It's been a couple of weeks, and nobody's so much as seen a half-plate until yesterday. This is a plea that it stays that way, with such equipment super rare. +1 AC Splints, Bandeds and 1/2 Plates sure, but I can't see fullplate making so much sense in the setting. It's an archipelago full of mud, beaches and quicksand, and full platemail is armor made for full on land battles, not exploring, and expecially not sea warfare.
I like the proliferation of interesting, lighter armor, and I'd love it to stay that way, with fullplate not only rare, but not even that desirable in a setting that's hot, humid and with mobility desired.
This isn't to try and nerf Heavy Armor classes, far from it, the 8AC could be accomplished with magic/mastercrafted other armors, but more for the feel of things.
I agree with this. I would also like to add the following in regards to finding and wearing heavy armor:
As the "weather of the archipelago tends to be temperate to tropical, with frequent storms and thick mists and fogs," I think it would be neat to put in a script for areas where it can be expected to be hot and humid to institute the heavy armor penalty described in the Chult section of the FRCS, pg 103:
QuoteAny character wearing armor that has an ACP of -5 or worse for more than an hour becomes fatigued as if he or she had slept in armor (-2 penalty to STR and DEX). He or she remains fatigued as long as he or she wears the armor and for 1 full hour after removing it.
So this could be tied to specific areas. Maybe the Ziggurat and that island, maybe not in the mountains (where it would be cooler). Don't know how the other islands measure up in terms of tropicality and stuff.
Anyway, it would be a bit more flavor and something for people to consider when making armor choices.
I'm in full agreement with Egon. Loving the rarity of good armor right now.
Quote from: Jayde Moon;88303I agree with this. I would also like to add the following in regards to finding and wearing heavy armor:
As the "weather of the archipelago tends to be temperate to tropical, with frequent storms and thick mists and fogs," I think it would be neat to put in a script for areas where it can be expected to be hot and humid to institute the heavy armor penalty described in the Chult section of the FRCS, pg 103:
So this could be tied to specific areas. Maybe the Ziggurat and that island, maybe not in the mountains (where it would be cooler). Don't know how the other islands measure up in terms of tropicality and stuff.
Anyway, it would be a bit more flavor and something for people to consider when making armor choices.
Yes, this and mandatory eating, drinking and pooping under pain of death otherwise.
I agree that nothing heftier than a half plate should be seen. Also Egon there have been multiple half plates since day 2~ and not from the underdark either XD
Out of curiousity does anyone want to see plates be more available?
I don't mind them being available. However, they should be somewhat rare or rather expensive. Perhaps even give them some sort of penalty like the old Mikleson armor had. They certainty shouldn't turn into what the UD had, people were selling full plates for under a thousand frequently.
Quote from: Howland;88378Out of curiousity does anyone want to see plates be more available?
Half plates and full plates -1 could be more abundant if expensive!
I saw somewhere that there was going to eventually (perhaps) be "special" skills added that you can take in addition to the normal skills. Things like masonry sailing forging. If that ever gets implemented making armors obtainable from being crafted by PCs with the skills to forge the armor is another idea.
Quote from: Howland;88378Out of curiousity does anyone want to see plates be more available?
I don't mind full plate and half plate being comparatively rare, but I'll just bring up the obligatory point about game balance and say that I worry about armor-reliant classes that can't get anything better than chain (I have only seen one set of 6 AC armor so far, and certainly none above that). I think there's probably a fine line to be drawn between a valuable, uncommon item and an item so rare it might as well be an artifact of ancient power, and I hope that plate ends up being the former rather than the latter.
Certainly AC 6 armors could stand to be more common, at least in my own personal opinion.
There are tons and tons of the corsair armor around, which is relatively powerful considering what it can do.
I want plates kept rare.
I think platemail should be rare. However, I think that +vs thing banded mail or chainmail should be more common than it was on EfU, even if it was +2/+3 vs thing, since it would still be roughly the same as a fullplate, vs a specific enemy.
For what it's worth, I'd easily consider those classes that were much more-so dependent upon heavier armors (specifically fighters, paladins, and clerics) to have a significant mechanical advantage already when full plate was common back in the dark, under style
Plate and half-plate are suitably rare as it is.
