PDA

View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next An armour system that makes (a bit) more sense PEACH



Takewo
2015-06-10, 01:43 AM
There are two things that have always sort of annoyed me in the D&D's armour system (well, and in most of role playing games as well). The first one is their anachronism and total lack of historical accuracy, and the second one is the fact that a heavy armour is pretty useless for a high-dexterity character.

Therefore, I have attempted to create an armour system that makes more sense historically-wise and with which a 20-dexterity character could still benefit largely from heavy armour. The table would be something like:



Armour Name
Armour Class
Str
Stealth
Damage Resistance


Light Armour






Leather or Padded
11 + Dex (max. +5)
-
-
-


Studded Leather
12 + Dex (max. +5)
-
-
-


Medium Armour






Hide
13 + Dex (max. +5)
-
-
-


Mail Hauberk
14 + Dex (max. +5)
-
Disadvantage
(maybe slashing)


Heavy Armour






Mail Coat
15 + Dex (max. +4)
15
Disadvantage
Piercing and Slashing


Plate Mail
16 + Dex (max. +4)
13
Disadvantage
Bludgeoning, Piercing and Slashing



Heavy Armour: In addition to having its speed reduced, a creature in heavy armour may suffocate. That means that it has disadvantage in all Strength (Athletics) checks and any Constitution roll that would result in an exhaustion level if failed.

That would befit a late middle age period. I'm getting rid of all the anachronistic armours and those that didn't exist ("Half Plate"? Seriously? and Breastplate as a whole armour wasn't used until XVI or XVII centuries, and by the time you had mail coats, scale armour was already outdated) and making it all more medieval, the word "mail" didn't come to mean the same as "armour" for no reason. Mail was the medieval armour. I have kept Padded for flavouring, because it was a peasant armour, but I see no need to give it different statistics from leather. At that point, both of them would be pretty much the same. I'm keeping hide for the sake of druids, but I'm not really sure that it'd be different from leather.

If you wanted a more medieval feel, you could drop the Plate Mail and give the Mail Coat 16 AC (or make two different mail coats or whatever) and if you wanted a more renaissance feel you could add Full plate with the same statistics as Plate Mail but AC 18 (thus making it a kind of ultimate armour).

To get a set of armours for a high middle age, you could use the following table instead:



Armour Name
Armour Class
Stealth


Light Armour




Padded
11 + Dex
-


Leather
12 + Dex
-


Studded Leather
13 + Dex
-


Medium Armour




Hide
13 + Dex
-


Scale Mail
14 + Dex
Disadvantage


Chain Mail
15 + Dex
Disadvantage




What I like about the system

I like the fact that encourages people to take a heavy armour if they are going to be in a battle. It doesn't matter how sneaky you are, if you go to a battle, you want the best armour you can afford (at least, I haven't heard about any knight using padded for fun or because he was so agile that armour was an impediment to him). But, on the other hand, it discourages its use to hang around or travel because of the suffocating thing. It also encourages people with good dexterity and heavy armour to use a double-handed weapon rather that a shield (which is more historically accurate). Also makes it useful no matter how high your dexterity is, so it discourages fighting builds based on dumping your dexterity and relying on a heavy armour to do the protection job.

What I do not like about the system

I do not like the fact that martial characters face an important loss of fighting power against heavy-armoured enemies, while spellcasters do not.

One option would be giving them damage reduction 3/- instead of damage resistance, which is basically what the feat "heavy armour master" does. But that only makes the problem smaller. Plus, low-dexterity characters become much more an issue.

Another idea is making the armour resistance work only on non magical weapons. Then, since playing characters are more likely to have magical weapons than non playing characters, they would still benefit from the resistance property but would easily overcome their enemy's resistance quite often. But I don't like that option because it kind of forces a fighting character to have a magical weapon, and I do not want to force magical items.

Historical sources

Here are some of the sources in which I have based this armour system.

The Association for Renaissance Martial Arts: Top Myths of Renaissance Martial Arts (http://www.thearma.org/essays/TopMyths.htm#.VXgckEbb75U) (especially numbers 4, 18).

