Heavy armor vs Light Armor

[Vibius]

Recently the discussion arguing that heavy armor is worse than light armor has been spotted in several different discussions, rather than derailing others discussions I propose writting here your concerns.

My opinon is that heavy armor is better than light armor since someone with full plate and 12 dex has an effective AC of 8(Full plate)+1(Dex Bonus)=9, someone with studded armor and 20 dex has an affective AC of 3(Leather)+5(Dex Bonus) of 8.

This would leave the armored fighter with better AC and more points to put in other interesting attributes.

[Horace]

I'm pretty sure that's not how it works in FK though, our hitpoints and to hit modifiers have to be so far off from tabletop that it's not comparable.

I do know that if you have heavy armor on all but one main spot (head, torso, abdomen, arms, legs), the spot with light or medium armor will be hit much more often. This could just be a result of the attack most likely hitting the least defended spot...and that if you had the same light armor all over your body the attacks would be spread out and not injure a portion of the body as quickly.

[Velius]

None of my characters ever had a full set of heavy armor before (I have a character that has heavy arm guards, and had a drow that had several pieces of heavy armor), so my opinion on this may be kinda off, but here goes.

Heavy Armors cost a whole buttload of coin, and on top of that they damage quick (I've had to repair those arm guards I told you about A LOT) and cost a lot to repair, and on top of that it pretty stops several of your skills from being affective ( A major one being dodge )

Leather Armors let you benefit from dodge, that should more than make up for that extra AC bonus you guys keep on bringing up I'd think. ( I don't know though )

Edit: How would a fighter with a grandmaster in dodge with a full set of light armor compare to a fighter with full plate?

[Selveem]

I, personally, don't care how it's 'supposed to be' coded. I can tell from experience that it doesn't work like the math would claim.

Put a fighter up versus a ranger and you'll see.

[Rawlys]

Easy there turbo Surely there are more less agressive ways of stating your opinion. Just sayin'

[Solaghar]

While Vibius is correct and I have done extensive combat testing with the new system, there are some other things to consider. Number one is that heavy armor comes with an associated penalty... it's literally heavy. Unless one is wearing mithril fullplate which is extremely light, wearing a full suit of heavy armor will weigh heavily on a person's load level. Having a load anything above light affects one's AC in a negative fashion, hence just by wearing heavy armor, you can be canceling out some of the bonus. One thus needs a very high strength to get big benefits from heavy armor.

Number two is the cost. A full suit of studded leather armor can be purchased for about 5 platinum. I know of at least two dex trainers in the game who can train up to 20 dex, so I don't think it's particularly difficult to get to that level. A full suit of adamantine platemail armour for my Drow as an aside cost over 1500 platinum. Consider that... 1500 platinum versus 5 platinum. I've never seen titanium fullplate for sale, but I know mithril is also very expensive. A full suit of steel platemail would surely cost about 400-500 platinum.

Number three is heavy armor penalties. These I don't know the mechanics of exactly, but with abilities like dodge, I'm sure that as Velius mentions, lighter armor is more beneficial.

Number four is the inherent benefits of dex bonus. Vibius suggests that fighters have more interesting things they can use their stat points for rather than waste them on dex, but dex is easily a fighter's third most important attribute after strength and con. In fact I'd argue that it might even tie con for second. High dexterity grants someone a high reflex saving throw, which is extremely important in terms of dealing with spellcasters. A fighter should be spending their points on dex whether they use heavy armor or not.

I would argue that in general, I have never seen the usefulness of the various stats better-balanced than they are today. No one is able to max out every category by any means, and each one has several benefits... strength for attack bonus, damage, carry weight... con for hit points, movement and fortitude save, dex for number of things you can carry, AC bonus, reflex save, intelligence for speed of training and languages and spells for wizards, wisdom for many quests, cleric spells, experience gain and wisdom save, and charisma for experience gain, even more quests and bard spells. Anyone would be a fool to ignore any stat completely, and I don't think this needs to be changed or certain stats made more or less important. I just think that heavy armor needs to be made more useful.

