What's the deal with mundane armor

[tedcahill2]

Was the armor in the players handbook written from a purely historical reason?

Light armor makes sense, armor goes up, max dex goes down, more armor means higher skill penalty.

Medium armor has a far and away winner of the category, breastplate. It has the best armor (+5) which is equal to chainmail, but has 1 less skill penalty than chainmail. It has the same max dex as scale mail (+3) but has an extra point of armor, and hide armor is just bull **** for the category and is solely to give druids a armor option in case they have a ****ty dex.

Heavy armor, once again has a clear, I repeat clear, winner, full plate. There is absolutely no reason to wear any other type of heavy armor.

If you made a game that had no armor except for all the light options, a breast plate, and full plate, no one would complain, ever.

Now the armor options matter at level 1 sure, maybe even as high as level 3. But as soon as you get a little gold you can easily afford the armor you want, so the fact that breast plate is 200 gold and full plate is 1500 is largely irrelevant.

Has this ever bothered anyone else?

[Darth Ultron]

Well, D&D has always had this armor problem.

You really only need ''light, medium and heavy'' armor...and you can leave the ''whatever it is'' description vague. Just make the AC go up for each type and the weight/penalty go up....very simple.

But, history wise, yes people like all the fancy types of armor in history. But it all makes no sense in D&D.

Not unless there were a couple pages of armor rules that made each type of armor unique, but did not make a couple types all ''number maximum cool''.

[DrMotives]

The one thing that confuses me the most about armor types is if I want to make dragonhide armor, my 2 options by RAW for medium weight types are banded & breastplate. Why did no one think that skinning a giant reptile would make scale armor? Instead they thought "It would be that weird Roman legion armor that looks like a lobster tail".

[Zancloufer]

The costs of armour actually do matter a fair bit. Yes it is mostly cost, but at least there is a clear line of upgrades with better armour costing more.

1.5k GP is not exactly cheap for PCs below level 5. WoTC expected level 4 PCs to have maybe 4-5k GP worth of gear and remember than level 3-4 is when you should probably invest in a magical weapon which costs a good 2-4k GP.

[Zanos]

Not really. The armors all have different niches. When one armor is strictly better than another it's usually because it costs more or is in a higher tier, which imposes movement speed penalties.

Breastplate is pretty good but it also costs more than every medium and light armor, and it's +1 AC over a chain shirt while dropping your movement speed. Chainmail might not seem great, and it's not, but if you only have +1 or +2 dex and want medium armor it's cheaper than a breastplate by a bit. Hide armor is worse than others in it's category but is dirt cheap. And not everyone is proficient with every type of armor.

And armor prices do matter. Full Plate can't be afforded at all by a level 1 or 2, and at level 3 it would still be more than half, so you'd probably have to wait until 4 or so to actually afford full plate.

And D&D has always been about more simulation over less. If you want just three pieces of armor you can do that, but you can also just have probably only 5 or 6 weapons. And you could keep going with monsters, spells, or whatever. More choices are good.

[Sacrieur]

Because NPCs aren't always as rich as adventurers.

[Nifft]

Categories of armor:

Light, cheap
Light, expensive
Light, professional elf

Medium, cheap
Medium, hippy Druid
Medium, professional Spartan

Heavy, cheap
Heavy, bourgeoisie
Heavy, professional landed nobility

[Crake]

If you're saying that cost is irrelevant, then what's to stop me saying that a mithril chain shirt is far and away the best light armor. 0 ACP, 4 armor, 6 max dex. It's literally leather armor but with 2 more AC, right? Not that, it also weighs less, coming in at 12.5lb, vs leather's 15lb. It is categorically better in every way than leather armor.

But it costs 1100gp.

The same goes for the other armors. The same way a +1 armor is better than a masterwork armor. Some armors just literally are better than others, at the cost of being more expensive. Hide armor actually just is crap, and inferior to breastplate in every way, even in real life. But its significantly cheaper and more easily sourcable than well crafted and shaped metal plates. That cost may be insignificant at lower levels, but upgrading from scale mail to breastplate at level 2 is the same as upgrading from +4 armor to +5 armor at level 15 or whatever.

[Deophaun]

Was the armor in the players handbook written from a purely historical reason?
Fairly certain the armor section in the PHB has never heard of this "history" thing you are talking about.

Has this ever bothered anyone else?
It's bothered me that if you care about AC, you should completely ignore actual armor. The only thing medium and heavy armor does is slow you down, make you fail skill checks, and cost money.

[Crake]

The only thing medium and heavy armor does is slow you down, make you fail skill checks, and cost money.

Say that to my +1 Mithril Nimble breastplate with +6 AC, 0 ACP and 6 max dex and no speed reduction, and my +1 halfweight, nimble, mithril comfort fullplate with +9 AC, 0 ACP and 4 max dex with no speed reduction.

Both of those are wearable by people with no proficiency in the armor at no penalty and are cheaper than equivilent bracers of armor (the full plate gives more AC than bracers of armor could possibly achieve anyway)

If you want to be able to use them as a caster, simply add feycraft, githcraft and thistledown padding to the breastplate, and it drops to 0% ASF, and change the fullplate to sectioned plate, add githcraft, feycraft and thistledown padding, along with the twilight armor special ability, and hey presto, 0%ASF there as well. Hell, you can even get a mithril, githcrafted heavy shield for another cheap +2 AC, still without any ACP or spell failure.

[Zanos]

Say that to my +1 Mithril Nimble breastplate with +6 AC, 0 ACP and 6 max dex and no speed reduction, and my +1 halfweight, nimble, mithril comfort fullplate with +9 AC, 0 ACP and 4 max dex with no speed reduction.
To be fair, after modifications those are both actually light armor.

[Crake]

To be fair, after modifications those are both actually light armor.

:smalltongue: If you're a knight (or a pathfinder fighter) though, you can move at full speed in medium and heavy armor anyway, but that requires you to play knight or fighter.

[Bakkan]

If you're saying that cost is irrelevant, then what's to stop me saying that a mithril chain shirt is far and away the best light armor. 0 ACP, 4 armor, 6 max dex. It's literally leather armor but with 2 more AC, right? Not that, it also weighs less, coming in at 12.5lb, vs leather's 15lb. It is categorically better in every way than leather armor.


Funny fact: a mithril shirt actually only weighs 10 lbs. It's explicitly statted up in the DMG section on armor.

On topic, I made a calculator that would find the cheapest armor under various restrictions and I was surprised at how often armors other than the big three showed up.