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Arms and Armor--Common Misconceptions and Frequently Asked Questions (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aams/hd_aams.htm) (especially numbers 4, 5).

Wikipedia: Battle of Agincourt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt).


Ideas? Suggestions? "This is just rubbish" comments?

AmbientRaven
2015-06-10, 02:49 AM
Dexterity doesn't gain much benefit from Heavy for a reason. It is heavy. It is very hard to be Agile wearing a set of full plate Armour. It just isn't a thing. That is what +dex represents, the ability to dodge blows vs Heavy armours thick armour to absorb blows.

Also Dexterity is an amazing stat.
Dex - 17AC in studded leather and +5dex. +5 to initiative, Dex is the best save in the game, Finesse is very strong, cans elect the best ranged weapons if needed. No need for str at all.
Str - One of the worst saves, no gain to combat stats besides damage. 2 handed weapons gain the most benefit. Needs dex still for initiative

2 AC is worth a better initiative to me. This is why heavy armour limits dex bonuses.
Also this heavily biases players. Very few monsters wear armour, even fewer wear heavier armours that will have resistances.

A Swashbuckler/Fighter character would be insane in your style of plate armour. DR all P/S/B. They can also reaction to half damage. Suddenly 60 damage becomes 30 damage, which becomes 15 damage. They will have 19 AC (21 with a shield), force things to attack them, gain dex and charisma to Initiative, always sneak attack and can deal 1D8+2+Dex+Sneak (or 3D6+Dex*3+Sneak) every round.

Edit: There is also the fact any class but a two handed fighter will stack dexterity. Duel-Wielding, 1 hand/shield and Dueling will just go max dex + plate + rapier
Sure the plate has a Str req, but it isnt hard to hit

Great attempt, but I would drop the dex bonuses scaling so much with Heavy Armour. I would definatly look and refine the resistances based on armour styles though. To do so I would either look at what weapons were used against which armour historically.

Sindeloke
2015-06-10, 03:03 AM
If it helps to see a different system with similar goals, we're doing

Light armor: 12+Dex
Medium armor: 14+Dex, min Str 11, disadvantage balance/jump/swim
Heavy armor: 16+Dex, min Str 13, disadvantage balance/climb/jump/stealth/swim
All armor gives disadvantage on saves vs exhaustion.
No weapons add Dexterity to damage. Finesse and ranged can use it for attack, but Str is always your damage mod, if one exists (crossbows and guns don't apply any; bows get Str as normal, as it's assumed you procure and string your own bow to take proper advantage of your strength).

All armor types past that are purely cosmetic. Banded lamellar in one nation might be the equivalent of chitin scale in another. It's easy, it's fast, it's completely flexible to setting, it acknowledges that you can do cartwheels in well-fitted plate but still don't want to march across country or fall in the ocean while wearing it.

The single most important thing is actually not the armors themselves, though, it's the Finesse bit. As AmbientRaven aptly points out, Dex is already too strong in this game. Raising or removing the heavy armor cap makes a bad scene worse, so you need to balance by taking something else away from the stat (so far damage has worked for us; giving initiative to Intelligence could potentially work too).

Takewo
2015-06-10, 05:53 AM
Dexterity doesn't gain much benefit from Heavy for a reason. It is heavy. It is very hard to be Agile wearing a set of full plate Armour. It just isn't a thing. That is what +dex represents, the ability to dodge blows vs Heavy armours thick armour to absorb blows.

Find me a reliable historical source of a knight going to war in leather instead of mail and I'll buy it. To be effective, an armour needs to let you move properly, as armour is always the last defence should your opponent overcome everything else. This afternoon I will link some of my historical sources.


Also Dexterity is an amazing stat.
Dex - 17AC in studded leather and +5dex. +5 to initiative, Dex is the best save in the game, Finesse is very strong, cans elect the best ranged weapons if needed. No need for str at all.
Str - One of the worst saves, no gain to combat stats besides damage. 2 handed weapons gain the most benefit. Needs dex still for initiative

That is a game problem, not a problem in this specific armour system per se. That system would make dexterity more important if everything else is let as it is, but I'm not that concerned with it at this point.


