Author Topic: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?  (Read 110128 times)

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Slaughterhouserock

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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #40 on: January 09, 2011, 10:48:31 AM »
Thanks! And that Psionic feat?

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Runestar

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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #41 on: January 09, 2011, 10:57:13 AM »
highly sweet Dragonscale Husk ACF in Dragon Magic. 

You mean the worst written ACF in existence? the one that stops you receiving other AC bonuses from any source and doesn't increase if you PRC out of your base class?

The funny thing is that the husk counts as medium armour, yet you must have heavy armour prof, and it doesn't count armour prof feat, so the 2 classes who seem like they would benefit the most (barbs and druids) have no use for it.

Intentional or oversight? For fighters and paladins, it certainly doesn't matter if my armour is treated as heavy or medium... ???
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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #42 on: January 09, 2011, 10:59:53 AM »

Integral

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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #43 on: January 09, 2011, 11:23:23 AM »
There's a 4000 gc slotless item that removes the movement penalty, so now your only problem with heavier armour is that you cannot tumble. If you don't have tumble on your class skill list and don't cast arcane spells and don't have a huge dex, I don't see the probelm with paying around 5k gold for +4AC.

Possibly just an SRD wording thing, AFB so can't check the PHB, but:

Quote from: SRD

So with a Tooth of Savnok, you can tumble in armor heavier than light.

Mixster

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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #44 on: January 09, 2011, 12:06:38 PM »
There's a 4000 gc slotless item that removes the movement penalty, so now your only problem with heavier armour is that you cannot tumble. If you don't have tumble on your class skill list and don't cast arcane spells and don't have a huge dex, I don't see the probelm with paying around 5k gold for +4AC.

Possibly just an SRD wording thing, AFB so can't check the PHB, but:

Quote from: SRD

So with a Tooth of Savnok, you can tumble in armor heavier than light.

Yeah it says the same thing in the PHB (just looked it up, page 84 if you want too).

I guess you can tumble in heavy armour if you have a Tooth of Savnok.

That then begs the question, what is the point of light and medium armour?
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Sunic_Flames

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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #45 on: January 09, 2011, 12:17:52 PM »
Tooth of Savnok is a unique item, and heavy armor still has a long list of disadvantages (starting with lower AC, which is rather counterproductive), the unique item just makes it suck a bit less?
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Nachofan99

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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #46 on: January 09, 2011, 05:24:15 PM »
highly sweet Dragonscale Husk ACF in Dragon Magic. 

You mean the worst written ACF in existence? the one that stops you receiving other AC bonuses from any source and doesn't increase if you PRC out of your base class?

Wrong, disinformation, and garbage.  The some of the best QUOTE UNQUOTE "PrC's" for Fighter/Paladin are Warblade/Crusader and they certainly grant armor profs.

Obviously, if you wanted to play Pun-Pun through Pun-Pun minus 2, then you'd be playing Wizard/Cleric/Druid/Archivist/Ardent whatever.  If you're going to incorporate classes that are tier 5, then you make do with what you have.

Dragonscale Husk doesn't stack with AC feats - like super sweet Dodge?  The feat that everyone takes?  Yeah.  Oh no, it doesn't stack with racial bonuses to AC - again, who cares.  Your gnome fighter (laugh) won't get +4 AC...sometimes?  Or you can't stack your monk AC bonus with Husk, OH NOES! Get real.  Are you really going to build something like that?

Spells that boost your AC like Haste or Protection from Evil still work.  Items that boost your AC like Ring of Protection or Amulet of Natural Armor still work.  And yes, as noticed by someone else, you can also use Bracers of Armor with it.

It works in an AMF.  Give me a break, that's good. If that is never going to be useful in your campaign, then why are you playing melee anyways?

Resistance 20 Acid/Cold/Electricity/Fire is like having 112,000gp worth of rings at level 20 that work in AMFs.  That's the worst ACF ever written?  Hardly.

dark_samuari

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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #47 on: January 09, 2011, 05:34:07 PM »
highly sweet Dragonscale Husk ACF in Dragon Magic. 