[Coidzor]

It's been tweaked from foundations stretching back to the 70s over the course of a few generations of game designer.

It's bound to introduce some wonkiness into things and have HAD some wonkiness just from the nature and decade of its genesis.

[weckar]

Funny fact: a mithril shirt actually only weighs 10 lbs. It's explicitly statted up in the DMG section on armor.

On topic, I made a calculator that would find the cheapest armor under various restrictions and I was surprised at how often armors other than the big three showed up.

Care to share? I'm curious as to your actual results.

[Florian]

"Weaker" armor options are also a tool for the gm to build and gauge encounters.

(Edit: Outfitting each and every Lvl1 Orc Barbarian with a Breastplate and Greataxe instead of Hide and Greatclub has the weird follow-up effect of people complaining about Orc Carbs being too op.)

[Crake]

Care to share? I'm curious as to your actual results.

I think it's this (http://www.wdtaylor.net/calculator.html). I remember helping out with suggestions of things to add for it while it was being developed, and I still use it frome time to time.

Breastplate I believe still comes in as generally the best medium armor, but sectioned plate is a straight upgrade to fullplate, having mostly the same stats, but it's ACP is 5 instead of 6.

[tiercel]

Closely related question: why would anyone make magical versions of most armor?

Why would Leather +1 exist if a Mithral Shirt does?
Why would anyone make Scale Mail +1 or Splint Mail +1 or Half Plate +1?

[weckar]

To add other effects, of course.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Closely related question: why would anyone make magical versions of most armor?

Why would Leather +1 exist if a Mithral Shirt does?
Why would anyone make Scale Mail +1 or Splint Mail +1 or Half Plate +1?
In-universe, it can be explained by the relative rarity of mithral in certain areas, or the difficulty of the craft check to make certain items (but then, items are mostly equally hard to craft, due to the flat mwk DC). OOC, it's hard to justify enchanting suboptimal equipment.

[Zombimode]

Closely related question: why would anyone make magical versions of most armor?

Why would Leather +1 exist if a Mithral Shirt does?
Why would anyone make Scale Mail +1 or Splint Mail +1 or Half Plate +1?

Well, magical Scale Mails or Splint Mails ARE really really rare, precisely because there is no market for them.

Ask yourself: when was the last time you saw a Magic Splint Mail (etc.) in a published Adventure?

[weckar]

So what you're saying is that wearing such armor is a mark of prestige due to its rarity? I had not considered that.

[Sir Chuckles]

So what you're saying is that wearing such armor is a mark of prestige due to its rarity? I had not considered that.

In some cases outside of core, very much so. Nothing flaunts it quite like Silk or Feather Armor. But even when you get into Exotic Armor, there tends to be a lack of things to beat Breastplate and Fullplate in terms of numbers. I definitely agree that a lot of them are more for those special low wealth campaigns, 1st level characters who spent too much on throwing knives and crowbars, and, more likely that the last two, DMs filling out their militia and bandit mooks.

Wicker, Bark, Hide, and Cord all scream "I am a poor mook from a poor rural area". Padded, a club, and a buckler is the epitome of a Commoner or Expert 1 brute squad.

[Bakkan]

Care to share? I'm curious as to your actual results.

It's the one in my signature.

[Florian]

Ask yourself: when was the last time you saw a Magic Splint Mail (etc.) in a published Adventure?

I see quite a lot of them, actually. It´s a nifty trick to outfit an NPC according to WBL, but reduce the efficiency a bit. Same holds true for managing WBL on the player side, as things like low-efficiency but magic armor or weapons can be counted on to be sold.

[Elkad]

When you suddenly need to defend against an orc horde (or equip your orc horde), going with cheaper armor means you can craft/buy many more sets of armor.

Do you want 400 orcs in studded, or 100 with a chain shirt and 300 in their underpants?

[Deophaun]

Say that to my +1 Mithril Nimble breastplate with +6 AC, 0 ACP and 6 max dex and no speed reduction, and my +1 halfweight, nimble, mithril comfort fullplate with +9 AC, 0 ACP and 4 max dex with no speed reduction.
Mithril breastplate is light armor.

If you want to be able to use them as a caster
Then you don't care about AC, because you can get better AC through magic.

[gkathellar]

Yes, and the really funny bit is that it has more to do with D&D's own history than that of the real world. This is one of those cases where "legacy" trumps either realistic simulation or genre expectation. This is D&D simulating itself.


Categories of armor:

Light, cheap
Light, expensive
Light, professional elf

Medium, cheap
Medium, hippy Druid
Medium, professional Spartan

Heavy, cheap
Heavy, bourgeoisie
Heavy, professional landed nobility

Mostly this. The cost difference stops mattering by about level 4-5, so yeah, it's pretty pointless, but not entirely pointless.

Exceptions can be made for Light armor, to a degree, as ACP and Spell Failure are in negatable ranges there, but ... yeah.


And D&D has always been about more historically inaccurate simulation of itself over less.

FTFY.


More choices are good.

Except when a bunch of them are traps and the exact same choices could exist as mechanically equivalent extensions of a single game abstraction.

[Telonius]

As far as I can tell, the main purpose of including the worse armors is to equip NPCs with magic abilities that you don't want to flat-out give to your players after they loot it.


DM: They're all wearing +3 Fortification ...
Fighter: +3 fortification? Sweet!
DM: ... Scale Mail.
Fighter: :smallyuk:

[Psyren]

Has this ever bothered anyone else?

Of all the things that bother me about this game, this one is pretty far down the list.


:smalltongue: If you're a knight (or a pathfinder fighter) though, you can move at full speed in medium and heavy armor anyway, but that requires you to play knight or fighter.

Or a Dwarf, though at that point "full speed" is relative.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Because the designers looked up the names of a bunch of different real-life armors and slapped some stats on them without any real expectation of one being balanced against another. Same reason that there are weapons you'd never use because they're just inferior.

[Zanos]

Mostly this. The cost difference stops mattering by about level 4-5, so yeah, it's pretty pointless, but not entirely pointless.

Exceptions can be made for Light armor, to a degree, as ACP and Spell Failure are in negatable ranges there, but ... yeah.
I'm pretty sure you can mitigate down full-plate quite a lot with illithid wrought, nimble, gith/feycraft, thistledown shirts, mithral, etc.


FTFY.
It's a medieval inspired game, not a medieval game. If it was historically accurate you would be rolling vs. latrines a lot. It's fine that the armor types aren't perfectly accurate, and it's fine that it simulates itself.