And...
I'd like to see better armor available personally!
Keep in mind that if the people that inhabit the ziggurate from now until when people get tired of this place, wanted to focus on making better armor *Makes references to the raise dead comment earlier on this part of the forum* they would focus the economy and industry towards this goal. Besides resources, which you can probably salvage from all sorts of stuff, there is nothing stopping any NCP from making them... although, they would indeed be taxing in the super humid jungle.
I'd be substantially disappointed for Full Plate to be impossible to find.
Rare is good, though!
Rare full plates is a good idea. They could be used as perks, or when some PC makes a success of a smithing trade.
You might also want to make tower shields rare. They are large army shields, not travelers' standard equipement.
I don't think Full Plate should be very easily available. Yes, as a matter of fact I have seen maybe 1 person in full plate. Do I think it should be made rarer? Nah. As a matter of fact, I'd love to see just a little bit more armor. The sad fact is that those awesome yellow armors, along with those awesome yellow helmets, are worn by maybe half Melee types I see on the server.
I'd love to see a greater variety of armor, of all types. At the same time, I love the fact that most of the characters on the server wear the same kind of armor, because it feels like we're really all just scavengers in a little camp. It's cool.
Keeping heavy armor as rare kinda sucks for the fighter class IMO. Why bother making a fighter if you cant tank him up? This would make the barbarian easily better than the fighter instead of a fair fight.
Better armor is fine with me. I can't really wear it, but having people around who can is nice.
Being a fighter starting off with just 4 ac armor and a 2 ac shield, I'd say starting out as a shock absorber wasn't bad with the exception of the harder enemies of mid-level quests (boss/boss area) which I can safely say need that extra 2 ac and buffs to be anywhere close to efficiency or at least not dying like a chump for the hard parts or at least have other PCs that can hold the line while getting patched up. Otherwise you are going to waste a lot of healing and come up with a loss. I think that so-called powerful banana armor is really just there to balance things out considering there's not much 7-8 AC plate and for bosses you wouldn't mind having to use the armor function liberally. More banana armor plz.
Although TBH, I think it would have been more awesome to be limited to 1-5 AC armor, have less NPC/DM faction stuff (as in I'd rather have most of them all go POOF and relatively leave PCs in charge), having more scavanger/swashbuckler theme loot (where all the +parry scimitars, daggers, and rapiers at?).
Hmmmm.... there's the realism side, and the balance side. The problem is that the fighters and clerics have always relied upon their big ol' armor as a counterweight for the Fighter's low will save and the Cleric's fairly low hp and lack of damage until higher levels. So, while I DO think it's unrealistic to have full plate for sale down in Gobsquat, I think it should exist. It could be incredibly rare, but I don't think it should just be for sale. Perhaps up in a cave in the Misty's there is a Frost Giant guarding a chilled suit of plate? A drow squad assigned to guard a cache of weapons and armor? I know the DMs will be creative about this, and I know us players will be creative in finding the stuff! So yes...
More armrz plz.
I like that we have lots of unique armor floating around and would be ok without having lots of platemail around as long as the creatures we fight are spawned considering that frontliners will generally have an AC of 2 or 3 lower than before. Or, if cool new armor types or bonuses are thought up. I would love it if people started wearing all different kinds of armor, would really spice up the look of the server instead of everyone wearing black full plate...
My fighter now is wearing chain and that is ok but she gets smacked around alot. Considering that the availability of healing supplies are also lower, we don't want to make frontlining a losing proposition.
Putting my vote for more variety of armor, but keeping full and half plates comparatively rare.
Remember how in the Underdark full plate was available, but extra expensive? Yeah, keep it like that. Us fighters need the armor.
From what I've seen so far, armor that is not full plate tends to provide a lot more skill buffs or use/charge abilities than what was available in the Underdark. I think this is a great idea to increase variety of armor worn. Let Fullplate just give AC, and let other armor types give other bonuses that characters might find useful for whatever reason, not just tanking in the front. I know I've seen some really good half-plate, and a lot of good splint floating around, and people go crazy over it.
