Avianmosquito
2017-07-20, 04:50 PM
So, in Aelsif as it's currently written, armour provides AC, DR and ER as part of the push to make armour actually worth using at all levels. Its AC is provided as normal, and its DR and ER are determined by its weight and the material the armour is made of. So, this is a pretty solid and functional system, but a coworker of mine was arguing that armour shouldn't provide DR because... It doesn't in regular D&D and that is literally his only reason. He proposed an alternative, though, of having armour materials and weight provide a bonus to AC, allowing by far higher AC for high-end gear and letting AC actually do a god damn thing at high levels.
So, in the current system there's four classes of armour, which would be the same either way. These are clothing, light armour, medium armour and heavy armour. Clothing is light clothing (AC 1, dex 9) and heavy clothing (AC 2, dex 8). Light armour is the gambeson (AC 3, dex 7) and the byrnie (AC 4, dex 6). Medium armour is the breastplate (AC 5, dex 5) and the hauberk (AC 6, dex 4). Heavy, finally, is the brigandine (AC 7, dex 3) and plate (AC 8, dex 2). Clothing provides 0-3 DR/ER, light armour 0-6, medium armour 0-9 and heavy armour 0-12. Maximum quality armour (generally only available at level 20 and above) can, in theory, provide AC 13 and DR 12, with wondrous versions available to raise max dex by 2 or increase DR by 1, and feats (armor focus and the fighter only armor specialization) that can raise AC and DR by 2 for a final total of 15 and 15. That armor bonus is pretty worthless even so, but the DR holds strong and can have a decent, if not overwhelming, effect on the attacks of a 20th level character. The ER bonus would also cap at a final value of 15, as it is always equal to the DR of the armour, and while that's not enough to have a serious impact on most high-level spells (even a fireball doesn't quite get cut in half) it would have a good impact on meteor swarm, at least, and a lot of low-level spells would get ruined.
His version would have that DR/ER bonus just increase the armor bonus instead. So, all those effects combined you could give a +30 armor bonus. Sounds great, even though a 20th level fighter usually has about +35 to hit on the first attack, because it ruins power attack and does a good job to make recurrent attacks less likely to find their mark. The problem is that Aelsif has guns, and guns are very effective against armour since the muzzle-loaders only fire the one shot for max BAB, and projectile weapons in Aelsif have a 5 point advantage against AC anyway. The other issue is that armor would still be completely worthless against magic, not that it's really all that great against it in my system, either. Oh, and there's the fact that attack would continue to increase past 20th level and leave AC behind again so this is really just postponing the worthlessness of armour rather than eliminating it.
So, I'm going to pass this off to the forum. If you can find a way to eliminate all my issues with going to pure AC and have good reasons why it'd be a good idea to make the switch, I'll consider it. That is, assuming people even want a pure AC system.
So, in the current system there's four classes of armour, which would be the same either way. These are clothing, light armour, medium armour and heavy armour. Clothing is light clothing (AC 1, dex 9) and heavy clothing (AC 2, dex 8). Light armour is the gambeson (AC 3, dex 7) and the byrnie (AC 4, dex 6). Medium armour is the breastplate (AC 5, dex 5) and the hauberk (AC 6, dex 4). Heavy, finally, is the brigandine (AC 7, dex 3) and plate (AC 8, dex 2). Clothing provides 0-3 DR/ER, light armour 0-6, medium armour 0-9 and heavy armour 0-12. Maximum quality armour (generally only available at level 20 and above) can, in theory, provide AC 13 and DR 12, with wondrous versions available to raise max dex by 2 or increase DR by 1, and feats (armor focus and the fighter only armor specialization) that can raise AC and DR by 2 for a final total of 15 and 15. That armor bonus is pretty worthless even so, but the DR holds strong and can have a decent, if not overwhelming, effect on the attacks of a 20th level character. The ER bonus would also cap at a final value of 15, as it is always equal to the DR of the armour, and while that's not enough to have a serious impact on most high-level spells (even a fireball doesn't quite get cut in half) it would have a good impact on meteor swarm, at least, and a lot of low-level spells would get ruined.
His version would have that DR/ER bonus just increase the armor bonus instead. So, all those effects combined you could give a +30 armor bonus. Sounds great, even though a 20th level fighter usually has about +35 to hit on the first attack, because it ruins power attack and does a good job to make recurrent attacks less likely to find their mark. The problem is that Aelsif has guns, and guns are very effective against armour since the muzzle-loaders only fire the one shot for max BAB, and projectile weapons in Aelsif have a 5 point advantage against AC anyway. The other issue is that armor would still be completely worthless against magic, not that it's really all that great against it in my system, either. Oh, and there's the fact that attack would continue to increase past 20th level and leave AC behind again so this is really just postponing the worthlessness of armour rather than eliminating it.
So, I'm going to pass this off to the forum. If you can find a way to eliminate all my issues with going to pure AC and have good reasons why it'd be a good idea to make the switch, I'll consider it. That is, assuming people even want a pure AC system.