Nerf mithral armor?

[Elves]

Mithral is almost universally used as the special material for armor, and the existence of mithral fullplate basically invalidates heavy armor as a category. Should mithral be nerfed -- perhaps to no longer count as one size category lighter?

Alternately, how would you buff other special materials to make them competitive?

[Rijan_Sai]

Mithral (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialMaterials.htm#mithral) is a very rare silvery, glistening metal that is lighter than iron but just as hard.
Emphasis added.

Just state that it is "very rare" to obtain mithral. If the party happens upon a mithral mine, (or maybe just an ore vein,) and wants to mine it for themselves, that's fine. Chances are they will have to deal with the dwarves that claim the metal for themselves, but that's another issue. (Alternatively, they could find or be given a few pieces of armor/ore as treasure/reward...)

Yes, the common go-to in equipment advice is "Mithral X" armor, but as a world-building option, it does not have to be readily available.

[Troacctid]

Mithral full plate, overpowered? Ha! More like overpriced. I'm not paying 9,000 gp for that when I could just use lighter armor from the start and get the same AC for cheaper!

[Elves]

Mithral full plate, overpowered? Ha! More like overpriced. I'm not paying 9,000 gp for that when I could just use lighter armor from the start and get the same AC for cheaper!

It's less about the tuning than is there a role for the heavy armor category. Presumably plate is for low dex.

[Troacctid]

If you have low Dex, why are you paying 9k to boost your armor's max Dex bonus?

[Elves]

Probably to get the full mod from a +dex item. The problem is that right now heavy armor proficiency is meaningless. But if you nerf mithral in the way I suggested I could certainly see raising plate to +10 AC (or higher) to compensate for the loss of speed.

[Troacctid]

The speed reduction from mithral full plate is exactly the same as regular full plate, except when running. How often are you using the run action?

[CharonsHelper]

You could use the Pathfinder tweak (which there was an argument back on the 3.5 boards that it was the correct RAW interpretation) that you still need proficiency with the original armor class. So you can't wear mithral full plate with only medium armor proficiency and avoid penalties. It's not massive - but it does make heavy armor proficiency more valuable.

But yes - at higher levels that +2 max dex bonus is much more valuable than any other armor type 90%+ of the time outside of particularly low DEX builds - which are generally sub-par.


The speed reduction from mithral full plate is exactly the same as regular full plate, except when running. How often are you using the run action?

It's primarily that at high levels it's exceptionally easy to get a +3 DEX bonus, so going mithral basically gets you an extra +2 AC.

[Silly Name]

Don't nerf mithral - improve heavy armor. There's way too many penalties to using it: 20 feet movement speed, you run worse, big ACP (arguably not so bad at higher levels, but still an annoyance), and low max Dex bonus.

As it stands, there's no real incentive to use heavy armor that counts as heavy, unless you're a Dwarf with bad Dexterity and don't care about the iconic knightly armor making you bad at riding horses,

Also, I'm going to agree with Rijan_Sai and say that if you feel mithral overshadows other special armor materials and renders heavy armor proficiency pointless, you could simply play things by the book and make it hard to acquire enough mithral to make a full plate suit.

[Elves]

The speed reduction from mithral full plate is exactly the same as regular full plate, except when running. How often are you using the run action?
My bad, I had remembered it as 1/2. So what's the problem then?



You could use the Pathfinder tweak (which there was an argument back on the 3.5 boards that it was the correct RAW interpretation) that you still need proficiency with the original armor class.
This is probably the best option. "Mithral is rare" isn't a rule fix, just a glossing over.

[Silly Name]

My bad, I had remembered it as 1/2. So what's the problem then?

It's easier to spend the money necessary to make a mithral heavy armor on getting a mithral medium armor and boosting your Dex/boosting your AC through other means with the gold you spare this way.

If you want to make other materials more attractive...