A Swashbuckler/Fighter character would be insane in your style of plate armour. DR all P/S/B. They can also reaction to half damage. Suddenly 60 damage becomes 30 damage, which becomes 15 damage. They will have 19 AC (21 with a shield), force things to attack them, gain dex and charisma to Initiative, always sneak attack and can deal 1D8+2+Dex+Sneak (or 3D6+Dex*3+Sneak) every round.

Damage can't be halved or doubled more than once, so they wouldn't be able to reduce it to 25%. Nonetheless, I agree that damage resistance is probably not a good idea, that's why I was asking the forum's opinion.

And again, that system would make the characters that rely on armour generally better in combat, but generally worse when traveling long distances or in more sneaky missions, as they'd need to use a lighter armour or face exhaustion (and I'd probably add something for traveling long distances in heavy armour). Well, or maybe not.


The single most important thing is actually not the armors themselves, though, it's the Finesse bit. As AmbientRaven aptly points out, Dex is already too strong in this game. Raising or removing the heavy armor cap makes a bad scene worse, so you need to balance by taking something else away from the stat (so far damage has worked for us; giving initiative to Intelligence could potentially work too).

That looks like an interesting idea. I'll have a thought about it.


EDIT:


There is also the fact any class but a two handed fighter will stack dexterity. Duel-Wielding, 1 hand/shield and Dueling will just go max dex + plate + rapier

That is really not a problem. If I use a medieval-based armour system, I'll also use a medieval-based weapon system, and thus the rapier will be one of the first weapons to disappear from the game.

I'm thinking about allowing finesse only for daggers or something like that.

Amechra
2015-06-10, 08:02 AM
The issue with "find me a knight that went into battle in Leather armor" is that it assumes the following:

A. Everyone's playing knight-type characters.
B. There were knights with the physiques of acrobats.
C. Your players can find fitted armor for less than the cost of their home village.
D. Knights went a-dungeon crawlin'.

When you pull up examples for knights in plate mail, keep in mind that it was tailored precisely to them; the necessary Strength for someone using unfitted plate mail should be at least 15, if not higher.

Alternatively, give the standard plate mail a cap on your Dexterity bonus, and make fitted plate mail an Uncommon "magic item". Another suggestion would be specifying that the Resistances are to non-magical Bludgeoning, Slashing, and Piercing, because magic axes and swords should slice through armor like butter. It would make that +1 Sword even cooler.

I'm also surprised that you don't get vulnerability to Electricity damage at the very least; there are reasons for not carrying metal in a thunderstorm.

Dienekes
2015-06-10, 08:33 AM
Dexterity doesn't gain much benefit from Heavy for a reason. It is heavy. It is very hard to be Agile wearing a set of full plate Armour. It just isn't a thing. That is what +dex represents, the ability to dodge blows vs Heavy armours thick armour to absorb blows.

Allow me to retort.

1) No it's not. Well, it's heavier than clothes that's for sure. But a full suit of plate armor is about 50 pounds, and it's evenly distributed around your body. That is less than the modern soldiers equipment. You can do do flips in plate armor if you want, and are trained in it. If it's well made, and you are trained in wearing it, you should be able to move and fight and dodge fine in what D&D refers to as heavy armor.

Rather amusingly, one type of armor that you absolutely should not be able to do these things in, is mail. Mail is about as heavy as plate armor, and unlike plate which as I said is evenly distributed along your body, mail has the entire weight of the armor resting on your shoulders. Even then, you can be agile in it, armor that doesn't let you move is idiotic, no one wore something like that. But it is very limiting in how you move as it can make you lose balance. The one, possible, exception to the armor let you move rule was tourney armor, which was heavier, more ornate, and designed only for jousting. And even that has some variance with quite a lot being no heavier than your normal plate armor, but some going as much as 10-15 pounds heavier.