Except when a bunch of them are traps and the exact same choices could exist as mechanically equivalent extensions of a single game abstraction.
Are we still talking about armor? Because buying cheaper armor doesn't make it a "trap option". It's cheaper because it's worse, generally. Unless you have sky high dex. Personally I love that all the armor types exist because even outside of level 5 it lets me do stuff like consider what the local militia can afford vs. the elite city guard. And within those first five levels I like that I get to make decisions within a bracket rather than say "characters with heavy armor have an armor value of 8 with +1 max dex."

There's definitely points where it's bad, I agree. A breastplate costs 200gp and a chain shirt costs 100gp for example, and the breastplate only gives +1 more AC and takes away usually 10 feet of movement. That probably isn't a good trade, but it might be for some characters and that's a choice you can make.


Because the designers looked up the names of a bunch of different real-life armors and slapped some stats on them without any real expectation of one being balanced against another. Same reason that there are weapons you'd never use because they're just inferior.
Weapons are much worse because the price difference is smaller and there's a lot more of them. Also some of them are just completely backwards. See rapier and scimitar, where they have the same statline except the scimitar is slashing, the better damage type, and costs less.

[AOKost]

I think it's this (http://www.wdtaylor.net/calculator.html). I remember helping out with suggestions of things to add for it while it was being developed, and I still use it frome time to time.

Breastplate I believe still comes in as generally the best medium armor, but sectioned plate is a straight upgrade to fullplate, having mostly the same stats, but it's ACP is 5 instead of 6.

Very nice! If you're interested in incorporating more templates and things in with that generator, I'd love to give you some sources to look at! Have you thought about having a checkbox to allow or disallow 3rd party materials like from Green Ronin?

[Deophaun]

Weapons are much worse because the price difference is smaller and there's a lot more of them. Also some of them are just completely backwards. See rapier and scimitar, where they have the same statline except the scimitar is slashing, the better damage type, and costs less.
??? Rapier weighs half as much (which can be very important if you aren't ignoring encumbrance) and can be finessed without trouble; it's a far superior weapon for Dex-based builds.

[Zanos]

??? Rapier weighs half as much (which can be very important if you aren't ignoring encumbrance) and can be finessed without trouble; it's a far superior weapon for Dex-based builds.
You aren't supposed to tell anyone you leveled dex...

I actually somehow completely forgot finesse builds existed. I know there's at least a couple of cases where there's core weapons that are objectively worse than alternatives.

[Max Caysey]

Closely related question: why would anyone make magical versions of most armor?

Why would Leather +1 exist if a Mithral Shirt does?
Why would anyone make Scale Mail +1 or Splint Mail +1 or Half Plate +1?



A +5, mithral segmented, reinforced halfweight, lightweight, nimble battle plate with the feats heave armor optimization and greater heavy armor optimization will yield +17 ac for much less gold than the equivalent epic braces of armor!

[Yogibear41]

Banded armor or something equivalent to it was around during the roman empire, the Technology for plate armor wasn't developed until hundreds of years later. Depending on how much work your DM puts into your campaign setting and levels of technology Banded armor might be the best you can get in the "heavy armor bracket" A similar comparison between Breastplate and chainmail could also potentially be made.

If you want to go even further you could also say that a chainshirt+Dastana is superior to a breastplate so why even have breastplates?

Not everyone has access to "the best"

[Telonius]

Closely related question: why would anyone make magical versions of most armor?

Why would Leather +1 exist if a Mithral Shirt does?
Why would anyone make Scale Mail +1 or Splint Mail +1 or Half Plate +1?

Leather is kind of explicable thanks to Druids.

As for the others, I blame high-level Githyanki with a healthy fear of death. They're also responsible for all of the Tridents of Fish Command that seem to populate loot hoards.

[DEMON]

Closely related question: why would anyone make magical versions of most armor?

Why would Leather +1 exist if a Mithral Shirt does?
Why would anyone make Scale Mail +1 or Splint Mail +1 or Half Plate +1?

So you can add other magical upgrades to them, of course :smallsmile:

[Arbane]

I feel obliged to point out that the awkwardness of armor is grossly exaggerated (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAzI1UvlQqw) in D&D.

[DEMON]

I feel obliged to point out that the awkwardness of armor is grossly exaggerated (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAzI1UvlQqw) in D&D.

I feel obliged to mention that Chariots of Fire is an awesome piece of work.

[Nifft]

I feel obliged to point out that the awkwardness of armor is grossly exaggerated (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAzI1UvlQqw) in D&D.

Difficult terrain penalizes armored and unarmored characters identically in D&D.

[zergling.exe]

Banded armor or something equivalent to it was around during the roman empire, the Technology for plate armor wasn't developed until hundreds of years later. Depending on how much work your DM puts into your campaign setting and levels of technology Banded armor might be the best you can get in the "heavy armor bracket" A similar comparison between Breastplate and chainmail could also potentially be made.

If you want to go even further you could also say that a chainshirt+Dastana is superior to a breastplate so why even have breastplates?

Not everyone has access to "the best"

Wouldn't that be the other way round with breasts plates being made before chain mail? I thought the Greeks made bronze breastplates, with chain (in the small links used in armor) being difficult to produce for the longest time.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Wouldn't that be the other way round with breasts plates being made before chain mail? I thought the Greeks made bronze breastplates, with chain (in the small links used in armor) being difficult to produce for the longest time.
In D&D, a bronze breastplate has -1 armour and +1 max dex compared to a steel breastplate. So the chainshirt is basically a straight upgrade, having -2 ACP, -5% ASF, and no movement penalty, but both provide the same armour bonus and potential AC.

[Elder_Basilisk]

A few thoughts on this:

1. There is absolutely nothing wrong with there only being 3-4 types of optimal armor in any given setting. That's actually pretty par for the course in any historical era. Sure, "medieval armor" includes recognizable suits of fullplate, half-plate, chain mail, splint mail (if you fudge a bit--chain and plate is probably a better historical term), brigandine (possibly representable by scale armor), chain shirts (byrnie), etc, however in this context "medieval" covers around 600 years. At any given point in time, there was a "best" armor that was worn by pretty much anyone with the money to be able to afford it, an economical armor that was worn by line troops, and a readily available armor that depending upon the era might have been worn by levies or militias. Sometimes one or more of those armor types was missing (in the first crusade era England, for example, there were basically two armor types: the full hauberk and the gambeson and there wasn't really anything in between), but there were rarely more than that.

