Is Heavy Armor good?

[Corran]

There's one further benefit to medium armors. If you're going for heavy armor, you're probably giving up on stealth, not taking it as a skill or having half-way decent Dex. Which means that if you have the good fortune of finding a coat of Mithril Plate Mail...

Stealth proficiency is still good to pick up even in heavies. Equipment aside, there is pass without trace. But even without these, stealth points are still useful given both how often the check can come into play with noticeable/significant effect and given that checks use a d20 and that many monsters have low or mediocre perception/senses anyway.

[Tanarii]

Your last section jives with why I started the post. Common practice on most of the Cleric ranking sights tends to give the Heavy Armor a blue rating and the default Medium a green, and/ or note that it's and upgrade to get the Heavy. Maybe in 1 or 2 cases where other subclass abilities support Str based attacks it could be, but in most cases I can't say I'd rate even having the option. Perhaps if character generation looked like having three 14s and three 15s and you could leave the option open for a magic suit down the road then sure, but in almost all cases you're not building a Cleric with 14 Dex and 15 Str.

Clerics are a special case. Various domains are encouraged to default to weapons or cantrips by their 8th level Divine Strike or Potent Cantrips feature. 6 out of 9 domains through Xanathars have blessed strikes encouraging weapons use, and 5 of those get Heavy armor. Those 5 are designed to (and IMO should) start with decent Str, dump Dex, and can occasionally thwap something with a Str-based weapon.

The only Domain that should be thinking about if they want to do Str 14 and Dex 14 so they can use a wider variety of Str-based weapons is the Trickery Rogue. Or they can act like the 3 Potent Casting domains: Dex 14, stick with Daggers, and drop Str to whatever level is required to carry their Medium armor (which isn't that light, especially in a Variant Encumbrance game). (Edit: IIRC I mostly saw the latter from players of Trickery Clerics, because they also liked background with Stealth.)

And while the difference between a Dagger and a Mace or Hand Axe or even a spear or staff is pretty negligible, one possible (but not required) consideration is if the campaign uses randomly determination for what type of magic weapons are found, you might be cutting your access to a large proportion of them.

[Ogun]

Gating stuff behind money is generally way easier to overcome than gating stuff behind stats, simply because you're going to see way more money than you are going to see stat increases.

Like... unless your game is going to reach high levels, you're generally going to see two-to-three ASIs over the course of the entire campaign — it's entirely possible that you'll only see one. Spending even one of those on just boosting your AC is a massive cost, unless you're using it to go from light armor to medium armor + shields (because that's a +4/+5 boost to AC).

I feel like a lot of people underestimate how precious ability scores and ability score increases are in 5e.

I agree and I still think heavy armor costs a lot in terms of money.
It maybe the campaigns I've played but as a Nature Cleric and Forge Cleric, we went to level 8 without me getting to buy the heaviest armor I could wear.
After dying as a high strength low hit point +dex forge cleric, I started favoring natural armor/sheild and Dex~Con/Casting stat builds, and they feel way more durable.

Of course, I also avoid melee, move faster and use more cover than when I was playing a Strength based character.

Even a Tortle caster might want to chose Dex as their third highest stat, just for saves.

Making heavy armor cheaper, and/or giving PCs more money earlier shouldn't do much to affect balance in a world without magic shops.

As an aside, why do Nature clerics get heavy armor proficiency?

[RogueJK]

Clerics are a special case. Various domains are encouraged to default to weapons or cantrips by their 8th level Divine Strike or Potent Cantrips feature. 6 out of 9 domains through Xanathars have blessed strikes encouraging weapons use, and 5 of those get Heavy armor. Those 5 are designed to (and IMO should) start with decent Str, dump Dex, and can occasionally thwap something with a Str-based weapon.