Looking at really any historical context, if you could afford heavier more expensive armor and were planning on fighting you took it. Even our common concept of Swashbucklers is a bit wrong. Swashbuckling was what happened off the battlefield when you didn't wear armor, or even a war sword. Just a small and fashionable blade and shield that is comfortable at your side when you're in town. Sort of like how a samurai duels out of his ō-yoroi kind of thing. To go by another example, the musketeers that have sort of been combined with swashbucklers in common thought wore plate armor on the battlefield. Because armor is great.

Now, that said. D&D doesn't model reality well. It frankly sucks at it, one of the worst systems to do it in I've played. In D&D an unarmored guy with a rapier is supposed to fight a full plated knight with a greatsword and have a chance of success. In the real world if you come across that, you run. You get out of the knight's reach and you run as fast as you can. That isn't what people want to see in a D&D game, and I don't think implementing it really helps the game as it inherently limits what you're allowed to play as.

And a minor point


I'm also surprised that you don't get vulnerability to Electricity damage at the very least; there are reasons for not carrying metal in a thunderstorm.

Full armor would actually have the opposite effect. If you're entire body is surrounded in metal, it would act as a faraday cage. There was a Fear Factor (I think) that used this, where the players got wrapped up in mail and had to walk across a balancing beam while being hit with electricity. Very terrifying to see, perfectly safe in practice.

Can't find that video, but this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVZBKKG4GiI), shows the same principles. Basically, if your entire body is covered in armor, you'd actually be immune to electric attacks. But if you're only wearing, like, a mail shirt, or just a helmet, or anything that doesn't cover you from in a straight line from your highest to lowest point you'd be screwed.


That is really not a problem. If I use a medieval-based armour system, I'll also use a medieval-based weapon system, and thus the rapier will be one of the first weapons to disappear from the game.

I'm thinking about allowing finesse only for daggers or something like that.

Don't know why, rapier and plate armor existed at the same time. Full plate really came about 1420s and lasted until the 17th century. Rapiers specifically were quite common by the 1500s, and they developed out of the cut and thrust sword which would be modeled by the same weapon in a D&D game, and is from around the same time as full plate started showing up, around 1450s is the earliest I've found.

Amechra
2015-06-10, 09:50 AM
I actually wasn't referring to plate armor. I... thought I noted that Plate Mail should be an exception? Whoops, I can see why you'd get that impression.

Maybe Chain Mail gives you Vulnerability to Electricity, while Plate Mail gives you Vulnerability to, I dunno, Fire?

Dienekes
2015-06-10, 10:10 AM
I actually wasn't referring to plate armor. I... thought I noted that Plate Mail should be an exception? Whoops, I can see why you'd get that impression.

Maybe Chain Mail gives you Vulnerability to Electricity, while Plate Mail gives you Vulnerability to, I dunno, Fire?

That still wouldn't make sense, as energy would be lost by going through the armor, meaning it would always be better than simply taking the fire through armor as opposed to your skin. It also would have the benefit above cloth and some lighter armors in that it won't catch on fire.

But again, that's if you're trying to model reality, which I reiterate, D&D does a piss poor job at.

Amechra
2015-06-10, 10:43 AM
It's not the armor catching on fire, it's heat transmission. Which does work that way in D&D (HEAT METAL! I like that spell a bit too much.)

Dienekes
2015-06-10, 10:56 AM
It's not the armor catching on fire, it's heat transmission. Which does work that way in D&D (HEAT METAL! I like that spell a bit too much.)

Yes, but heat to armor, using the basic dumbed down way of describing it.

Heat source on direct skin has the heat apply directly to the skin so the only heat lost is what is lost in that transfer, by contact with air, or whatever.

Heat on armor has the heat that is lost during the transfer to the armor, then the heat that is lost on the transfer to the skin. Then, again, in a full body plate armor, the heat wouldn't just spread from metal that is affected by heat to skin, it would also spread around the metal itself as it's all connected providing more space for the heat to be transferred to the air. This may make any wound caused by fire weaker, but more evenly distributed.

