Help Me Understand: Armor Penalty

[Anguin]

I feel sure there's something I'm missing here. Please help me out.

The Armor Penalty on my score sheet is 0. (Spell failure is 45%, but I never fail cleric spells).
However, I am wearing masterwork full plate, half plate, or banded mail on various body parts. All my armor is magical. Even so, shouldn't heavy armor incur a penalty?
The help file suggests that Armor penalty only affects hide, climb, sneak, and (double penalty) swim. However, I often get echoes indicating that my search skill is being hindered by my armor. I'm pretty sure my swim skill is sometimes affected by armor (I choke and gag), even though technically I have no penalty.

[Jeanne]

I feel sure there's something I'm missing here. Please help me out.

The Armor Penalty on my score sheet is 0. (Spell failure is 45%, but I never fail cleric spells).
However, I am wearing masterwork full plate, half plate, or banded mail on various body parts. All my armor is magical. Even so, shouldn't heavy armor incur a penalty?
The help file suggests that Armor penalty only affects hide, climb, sneak, and (double penalty) swim. However, I often get echoes indicating that my search skill is being hindered by my armor. I'm pretty sure my swim skill is sometimes affected by armor (I choke and gag), even though technically I have no penalty.

I'm not sure what the code is on FK, but at least in some editions of D+D magical armor is considered virtually weightless. But even assuming that, logically I agree that it makes sense that if you're wearing really big, bulky armor (even if it's weightless) it should have some negative effects on skills that would be hindered by big, bulky armor. Which to me would include hide and probably sneak, but not so much climb or swim (assuming weightless, of course).

[Nylo]

Currently the armor check penalty is pretty much non-functional, from my tests. The reason you're seeing 0 is because most heavy armor is set incorrectly, or is displaying incorrectly. It should have a penalty of -7 from the half plate. For the ones I've tested, the skill code currently doesn't use the armor check penalty, instead it uses a random chance based on armor type and weight.

[Anguin]

Well, that's interesting. Not good, but interesting. I imagine it's a low priority to fix (and painstaking, considering how many items are in the game).

Appreciate the thoughts! Thanks!

[Gwain]

One thing I was told a while back was that clerics receive no penalty to casting even in full armour because they use divine spells and not arcane like wizards. I'm not sure if that is the case here.

[Nylo]

That's correct, divine spells are not affected by armor.

[Anguin]

Ideally, the spell failure % should only show up for wizards (and maybe bards?) who actually have a chance of failing spells. I don't think clerics, or any other characters, have any ability to use arcane spells that could actually fail.

[Nylo]

They don't, it's just easier to code it to show for all classes. One line of code vs five or six.

[Rhangalas]

I agree that the armor penalty as is, is pretty wacky though. 10% failure because your boots are leather?? And... the boots themselves weigh like, 1 pound max. *shifty eyes*