The only Domain that should be thinking about if they want to do Str 14 and Dex 14 so they can use a wider variety of Str-based weapons is the Trickery Rogue. Or they can act like the 3 Potent Casting domains: Dex 14, stick with Daggers, and drop Str to whatever level is required to carry their Medium armor

Divine Strike vs. Potent Cantrip is functionally moot, post-Tasha's. You no longer have to worry about whether your domain is pushing you to use weapons or to use cantrips.

Any domain can get bonus damage to either weapons or cantrips now, via Blessed Strikes. And it's Radiant damage too, so you also don't have to fret about your specific domain getting a subpar type of bonus damage.

So now, rather than the Trickery Cleric trying to decide which STR/DEX weapon they're less bad at using so that they can try to squeeze out a few points of bonus poison damage, they can instead stick to using their auto-scaling damage cantrips that key off their undoubtedly higher WIS plus also get bonus radiant damage.

Blessed Strike's 1d8 averages out to +4.5 damage, which is basically the same as Potent Cantrip with 20 WIS.

[JackPhoenix]

Indeed. There are a number of races who get a base movement speed of 35', and who can happily dump STR and still wear Heavy Armor while having the same 25' movement speed as a Dwarf:

Air Genasi
Dhampir
Leonin
Satyr
Wood Elf
Wood Half Elf

And Centaurs have a 40' base movement speed (as do Swiftstride Shifters for short periods while Shifted), so they can still have the standard 30' movement speed while wearing Heavy Armor and dumping STR.

Yep. Even if you don't go for those races, there are various speed increases elsewhere, feats, spells, magic items, mounts and other ways to avoid relying on your movement speed (Broom of Flying), and Gauntlets of Ogre Power (and Str belts) can get you the Str you need. Mithral armor is a thing, and many characters who would pick heavy armor are casters and likely don't need to move that much during combat in the first place... and the speed penalty doesn't matter for exploration and overland travel.

[Tanarii]

Another point is that IMX, medium armor usually means a 2 pt drop in AC in practice.
Because more often than not players want Stealth as an option in their back pocket.

Divine Strike vs. Potent Cantrip is functionally moot, post-Tasha's.

Tashas is a splat with optional DM controlled rules, and not a well received one at that. It can't be assumed to be in play. But if that rule is allowed, yes it will change the dynamic for Clerics. Especially Trickery Clerics

[Amechra]

After dying as a high strength low hit point +dex forge cleric, I started favoring natural armor/sheild and Dex~Con/Casting stat builds, and they feel way more durable.

Of course, I also avoid melee, move faster and use more cover than when I was playing a Strength based character.

I've bolded two very important things — first of all, you got the Con and Dex on your Forge Cleric backwards. :p If you were worried about Dexterity saves, Resilient (Dexterity) is going to give you a way bigger bang for your buck than actually boosting Dexterity. Second of all, of course you felt like your Dex-based characters were tougher if you used more cover — cover is an amazing boost to your AC and Dex saves.

I bet you that, if you prioritized Str/Con instead of Str/Dex and made good use of cover, your Strength-based Forge Cleric would feel way tougher. In general, focusing on both Strength and Dexterity is a bad idea unless you have to (looking at you, Barbarians!)

[strangebloke]

Heavy armor - and the strategies it incentivizes - are pretty bad overall.

• Do you care about stealth? Well, too bad. You either need mithral armor, or huge modifiers that can overwhelm your disadvantage. Stealth is important! Surprise is a lot of free damage! Note that a medium armor build can switch between breastplate and halfplate depending on what is relevant.
• Plate incentivizes investment into STR. STR is not a very useful stat. Athletics is sort of useful, sometimes, but compared with Stealth + better ranged options + initiative + dexterity saves, its clear which one wins. You don't have to invest in STR, but losing 10 feet of movement is another serious cost. Yes you can get improvements to your movement speed, but losing 10 feet of movement range is losing 10 feet of movement range, no matter how you slice it. Movement speed is important! I can't take anyone seriously who just dismisses losing movement speed! And yes you can get Gauntlets of Ogre power but... that's an attunement slot and a magic item! Wouldn't you rather be picking up boots of flying and amulets of mind reading and weapons of throwing and such?
• If you are using encumbrance rules, most STR builds end up with less carry capacity free than light armor builds.
• Vulnerability to random things like heat metal and rust monsters.
• You can't get most benefits of rage.
• Plate is expensive. Medium armor costs half as much across the board, and light armor or natural armor is free. Mage armor requires non-monetary resources but also can be very good.
• You need proficiencies to use plate, that are relatively hard to come by.
• What are the upsides?

