that they cribbed the name from, and my name actually has the H.




Hrm. I think you want the idea present in a limited fashion? I dislike the idea that one guy would get +8 AC from full plate and always be stuck at movement 20, but another guy would get +10 AC and move much faster. That seems worth much more than a feat. I didn't really balance it like that, I just buffed armor.

Having an MDB equal to your strength bonus is actually something I played with. I tried having it based on a base with modifiers from strength and con, but at the end of the day I decided that if I was going to use the dumb fucking idea of max dex bonus in the first place, I didn't need players feeling like they needed to spreadsheet their attribute choices to ensure that they got the bonus that they wanted. In practice, everyone will have a good strength. If your game lets players buy a strength of 18 and then boost it to 24, then they will do that, and so will your NPCs. If it lets them start at 22 and buy a Codpiece of Strength +6, then you'll see a lot of Str 28s as soon as they can afford it, etc. I ended up reflecting the ability of a strong guy who has trained in his armor to, depending on the armor and his strength, move at 25 or even 30 instead of 20, and also to run at x4, depending. If you'll notice, I even tried to make it so that armor that defends your chest and legs equally and gives you an AC of X has an easier time of being moved in when stronger, but a harder time of being RAN in when stronger, than if the armor has say a lot of chest protection but a lesser armor type guarding the legs. I don't know if THAT is accurate, but it seemed acceptable to me.

The other problem you could run into with this setup is that if you build a non-heroic character (which you do a lot of), armor ends up being very restrictive for HIM. I was fine with a guy with a strength 15 who has enough cash to get a decent set of armor not being very fast in it, but I wasn't ok with him having a different AC.

Still, if you try that, let me know how it works for the PCs, the heroic NPCs, and the mundane NPCs.

Sorry about the spelling, John

Anyways, I am going to use your table regardless because it just makes sense.

What I am trying to go for is that a person could fully move based off that he just simply brutes his way through it (as reflected on your table) or by using a feat that represents him taking the time to train in the armor and become better at it than some guy with equal strength but never took the time. The bonus for a character with a high strength that takes the feat is that he gets his MDB up to his strength bonus, if he has one beyond what your table allows, to show he has also trained and tried to learn to maneuver maximally in it. In terms of movement, perhaps the feat gives the character a +4 or so to strength for your table.

I just want something that isnt broken but makes sense as long as the character puts some sort of sacrifice into using armors better

For a feat, I would recommend something like:

>The max dex bonus on any armor you wear is increased by 2. Treat your strength as 4? higher on the custom chart for determining speed in armor and run speed in armor.

Normally a feat should not grant more than 1 AC, but since there's a limit here (the dex bonus). Putting it to an arbitrary external stat, especially a pumped one such as Con or Str, is essentially a 4-5 AC bump for any non-retard taking the feat. Pathfinder does show us a class that gets to mitigate, point by point, max dex bonus as a concept- that class is the fighter (who does and should enjoy martial superiority to his divine brother, the paladin). I'm not familiar with a 3.X example, sadly. In any event, ignoring one point of max dex (aka, raising full plate up by a point) seems to be worth LESS than a feat, so maybe ignoring two of those points is as well.

In the event of very dextrous characters, you'd want this feat to be able to be taken more than once. The advantage of making it an investment is that not every, say, rogue would take it. The disadvantage is that character development would consider the cost of the feat (or feats) versus AC.

Another good option (and the one I would use if I wanted this as a feat, which I might) is to offer a LARGE max dex bonus increase (such as 4 or 6), but at the end of a 2-3 feat chain, with prereq feats that are flavorful but mechanically not strong. Endurance would be a GREAT one for this, as would be Run. Both of these represent masterful training in armor, and should probably not be ignored if you are making a mechanically superior version of them!

After some thought, I like your second option of the large dex bonus with the Run and Endurance prereqs. Now since Run gives the user of heavy armor x4 anyways, would the high strength in STR-run give the user x5 for the Run feat? I think it should. I highly doubt any of my players will get to such high strength as Ravenloft is a low magic campaign, but its good to know anyways.

Absolutely. In fact, my text might not be too clear about that. In my game, assume that Run increases your run multiplier by one- if it is at x3 from armor, it goes back up to x4, and if it is x4, then it becomes x5. The wording of the feat normally is just because in the stock rules, any heavy takes you down to x3.

I actually have very few stat boosting items, but if you'll check the prices on them, they WOULD be available in low magic games, to a degree- at least the +2 guys are only 4000 gold, and the +4 guys are 16000 gold. Keep in mind a +1 weapon is 2000 gold, and even low magic games tend to have those (a +2 weapon is 8000 gold).

Personally, I'm just not a fan of those items- I give players generous stats to start with, and I play with a lot of magic items, so I don't like the idea of players feeling like they "should" have a bunch of +6 stat items.


Note that these items all give "enhancement" bonuses, so they don't stack with say, Bull's Strength, a +4 enhancement bonus spell cast by both divine and arcane casters as a 2nd level spell- so even if your players don't have access to medium money items, you'll often see strengths popping higher than default here and there.