For the simple method of testing this, get a pot, cover it, put a chicken in the pot and cook it over a fire. Then throw another chicken directly on the fire. The one in the pot will take longer to cook, while the chicken on the fire will be burnt.

And that's not even getting into the part that armor wasn't generally worn directly connecting to skin anyway.

Amechra
2015-06-10, 12:15 PM
Dudeness.

Dudeness.

I am aware of how heat transference works in real life. And how it works in real life doesn't matter.

You keep saying that D&D is terrible at modelling reality (I've seen a LOT worse, by the way)... have you considered that modelling reality might not be the core goal of the system, like it is with GURPS?



Anyway, I'm done helping the derailing process. Toodles, all.

Stan
2015-06-10, 12:20 PM
Find me a reliable historical source of a knight going to war in leather instead of mail and I'll buy it.

It's reformation era but many soldiers (especially cavalry) wore buff coats instead heavy armor to be quicker, even though armor was still decent against bullets of the time. It's not entirely applicable as armor was heavier at this time due to guns. But D&D isn't necessarily medieval Europe.

I think the rules in the post are not worth it as they're trying to chase realism, which is a lost cause in D&D. The official armor rules have as much to do with character design as realism. Dex is nearly a super stat as it is, with many skills, a common save, and initiative. If it always affects AC as well, it's just too good and nearly everyone will have characters with at least moderately high dex. That makes characters more similar to each other and the game a little less interesting. Removing dex from heavy armor allows characters that have high dex or high strength that can largely ignore the other stat. Why change the armor rules in a way that makes melee characters more MAD?

Sindeloke
2015-06-10, 02:37 PM
Why change the armor rules in a way that makes melee characters more MAD?

It turns out it doesn't, really. Every character, be it wizard, fighter, cleric, barbarian, whoever, wants to max their offensive mainstat, and then put a good score in Con and Dex for the defensive boost. 2h fighters and vengeance pallies who otherwise would have 18 AC can now throw a 12 in Dex and get 17 AC, which is still perfectly respectable and a fair trade for not focusing on defense. I would call a 12 "largely ignoring" the other stat. And nobody else was using full plate anyway and already needed Dex if they wanted a good AC.

The end result is that shields and the Defense style are slightly more valuable, and heavy armor characters who want to focus on damage have to skirmish a bit and act more like rangers/rogues/monks if they're really afraid of getting hit. Which makes perfect sense, really.

The only MADness comes in when you force rogues and Dex rangers to pick up Str for damage, which the OP's system doesn't do - but even if it did, that still just means that they now want three stats too, instead of the two they worry about currently. The bulk of their damage already comes from non-attribute sources (sneak attack, mark & giant-killer), so they can get by with the same score in Str that the Barbarian had to put in Dex. No biggie.

Stan
2015-06-10, 03:13 PM
2h fighters and vengeance pallies who otherwise would have 18 AC can now throw a 12 in Dex and get 17 AC, which is still perfectly respectable and a fair trade for not focusing on defense. I would call a 12 "largely ignoring" the other stat. And nobody else was using full plate anyway and already needed Dex if they wanted a good AC.


But the character in plate and 18 Dex will have 20 AC, throw in shield, fighting style, and/or other boosts and you can get into the "almost never get hit" zone. Add that to all the other benefits of Dex and almost everyone will have Dex as their first or 2nd highest stat.

In the standard rules, it's easy to afford splint after a couple of levels, which is 17 AC and as good or better than any medium or light armor regardless of Dex. So, you can dump Dex and not be penalized in your AC (though you still take a hit elsewhere).

Sindeloke
2015-06-10, 08:53 PM
But the character in plate and 18 Dex will have 20 AC, throw in shield, fighting style, and/or other boosts and you can get into the "almost never get hit" zone. Add that to all the other benefits of Dex and almost everyone will have Dex as their first or 2nd highest stat.

