Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Nelagend 06-30-06, 01:02 PM	OK, I'm starting a campaign in a couple months that I'm planning out the world for, and I want to have Mithral not be the be-all and end-all of high level armor. Specifically, I want to see Dragonskin and Adamantite be viable options, so that high level TANK tanks are mostly split between Dragon/Adam armor, and general DAMAGE tanks and rogues split between dragonskin and mithril at high levels. 2nd Edition Dragonskin: BASE AC offered is 4 worse than the dragon. If you enchant it to +5, this means that great wyrm red dragon (from killing) or wyrm gold dragon (given freely when the dragon molts) was a base of -12. It was obviously the best possible RAW armor, at least if you threw out the -10 cap. 3.5 Edition Dragonskin: Er, nothing? It makes masterwork. And doesn't break druid oaths. Obviously, to make both dragonskin and mithral viable, it needs to be somewhere in between. I'm leaning towards resist fire/cold/acid/lightning of 2xage category, or 4% poison resist per age category, depending on the dragon type, -1 to ACP, +1 to max dex, and no breaking druid oaths. Enchantments that somehow relate to the dragon type's abilities would have a discount of 5% per age category, or something like that. Is that equal to mithral, or have I misstepped and made it clearly >> mithral by this point? I'm not planning to make dragonskin available for sale, you either have to complete a quest and wait for molting (good), or kill it (evil). Adamantite... the way I understand it this is underpowered because of touch AC and movement speed, right? Would allowing its DR to chop one die off of each ray attack spell (one per spell, not one per ray, so no complete nerfs of scorching ray) per point of DR be enough to make it roughly equal to mithral, or does it need a bigger buff to compete? Oh, and, no excessive RAW please. This is a question of how to make the most balance house rule.
sren 06-30-06, 07:18 PM	Hnnn... interesting question. The dragoncraft feat in the daconomicon give dragon armor elemental resistence of 5 (type based on donor). If you need it to be more powerful, try makign it easier to enchant: the cost in time, gold and experience points to enchant is cut in half. (maybe cost in gold and XP eliminated for appropriate enchantments, and double for inappropriate enchantments). This should require the dragoncraft feat to do the work, and all bonuses should be specific to the dragon type (i.e. dragon armor shouldn't be generic armor, each suit should have abilities specific to the dragonskin used to make the armor). For adamantine, since it is way more expensive, it should be better. increase the DR provided, but make the higher DR bypassed by adamantien or epic weapons. (maybe triple DR for non-adamantine and/or non-epic weapons, but still have the standard DR for adamantine/epic weapons). Also, anyone wearing a full suit should have a chance for crit negation, or maybe the armor should have the enchanting cost for fortification, armor bonus, elemental resistance, and spell restence reduced by half. For higher-level games, if the party can do its own enchanting, then making the armor easier to enchant will make it extremely attractive. By higher levels, armor material isn't particularly important unless you're a spellcaster, or if you want want to wear medium armor, but your class abilities limit you to light armor. For arcane spellcasters, and those with class abilities limiting armor worn to light armor, mithril is going to remain the most attractive because of mithril's reduction in ASF and dropping the armor type by onecategory. Unless you want to give dragonskin or adamantine the same abilities, your arcane spellcasters, rangers and rogues are still going to use mithril if possible simply because they aren't allowed to wear anything better. It might make a little sense to give dragonskin a reduction to ASF or give adamantine the armor category drop, but doing so makes mithril less special, and doesn't fell like it fits the theme of most settings very well. So, in my opinion, you'll have a hard time convincing rangers, rogues and arcane spellcasters to use non-mithril armor, but simply increasing the existing benefits of dragonskin (natural elemental resistence) and adamantine (natural DR) will give suitable encouragement for fighters, clerics and paladins.
Nelagend 07-01-06, 03:32 PM	Right. I've got to compare the mithril breastplate (+5/+5/-2, no special abilities) to dragonskin studded leather (+3/+6/0, elemental resistance). No dragonskin chain, it makes no sense. That I think is about even, 2 points of ACP and elemental resistance vs 1 AC. The only light adamantite armor is the chain shirt (+4/+4/-1,DR 1, -1 die of damage from ray spells), which doesn't measure up, but that's OK. Now at medium armor, mithril full plate (+8/+3/-4) is the standard, compared to a dragonskin breastplate (+5/+4/-3, elemental resistance). Adamantite comes in with a comparatively cruddy breastplate (+5/+3/-4, DR 2, -2 dice of ray damage). I think this is just a case of full plate being overpowered or the middle-level armors being underpowered. I'm really tempted to increase the max Dex bonus on all armors except padded and full plate by 1. That and mess with prices. Half plate and splint are a bit overpriced, while banded should actually cost more. Now, if you're slow as a rock, dragonskin or adamantium full plate are good. But for anyone without a starting Dex penalty, they're going to get better results from Mithril. hmmm....
Jackmojo 07-05-06, 04:23 PM	The subtracting ray dice mechanic seems iffy, what about just having Adamantine add to touch AC vs spells?