Your Armor discussion

[Amoenotep]

alright..post away your thoughts and feelings about how you hate armor and prefer to run around naked.


btw, the biggest advantage of reworking the armor system would probably be the disadvantages/advantages of actually needing to choose a different armor type. since it is now "any old thing" will do approach.

[Tsavong]

I prefer to run around naked, with only a white jockstrap to preserve my modesty!

i think i agree with ajantis. i think this is only really broken against an idealist's view. could the armor/weapon/gear/spell systems be better? sure. but not much better. its not horribly broken. and regardless of whether you like it or not, its pretty balanced and i think that is worth more than perfection.

I think as glow said the armour (I'm not misspelling armor, adding a U is just how it goes in the UK) system is ok. Personally I think most of the problems and the reason people prefer full plate or a dress is because of how its implemented in NWN and or DnD not how it is done on NS4. The max ac you can get out of your base armour is 9 ether with full plate 8 from the armour and 1 from dex or padded 1 form armour and 8 from dex. Now if you have enough dex for padded you probably have enough to get more AC from a robe so dexers go with robes and because full plate gets more AC than all the other armours for str most str builds will go with full plate if they can.

The best base AC you can get from the other armours is 8 say from medium 4 armour 4 dex so if you are can't use full plate and are not a dexer you have to except a -1 to AC may be if there were other advantages for using medium armour or the AC loss was made up some how they would be used more.

[Bargeld]

My initial thoughts revolve around monks (since this is one of my favorite base classes to build on). Monks must wear robes in order to gain the wis and monk AC bonuses. Arcane casters also have spell failure penalties with shields, so going monk with a little bit of wisdom allows you to get rid of the shield and its DR and still get some good AC.

On the other hand, fighters/clerics with plate & shield end up with decent DR, but even epic warding or barb or e-gen DR, big crits still kick your butt. AND you only end up with about 45 AC without expertise.

Not offering any solutions/suggestions (yet), just adding a few thoughts...

[Daltian]

As much as I like the idea it scares me. It might open all new set of issues. It needs to be thought out real good before doing something about it. Lots of characters will be broken by it.

[Rufio]

I think 45 ac is a bit low, with my calculations, a full-plate and tower sheild build without haste and bardsong should hit 59 ac assuming max tumble, otherwise 55 ac for cross-classed tumble. There are some +6 and +7 dodge ac boots that could get you 1-2 more ac than what I calculated if you have enough dex to max out the fullplate ac. Earth gen would get you another 2 and haste/bardsong give another boost. In all, 68 ac in fullplate and a tower shield (or 70 if you were gith, but I don't think I have ever seen a fullplate wearing gith, and I used +4 dodge ac bard song, because I don't remember what bonuses pure bards get), and that can be pumped higher with divine shield or epic mage armor, up to 76 ac (at that point the dodge ac cap has been reached). You could eek a few more ac out if you had the option to go with pale master or RDD, potentially hitting 80+ ac in fullplate, or 90+ with improved expertise (94 would be absolute max with 28 PM in imp expertise mode).

man, I actually surprised myself with how high that could go.

[Alkapwn]

Most medium epic armours are dual resist which work very well with dual wielding str toons. That is the only draw to mediums that I can see besides class restrictions. ie druids.
Light armours need some love for sure. maybe decreased spell failures, added skill points, more lucrative damage resists/immunities. I'd still be hard pressed to find a use for them but if they were good enough would definitely build into them. I'd definitely like to see more dual resist/immunities on light and mediums all the way through from lvl 1 to lvl 40 gear

I like Plate/Robes how they are really. "any old thing" doesn't really apply for most of my toons. I always have a wide range of selection of armor and shields to choose from. My PM/cleric carries 6 plates and 4 shields and switches them often. To go adventuring in epic areas it definitely pays to be wearing the right sets.

I really think we should have a custom armor guy in avendell or maybe deep in epic area. Where you'd have to pay large gold for a single customization, like in Sacro but expensive. Then Zerg can make all his armors invisible and he can free willy. *will probably regret this suggestion*

In the PvP aspect i think the current system works really well. It usually leaves open at least one vunerable spot on any toon and in some cases 2.

High AC's have really been dropped already . The epic areas in turn have got alot tougher to handle for some toons.


- Candians spell it Armour aswell with honour

[Korr]

Read back through the DMG and check out many of the other options (of which Im not sure how many could be applied) that shields and armors can have (as well as weapons). I couldnt tell you more than a handfull off the top of my head these days, but things like Fortification (dangerous to start throwing around) light, medium, heavy is 25%, 50%, 75% respectively of crit immunity. SR on armors is usually pretty moot from what I remember... I would think a level 16 armor should need 21 SR, and level 40 armor should need 45 SR(5 + required level).

Abyssal plate is on the top of the list at the wiki, so I will use it as an example. Its a level 35 required armor which provides : (4 base AC 4 dex ac)

+6 AC (DMG says an armor should never go beyond +5 AC boost, everything else should be a magical enhancement... I know ELH changes this rule consider more variable AC bonuses (ie +5 plate +7 vs bludg))
25% Fire Immune (Immunities here can be changed up easily enough it would seem, 25% to one or 20 to 2 or 15 to 3, etc, etc to make things more usefull all around)
25% Piercing Immune (Same as elemental immunity)
20/- Piercing Resist (Same as immunity)
SR 28 (28 SR on a level 35 item means that 35 caster levels would NEVER fail to break this SR and an 18 caster level would fail 50% of the time)
Prot vs Align 1x/day (Extra bonuses are good, some items hold nice spells in them, consider also save bonuses, skill bonuses, feats, etc)