You mean the worst written ACF in existence? the one that stops you receiving other AC bonuses from any source and doesn't increase if you PRC out of your base class?

Wrong, disinformation, and garbage.  The some of the best QUOTE UNQUOTE "PrC's" for Fighter/Paladin are Warblade/Crusader and they certainly grant armor profs.

Obviously, if you wanted to play Pun-Pun through Pun-Pun minus 2, then you'd be playing Wizard/Cleric/Druid/Archivist/Ardent whatever.  If you're going to incorporate classes that are tier 5, then you make do with what you have.

Dragonscale Husk doesn't stack with AC feats - like super sweet Dodge?  The feat that everyone takes?  Yeah.  Oh no, it doesn't stack with racial bonuses to AC - again, who cares.  Your gnome fighter (laugh) won't get +4 AC...sometimes?  Or you can't stack your monk AC bonus with Husk, OH NOES! Get real.  Are you really going to build something like that?

Spells that boost your AC like Haste or Protection from Evil still work.  Items that boost your AC like Ring of Protection or Amulet of Natural Armor still work.  And yes, as noticed by someone else, you can also use Bracers of Armor with it.

It works in an AMF.  Give me a break, that's good. If that is never going to be useful in your campaign, then why are you playing melee anyways?

Resistance 20 Acid/Cold/Electricity/Fire is like having 112,000gp worth of rings at level 20 that work in AMFs.  That's the worst ACF ever written?  Hardly.

The problem many have with the alternate class feature is the inability to add any enchantments or upgrades. The dragon husk is pretty much locked in for what you are going to be getting, which is useful if you are running a very low wealth/equipment game but generally not the case.

Ikeren

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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #48 on: January 09, 2011, 05:41:49 PM »
Quote
Tooth of Savnok is a unique item, and heavy armor still has a long list of disadvantages (starting with lower AC, which is rather counterproductive), the unique item just makes it suck a bit less?

Heavy Armor is still for clerics. (Or Mithril Fullplate if you ever get the dex to take advantage of it).

JaronK

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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #49 on: January 09, 2011, 05:52:41 PM »
Wrong, disinformation, and garbage.  The some of the best QUOTE UNQUOTE "PrC's" for Fighter/Paladin are Warblade/Crusader and they certainly grant armor profs.

Warblade doesn't give heavy armor.  So... just something to consider.

Though you can get interesting enchantments, just wear a shirt and enchant it.  You won't get the AC buffs, but you will get the various other bonuses.

JaronK

Nachofan99

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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #50 on: January 09, 2011, 06:09:37 PM »
Wrong, disinformation, and garbage.  The some of the best QUOTE UNQUOTE "PrC's" for Fighter/Paladin are Warblade/Crusader and they certainly grant armor profs.

Warblade doesn't give heavy armor.  So... just something to consider.

Though you can get interesting enchantments, just wear a shirt and enchant it.  You won't get the AC buffs, but you will get the various other bonuses.

JaronK

Sigh, I know about Warblade - I specifically didn't write "both grant heavy armor prof," for a reason.  Someone else mentioned medium armor prof *somewhere* and I amalgamated.  But still, Crusader certainly does.

About not being about to enchant the armor - honestly, I find that pointless.  And you say why JaronK - just get something else enchanted.

If you have wealth and can buy magic items, you will use the wealth to...buy...magic...items.   What would you enchant your armor with that you absolutely CANNOT get in another slot or another way?  Honestly, very, very little.  Doesn't mean there aren't a few things, but again, very little.  Nothing absolutely game changing because you're Tier 5.

Again, Tier 5 classes are Tier 5.

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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #51 on: January 09, 2011, 06:29:01 PM »
Here's the issues with armor and AC in general:

-AC is only a small measure of a character's defense. You also have to look at things like saving throws, spell resistance, hit points, various special abilities like evasion and mettle, etc so it's not usually wise to invest a disproportional amount of resources into significantly raising your AC.