If they want to completely abandon their attack stat and never hit or hurt anything, sure. I don't see a problem with that. Enemies will just start walking past the invulnerable but harmless fighter and kill the dudes who are actually doing damage. Or they could put everything into attack stat and Dex and ignore Con, in which case you can just drop some AoEs or Con/Will-targeted damage on them until they limp off the battlefield crying and wishing they'd remembered that weapons aren't the only thing in the game that costs hit points. The best possible sustained damage an 18 dex rapier+shield fighter is getting at level 20 is 40 DPR lower than he could have gotten if he'd gone Str instead, and unless he's a champion you can shave another 8 DPR off that if he wants the +1 AC from fighting style.

Admittedly, take feats out of the equation and that +10 per hit goes away and he's got nothing better to spend his piles of ASIs on than pumping his defense, but take feats out of the equation and fighters sort of suck, so letting them become unhittable at high levels seems the least one can do to help them keep up with level 9 spells.


So, you can dump Dex and not be penalized in your AC

Just an idle question, but why is this desirable? It sounds the same to me as "so you can dump Con and not be penalized in your hit points" or "so you can dump Wisdom and not be penalized on your mental saves." This isn't an MMO, where every single class is DAD but they call them different things so you know which gear is whose. The whole purpose from a design perspective of having six different discrete attributes in the first place is that each is desirable for a different reason, and you can't dump any of them without giving up what that attribute governs. That the game is poorly balanced in terms of how significant the dependencies of each attribute are is no reason to run around erasing all those dependencies until there's no reason not to just have a generic "attack" and "defense" stat for everyone.

Takewo
2015-06-11, 03:31 AM
Thank you all guys, you made me think, and that is always good. And special thanks to Sindeloke and Stan for their analysis on how this would affect the rest of the game system.

That said, I have a few things to comment.



The issue with "find me a knight that went into battle in Leather armor" is that it assumes the following:

A. Everyone's playing knight-type characters.
B. There were knights with the physiques of acrobats.
C. Your players can find fitted armor for less than the cost of their home village.
D. Knights went a-dungeon crawlin'.

A. Nope, I'm just assuming that any witty person would want the best protection they could get if they were going to a deadly fight.
B. Dexterity represents many things, not only the ability to perform acrobatics. Coordination and quickness are extremely important when you are trying to divert your opponent's blow. This, and no other, is my main reason to apply dexterity to armour class.
C. I never said that either. There are no prices in the armor list because I think it should chiefly depend on the setting, but as a general thing, I wouldn't find 25,000gp for a plate mail expensive at all. And I never said that any armour they found should befit them. That is something that D&D and roleplaying games in general assume, not me.
D. I'm just taking one of the deadliest fight situations in the middle ages as a matter of reference for the design of a deadly fight situation. Also, your statement seems to assume that the main purpose of an adventuring game is dungeon crawling. Frankly, if I wanted a guy to tell me "Weird things are going on in the Dusty Ruins, go and explore them, killing any monsters you find," and then feast on a slaughter of evil creatures I'd be playing Shadowflare, not roleplaying games.



D&D doesn't model reality well. It frankly sucks at it, one of the worst systems to do it in I've played. In D&D an unarmored guy with a rapier is supposed to fight a full plated knight with a greatsword and have a chance of success. In the real world if you come across that, you run. You get out of the knight's reach and you run as fast as you can. That isn't what people want to see in a D&D game, and I don't think implementing it really helps the game as it inherently limits what you're allowed to play as.

That, despite being a generalisation and thus a fallacy by its own definition, does make me consider if I want to keep playing D&D anymore. That's completely another issue, but it annoys me how combat focused it is. Nonetheless, I don't think it should limit the play any more than infiltration or social interaction do. When I play, at least, I hate being involved in massacres all the time, I do fancy going diplomatic, where the characters with the appropriate abilities shine. In the same way that a fighter can't shine hitting stuff in an adventure that's about sneaking in without nobody noticing and has to go "roguish", I can't see any problem in the rogue going "fightish" in a fighting adventure.