Well, uh.

• You get to be 1 AC ahead of the medium armor bros, and maybe 2 AC ahead of the light armor bros at some levels if they don't have mage armor.
• You're less MAD if you're building for STR already (itself a dubious proposition).
• ...
• ...
• Heavy armor master is good sometimes?

It's just not good! There's little upside here! It's marginally ahead in a very straightforward beatstick competition but every possible externality shows heavy armor to be the worse option. I love STR characters. I have played many STR characters. Melee fighters, melee rangers. Big beefy cleric dudes. But the heavy armor is, almost strictly, a concession to the aesthetics I want, not something I'm picking for the sake of power.

[Tanarii]

Do you care about stealth? Well, too bad. You either need mithral armor, or huge modifiers that can overwhelm your disadvantage. Stealth is important! Surprise is a lot of free damage! Note that a medium armor build can switch between breastplate and halfplate depending on what is relevant.

Surprise is hard to achieve even with a full Stealth oriented party. Because every one of the party has to beat all of the enemies PP. Unless the DM is like me, and allows fairly short distances (60ft in my case) between separate groups, in which case a smaller 1-2 person scout element can be involved in trying to achieve surprise.

What's really impacted hard is being eliminated from scouting roles, and non-surprise non-group stealth checks where the layers didn't get a choice, and to a lesser degree non-surprise group stealth checks. YMMV on how often those come into play though.

Plate incentivizes investment into STR. STR is not a very useful stat.

It is if you don't want to be restricted to a small subset of melee weapons. Although IMO finesse weapons should probably take a 1 die size reduction when used with Dex.

Plate is expensive.

But Splint is cheap. Cheaper than getting AC 16 with stealth or AC 17 without stealth using Medium armor.

You need proficiencies to use plate, that are relatively hard to come by.

This one is a real pain for some Str builds that would really love to be able dump Dex. Especially Valor Bards and StRangers.
But really, two of the three classes Str classes start with it (Fighters and Paladins), Barbarians get Rage resist instead. And Melee-oriented Clerics start with it as well.
They really did but some thought into it.

What are the upsides?

- Access to all weapons. Important if you want to use 2H weapons or something other than a Rapier / shortswords / dagger. Especially important if found magic items are random types.
- A cheap bump to AC 17 in Tier 1, and an expensive one to AC 18 in Tier 2.
- If feats are allowed: Heavy Armor Master. A great (but not OP) feat.

Is it worth it for a Wizard or Sorcerer or non-blade Warlock? Probably not. Medium + Shield is a huge enough upgrade already.

It really is a class dependent discussion. Fighters, Paladins, some Clerics, Bards, Rangers and Blade Warlocks would love it. The important three start with it.

[Witty Username]

Generally speaking you want at least one strength invested character. Unless you want the party to be stonewalled by otherwise minor obstacles.
Note: I consider a 300 pound iron gate, a minor obstacle.

Heavy armor vs medium armor depends on how your party comp is made and what tools they have, If everyone else is using medium armor, and you have no barbarians, then you likely need a strong arm character (a summoner or wild shaper can handle that as well but so can a heavy armor fighter or paladin type character).

For casters, if you don't need movement speed, heavy armor is cheaper in both gold (until you get to plate) and ability scores. 20 ft move can definitely be enough for a sedimentary character like a control caster or summoner. Mounts like phantom steed can muck with this as well (YMMV).


Heavy armor is ok, medium armor is definitely reasonable.