- Adamantine grants better DR (3/- for light, 5/- for medium, 7/- for heavy?). Maybe even make it so that +1 on the armor also increases the DR by 1.

- Dragonhide technically exists to let Druids use armor they normally wouldn't be allowed to. It's pretty sucky, though - it could grants some form of resistance to the damage type corresponding to the dragon from whose hide it was crafted - shields are a bit more difficult.

- Bonus: you could have Cold Iron Armor granting SR.

[Maat Mons]

I prefer sentira (Secrets of Sarlona, p135). It's mechanically identical to mithral, but there's no lore about it being rare, it's explicitly a man-made material, and its crystal, not metal, so take that rust monsters.

[Troacctid]

It's primarily that at high levels it's exceptionally easy to get a +3 DEX bonus, so going mithral basically gets you an extra +2 AC.
You have to be fairly deep into diminishing returns before it's worth upgrading to mithral even if you start with +3 Dex. I think something like...+2 armor and +3 shield, as well as +1 deflection, +1 natural, +1 insight, and +1 luck. Which is, y'know, a solid 40k or so worth of gear. And that's assuming you aren't paying 16k for a pair of gloves and you don't have to sell your existing armor and buy a new set. If you include the price of the gloves as part of the upgrade, you have to have +5 armor, +5 shield, +3 natural armor, +3 deflection, +1 insight, +1 luck, and a +2 defending weapon before it's worth spending 25k for another +2 (or 13k for another +1).

[newguydude1]

i agree that nerfing mithral is bad. because armor is bad. because ac is bad. so any investment in ac is bad. so when you say we should make mithral armor even worse than it already is then i have to say thats a bad way to go.

as others said buff heavy armor because even mithral full plate is unacceptably bad and you want to make it worse.

[AvatarVecna]

"Mithril is a better armor material than adamantine!"

Well, it is for adventurers. Adventurers more frequently face enemies with high attack and damage bonuses. Squeezing out every last point of AC is more valuable to them, and a few piddly points of DR isn't very useful to them. Mithril also favors casters, armored casters, and non-low-Dex characters, all of which are more common among adventurers than elsewhere. For your platoons of elite soldiers and your army generals, though, they're generally going to be dealing with huge battles against weaker opponents - if they can only be hit on a nat 20 anyway, squeezing another couple points of AC isn't going to help, but on the flipside, even DR 1/- will make an enormous difference over the course of hours of combat.

"And that's why we should make mithril worse!"

Now wait a minute. The problem here isn't that mithril is too good, because it's not. A bard or warmage might get soem extra use out of being able to cast in mithril medium or mithril heavy or whatever, but there's feats that would allow them to do that anyway, and for AC benefits, there's spells that do it better. Monk's belts and bracers of armor will serve a high-dex character better than mithril armor before too long. The problem is that armor sucks so bad that mithril can't make armor competitive with no-armor, and adamantine is even worse than mithril. So make both of them better! And other materials too.

[Melcar]

Mithral is almost universally used as the special material for armor, and the existence of mithral fullplate basically invalidates heavy armor as a category. Should mithral be nerfed -- perhaps to no longer count as one size category lighter?

Alternately, how would you buff other special materials to make them competitive?

No... armor is basically worth nothing by the time a wizard reached level 5... why would you take away fromt the mundanes?????

[CharonsHelper]

You have to be fairly deep into diminishing returns before it's worth upgrading to mithral even if you start with +3 Dex. I think something like...+2 armor and +3 shield, as well as +1 deflection, +1 natural, +1 insight, and +1 luck. Which is, y'know, a solid 40k or so worth of gear. And that's assuming you aren't paying 16k for a pair of gloves and you don't have to sell your existing armor and buy a new set. If you include the price of the gloves as part of the upgrade, you have to have +5 armor, +5 shield, +3 natural armor, +3 deflection, +1 insight, +1 luck, and a +2 defending weapon before it's worth spending 25k for another +2 (or 13k for another +1).

You're ignoring several factors.

