Post/Author/DateTime	Post
thecasualoblivion 02-20-08, 12:01 AM	I've never been terribly thrilled with the 3E armor rules, because it tends to end up all the same. With the exception of Full Plate with its ending armor plus dex bonus to AC of +9, and a few odd ones like Hide, Chainmail, ect ending up +7 or less, the best armors generally end up at +8. Anybody can achieve this +8, just matching up your Dex score to what armor it fits best with. The only difference is the movement qualities for Light, Medium and Heavy armor. This generally ends up with only three armors of any relevance: Chain Shirt, Breastplate, Fullplate, and their Mithril and Adamantium equivalents. This system also tends to downplay DEX as a valuable stat for heavily armored characters, and runs into some situations at higher levels where you start wearing +4 and +6 Dex items and it starts to make more sense not to wear armor at all as your Dex mod goes beyond +6. I have a subtle fix, that makes both Dex and your choice of armor more important. It trades off, giving a little less AC at lower levels, while giving the opportunity for higher AC with really high Dex at higher levels. My fix is to change the maximum bonus to Dex from armor to a penalty to your Dex bonus to AC. The Dex penalty would be equal to the max Dex of the armor minus 5, with a maximum of zero. The results would be: Studded Leather 0 Chain Shirt -1 Hide -1 Scale Mail -2 Chain Mail -3 Breastplate -2 Banded Mail -4 Splint Mail -5 Half Plate -5 Full Plate -4 One noticable change for this system is that Mithril needs to be revised, and the change to Max Dex/Dex Penalty needs to be lowered, in this case the Dex penalty would be one less, not two. The mathematics for this are interesting, here are some examples of final AC bonus, from +0 to +5: Dex +0 Studded Leather(SL) +3 Hide(Hi) +3 Chain Shirt(CS) +4 Scale Mail (SC)+4 Chain Mail (CH) +5 Breastplate(BP) +5 Banded Mail(BM) +6 Splint Mail(SM) +6 Half-Plate(HP) +7 Full Plate(FP) +8 Dex+1 SL+4 Hi+3 CS+4 Mithril Chain Shirt(MS)+5 SC+4 CH+5 BP+5 BM+6 SM+6 HP+7 FP+8 Dex+2 SL+5 Hi+4 CS+5 MS+6 SC+4 CH+5 BP+5 Mithril Breastplate(MB)+6 BM+6 SM+6 HP+7 FP+8 Dex+3 SL+6 HI+5 CS+6 MS+7 SC+5 CH+5 BP+6 MB+7 BM+6 SM+6 HP+7 FP+8 Dex+4 SL+7 HI+6 CS+7 MS+8 SC+6 CH+6 BP+7 MB+8 BM+6 SM+6 HP+7 FP+8 Mithril Full Plate(MP)+9 Dex+5 SL+8 HI+7 CS+8 MS+9 SC+7 CH+7 BP+8 MB+9 BM+7 SM+6 HP+7 FP+9 MP+10 Everything goes up by one each time from here on out. With this system, you can keep a decent AC no matter what your Dex is by wearing heavier armor. With lower Dex scores(+0 to +2) all ranges of armor become usable that are unoptimized currently, Chainmail, Banded, Splint and Half-Plate. Looking at the math there, your choice of armor is more important, and wearing heavier armor in general gives you more than wearing lighter armor. Also, Dex is even more important, since you can't just rely on getting your entire Dex score if its +2 or +3. It makes a high Dex valuable for all characters, not just those in light armor. It allows characters with a really high Dex score to wear armor and not penalize themselves, as by the time you can get +7 or more as a Dex modifier, you can generally also afford Bracers of Armor +8, which is only one worse than a Mithril Chain Shirt+5. There are some holes in this, like how a character with 16 Dex has an AC of +6 wearing a breastplate instead of +8, but i think this system is in general far more interesting.
Rugar 02-20-08, 04:24 PM	Well, got sucked into the forums as I was looking at info on 4ed so this marks my inaugural post... Over running games ranging from late 70's Basic to my last 3rd Ed campaign, I've settled on an armor system that seems to work best for my homebrew campaigns. The genesis of this idea was the realization that in each edition was a "Premier" weapon that every single player would carry because of its perceived benefits (increased damage, speed, whatever) over other weapons. I began looking for ways to encourage players to use alternate weapons. I hit upon the idea (and this has appeared in various incarnations in official rules as well) that has remained essentially the same in my games since the mid 80's. In essence, I use the AC rules for the relevant edition but I add in a "Weapon vs. Armor Type" correction. To do this requires 2 tables. Table 1: Armor by Type This breaks every armor into one of the armor types. Those types are No Armor, Leather/Hide, Ring, and Plate. Table 2: Weapon Effect vs. Armor Type This gives bonuses or penalties for each weapon based on the armor type of your opponent. As an example of how this works, take a heavy (footmans) mace. Designed to crush plate type armor, it has no penalties against other armor types but gets bonuses against plate types. Another example would be a rapier. Bonuses for No Armor, Leather/Hide, and Ring but with substantial penalties vs. Plate Type. The essence of this system is that not all weapons are equally effective vs. all targets.