[Ogun]

I've bolded two very important things — first of all, you got the Con and Dex on your Forge Cleric backwards. :p If you were worried about Dexterity saves, Resilient (Dexterity) is going to give you a way bigger bang for your buck than actually boosting Dexterity. Second of all, of course you felt like your Dex-based characters were tougher if you used more cover — cover is an amazing boost to your AC and Dex saves.

I bet you that, if you prioritized Str/Con instead of Str/Dex and made good use of cover, your Strength-based Forge Cleric would feel way tougher. In general, focusing on both Strength and Dexterity is a bad idea unless you have to (looking at you, Barbarians!)

Let me clarify.
My hit points were low, because of poor rolls.
My Dex wasn't even in my top 3, stats, it was just low.
I went Strength/ Con/Wisdom, because I wanted to toss a Bless and then hit things in melee.
He died from dragons breath while attempting to take cover.

My characters that dump Strength for Dex get better at hitting, hiding,ambush, Dex saves and escaping grapples.
I never choose resilient, it's boring and it also doesn't do everything that a strait +2 to Dex does.
But mostly it's boring, I prefer more options to strait utility.

Strength based characters who want to use cover a lot won't get to melee very much, unless they skirmish maybe?
In 3.5 I would have carried a Tower or Hide Sheild, but that's not an option now.

If you could start out actually using your heavy armor proficiency for the best in mundane heavy armor, I could see choosing it more.
Right now it feels like not being able to aquire a greatsword from the beginning, despite having proficiency.
The better AC part of high Strength is money gated, and may not even show up in play.

[Amechra]

Honestly, it's like no-one read the very clear and not at all confusing chart that I posted earlier in this thread!

Splint and Half-Plate give you the same AC for roughly the same investment (Dex 14 vs. Str 15), except Splint costs 200gp and Half-Plate costs 750gp. On top of that, they have very different penalties for not hitting the "stat minimum" — Half-Plate gives you a scaling penalty to AC, while Splint gives you a flat -10ft movement speed.

Plate lets you effectively spend 1,300gp instead of spending two ASIs — one to increase your Dexterity to 16+, and another on Medium Armor Master.

It's all a matter of perspective! :p

[Ogun]

I feel seen...
Yeah, splint seems like the sweet spot.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Another point is that IMX, medium armor usually means a 2 pt drop in AC in practice.
Because more often than not players want Stealth as an option in their back pocket.


Tashas is a splat with optional DM controlled rules, and not a well received one at that. It can't be assumed to be in play. But if that rule is allowed, yes it will change the dynamic for Clerics. Especially Trickery Clerics

Regarding the Stealth, as you say in your other post, mileage may vary. And it will not just vary from table to table, but party to party, and location to location. So the Dex 14 character may have times they don the 1/2 plate and also have opportunities where they will just have the breastplate on in order to potentially get surprise. When surprise works, the extra AC point is definitely worth the trade off. To me this provides more viable options for the Med armored character and is a good thing.

[diplomancer]

Divine Strike vs. Potent Cantrip is functionally moot, post-Tasha's. You no longer have to worry about whether your domain is pushing you to use weapons or to use cantrips.

Any domain can get bonus damage to either weapons or cantrips now, via Blessed Strikes. And it's Radiant damage too, so you also don't have to fret about your specific domain getting a subpar type of bonus damage.

So now, rather than the Trickery Cleric trying to decide which STR/DEX weapon they're less bad at using so that they can try to squeeze out a few points of bonus poison damage, they can instead stick to using their auto-scaling damage cantrips that key off their undoubtedly higher WIS plus also get bonus radiant damage.

Blessed Strike's 1d8 averages out to +4.5 damage, which is basically the same as Potent Cantrip with 20 WIS.

The one exception is the Arcana Cleric; having native class access to GFB/BB, his weapon attacks are actually cantrips, and cantrips that can double up on damage, which Tasha's feature doesn't allow for, so he still prefers Potent Cantrip.