1. Every martial and their kid brother will that have that exact 40k worth of gear (if using armor/shield) by level 11-13ish. (I did say specifically "It's primarily that at high levels it's exceptionally easy to get a +3 DEX bonus, so going mithral basically gets you an extra +2 AC.") At low levels it's not a gimme to get mithral.

2. You're ignoring the secondary advantages of mithral armor - which aren't amazing, but substantial. The lower armor check penalty and the fact that the AC from that extra DEX bonus counts as Touch AC - which is generally more valuable than an armor bonus.

3. In your second list, you're ignoring the MANY other secondary benefits of having a higher DEX, such as Reflex, initiative, ranged weapon attacks, and skill checks etc. (Plus - depending upon the reading, defending weapons may only give AC if used to attack that turn. I know that was the official FAQ in Pathfinder.)




- Dragonhide technically exists to let Druids use armor they normally wouldn't be allowed to. It's pretty sucky, though - it could grants some form of resistance to the damage type corresponding to the dragon from whose hide it was crafted - shields are a bit more difficult.


I seem to remember a rule (in the Draconomicon?) saying that the armor itself remained immune to the associated element (which is rarely a factor) and it made the Resistance enchantment cheaper.

Edit: Actually - I just googled the Draconomicon, and apparently a "Dragoncraft" armor got the same rules as Mithral (counting as 1 armor lighter) plus gives Resistance 5 to the appropriate element (non-magical). 2k more expensive than mithral across the board. This is in addition to the cheaper enchantment for Resistance.

[icefractal]

the existence of mithral fullplate basically invalidates heavy armor as a category.To what extent does "heavy armor" even differ from "medium armor" though? Most classes that can use one can use the other, the primary speed reduction is the same, and the difference in running multiplier barely ever comes up. Are you having a problem with Barbarians and Warmages being overpowered?

Pathfinder has the change you propose (it has the faster speed / lower ACP, but still count as the same category for proficiency and such), and it doesn't change much about Mithral Full Plate. What it does change is that Mithral Chainmail or Breastplate is less good, and people who would have used it are more likely going to use a Mithral Shirt instead.

[CharonsHelper]

...and people who would have used it are more likely going to use a Mithral Shirt instead.

That's actually not true, as Pathfinder gave +1 AC to all medium & heavy armors largely to make medium armor worthwhile. Mirthal breastplate is probably a bit overused though, especially due to the minor exploit that lets you wear it without any armor proficiency.

(If you take the Armor Expert trait you have -1 armor check penalty - and a mithral breastplate only HAS 1 armor check penalty. So since you're not proficient in medium armor you are technically taking a penalty to all attacks & skill checks of -0. That's the trick I use for all of my light armor characters like bards & rogues. It's not a massive exploit - a trait is basically worth half a feat, so it saves half a feat over taking proficiency, with the added bonus of avoiding the armor check penalty.)

[vasilidor]

no, bad idea.

[Anthrowhale]

Amongst heavy armors, Thaalud Stone Plate gives a +12 armor bonus with a +0 max dex bonus. That's pretty good if you have a character with bad dexterity.

[rel]

mithral is overvalued primarily because of the downgrade from medium to light since light armour can have no or almost no penalties while medium and heavy armour is crippling.

A solution is to modify the rules for medium and heavy armour making it less crippling to wear.
If you are changing the rules up modifying the rules for armour in general to make it more effective might also be worthwhile.

The iconic image of a knight hiding from dragon fire behind their shield is not replicatable under the standard D&D rules.

[Gusmo]

Armor shouldn't reduce tactical movement speed in the first place. At most it should reduce run speed, and perhaps inflict additional nonlethal damage when hustling using the overland movement rules. Make those change and suddenly mithral armor isn't all that special by the time you can afford it.

[Ignimortis]

Medium and heavy armor does too little and too late in 3.5, especially considering the crippling penalties it's been saddled with.

