I've got my wemic, Frachiir, decked out in studded leather all over his body (except his feet; he's got claws, after all). Studded leather armor typically imposes an armor check penalty of -1. However, I seem to be stuck with a penalty of -3.
After checking over Frachiir's items, I found the culprit. I've got him wearing a nice animal hide on his back. This hide apparently counts as a saddle as well as being hide armor (armor check penalty of -3). As soon as I take that one item off, my penalty shifts to the appropriate -1. However, despite this item counting as armor, it seems to have no effect whatsoever on my armor class. Wearing it provides no visible benefits, only the penalty.
I see a couple of problems with this situation. The first is that the animal hide is counting as armor and hindering me with no benefit. However, I suspect this is because it counts as a saddle, something that PCs typically do not wear. Maybe it's secretly armoring my "saddle" spot, but since I've never seen my "saddle" become bruised, badly lacerated, removed from my body, etc., I think it might just not be counting towards anything. My thinking here is that if saddles don't actually provide any sort of protection, then they really shouldn't be such a hinderance to the mount wearing it.
The other issue I see here is that your armor check penalty can become pretty nasty just by wearing one piece of armor since the game will apply the worst one that you've got on you. Could you imagine wearing a bracelet that technically counts as some type of metal armor? I can see it being heavy enough to hinder the hand and arm that it's worn on, but should it really be giving you a penalty of, say, -6 to your entire body?
I don't think you should become as stiff as a knight in a tin can just for wearing some heavy boots (as the system is now, it will apply the worst armor check penalty of all your gear), but, on the other hand, I also don't think you should get to prance around in half-plate with no penalty just because you're barefoot (if the game only applied your lowest armor check penalty, people would just choose to leave off one piece of armor to negate their entire penalty). But can there be a happy medium? Could your armor check penalty be an average of the penalty on each of your body parts?
Unfortunately, D&D doesn't account for a problem like this since armor in D&D is an all-or-nothing type of deal. If you want the armor bonus provided by your armor, you need to actually wear all of it. FK is different in that people are not only able to put together their suit with all different varieties of armor, they are encouraged to do this. After all, why else would a quest hand out arm guards as a reward while skipping the rest of the suit of armor? I guess we should be thankful that they've given you a matching pair at least!
I know that wearing a saddle shouldn't be enough to encumber you as if you were wrapped up in tough hide armor (at the very least, saddles give no armor check penalty in D&D), but I'm not too sure what the right fix to this should be. What do you think could help this situation? Is this a problem, or is it just me being a big whiner?
All this being said, having a medium or heavy load should still incur the appropriate penalty, regardless of what you're wearing where. Item weight management is a pretty big problem in this game, but that's one for a different discussion.