[LudicSavant]

The main advantage of Potent Cantrip is that it can activate multiple times per turn, such as on a Word of Radiance or an Arcana Cleric's BB/GFB/Bonfire or on a Warcaster OA.

Divine Strikes is basically obsolete these days, Blessed Strikes is better in just about every way until level 14, and even at level 14 it's often better since it can apply to cantrips and off-turn attacks.

[Tanarii]

It's all a matter of perspective! :p

Absolutely. And the problem with pushing back on "Heavy Armor is always worse/useless" is you start to look like you're claiming "Medium is always worse than Heavy" when you're not.

All three armor types have their places, and for the most part they lined up appropriate proficiencies in the PHB. There's a few pain points, especially if Multiclassing and Feats are allowed so ou get Armored Arcane Casters.

[Witty Username]

Regarding the Stealth, as you say in your other post, mileage may vary. And it will not just vary from table to table, but party to party, and location to location. So the Dex 14 character may have times they don the 1/2 plate and also have opportunities where they will just have the breastplate on in order to potentially get surprise. When surprise works, the extra AC point is definitely worth the trade off. To me this provides more viable options for the Med armored character and is a good thing.

That seems unrealistic, for one it takes 6 minutes to switch armor sets to this isn't something you can necessarily do responsively, for two that makes up almost all the gains the medium armor user makes up over plate in terms of cost and weight.
I will give heavy armor doesn't have that option as much (although there is nothing stopping a character having a splint and a breastplate, for a point loss in AC for better stealth capacity) so it is a benefit, but that sounds very minor.

[diplomancer]

That seems unrealistic, for one it takes 6 minutes to switch armor sets to this isn't something you can necessarily do responsively, for two that makes up almost all the gains the medium armor user makes up over plate in terms of cost and weight.
I will give heavy armor doesn't have that option as much (although there is nothing stopping a character having a splint and a breastplate, for a point loss in AC for better stealth capacity) so it is a benefit, but that sounds very minor.

It's true you can't do it responsively, but there are plenty of situations where you can know in advance whether Stealth will be viable or not. Have a mule carry your extra set of armor.

Also, going from Splint to Breastplate is only a 1-point loss in AC if you have Dex 14; which, if you're a Heavy-Armor wearer, you probably won't have (Insert standard disclaimer of "unless you've rolled well).

[stoutstien]

HaM is a decent feat which is locked into H armor.

[RogueJK]

HaM is a decent feat which is locked into H armor.

Decent primarily at lower levels, when you're most likely to frequently encounter non-magical B/P/S, and 3 points of damage makes a bigger difference.

But can remain decent for a bit longer on specific builds, like a Goliath Clockwork Sorcadin wanting to squeeze every last drop out of their upcast Armor of Agathys to keep the retributive damage going as long as possible.

But outside niche builds like that, HAM isn't anywhere near good enough to make Heavy Armor a must-have.

[Keltest]

Decent primarily at lower levels, when you're most likely to frequently encounter non-magical B/P/S, and 3 points of damage makes a bigger difference.

But can remain decent for a bit longer on specific builds, like a Goliath Clockwork Sorcadin wanting to squeeze every last drop out of their upcast Armor of Agathys to keep the retributive damage going as long as possible.

High level encounters tend to rely on multiattacks, and many monsters surprisingly do not do magical damage with their attacks. Even at high levels knocking ~10 damage off an attack sequence can be non-trivial.

[stoutstien]

Decent primarily at lower levels, when you're most likely to frequently encounter non-magical B/P/S, and 3 points of damage makes a bigger difference.

But can remain decent for a bit longer on specific builds, like a Goliath Clockwork Sorcadin wanting to squeeze every last drop out of their upcast Armor of Agathys to keep the retributive damage going as long as possible.

But outside niche builds like that, HAM isn't anywhere near good enough to make Heavy Armor a must-have.

Must have no but also not as short lived as it looks at first glance. Even in T4 it's a huge pile of a mitigation.