Here is a level 35 [censored] Sword : Blade of the Lumi (base is 1d10 damage 19-20 x2 crits)
Additional Damage : 2d12 Slashing (thats 3-34 lets say 20 average(yes its 1-2 points high) is 15 after immunity and then -5 after resistance... so a weapon alone almost breaks armors DR)
Elemental Damage : 1d8 Sonic (hard to compare to armor, other than 25% off of average 4 is 3 average which is seems fair based off low numbers)
Elemental Damage : 2 Positive (irresistable)
Enhancement : +7 (no damage because the 2d12 is higher but the AB bonus is just 1/2 what the armor gives (seems high considering base AB goes up with levels, AC doesnt)
Massive Criticals : 2d10 ( 10 - 108 damage on a crit because of this... thats without any str modifier I dont need calculations are even needed here)
Keen (Keen on every weapon above 13?!?!?!? Why!!!)
Light : Bright (20 m) White (Oooh shiney)


So after comparing a 35 armor to a 35 weapon... are the armors needing changed or the weapons? It sure seems that weapons are HIGHLY overpowered to alot of armors. Yes this was just one example and it was old posi gear vs new abyss gear which could skew things a bit. But I think the main thing is (as I think alka said something about crits) why is every weapon massive criticaled (there are feats for that) and keened (feats for that too). Throw in bard song and ava and its sick damage output... although part of the need is the HP on some monsters (thats why we always brought 2-3 mages when boss hunting its the easiest way to chop hps). A new person to the server would see someone running around with a rapier (this someone took imp crit) and would immediately think "That must be a weapon master thats a crit nearly every hit and it hurts" when in reality the weapons are incredibly powerfull!!!

[VagaStorm]

I think 45 ac is a bit low, with my calculations, a full-plate and tower sheild build without haste and bardsong should hit 59 ac assuming max tumble, otherwise 55 ac for cross-classed tumble. There are some +6 and +7 dodge ac boots that could get you 1-2 more ac than what I calculated if you have enough dex to max out the fullplate ac. Earth gen would get you another 2 and haste/bardsong give another boost. In all, 68 ac in fullplate and a tower shield (or 70 if you were gith, but I don't think I have ever seen a fullplate wearing gith, and I used +4 dodge ac bard song, because I don't remember what bonuses pure bards get), and that can be pumped higher with divine shield or epic mage armor, up to 76 ac (at that point the dodge ac cap has been reached). You could eek a few more ac out if you had the option to go with pale master or RDD, potentially hitting 80+ ac in fullplate, or 90+ with improved expertise (94 would be absolute max with 28 PM in imp expertise mode).

man, I actually surprised myself with how high that could go.

I have a full plate gith Other than that, your calculations are spot on.

Right now, dex toons get at least like 10 ac more than a full plate toon, which combined with the wepon bonus damages(lessens the importance of str) gives dexers the upper hand right now, and off the top of my head, I dont see a quick fix for it. The medium armors with split damage types are nice, but it's the same damage, it's just split...

[Amoenotep]

the fact that the dexr's can get more ac with the same amount of resistances on their robes is what stats putting them over the top. sure its more ac, but should they be afforded all the physical protections too.

as far as weapons go, thats a bit of a different subject since that will drastically change the face of everything everywhere....but still doable.

[Ajantis.]

One thing that comes to mind, and as it was stated before, this would require a bit of work with possibly a better overall result concerning balanced AC....

But should we really be investing development time into NS4? At least this kind of development time that we could put elsewhere? As I said before, I'm willing to help if it would be welcomed. However, shouldn't we put our time toward NS5? Has the armor/shield/etc work been done for that yet? Why don't we put our collective time into a mod that really needs our efforts.

[burrahobbit]

You could remove all resists from cloth armors but your going to have to stop dropping ac perks from classes. You sacrifice allot to get 80 ac already, if you make dex chars so that they get blown up in 2 hits then you've just created the problem again but in reverse. Since 70 ab isnt that hard to achieve i am not sure that very much tweaking is needed.

I'm an ac junkie, i rarely run around with anything that has less that 78 ac. I agree that something should be done but your gonna have to go about it real careful and i would keep the change very minimal. Throw heavy armor a bone, not a side of beef.

Hows that for not giving any feedback what so ever......

[LinuxPup]

One thing that comes to mind, and as it was stated before, this would require a bit of work with possibly a better overall result concerning balanced AC....

But should we really be investing development time into NS4? At least this kind of development time that we could put elsewhere? As I said before, I'm willing to help if it would be welcomed. However, shouldn't we put our time toward NS5? Has the armor/shield/etc work been done for that yet? Why don't we put our collective time into a mod that really needs our efforts.

Ok Flailer... I see Ajantis has given you his forum password

[burrahobbit]

One thing that comes to mind, and as it was stated before, this would require a bit of work with possibly a better overall result concerning balanced AC....

But should we really be investing development time into NS4? At least this kind of development time that we could put elsewhere? As I said before, I'm willing to help if it would be welcomed. However, shouldn't we put our time toward NS5? Has the armor/shield/etc work been done for that yet? Why don't we put our collective time into a mod that really needs our efforts.

NWN2 sucks and i am not going to switch to 5. When this server croaks so will my nwn days, thats why......

[Ajantis.]

I dont beleive you. You think that because NS4 is familiar. Neverwinter Nights I and Neversummer 4 have very little in common anyhow. Can't really compare NWN2 to NS5 yet.

[Amoenotep]

NS5 has about 6+ devs at the moment with others rotating in and out as they have time. not to mention the merc work anyone is allowed to do just by contacting Flailer.

ns4 has 2 devs and only 1 of those is a committed ns4 dev. the work on this might be long going and tiresome if its something the community would really want....but ns4 isn't dead yet.