The main problem I have with heavy armor vs light armor is that the way they function simply isn't realistic, in fact it's almost insulting. AC determines whether attacks hit you or not, but the moment they hit you they do full damage. If your AC is the same, cloth armor will protect you from a sword as well as mithril fullplate. That is why I support some kind of damage reduction being brought into play, because heavier armor should mean more protection, less damage even when you are hit. It just seems obvious to me. If a goblin punching you can't do more than the 4 damage a suit of masterwork fullplate might reduce with every attack, oh well. I'm unaware of the game being built to the point where high level characters who can afford costly armor have generally been afraid of being punched to death by extremely weak creatures like rats or goblins.

While other classes have obviously benefited from one or more of many of the changes which have taken place, I can't think of anything that has been done which has been particularly useful to fighters, which has I'm certain, left them feeling kind of left behind. Now that attacks are using all their proper rolls and taking AC into account, the vaunted fifth attack of a fighter is fairly nerfed. As in D&D, with every successive attack after the first hitting with a cumulative -5 penalty, the fifth attack hits at a -20 penalty, completely canceling out the base attack bonus of a level 50 character.

My opinion for what should be done to benefit fighters stands here... some sort of damage reduction for heavy armors, and the completion of several fighter-only feat trees, alongside the introduction of bonus feats for fighters, perhaps as many as one every 10 levels for a total of 5 additional. With a much wider variety of feats having particularly useful effects upon AC, weapon specialization, fighting styles, etc... I think fighters would come to play their standard role once more. One major difference between us and D&D is that a priest or wizard can run out of spells and hence they need to conserve, they need to use melee at times, they need to memorize their spells and then find that they're completely useless in the situation they're in. Here it's a small matter for a spellcaster to forget their spell and memorize a new one in a few seconds with meditate. Fighters are supposed to be so valuable simply because they can keep killing, on and on, dealing out massive amounts of melee damage while heavily armored, even when spellcasters in their group have long since run out of spells. That just isn't the case here, and as fighters can't fulfill their predestined purpose, they are falling behind the other classes.

fake edit - (crossposting in the other thread, I realized that I meant this more for over there)

[Rawlys]

Now that it has been stated that quite a few players believe that heavy armor is 'broken' in regards to AC, quality/cost, and even modifiers... Is it possibile that we can get confirmation on this? I don't mind concerns and speculation to be discussed, but it kind of bothers me that it keeps continually being discussed (both here and quite a bit on another thread) without anything concrete to back it up (aside from personal experience, but possibly interpreted incorrectly).

I hate beating a dead horse (live horse=okay) and was under the impression that this thread was the best place to ask this question. Thanks!

[Solaghar]

Heavy armor is not broken, it functions exactly how it should in D20. I should have made this more clear in my post. The admins worked extremely hard to get the combat system working as it does in D20, and it does. All armor types give the appropriate benefits, have their exact max dex modifiers, their exact ACs. The difference is that in D20, by the time someone hits level 20 (our 50) they will have numerous items like a shield +4 AC, a ring of protection +5 AC, a suit of fullplate that is +4 AC itself, so on and so forth. Here items max out at +1 AC in general. For a wizard and to a lesser extent a priest, they have access to spells which work as they do in D20 which grant them all kinds of protective benefits, because spells were worked on first to make them D20 standard. That is why people are seeing wizards and priests far better able to tank than fighters at the moment.

Now... Dalvyn plans to fix this by going through items one at a time, but only when other things in the system which need to also be altered (like resistances and saving throw modifiers) have been coded, so that he can do it all at once. The things which I feel need to be altered somewhat are the extremely high price of non-magical heavy armor, which by any cost-benefit analysis simply isn't worth the price compared to high dex and studded leather. Many of these problems will go away especially once we start seeing highly enchanted magical shields and heavy armor. Fighters will once more become the tanks they are meant to be, alongside weapons with higher +hit bonuses. Really it's a matter of patience.

[Orplar]

Hmm..

I think all some of the players needed was the info that it was indeed happening.

Im excited. IF anyone need anyhelp. Ask me!