I'll leave any questions of how well D&D or pathfinder represents those armor types and their relative merits in the game statistics; the point is that in any given historical context, there were usually only a few armor types in common use. If you showed up at a tournament in King Henry VIII's England wearing a suit of full chain mail (yes I know it's anachronistic terminology) people would have thought it just as bizarre as if you turned up in a standard D&D setting (with full equipment availability) with a 10th level fighter kitted out in + 3 chainmail. "What's up, man, don't you know fullplate is way better than that?" Likewise, no Roman tribune in the era of Julius Caesar turned up wearing a bronze breastplate and Corinthian helm. They had better armor than that.

2. The additional armor types still serve an important purpose. They enable you to distinguish vikings from Condottieri and barbarian hillmen from street toughs. Your vikings might wear chain shirts and wield sword and shield or greataxe while the condottieri wear breastplates and wield swords and bucklers or longspears. Your barbarian hillmen might wield greatclubs or longspears and wear hide armor while the street toughs wear your choice of chain shirt, studded leather, or padded armor and wield quarterstaffs, greatclubs, or rapiers. However if you only have two or three armor types, you won't be able to differentiate between the types of opponents that your characters face nearly as effectively.

You could easily look at the "extraneous" armor (and weapon) types as flavor baked into the ruleset that helps the DM add color to the world.

3. You can also use them to add detail to treasure hordes and to inflate them without harming game balance. A suit of ancient armor might actually be +3 splint mail. Why? Because when the ancient king died, splint mail was the best armor they could make. Now for your players maybe it's somewhere between +1 fullplate and regular fullplate in value (depending upon whether it's 3.5 or pathfinder and whether or not your PCs have a dex bonus), but it makes sense to find outdated armor in an ancient tomb. You might need to reduce its value by an ad-hoc amount when the PCs go to sell it--worth only 1000 gp in sale despite the cost of construction simply because it's outdated. However it adds detail and lets you give out high plusses without unbalancing your game if you decide to use it that way.

[Elkad]

The game used to have AC adjustments for damage type vs armor type.

Weapon Type vs. Armor Modifiers
ArmorType Slash Pierce Bludgeon
Banded mail +2 0 +1
Brigandine +1 +1 0
Chain mail* +2 0 -2
Field Plate +3 +1 0
Full Plate +4 +3 0
Leather armor** 0 -2 0
Plate mail +3 0 0
Ring mail +1 +1 0
Scale mail 0 +1 0
Splint mail 0 +1 +2
Studded leather +2 +1 0
* Includes bronze plate mail
** Includes padded armor and hides

So if all your opponents had bludgeoning weapons, you could save some money going with splint mail, and have a BETTER effective AC than the guy in Field Plate, or equal to the guy in Full Plate.

Those went away for simplicity.





Probably at some level magic enhancements to your armor should have been a percentage bonus.

So we set +5 armor (25,000gp) at 100% bonus. And then apply it equally to all the armor.

Ignoring the base price of the armor, for 25,000gp, you'd get a chain shirt that was only 4+4. But full plate would be 8+8.
An old +1 chain shirt would have an AC bonus of 4.8

Then we'd need to multiple AC (and combat rolls and bonuses) by 5, so we can get the granularity we need for this new system. (This lets +1 padded have an actual AC bonus - barely)

Naked and 10dex, you'd have AC50. Padded is AC55. Padded+20% (old +1) is AC56
Full plate is +40. Full plate +3 is 40x1.6= +64

[Elder_Basilisk]

That's 2nd edition. The game used to have a weapon vs armor table in AD&D. If your opponents are wearing plate mail, bring military picks.

[Nifft]

The game used to have AC adjustments for damage type vs armor type.

Weapon Type vs. Armor Modifiers
ArmorType Slash Pierce Bludgeon
Banded mail +2 0 +1
Brigandine +1 +1 0
Chain mail* +2 0 -2
Field Plate +3 +1 0
Full Plate +4 +3 0
Leather armor** 0 -2 0
Plate mail +3 0 0
Ring mail +1 +1 0
Scale mail 0 +1 0
Splint mail 0 +1 +2
Studded leather +2 +1 0
* Includes bronze plate mail
** Includes padded armor and hides

So if all your opponents had bludgeoning weapons, you could save some money going with splint mail, and have a BETTER effective AC than the guy in Field Plate, or equal to the guy in Full Plate.

Those went away for simplicity.

Heh, and those were a simplification.

http://i.imgur.com/kJP9EEW.png

... and here's what 1e had for weapons, which have specific bonuses vs. different base armor types:

http://i.imgur.com/VFFUUzN.png

The interesting thing about this is that some weapons were just-plain-better against some armor types.

Like, if everyone is going around in Shield + Full Plate (AC type 2), then the Longbow is just-plain-better than the Composite Longbow.

Anyone else know about modern game design and how meta moves around based on what everyone else is choosing to play? This is an early example of that.

There's a good reason for it, too. It's because a lot of the early D&D design came from competitive PvP wargaming, and the same sorts of design decisions went into competitive wargaming as go into modern PvP game design.

Mild imbalance, specific counters to OP defenses as the meta changed, and modeling various historical battles which challenged & changed the IRL meta -- that's what D&D started out as, and honestly it's really cool to see that the video game market has been infested by this same thinking.

I'd like to see more of that thinking coming back into D&D.

[Elkad]

Heh, and those were a simplification.

Yup, I just couldn't find that table. And I dunno about you, but we just skipped it anyway. So simplifying it out was a good change.

On the other hand, weaponspeed vs cast time was in some ways better than the current casting defensively mechanic. If your caster was in melee, you had to stick to low-level spells to not get interrupted, and a smart fighter would switch to a dagger to ruin even that.

[Pugwampy]

The gold value of armour never bothered me . I have contemplated other conundrums .

Some armours seem to have helmets and some dont . Should they not all have helmets or should helms be a different armour type ?

Full Plate in theory is molded to a persons body type before its forged which would take a significant amount of time . Poor Player
Are readily available full plate "hand me down"s and not give the player a full armour bonus .
Full plate reduces your movement speed in game , but in theory you can still run away ?

Armour does not seem to degrade or break unless DM plays with acid or fire spitter monsters .

Why do you suffer fatigue penalties from medium and heavy armour but not light ? I can understand padded armour being nice and soft but leather armour is boiled pretty stiff . chain mail should be no more or less comfy than chain shirt . Fullplate is molded to your bodyshape . Some if not all metal armours have leather padding on the inside .