Neither medium or heavy armor should slow down tactical movement aside from running. ACPs for most armors is about 2 points too high. ACs for medium and heavy armor should probably be +1 for all medium and +2 for all heavy. A proficiency feat should be worth a lot, since it's supposed to be a draw for a class.

Mithral armor is used because it's about the only effect worth talking about. The issue isn't that mithral is too good, the issue is that adamantine and such are too weak. Who cares about DR 3/- by the level you can get an Adamantine Full Plate? Bump that up to 10 or even 15 for heavy armor and 6 or 10 for medium armors, then we'll talk. Cold Iron? Does armor out of CI even do anything? Etc, etc. If you want special materials to feel special, give them meaningful traits, not almost-fluff stuff that rarely matters. As it stands now, the only materials that matter are adamantine for weapons and mithral for armor, unless you're stuck against specific enemies like werebeasts and are of low enough level that their DR 10 does matter.

[Gruftzwerg]

Imho it is good designed as it is. My reasoning is the following.

Lightweight tuning is a common concept in many real life topics where weight matters. E.g. car tuning is weight an important topic where people invest money into. And most people will use the same good/best material(s) for that purpose.

Armor is such a topic where weight is important. So it is to expected that most characters who want to optimize it will invest in some kind of weight optimization for it.


But...
... if we sill stick to the car example, there are also others who invest into heavy armor. Bulletproof, Rocketproof, you name it. This is a very specific niche where only a fraction of the tuned cars fit into.

The same can be said about the "Heavy Armor Specialization" (feat-line) and similar abilities. Most people aren't aware of the options here at all (as in real life, most average guys will know more about lightweight tuning then heavy armor tuning for cars).
Heavy Armor comes with some penalties you have to deal or live with. And most people aren't willing to invest into this niche. But that doesn't mean that we should nerf everything else, just because Heavy Armor tuning is only a niche.

Maybe try to bring a Heavy Armor specialized character to your table to showchase it to your group. If you are lucky, some may pick up on that idea.

[Troacctid]

You're ignoring several factors.

1. Every martial and their kid brother will that have that exact 40k worth of gear (if using armor/shield) by level 11-13ish. (I did say specifically "It's primarily that at high levels it's exceptionally easy to get a +3 DEX bonus, so going mithral basically gets you an extra +2 AC.") At low levels it's not a gimme to get mithral.
Level 11 WBL is 66,000 gp. Are you really looking to spend two-thirds of your wealth on all that? Surely there are more efficient uses. At the very least, I would much rather spend that much enhancing my weapon. I mean, sure, level 15 WBL is 200k...but if your argument is "Mithral heavy armor makes other armors obsolete specifically at the highest levels of play and nowhere else!" that's kind of like saying "Why would anyone cast alter self when polymorph any object is clearly much better?" Not exactly very persuasive. And frankly, even with 200k of wealth, I'm not sure it's worth investing 20% of it on AC, given the diminishing returns involved, and the opportunity cost of more exciting items you could be snagging.


2. You're ignoring the secondary advantages of mithral armor - which aren't amazing, but substantial. The lower armor check penalty and the fact that the AC from that extra DEX bonus counts as Touch AC - which is generally more valuable than an armor bonus.

3. In your second list, you're ignoring the MANY other secondary benefits of having a higher DEX, such as Reflex, initiative, ranged weapon attacks, and skill checks etc. (Plus - depending upon the reading, defending weapons may only give AC if used to attack that turn. I know that was the official FAQ in Pathfinder.)
The premise is that you're not a Dex-based character and presumably not investing heavily into Dex skills or ranged weapons as a result. If it were important, I'd personally want to start with a 16 and get gloves to go even further up—and at that point, a lighter armor like a chain shirt is virtually guaranteed to be more efficient. (This isn't even considering dastana and chahar-aina, which won't be available in all campaigns, but will easily blow other options out of the water when they are.) Spending 4k on +2 Dex is pretty reasonable; however, for a non-Dex character, you can do a lot better initiative-wise than spending the extra 12k to go from +2 to +4.