[strangebloke]

Surprise is hard to achieve even with a full Stealth oriented party. Because every one of the party has to beat all of the enemies PP. Unless the DM is like me, and allows fairly short distances (60ft in my case) between separate groups, in which case a smaller 1-2 person scout element can be involved in trying to achieve surprise.

What's really impacted hard is being eliminated from scouting roles, and non-surprise non-group stealth checks where the layers didn't get a choice, and to a lesser degree non-surprise group stealth checks. YMMV on how often those come into play though.

Something like +13 to +15 Stealth is relatively easy to achieve thanks to PWT, and if the map is relatively open and longbows are in play, its really not hard to beat the PP of most enemies and get an opening salvo off.

The Plate guy will have to stay behind, and will lose a turn in combat 5-20% of the time because of lower initiative. These are drawbacks.

It is if you don't want to be restricted to a small subset of melee weapons. Although IMO finesse weapons should probably take a 1 die size reduction when used with Dex.

Sure, but if the question is optimization, STR-based melee hyperspecialists using PAM/GWM aren't very good outside of a whiteroom. They end up marginally better in melee and absolute biscuits at ranged play, while the ranged builds are marginally behind in melee and leagues ahead at range, while also getting ahead in all the utility areas as outlined above.

As soon as you start looking at combats starting at distances greater than 30 feet these builds fall way behind. It may be aesthetically important to have a greatsword, but mechanically there's little reason, and a lot of the melee builds you can think of that focus strength don't even get the proficiency to begin with or straight up CAN'T use heavy armor (barbarians lol) so... one questions what th.

I will concede the point regarding magic item selection. That is one case where STR bros do genuinely win out, but again, that's if and only if random magic item generation is in play, which is either all you see or not something you see at all.

Generally speaking you want at least one strength invested character. Unless you want the party to be stonewalled by otherwise minor obstacles.

STR characters do have a role, but I'd not really consider them a 'quota' character. You don't NEED a strength bro almost ever. There's no stopping the druid from turning into a bear and lifting the gate, or the wizard casting shatter, or the thief from scaling the wall and opening the gate from inside.

Heavy armor is ok, medium armor is definitely reasonable.

Yeah I would agree with this. Heavy armor is 'bad' but not obscenely worse than medium armor. It just generally has more drawbacks than you'd expect, given that heavy armor proficiency is treated as a premium class feature.

But Splint is cheap. Cheaper than getting AC 16 with stealth or AC 17 without stealth using Medium armor.[/COLOR]

Honestly, it's like no-one read the very clear and not at all confusing chart that I posted earlier in this thread!

I'm not ignoring it, its just a non-sequitor. I'm giving heavy armor credit for "+1 or +2 to AC" but you can't give it credit for improving AC without mentioning the drawback of high cost. You can ignore the high cost, but that also means ignoring the only real benefit plate armor has to begin with.

Splint does end up being better overall for a couple levels, but it is technically more expensive than the option it has +1 AC in comparison to, which is scale.

Decent primarily at lower levels, when you're most likely to frequently encounter non-magical B/P/S, and 3 points of damage makes a bigger difference.

But can remain decent for a bit longer on specific builds, like a Goliath Clockwork Sorcadin wanting to squeeze every last drop out of their upcast Armor of Agathys to keep the retributive damage going as long as possible.

But outside niche builds like that, HAM isn't anywhere near good enough to make Heavy Armor a must-have.

HAM is what I would call "rock solid." It's arguably broken at level 1. A level 1 Clineage fighter with HAM and 18 STR is going to slaughter most early game threats that would challenge a party, but even at level 14 or so that fighter is going to remain resilient.... depending on the set of monsters being used. A lot of newer monsters have pure elemental damage, which does suck, but even against something like an ancient red dragon you'll be mitigating 6-9 damage a turn, which is pretty good for a half-feat. And if your DM is fond of hordes, well, you're even happier.

Not good enough to auto-lock plate, but definitely a plus to the archetype IMO.