Whats the point of putting your tank at such a disadvantage when you have to sleep in bushes ? What DM does not enjoy attacking at night ? I never read or seen any movie where say a warrior needs leather armour PJ,s for overnight camps but thats basically your best option in DND land .

[Crake]

Then you don't care about AC, because you can get better AC through magic.

I'm sorry, you'll have to direct me to the spell that grants a +9 to +13 armor bonus to AC. The best spell I'm aware of is greater luminous armor, which is only +8. Likewise, i'm not aware of any spell that gives a +7 shield bonus to AC.

The above of course, does not apply to abjurant champions, because they CAN get +13 armor AC from greater luminous armor, and +9 shield AC from the shield spell, in which case, sure, you don't need to wear armor. To all the other spellcasters, I ask "where are you getting equivilent numbers from?"

[Elder_Basilisk]

I'm sorry, you'll have to direct me to the spell that grants a +9 to +13 armor bonus to AC. The best spell I'm aware of is greater luminous armor, which is only +8. Likewise, i'm not aware of any spell that gives a +7 shield bonus to AC.

The above of course, does not apply to abjurant champions, because they CAN get +13 armor AC from greater luminous armor, and +9 shield AC from the shield spell, in which case, sure, you don't need to wear armor. To all the other spellcasters, I ask "where are you getting equivilent numbers from?"

The more important question is: "at what level can you get this godlike AC from magic?" Because you'll have a lot of trouble getting those kinds of bonuses by level 6 while fullplate+shield is yielding a pretty strong armor class by level 2 or 3. And magic fullplate+magic shield by level 6. If the "magic is better" only shows up at level 16-20, then you're ignoring 3/4 of the game to focus on the last quarter (which often isn't played at all).

[Zanos]

I'm sorry, you'll have to direct me to the spell that grants a +9 to +13 armor bonus to AC. The best spell I'm aware of is greater luminous armor, which is only +8. Likewise, i'm not aware of any spell that gives a +7 shield bonus to AC.

The above of course, does not apply to abjurant champions, because they CAN get +13 armor AC from greater luminous armor, and +9 shield AC from the shield spell, in which case, sure, you don't need to wear armor. To all the other spellcasters, I ask "where are you getting equivilent numbers from?"
Inertial armor with 20 PP invested can give +11 armor AC. If all you care about is numbers Thaluaad Stone Plate gives +12 base with +17 at +5, but I haven't been able to figure out how to make that usable without penalties.

I mean in general you're right, even casters can benefit from + 1 MUCH STUFF HEAVY ARMOR or whatever.


The more important question is: "at what level can you get this godlike AC from magic?" Because you'll have a lot of trouble getting those kinds of bonuses by level 6 while fullplate+shield is yielding a pretty strong armor class by level 2 or 3. And magic fullplate+magic shield by level 6. If the "magic is better" only shows up at level 16-20, then you're ignoring 3/4 of the game to focus on the last quarter (which often isn't played at all).
You can generally have both is the thing, although caster armor is pretty expensive and might not be worth it compared to other tiems.

[Nifft]

I'm sorry, you'll have to direct me to the spell that grants a +9 to +13 armor bonus to AC. The best spell I'm aware of is greater luminous armor, which is only +8. Likewise, i'm not aware of any spell that gives a +7 shield bonus to AC.

The above of course, does not apply to abjurant champions, because they CAN get +13 armor AC from greater luminous armor, and +9 shield AC from the shield spell, in which case, sure, you don't need to wear armor. To all the other spellcasters, I ask "where are you getting equivilent numbers from?"

Off the top of my head, a Paragnostic Apostle can get +10 armor bonus from greater luminous armor, and +6 shield bonus from shield.

That +2 bonus stacks with the +5 from Abjurant Champion, too.

[Crake]

Inertial armor with 20 PP invested can give +11 armor AC. If all you care about is numbers Thaluaad Stone Plate gives +12 base with +17 at +5, but I haven't been able to figure out how to make that usable without penalties.

I mean in general you're right, even casters can benefit from + 1 MUCH STUFF HEAVY ARMOR or whatever.


You can generally have both is the thing, although caster armor is pretty expensive and might not be worth it compared to other tiems.

Yeah, as Elder_basilisk said, you also need to take into account whe things come online. Sure 20pp inertial armor has +11 AC, but a +1 halfweight, mithril, nimble, githcraft, feycraft, twilight thistiledown padding comfort sectioned plate (phew, that was a mouthful) costs 55100, or roughly a quarter of your wbl at level 15, which can be then swiftly enchanted by your party cleric with magic vestment (assuming a karma bead and some other means to bump CL by at least 1) for a +5 enhancement bonus, preferably with a rod of chain spell to also hit your shield mithril feycraft shield (and everyone else's armor and shield) which would only cost 1520gp, which you could have had as early as 4th or 5th level.


Off the top of my head, a Paragnostic Apostle can get +10 armor bonus from greater luminous armor, and +6 shield bonus from shield.

That +2 bonus stacks with the +5 from Abjurant Champion, too.

That only applies to armor bonuses, so you could potentially get greater luminous armor up to +15 with that, though that requires 6 levels of investment to achieve

[zergling.exe]

In D&D, a bronze breastplate has -1 armour and +1 max dex compared to a steel breastplate. So the chainshirt is basically a straight upgrade, having -2 ACP, -5% ASF, and no movement penalty, but both provide the same armour bonus and potential AC.

The point was that breastplates were made first, and chainmail came after due to forging and metal difficulties. Since what I was responding to was that later invented armours in the same category were better, chainmail is the relevant armour, not chainshirt. Not sure if breastplates were upgraded to iron/steel before chain became available or if iron/steel chainmail was around before iron/steel breastplates.

Does this post make sense? I think I lost my train somewhere in it...

[Telonius]

Heh, and those were a simplification.

http://i.imgur.com/kJP9EEW.png

... and here's what 1e had for weapons, which have specific bonuses vs. different base armor types:

http://i.imgur.com/VFFUUzN.png

The interesting thing about this is that some weapons were just-plain-better against some armor types.

Like, if everyone is going around in Shield + Full Plate (AC type 2), then the Longbow is just-plain-better than the Composite Longbow.

Anyone else know about modern game design and how meta moves around based on what everyone else is choosing to play? This is an early example of that.