[the_tick_rules]

It's funny, as an armor mithral is amazing but as a weapon material it is garbage. Adamantine is a stellar weapon material but mediocre armor. Course that is how real metals are, great for some uses useless for others.

[CharonsHelper]

The iconic image of a knight hiding from dragon fire behind their shield is not replicatable under the standard D&D rules.

It is easily doable with a tower shield. One of my favorite D&D memories is my character protecting the party from a dragon's breath with a tower shield as it circled the plateau we were stuck on. (Lightning breath rather than fire - but same gist.)

Now - the DM had ruled that I could buy a mithral tower shield - as I had built the character with the intention of using the tower shield to block stuff at long range and didn't want it breaking on me. (Which was the only thing he could really do at range since he was blind. Though he did have the Combat Focus feats to have blindsight and had Keen-Eared Scout feat to be able to easily find where foes were.)

You do have to ready an action to pull it off.


Level 11 WBL is 66,000 gp. Are you really looking to spend two-thirds of your wealth on all that? Surely there are more efficient uses. At the very least, I would much rather spend that much enhancing my weapon. I mean, sure, level 15 WBL is 200k...but if your argument is "Mithral heavy armor makes other armors obsolete specifically at the highest levels of play and nowhere else!" that's kind of like saying "Why would anyone cast alter self when polymorph any object is clearly much better?" Not exactly very persuasive. And frankly, even with 200k of wealth, I'm not sure it's worth investing 20% of it on AC, given the diminishing returns involved, and the opportunity cost of more exciting items you could be snagging.

My characters pretty much always spend around half their wealth on AC - sometimes a good deal more. As a general rule, character/class abilities are more efficient offensively, while gear is more efficient defensively. So I put most/all character abilities toward offense, and other than my weapon & primarily ability booster, nearly all of the rest of my gold goes towards defense - primarily AC along with a solid cloak of resistance.

Extreme example: My favorite PFS character was a tanky bard who spend nearly all of his gold on AC - as it's not as if he really needed a great rapier - his job was to buff, look pretty, provide flanks for the rogue, and hopefully get the monsters to take a swing at him. A couple GMs actually checked his sheet to make sure he was kosher after missing attacks they were sure would hit.


It's funny, as an armor mithral is amazing but as a weapon material it is garbage. Adamantine is a stellar weapon material but mediocre armor. Course that is how real metals are, great for some uses useless for others.

Mithral weapons rarely have much use over steel (other than hardness) though it's sometimes actually cheaper than masterwork steel for lighter weapons, moreso for small-sized PCs. A halfling sized masterwork steel dagger is 302gp, while a mithral one is 127gp. (A normal dagger weighs 1lb. A small weapon weighs half, mithral weighs half. Each pound of mithral on an item adds 500gp/lb, but it's automatically masterwork and is included in that price.)

Daggers and other normally 1lb weapons are always cheaper mithral than steel masterwork, while normally 2lb weapons are cheaper for halflings/gnomes (since being small lowers them to 1lb).

[Elves]

Half on AC is too much but 9k for +2 is pretty good. Significantly cheaper than deflection or natural armor past +1. No, it's not a low level item but that was never a qualifier.

I'm content with gating its proficiency by base armor type and then boosting other materials to be competitive.

[Melcar]

Half on AC is too much but 9k for +2 is pretty good. Significantly cheaper than deflection or natural armor past +1. No, it's not a low level item but that was never a qualifier.

I'm content with gating its proficiency by base armor type and then boosting other materials to be competitive.