I think the rules in the post are not worth it as they're trying to chase realism, which is a lost cause in D&D.

Which is sad (not the "I think" part, but the "lost cause" part).



Don't know why, rapier and plate armor existed at the same time. Full plate really came about 1420s and lasted until the 17th century. Rapiers specifically were quite common by the 1500s, and they developed out of the cut and thrust sword which would be modeled by the same weapon in a D&D game, and is from around the same time as full plate started showing up, around 1450s is the earliest I've found.

Aye, that was probably my mistake. I didn't really know how to call it, but I didn't mean "Full Plate Armour" when I wrote "Plate Mail". I rather referred to its beginning when they started putting some plates over the limbs and stuff.



Dex is nearly a super stat as it is, with many skills, a common save, and initiative. If it always affects AC as well, it's just too good and nearly everyone will have characters with at least moderately high dex. That makes characters more similar to each other and the game a little less interesting. Removing dex from heavy armor allows characters that have high dex or high strength that can largely ignore the other stat. Why change the armor rules in a way that makes melee characters more MAD?

I personally wouldn't mind completely removing strength from the game, assigning all the attack rolls to dexterity and athletics to constitution (for balance you might want to put initiative under wisdom, then). I find it a rather redundant ability anyway.


Now, with all your comments in mind I will try to get to a version 2.0 of that and see if it works.

Stan
2015-06-11, 08:39 AM
It sounds like you have a handle on the ramifications. It would be worth doing for a campaign and I wouldn't leave a campaign for such a rule change. But I can see why the core rules are the way they are. I'm also old and cranky - I've done all the common rule changes in AD&D and 3e, made it classles with just a bunch of abilities to choose from, remade the magic system, grittier hit point systems. I've gotten to the point that I just want a playable system that most people can understand.

It would be more realistic to make heavy armor more desirable. In 3e and 5e, I see more light armor than heavy, which is odd. It will tilt the rules away from some builds; these builds aren't necessarily realistic but some people enjoy playing them.

The damage resistance might be too much. Half damage is a huge effect if it's constant and against virtually all non-magical damage.. Maybe DR 1 for medium, DR 3 for all damage but psychic. Why let magic bypass armor when the magic creates physical energy? Most armor also includes enough padding to be a body-sized oven mitt.

Blood of Gaea
2015-10-02, 12:31 AM
Ah, well there is a few problems here, if you are looking for accuracy.

1. Studded leather has no advantage over leather.

2. Leather only works as armour if boiled or slowly baked until hard, it is not very flexible, unless made into scale.

3. A full set of plate only weighs 30-50lbs, and you wont have problems breathing if you flip the face plate up, which you should do in a melee anyways.

4. Hide doesn't make good armour, it would be light at best.

5. You mixed up coat and hauberk, think of a coat as a t-shirt, and a hauberk as a long sleeved shirt that goes to your knees.

6. Padded armour (i.e. a gambeson) is he best armour you can get without metal.

7. The second best heavy armour would likely be a brigandine, which is similar to scale armour, but better.

8. You can sprint full speed, job, do cartwheels, and more in plate, you just can't do it as long.

9. While historically accurate, you made plate the best option for any build that doesn't sneak, period.

If I had to make a list it would be like:

Light:

Boiled Leather: 11 +Dex(max 4)

Padded: 12 +Dex

Medium:

Jack Chains: 13 +Dex

Mail Hauberk: 14 +Dex(max 3)

Heavy:

Brigandine: 15 +Dex (max 3)

Plate: 17 +Dex(max 3)*

When wearing plate and are standing you have resistance to pierce and bludgeon, and immunity to slashing. However you have disadvantage on swimming and perception checks, you cannot sneak, and if you would gain a level of exhaustion due to physical exertion, instead gain two. You do not gain a AC bonus from wearing a shield.

JNAProductions
2015-10-02, 09:04 AM
From a history standpoint, I have no comment.

From a gamist standpoint, this is just kinda awful. It ridiculously overpowers heavy armor.