[Keltest]

Something like +13 to +15 Stealth is relatively easy to achieve thanks to PWT, and if the map is relatively open and longbows are in play, its really not hard to beat the PP of most enemies and get an opening salvo off.

The Plate guy will have to stay behind, and will lose a turn in combat 5-20% of the time because of lower initiative. These are drawbacks.

If youre using PWT, then you still end up with a stronger stealth bonus than you would from stripping naked before stealthing without PWT. Its only disadvantage. Its annoying, but with a large enough flat modifier, you can still easily beat most monsters' passives.

[Telwar]

Decent primarily at lower levels, when you're most likely to frequently encounter non-magical B/P/S, and 3 points of damage makes a bigger difference.

But can remain decent for a bit longer on specific builds, like a Goliath Clockwork Sorcadin wanting to squeeze every last drop out of their upcast Armor of Agathys to keep the retributive damage going as long as possible.

But outside niche builds like that, HAM isn't anywhere near good enough to make Heavy Armor a must-have.

Would be nice if it instead, say, removed (1+PB) damage from non-magical B/P/S hits, so it scaled.

[sithlordnergal]

Hmmm, I've always been a fan of heavy armor over Medium, and I consider Light Armor to be worthless for everyone except a pure Dex build. From what I've seen, most of the Cons for Heavy Armor apply to Medium Armor as well:

- Disadvantage on Stealth? Unless you decide to stick with Breast Plate or downgrade from Scale Mail, you'll have Disadvantage on Stealth Checks as well. Meaning the price of no Disadvantage is being 2 points lower than what Plate gives you instead of 1

- Higher Dex score? You can do that with Heavy armor as well. You can have the same bonuses to Stealth, Dex Saves, and other Dex Skills as a Medium Armor user.

- Vulnerability to Heat Metal and Rust Monsters? Last I checked, Medium Armor is still metal, and is vulnerable to both of those things.

- Donning/Doffing times? People do have a point that its easier to put on and take off Medium Armor. However, the times are so long for both that it doesn't actually matfer. If you're ambushed, you're not going to be able to use your Light, Medium, or Heavy Armor unless you're sleeping in it. If you're hit by Heat Metal, the spell lasts 1 minute and it takes 1 minute to remove Medium Armor. You'll be taking the full damage from the spell anyway.


The only Cons that solely apply to Heavy Armor is the price, and the Strength requirements. However, I have some thoughts on those too:

- Price: Yes, Heavy Armor is more expensive than Medium. But you're getting a +1 to AC, which is a big deal in 5e's Bounded Accuracy system. Not only thay, but its just a monetary price. In order to get the same AC with Medium Armor you need a 16 Dex and a not so great Half-Feat. That's an investment of two ASIs, versus some Gold.

- Strength Requirements: Technically speaking, you don't need to meet the Strength Requirement. You do lose 10 feet of movement, but as long as you're not playing some sort of mobility build then you're fine. This is especially true for Casters. When was the last time you, as a Caster, wante to be right in melee range of your enemy? Perosonally, I tend to hang back and let the enemy run to me. Additionally, there are ways around that penalty. Obviously you could get 15 Strength, but you can also use a mount or play a Dwarf. All in all, not nearly the major penalty people say it is.


Meanwhile the benefits speak for themselves. Consider what sort of builds we're talking here. From what I can see, we're talking about casters, be they Wizards or Clerics. Consider the spells that buff AC, they work best when you have a high base AC. Now, Clerics are somewhat limited, in that they only have Shield of Faith. But even then, a 22 AC is nothing to scoff at.

Wizards fare far, far better. Given you need to multiclass to get Heavy Armor on a Wizard anyway, there is no reason not to go Fighter and take the Defense Fighting Style. Once you have Plate, you're looking at a base 21 AC, with a 26 AC via Shield, no magic items what so ever. And yes, Medium Armor nets you a 25 AC once everything is added together, but in 5e that +1 to AC can be really important due to bounded accuracy. And its not like I did some crazy build here either, where I had to work hard for 21 to 26 AC. No, this is a basic build path, cause Wizards aren't really going to use the other Fighting Styles.