Are you saying you want in increase the cost of magic armor? As is, +3 costs 9k, you want to increase the cost so that +2 cost 9k? Am I reading this correctly? Mundane armor bonus really is the least valuable of all stats in general, sure some campaigns will have an emphasis on AC, but overall its better to gain miss chance, flight, invisibility etc. than trying to boost some numeric number... why? Well, because no matter the AC, you always get hit 5% of the time, spells still hit you and there are even a number of spells that either gives you a +20 to hit (True Strike) or auto hit (Lesser Wish)... So really normal AC is probably the worst thing to focus on!

[Vaern]

Instead of nerfing mithral to make it less useful, you should consider buffing other materials to make them more appealing. I rarely see adamantine used as an armor material and almost exclusively see it used as a material for miscellaneous items solely for its high hardness and sometimes weapons for its ability to pierce hardness. You might consider buffing the damage reduction on adamantine armor to make it worth the substantial gold investment, perhaps 3/- for light armor, 6/- for medium, and 9/- for heavy. I've always felt that a single point of damage reduction was grossly overvalued on players considering that monsters' damage reduction is usually granted in increments of 5.

[Silly Name]

I've always felt that a single point of damage reduction was grossly overvalued on players considering that monsters' damage reduction is usually granted in increments of 5.

Core has some weird assumptions about what's valuable and what's not - 1 or 2 point of DR were apparently considered extremely powerful by the designers, and if you read the DMG guidelines on creating new playable races the designer value a +2 to Strength as the best possible thing a race can have, and thus need to be balanced by getting two -2s to other stats (see: half-orcs).

[gijoemike]

If your issue is that Mithral reduces the armor category....
There are several materials that do that. Mithral is the only one in core that I know of. It doesn't matter. As stated above PF clearly calls out one must still have the proper armor proficiency. 3.5 clearly missed the mark. Use the PF rule as a house rule. I won't bother even to do that.

Side Note: Blanket category based armor prof is absurd. Bob can wear chain mail but wouldn't have a clue how to put on a multi piece breastplate.


If your issue is that Mithral reduces the armor check penalty...
there are several materials, and qualities even in core that do that. It isn't an issue to signal it out. Also ACP for heavy are rough.


If your issue is that Mithral reduces the speed penalty....
GOOD. More materials and magic should do this anyway. Magic exists in this game yet armor is still uncomfortable. There are magical lighting trains in some settings yet my breastplate chaffs.

If your issue is that Mithral increases the max dex mod...
Not all characters can benefit from high dex and it is only 2 points of AC. That is nearly worthless at mid levels. There are dozens of spells, enchantments, and some materials that your money is better spent on.

If your issue is Mithral is the best armor ever!!!!!!!
Start providing darkwood, ironwood, cold iron, silver, leaded, stone, bone armor, crystal, riverine, or glasssteel. What I tend to see is DM provide base armor and mithral. Have them run up against a druid wearing stone and ironwood platemail riding a bear wearing the same. The players will remember that fight.


The mage is the most powerful character. The cleric doesn't need mithral armor to be CODzilla. Why are you even concerned about the ranger/barbarian/fighter? Let them do their trick with armor to save a single feat.

[Pinkie Pyro]

Don't nerf mithral - improve heavy armor. There's way too many penalties to using it: 20 feet movement speed, you run worse, big ACP (arguably not so bad at higher levels, but still an annoyance), and low max Dex bonus.

As it stands, there's no real incentive to use heavy armor that counts as heavy, unless you're a Dwarf with bad Dexterity and don't care about the iconic knightly armor making you bad at riding horses,

Also, I'm going to agree with Rijan_Sai and say that if you feel mithral overshadows other special armor materials and renders heavy armor proficiency pointless, you could simply play things by the book and make it hard to acquire enough mithral to make a full plate suit.

Seriously. I remove any sort of max dex or skill check penalty if you're proficient with the armor. 0 issues.

[Elves]

Are you saying you want in increase the cost of magic armor?
mithral plate armor is +9k and is functionally +2 AC from the increased max Dex.

[Morty_Jhones]

Must admit that I ve had a problem with Heavy armours Slowing tatical movment for ages.

