Add 1 ac to all non-robe and non-heavy armors (8+1 ac)?

[DeputyDog]

Could do another route and add movement penalties to heavy armor.

Or incerease ac on light and med and lower ac bonuses on heavy.
Make heavy armor have less ac bonus then comparable medium.

If you are able to wear heavy why would you want medium? You wont have a dex bonus anyway.
If you can wear light, you want that dex bonus.
If you are a strength based barbarian then you wear medium and you dont get as good of an ac becuase you do more damage?

If you are a strength based ranger then you wear medium. Fighters are tanks, they should tank bettern then rangers and barbs unless the ranger or barb does a full dex build.

[Celorn]

Yes that's what I was getting at Korr... the STR-based toons who (for soWMe reason) have to have a base of 13 dex, can effectively use medium armor, but there's firstly the loss of 1 ac, and 2ndly the loss of 4 (or whichever the dex ac bonus is on it) due to not having uncanny dodge (well, if they don't and if it actually works properly in 1.69).

I bet if you increased the hardly used medium armor you'd see a lot more people wielding double-ended weapons.... now wouldn't that alone be fun?

and dd, we don't need to nerf heavy! It's hard enough getting the AC up with STR fighters as it is hehe. Plus, any more nerfs and you're gonna have to start nerfing some mobs/areas so that they are possible to do without a massive party that is gonna lag/crash the server.

[DeputyDog]

Yea I dont like nerfing, Id rather beef other areas.
Could do str bonus to medium armor or some other bonus.

[Korr]

double-ended weapons are really fun... and scary looking! ::drool double-axe::

I wasnt trying to blatanly shut anyone down Cel, just saying its a carefull balance.

[disastro]

the best buff ive seen to the medium armors is the drider exoskeleton kind.. gives smaller protection but to 2 damage types. gives you a strategic reason to choose one or the other if you have the choice.

[Rummybum]

I think medium armor in particular is not very useful in game atm.

The more you favor dex and nerf armor, however heavy, the less realistic the entire feel of the game gets. Now it is D&D based, not something decent like the old Runequest combat system, so it's never gonna get realistic; but armor in general is pretty messesd up. If you want a better feel you should upgrade a lot of armor with damage reduction especially medium and heavy armor.

Fine, if heavy armor gets a movement penalty for realism how about something truly realistic, like unarmored humans die or are maimed when they are hit?

[VagaStorm]

The more you favor dex and nerf armor, however heavy, the less realistic the entire feel of the game gets.

Sry, I*m not in favor of 90% speed decrese on hevy armor just to make it realistic. Then horses would realy need a fix first :p

[Korr]

PnP rules is you lose 10 feet of movement while wearing heavy armor, except for dwarves who are hearty and endurant enough to handle it and get no decrease. The problem with beefing up the medium armors is then noone will wear heavy armor... then later down the line everyone will say beef up the heavy armor a bit fellas!

[Rummybum]

Yeah Vega I didn't say that and it is not my point. Armor is rediculously nerfed in D&D rules and that carries through to NS4. I'm just saying a speed decrease for armored people would seem more realistic, but a very large life expectancy decrease for the unarmored would be better.

The whole problem comes from the idea that armor makes you harder to hit, the AC idea. It should make you harder to hurt.

[Korr]

The thought of armor, and on the far end of heavy armor like platemail is that you need to find where the joints seperate and such to be able to land a hit, and to score a critical hit you need to deepen your wound at those points. The thing about robes is that you dont rely on physical coverage, you are so adept ad dodging blow that you can duck and weave between the slices that come at you.

The damage immunity % and the Damage Resistance is a purely magical thing!

Though yes I think it would add alot of flavor to make the different armor types have resistances and vulnerabilities to different weapon types. Heavy armor is GREAT against slashing, but not so good against piercing, and bludgeoning which can literally squish you in your armor you have a weakness. The other plate-based armors would be the same with a varying degree depending on their coverage. Cloth armor I agree would give no protection what so ever, but to balance that out you would think it wouuld give a better armor class... platemail is fully attatched and defines the body of who wears it. A robe is long and flowing, with many spaces where it seems you stabbed or slashed someone but it wasnt an actual hit because of their great ability to dodge such attacks.

Such a system has its own balance as well, dexers have a hard time hurting str based armor wearers because of the DR. But at the same time str based toons cant hit the dexers because of their ability to evade attacks. This also creates problems with MAJOR dexers who can only get hit on a nat 20, and then they heal just like the str based can. Or the str based that cant be hurt at all because of his armor/shield, etc. Also then the dexers will do things like take cleric or paladin or bg levels (I said those for the ease of implementation here) to be able to do divine damage, so when they do (beacuse they will) hit the str based toon they will do that minimum damage. One minimum damage is easily worth 2 maximum damage, especially when you consider the number of landed hits....