There's a good reason for it, too. It's because a lot of the early D&D design came from competitive PvP wargaming, and the same sorts of design decisions went into competitive wargaming as go into modern PvP game design.

Mild imbalance, specific counters to OP defenses as the meta changed, and modeling various historical battles which challenged & changed the IRL meta -- that's what D&D started out as, and honestly it's really cool to see that the video game market has been infested by this same thinking.

I'd like to see more of that thinking coming back into D&D.

It's basically all the fiddly math bits that people either love or hate. Either you love the simulationism, or you hate having to remember seventeen different bonuses depending on a bunch of different factors. If you hate the math, having a computer do it for you is really nice. I know Dwarf Fortress does that, thought it might be an extreme case.

[Yogibear41]

Wouldn't that be the other way round with breasts plates being made before chain mail? I thought the Greeks made bronze breastplates, with chain (in the small links used in armor) being difficult to produce for the longest time.


I was less sure about the breastplate/chainmail scenario. I have actually heard that chainmail is rather easy to make but it just takes time, not sure how much truth there is in that. I have also heard that the Breastplate(the PHB version, not the bronze version), was essentially made using the same technology that full plate was made with, but instead of making an entire suit of armor it only covered the chest. Fullplate is made from a breastplate with additional armor to cover the extremities. That is probably an extreme over simplification though.

[Nifft]

It's basically all the fiddly math bits that people either love or hate. Either you love the simulationism, or you hate having to remember seventeen different bonuses depending on a bunch of different factors. If you hate the math, having a computer do it for you is really nice. I know Dwarf Fortress does that, thought it might be an extreme case.

The modern way to update it would be to have armor types include a keyword or two.

Then have some weapons (& spells & monsters) get special benefits against specific armor keywords.

Much easier to remember, and you can introduce new weapons & armor types without needing to re-write the table.

[Max Caysey]

Inertial armor with 20 PP invested can give +11 armor AC. If all you care about is numbers Thaluaad Stone Plate gives +12 base with +17 at +5, but I haven't been able to figure out how to make that usable without penalties.

From where is this type of armor? I have never head of it, but since I can get 17 AC out of a +5 reinforced Battleplate (with feats), one should be able to get 20 AC out of a Thaluaad Stone Plate! Add nimbleness, segmented, light-weight half-weight too, and the feats Heavy Armor Optimization and Greater Heavy Armor Optimization and those penalties should be going way down!

[DEMON]

From where is this type of armor? I have never head of it, but since I can get 17 AC out of a +5 reinforced Battleplate (with feats), one should be able to get 20 AC out of a Thaluaad Stone Plate! Add nimbleness, segmented, light-weight half-weight too, and the feats Heavy Armor Optimization and Greater Heavy Armor Optimization and those penalties should be going way down!

It's a power (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/inertialArmor.htm).

[Martin Greywolf]

I was less sure about the breastplate/chainmail scenario. I have actually heard that chainmail is rather easy to make but it just takes time, not sure how much truth there is in that. I have also heard that the Breastplate(the PHB version, not the bronze version), was essentially made using the same technology that full plate was made with, but instead of making an entire suit of armor it only covered the chest. Fullplate is made from a breastplate with additional armor to cover the extremities. That is probably an extreme over simplification though.

Define breastplate. Armor with plate components was known from about the time someone figured out how to hammer a helmet out of a single piece of metal.

Bronze breastplates were around at a time when ironworking was not even discovered and continued to be in use for a while after for one reason: bronze is easy to work with. Not only is it relatively soft and easy to hammer into shape, bronze items can be created by pouring molten bronze into a mold - something you can't do with iron or steel, no matter what LotR movies taught you. That said, it is also heavier by about 20%, which is great for maces and bad for armor.

Plate bits on armor once iron was a thing were used at times, but they were fairly thick - problem is, iron is a bad material for armor, you need steel to get good results, and pre-medieval tech was only able to reliably produce carburized iron in big quantities - this is also the reason why you don't see long-bladed swords during the Roman era.

Enter the celts. They figured how to work iron quite a bit better than the Romans and managed to not only start lengthening swords, they also figured out how to make iron good enough to draw wire from. Then some masochist decided to essentially make a knitted sweater with it and chain mail was born. It isn't as easy to make as you might think, sure, the closing rings and riveting them is easy, if incredibly boring, but you need to make the wire in the first place, then cut rings out of it, and then flatten at least the bits that will have rivets in them and cut holes for rivets. Those are all time-consuming tasks.

Romans, for their part, did experiment with plate armor, it's the iconic lorica segmentata. While it offered marginally better protection (remember, it wasn't proper tempered steel yet) than lorica hamata (chain mail copied from celts), it was soon discarded because the manufacture and maintenance weren't practical. Chain mail was simply much easier to make and repair in the field, and you didn't need to fit it to the individual anywhere near as much.

Plate components were still used to reinforce it in places, there are famous wood carvings of Carolingian cavalrymen having what is most likely splinted forearm and foreleg protectors, and you could argue that metal lamellar armor is kinda sorta plate.

Then we get to high middle ages and bows and crossbows start to amp up in strength, so people with armor stard adding additional layer on top, at first coat of plates (which is where DnD studded leather gets its looks from, those studs originally held metal plates in place under the leather or cloth layer, and it was worn over chain mail) or padded surcoat, which slowly splits into two evolutionary branches, brigandine (worn over the chain mail as often as not) and breastplate (still worn over mail).

At the end of high middle ages, other plate components crop up, most prominently metal gauntlets and arms and metal leg protection. At this point, mild steel can be reliably manufactured, and armor of the highest quality is also tempered - not that everyone can afford it. This is the armor of Agincourt that can stop warbows cold (unless it gets point-blanked from the side into the visor).

Then we leave the middle ages, and metal plates not only start to cover more and more, but start to be better in quality, and prices of tempered kits go down. Chain mail now adds more weight than protection and is gone from the armor, save for protecting places that need to flex. This is when you get DnD full plate, and fun fact, this is also era of gunpowder weapons. Speaking of which.

Armies start to grow in size and organization during this period, and not unlike the Romans, their leaders soon discover that there is no economically viable way to get them all good armor. It needs to be fitted and is just plain too expensive, so they start cutting corners and either use earlier types like chain mail (during early renaissance), or just use partial armor. The clear evidence is in that the first bit of armor to go are the shin plates, which are notoriously difficult to make and have to be shaped precisely to the individual leg.