As somone who used to whear full body protective gear as prt of his work I can state that ater geting used to it (Gaining the feat?) you realy don't knowtise it and its only if your try to run or sprint that it's is a problem. So making Run or Sprint action shorter for Heavy armour wherers seems a good way to buff what seems to be 'old fashiond thinking' about body armour.

Gona have to start houseruling this into my games.

[Melcar]

mithral plate armor is +9k and is functionally +2 AC from the increased max Dex.

Right... so you think it’s too good?

[CharonsHelper]

Must admit that I ve had a problem with Heavy armours Slowing tatical movment for ages.

As somone who used to whear full body protective gear as prt of his work I can state that ater geting used to it (Gaining the feat?) you realy don't knowtise it and its only if your try to run or sprint that it's is a problem. So making Run or Sprint action shorter for Heavy armour wherers seems a good way to buff what seems to be 'old fashiond thinking' about body armour.

Gona have to start houseruling this into my games.

True enough. In the system I made (shameless plug - see sig) heavier armors don't slow down base movement or even a normal run. They just give a penalty to some skills - which includes Athletics - which will reduce the extra speed you get for running in a straight line. Though if your Brawn is too low, you'll take extra penalties on your defense and skills both. (Armor=DR system)

[Darg]

I don't see the point of nerfing mithral armor. Heavy armor is 9000 gp for maybe 2 AC, -3 ACheck penalty, half weight, and limited category fluidity that still requires proficiency. That's the same price for a +3 bonus. I can't see it as being too strong. The wizards don't even use armor so I don't see the need to nerf something that can only help other classes.

I agree that instead of nerfing mithral, improve the other materials to be worth using.

[Elves]

Must admit that I ve had a problem with Heavy armours Slowing tatical movment for ages.

As somone who used to whear full body protective gear as prt of his work I can state that ater geting used to it (Gaining the feat?) you realy don't knowtise it and its only if your try to run or sprint that it's is a problem. So making Run or Sprint action shorter for Heavy armour wherers seems a good way to buff what seems to be 'old fashiond thinking' about body armour.

Gona have to start houseruling this into my games.

Yeah, a simple rule would be "can't run in heavy armor", shift current run impediment to medium armor, no speed minus for either.

[Silly Name]

Yeah, a simple rule would be "can't run in heavy armor", shift current run impediment to medium armor, no speed minus for either.

Straight-up being unable to run is excessive as well, if you have realism in mind. I'd be ok with the current rule that running in heavy armor only lets you move at 3x your speed rather than 4x, if it weren't on top of medium and heavy armor slowing down tactical movement also.

Honestly, there's no need to have any sort of penalty on medium armor compared to light armor other than slightly bigger ACP - and same goes for heavy armor. Still gotta diminish the ACP compared to what is presented by Core, though.

[Darg]

Dwarven Mountain Plate makes it so you can't run. Mithral also loses the size category reduction. It also reduces speed by an extra 5ft. but you get 10 armor AC and is perfect for deepwarden which is in the same book. Although, good luck moving anywhere in it with a base speed of 15/10.

[vasilidor]

until the advent of jousting, armor did not really hamper the movements of the wearer all that much, most certainly not as much as portrayed in DnD. The only real issue is carrying the extra weight took that much more energy and lead to faster exhaustion, same as carrying a heavy pack (that had even distribution around your body).
Jousting armors just got heavier and heavier until the knight in question was unable to really move, but was typically not used in actual warfare due to impracticality.

[Remuko]

Simple change idea? Maybe the slowing effects only apply to people wearing the armor without proficiency. The people intended to wear them will get/have prof, the ones that dont wont be able to cheese fully wearing armor theyre not prof with. They will get speed penalties. Seems a decent buff. Fighters should know how to run in full plate.

As for dwarven racial, it would remain unchanged. Dwarves could ignore the speed penalty for being non-prof. Maybe give them some other minor buff if you think theyre too weak (and some might say they were before this change but still).