-AC is easily replaceable with spells/abilites like mirror image, blink, displacement, wings of cover, wind wall, invisibility, etc. Plus there's plenty of AC boosting spells like alter self, polymorph, haste, barkskin, shield of faith, shield, mage armor, magic vestment, etc and most of them are fairly low level (3rd level or less) so it won't be a tremendous use of resources at mid-to-high levels.

-Generally speaking you're better off investing in several different smaller AC types (armor, shield, natural, dodge, deflection, sacred/profane etc) than focusing your resources on one big AC boosting item.

-After a certain point AC simply doesn't really manner against some combat monsters unless you get your AC very high. But like I said with my first investing a significant amount of resources in AC can easily leave you more vunerable in other areas of defense.

When you add up all of these factors it's very easy to see why armor isn't that important other than providing various armor enchantments to characters.

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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #52 on: January 09, 2011, 09:03:34 PM »
Okay so ignoring all the crap armor that isn't Breastplate or Full Plate in core, what should be done to raise these armors to decency?  I think Medium should give a lesser penalty to movement, and Breastplate should just have a higher AC bonus (like +7) and maybe cost a tad more.  And then up Full Plate to a strong +10.  It gives a +3/+3 difference rather than the stupid +1/+2 difference that is around currently.

Of course, it does nothing to nerf the cleric, but at least Cloisterd Cleric is a slightly harder decision.
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The_Mad_Linguist

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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #53 on: January 09, 2011, 09:23:45 PM »
Give heavy armor a couple of points of DR too. 
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Mixster

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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #54 on: January 09, 2011, 10:57:30 PM »
But the problem is that at the higher levels, there is no real point to having a high AC and a high DR since most attacks will just cirumvent those things.

I like the sentiment of increasing the AC of medium armour by 2 and heavy armours by 4, and giving them some DR (I'd be thinking 2 and 4 respectively). But I don't think it would help a lot in the long run, the cleric would be better in the beginning though.
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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #55 on: January 09, 2011, 11:26:29 PM »
Okay so ignoring all the crap armor that isn't Breastplate or Full Plate in core, what should be done to raise these armors to decency?  I think Medium should give a lesser penalty to movement, and Breastplate should just have a higher AC bonus (like +7) and maybe cost a tad more.  And then up Full Plate to a strong +10.  It gives a +3/+3 difference rather than the stupid +1/+2 difference that is around currently.

Of course, it does nothing to nerf the cleric, but at least Cloisterd Cleric is a slightly harder decision.
No movement penalties for full plate (seriously, it's not hard to do backflips in even), and grant miss-chances to heavy armor, even on a nat 20 attack roll. A flat percentage chance that stacks with other miss chances.

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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #56 on: January 09, 2011, 11:38:25 PM »
Biggest issues with Dragonscale Husk:

1. Depends on what classes you take, so either you're limiting your choices or you're limiting the effectiveness of the ACF. A couple exceptions like a straight Crusader lock build would be viable.

2. IIRC, Soulfire is Armor-only. And it's one of the best armor/weapon properties in the game. The only reason NOT to get Soulfire is if BoED isn't an allowed sourcebook for that game.
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The_Mad_Linguist

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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #57 on: January 09, 2011, 11:40:11 PM »
AEG says you can stick armor enchants onto bracers of armor.

So there's that.
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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #58 on: January 09, 2011, 11:42:54 PM »
AEG says you can stick armor enchants onto bracers of armor.

So there's that.
But who would want to? They're too damned expensive.

I could maybe see it if you were about to hit epic enhancements, just due to the cost, but it's the principle of the thing.
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Re: What is the point of medium and heavy armor?
« Reply #59 on: January 09, 2011, 11:50:07 PM »
You get bracers of armor +1, slap soulfire onto them, call it good.
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