The best armor of this period is tempered steel in multiple layers of different properties, and is capable to stop a direct hit with a musket from about 30 meters - well, at least the thick parts can. Once muskets start to appear, arm and leg armor promptly can't stop them and be light enough for you to fire back, and since light field cannon starts to be commonplace, even the lone breastplate is kind of pointless for the infantryman.

Some components of armor are kept in service up to WW1 in cavalry regiments with good success (chain mail backed gloves were very popular during the Indian mutinies), but these are what we would call specialist troops today.

tl;dr Chain mail and plate armor co-existed together for the entire existence of chain mail armor, and plate armor sort of predates it.

[Deophaun]

I'm sorry, you'll have to direct me to the spell that grants a +9 to +13 armor bonus to AC. The best spell I'm aware of is greater luminous armor, which is only +8.
GLA is essentially +10, due to the -2 attack penalty inflicts.

The above of course, does not apply to abjurant champions, because they CAN get +13 armor AC from greater luminous armor, and +9 shield AC from the shield spell, in which case, sure, you don't need to wear armor. To all the other spellcasters, I ask "where are you getting equivilent numbers from?"
Monk's belt gives you Wis to AC without wearing armor. You could actually dip monk or swordsage and go the ascetic mage route, or battledancer, in which case you've now got an added +12 to AC from a casting stat. So, with the shield spell and not even bothering with abjurant champions, we've got +26 AC versus to go against the +27 of a feat boosted Thaluaad (which, I honestly don't know what that is, and Google is zero help) Stone Plate. But then I have no max Dex to worry about, either, and a good portion of that applies to touch AC, so I'm ahead.

So that's the base, and the nice thing is this scales without fuss. You want to keep throwing templates and modifications on your armor? You need to buy a whole new set each time. Now we can factor in that we're a caster, and we can do things like grab armor of darkness for +8 deflection bonus. While you've been using feats to boost you armor, we just grabbed Law Devotion for a +7 to AC (or attack, if we don't need the defense). Heck, if we're going the inertial armor route, we probably grabbed psicrystal affinity, which can take Protection Devotion. At some point, your DM asks you to lay off the AC because either nothing outside a nat 20 can hit you or nothing but a nat 1 misses everyone else. Armor-based AC is just being very try-hard about it, and it still falls short of some guy wearing nothing who doesn't have to worry about pesky things like touch attacks.

[Elder_Basilisk]

Good grief. We we're having an interesting thread about armor types until people had to drag the tiresome wizards rool/martials drool garbage into it. Can we get back to talking about actual armor and leave the spells for one of the million "I'm better than you because I only know how to talk about so-called tier 1 classes at level 20 in tippyverse" threads?

[Deophaun]

Good grief. We we're having an interesting thread about armor types until people had to drag the tiresome wizards rool/martials drool garbage into it.
Sigh... let's play everyone's favorite game "Let's Read the Thread!"

If you want to be able to use them as a caster

Then you don't care about AC, because you can get better AC through magic.

I'm sorry, you'll have to direct me to the spell that grants a +9 to +13 armor bonus to AC.

Look! Nothing about martials there. Just about casters that want to jump through a bunch of hoops to wear armor for some reason.

[Elder_Basilisk]

Content deleted.

[Elder_Basilisk]

I'm aware that the thread was derailed by a bunch of discussion of splatbook casters. I understand you were responding to a question/challenge, but it's still a derailment from the initial discussion in the thread which I find much more interesting than discussion of high level caster AC maximizing tricks.

[Deophaun]

Look, we were having a lovely discussion about armor until someone came in here and started complaining about trains.

[Crake]

GLA is essentially +10, due to the -2 attack penalty inflicts.

Monk's belt gives you Wis to AC without wearing armor. You could actually dip monk or swordsage and go the ascetic mage route, or battledancer, in which case you've now got an added +12 to AC from a casting stat. So, with the shield spell and not even bothering with abjurant champions, we've got +26 AC versus to go against the +27 of a feat boosted Thaluaad (which, I honestly don't know what that is, and Google is zero help) Stone Plate. But then I have no max Dex to worry about, either, and a good portion of that applies to touch AC, so I'm ahead.

So that's the base, and the nice thing is this scales without fuss. You want to keep throwing templates and modifications on your armor? You need to buy a whole new set each time. Now we can factor in that we're a caster, and we can do things like grab armor of darkness for +8 deflection bonus. While you've been using feats to boost you armor, we just grabbed Law Devotion for a +7 to AC (or attack, if we don't need the defense). Heck, if we're going the inertial armor route, we probably grabbed psicrystal affinity, which can take Protection Devotion. At some point, your DM asks you to lay off the AC because either nothing outside a nat 20 can hit you or nothing but a nat 1 misses everyone else. Armor-based AC is just being very try-hard about it, and it still falls short of some guy wearing nothing who doesn't have to worry about pesky things like touch attacks.

You can't start including penalties into effective AC, because not all things will be affected by those penalties. Ranged attacks and enemies with abilities like blindsight will not care. Greater Luminous armor is also restricted to good, prepared casters, so no sorcerers allowed, can't stack GLA and aescetic mage in that case. But really, even if you could, you're now investing a level and a feat vs just a smattering of cash and a single prepared spell from your party cleric.

I never mentioned feats, that was someone else, but for now, why don't we keep the discussion about armor, armor bonuses, and things exclusive with those, because saying you'll add law or protection devotion, and armor of darkness (which is a darkness domain exclusive spell as far as I can see) doesn't add anything to the discussion, because any caster could cast those, even ones in armor.

If you want to bring spells into the discussion, bring ones that are relevant to the discussion, so far only greater luminous armor, inertial armor, shield, and the monk's belt have been relevant.

[Sir Chuckles]

I'm aware that the thread was derailed by a bunch of discussion of splatbook casters. I understand you were responding to a question/challenge, but it's still a derailment from the initial discussion in the thread which I find much more interesting than discussion of high level caster AC maximizing tricks.

Ultimately, it's like many of the other mundane items that are awkward or outright inferior to other mundane items. They're less for players, more for DMs making their mook and villain rosters more colorful. A dude carrying a Longsword and wearing Breastplate is a generic footsoldier. But give him a heavy sickle and a feather cloak? That's a totally different character, even if it's the same stats and class.

As for casters, they typically want it for the enchantments. Same with the whole mithral buckler thing. The AC bonus is just a neat afterthough that may or may not matter. It's why, in Pathfinder, I like armored kilts for casters. Or, if the low level can afford it, Quilted Cloth for situation damage reduction. I mean, crossbows are everywhere, so the 6-8hp guy having DR3 against them is a probably worth 100gp.