[Pex]

STR characters do have a role, but I'd not really consider them a 'quota' character. You don't NEED a strength bro almost ever. There's no stopping the druid from turning into a bear and lifting the gate, or the wizard casting shatter, or the thief from scaling the wall and opening the gate from inside.

Aside from the rogue with Mr. Strong Man they wouldn't have to and save the resource use for something more potent. Even with lenient or no encumbrance rules strength uses happen in a campaign. I have no issue it happens less often than stealth is needed, but that's not to say strength characters just shouldn't bother existing. Lifting and shoving are a thing out of combat. As with any out of combat thing usefulness is dependent on the DM. Some games dark vision is super important and you're The Suck for not having it. Other games it doesn't matter but having it is a convenience once in a while. Some DMs make Medicine matter to figure out how an NPC died or how close to 0 hit points an enemy is (raises hand). Other games Medicine might as well not exist. Strength use is not the outlier here.

[TaiLiu]

Honestly, it's like no-one read the very clear and not at all confusing chart that I posted earlier in this thread!

I really liked your table! It was super helpful.

[Amechra]

I'm not ignoring it, its just a non-sequitor. I'm giving heavy armor credit for "+1 or +2 to AC" but you can't give it credit for improving AC without mentioning the drawback of high cost. You can ignore the high cost, but that also means ignoring the only real benefit plate armor has to begin with.

Splint does end up being better overall for a couple levels, but it is technically more expensive than the option it has +1 AC in comparison to, which is scale.

I mean, it isn't a non sequitor?

The idea that heavy armor is supposed to be an improvement in overall AC over medium armor is one possible way to interpret the armor list, but it's just as valid to look at heavy armor from the perspective that it's supposed to be a way for Strength-based characters to end up with comparable AC to Dexterity-based characters. Heck, if you look at the "free" starting armor that your class gives you, medium armor users get scale and heavy armor users get chain mail. That implies that those two armors are supposed to be comparable — after all, if heavy armor is supposed to give you better AC, why isn't that the case with starting armor?

It's kinda like... medium armor isn't inherently a big AC boost over light armor for dex-focused characters, since someone with Dex 20 gets the same AC in studded leather and half-plate unless they spend an ASI on Medium Armor Master. The reason why it's a big deal for spellcasters (and Barbarians) is because they usually aren't super-focused on Dexterity, so the fact that they only need Dex 14 to get that "Dex 20" equivalent AC is pretty nice. Heavy armor is similar — if you only have a 13 to stick in an AC-boosting stat, heavy armor is going to give you the biggest bang for your buck, since Str 13 chain mail gives you the same AC as Dex 13 half-plate for 10% of the cost.

If you do want to look at the top-end instead, heavy armor has a different advantage — if you start with Dex 16 (for light and medium armor) or Str 16 (for heavy armor) and the free armor from your class, you have a situation where the following is true:

• You can upgrade your AC twice over the course of the game before accounting for magic armor.
• Light armor's upgrades are purely through ASIs (assuming that the cost for studded leather is negligible).
• Medium armor upgrades once through money (scale → half-plate) and once through an ASI (Medium Armor Master).
• Heavy armor upgrades twice through money (chain mail → splint → plate).

Medium armor is arguably the most expensive in terms of character resources, since you have to spend a feat to effectively turn half-plate into a +1 breastplate (with no other benefits). Light armor asks you to do something you were going to do anyway (and you "pay" for it with a reduced AC cap), while heavy armor just costs money. And, honestly? I feel like plate's cost is deceptively high, since gear is pretty inexpensive otherwise and it's something that's probably in your party's best interests to pool money for. If you only have one heavy armor user in your party, it's entirely possible to put them in plate by the beginning of Tier 2 if you're all willing to chip in some cash.