[Yogibear41]

Define breastplate. Armor with plate components was known from about the time someone figured out how to hammer a helmet out of a single piece of metal.

Bronze breastplates were around at a time when ironworking was not even discovered and continued to be in use for a while after for one reason: bronze is easy to work with. Not only is it relatively soft and easy to hammer into shape, bronze items can be created by pouring molten bronze into a mold - something you can't do with iron or steel, no matter what LotR movies taught you. That said, it is also heavier by about 20%, which is great for maces and bad for armor.

Plate bits on armor once iron was a thing were used at times, but they were fairly thick - problem is, iron is a bad material for armor, you need steel to get good results, and pre-medieval tech was only able to reliably produce carburized iron in big quantities - this is also the reason why you don't see long-bladed swords during the Roman era.

Enter the celts. They figured how to work iron quite a bit better than the Romans and managed to not only start lengthening swords, they also figured out how to make iron good enough to draw wire from. Then some masochist decided to essentially make a knitted sweater with it and chain mail was born. It isn't as easy to make as you might think, sure, the closing rings and riveting them is easy, if incredibly boring, but you need to make the wire in the first place, then cut rings out of it, and then flatten at least the bits that will have rivets in them and cut holes for rivets. Those are all time-consuming tasks.

Romans, for their part, did experiment with plate armor, it's the iconic lorica segmentata. While it offered marginally better protection (remember, it wasn't proper tempered steel yet) than lorica hamata (chain mail copied from celts), it was soon discarded because the manufacture and maintenance weren't practical. Chain mail was simply much easier to make and repair in the field, and you didn't need to fit it to the individual anywhere near as much.

Plate components were still used to reinforce it in places, there are famous wood carvings of Carolingian cavalrymen having what is most likely splinted forearm and foreleg protectors, and you could argue that metal lamellar armor is kinda sorta plate.

Then we get to high middle ages and bows and crossbows start to amp up in strength, so people with armor stard adding additional layer on top, at first coat of plates (which is where DnD studded leather gets its looks from, those studs originally held metal plates in place under the leather or cloth layer, and it was worn over chain mail) or padded surcoat, which slowly splits into two evolutionary branches, brigandine (worn over the chain mail as often as not) and breastplate (still worn over mail).

At the end of high middle ages, other plate components crop up, most prominently metal gauntlets and arms and metal leg protection. At this point, mild steel can be reliably manufactured, and armor of the highest quality is also tempered - not that everyone can afford it. This is the armor of Agincourt that can stop warbows cold (unless it gets point-blanked from the side into the visor).

Then we leave the middle ages, and metal plates not only start to cover more and more, but start to be better in quality, and prices of tempered kits go down. Chain mail now adds more weight than protection and is gone from the armor, save for protecting places that need to flex. This is when you get DnD full plate, and fun fact, this is also era of gunpowder weapons. Speaking of which.

Armies start to grow in size and organization during this period, and not unlike the Romans, their leaders soon discover that there is no economically viable way to get them all good armor. It needs to be fitted and is just plain too expensive, so they start cutting corners and either use earlier types like chain mail (during early renaissance), or just use partial armor. The clear evidence is in that the first bit of armor to go are the shin plates, which are notoriously difficult to make and have to be shaped precisely to the individual leg.

The best armor of this period is tempered steel in multiple layers of different properties, and is capable to stop a direct hit with a musket from about 30 meters - well, at least the thick parts can. Once muskets start to appear, arm and leg armor promptly can't stop them and be light enough for you to fire back, and since light field cannon starts to be commonplace, even the lone breastplate is kind of pointless for the infantryman.

Some components of armor are kept in service up to WW1 in cavalry regiments with good success (chain mail backed gloves were very popular during the Indian mutinies), but these are what we would call specialist troops today.

tl;dr Chain mail and plate armor co-existed together for the entire existence of chain mail armor, and plate armor sort of predates it.


Interesting read, in away you conveyed the point I was trying to make, but didn't have the knowledge to make: Not everyone has the technology/Money to wear the best of the best, and in the real world unlike in DND some armors are better suited to certain tasks than others.

Also I was defining the PHB breastplate as the Steel "harder to make Breastplate" not the bronze age version.

[ericgrau]

Was the armor in the players handbook written from a purely historical reason?

Light armor makes sense, armor goes up, max dex goes down, more armor means higher skill penalty.

Medium armor has a far and away winner of the category, breastplate. It has the best armor (+5) which is equal to chainmail, but has 1 less skill penalty than chainmail. It has the same max dex as scale mail (+3) but has an extra point of armor, and hide armor is just bull **** for the category and is solely to give druids a armor option in case they have a ****ty dex.

Heavy armor, once again has a clear, I repeat clear, winner, full plate. There is absolutely no reason to wear any other type of heavy armor.

If you made a game that had no armor except for all the light options, a breast plate, and full plate, no one would complain, ever.

Now the armor options matter at level 1 sure, maybe even as high as level 3. But as soon as you get a little gold you can easily afford the armor you want, so the fact that breast plate is 200 gold and full plate is 1500 is largely irrelevant.

Has this ever bothered anyone else?
Yeup, when you get to higher level there are only 3-5 relevant mundane armor types. At levels 1-2 and for NPCs every single one of the others are relevant and it's actually very well thought out for this narrow purpose. I believe 1e/2e was much more concerned with equipping armies and it's a carry over. In fact I remember a 2e section saying specifically that nobody in an army really wears full plate because they can't afford it. It's mostly for the rich and for parades. So your favorite armors are way too expensive and totally irrelevant for the masses so there. :smalltongue:

If it makes you feel better the magic item tables greatly favor studded leather, chain shirt, hide (for druids), breast plate and full plate. With a whopping 40% to full plate. All the other misc. armors have precisely a 1% chance to be magic armor.

Personally I think 3.5e is incredibly detailed (in a good way) yet incredibly poorly organized. They have a rule for every tiny detail but not where it will ever be noticed. You need system mastery to make even basic choices, and even then most of us don't know 1/4th of the rules. They should have explained things like this in a character building section but instead <PMPHHPFFBBT><PLOP>: This is the equipment section. Here is ALL the equipment. Most of it is totally pointless for you and just for the villagers or for highly specific circumstances. Now YOU sort it out. You may notice a lot of 3.5 is like that.