Don't agree that Full Plate should be very rare. Having been killed ridiculously easy by some very average spawns whilst invisible i'd like to see it avaliable but expensive, make people 'work' for it via getting coin or great RP and DM rewards.
Making it as rare as it is now will get a bit tiresome, esepcially as the server average lvl increases, as it undoubtably will.
Do I even have to state my opinion?
Rarer armor = More RP over trying to get it.
Opps. Double post
Agreed. If I remember correctly purchasing custom made full plate armor was about 2500 gold. A small fortune. That's enough gold to buy half a ship folks.
It's not like wearing full plate makes you invincible or anything anyway.
But since gold is in short demand, why not just leave the price at where it was, and maayybe add a little flaw to the armor like the one Harri.. er.. which NPC was it? used to sell.
The rarer you make full/halfplate, the more you encourage dex based characters. I like it rare, so it feels that much better when you -do- find a set, but don't go overboard.
I don't like fatigue scripts, unless you're going to implement them for everyone. Sure, wearing fullplate is going to be tiring, but your average fullplate wearing behemoth has much higher con than the average Rogue/Bard/Duelist/what have you. Heck, I'd expect my 10 con Mage to wear herself out faster in her robes than a 16-18 str, 14-16 con Fighter in fullplate.
Generally, scripts like that are more of a pain than they're worth, because you can't -do- anything to deal with them in an rp fashion. A system like that can't take into account stuff like.... *Mister Fighter pauses at the stream and dunks his head under a bit, cooling himself off*
I like the rarity of plate (from what I've seen). But the environment is so humid, jungle hotness and all...would it be possible to add to certain areas that wearing heavy armor penalizes you in some way? Maybe a small reduction in speed in especially hot areas. Or any other small penalty that might add some edge to the people who invested those stat points in avoidance style armor.
Just in certain areas, like the jungle areas, on the beach, ect. Just tossing it out there, really not that huge of an issue either way, the grind to get that first fullplate is a milestone every warrior has to make.
I still find it pretty ridiculous splint mail's that easy to find. It seems kind of weird that heavy armor is washing up on the shores and stuff, considering it is, as I supposed, heavy, implying it should stay at the bottom of the ocean.
How about something where you need to go some way under water, to retrieve the plate, probably in a treasure chest, or next to some pirate/corsair corpse? Any takers?
The idea of more penalties for heavy armor strikes me as a bit unbalanced. Heavy armor is a class feature (and for fighters, a particularly important one), and I don't think there's anything to be gained from deliberately weakening the feature. Armor check penalties already exist to penalize the mobility of characters of wearing heavy armor; I don't think more penalties are needed.
The whole idea of the penalty system for wearing heavy armor seems arbitrary. Just like we've decided not to have eating drinking ect mandatory, why should there be penalties for wearing armor that have never been in place before? Heavy armor should be available, as should be every weapon the game has. The rarity of these items should vary depending on many variables. If for some reason the island gets some smithies or establishes a trade route, it would likely become more available. However as it is they should remain rather rare.
It's not a penalty to the armor, it's a penalty to wearing it in certain terrains.
You know, like when you go under water and you move at a snail's pace unless your strip down? Same thing, only expanded to the hot humid climate of some of the jungle regions of the setting.
There's already a precedant for it in the underwater areas.
It's sounds silly to me, that people think plate shouldn't be allowed just because of the terrain or whatever... I think it's fine the way it is. I'm not sure why wer'e still discussing this. Changing anything would be a lot of trouble and not really worth it.
Quote from: Vlaid;88603It's not a penalty to the armor, it's a penalty to wearing it in certain terrains.
A penalty to armor is a penalty to armor, even if the penalty is conditional.
The underwater areas are, as far as I have seen, few and far between. In small amounts this isn't a problem. The more such places you add, however, the more severe the penalty becomes, and the more unbalanced the game becomes.
The argument from realism is fine and all, but I feel that at some point we have to accept that this is a game, and a game that would be negatively impacted by penalizing class features without regard for both the mechanical repercussions. Some rarity is not a problem, but if you make it so rare as to be inaccessible for most, or so bad that few will want it (with negatives to movement or other penalties beyond the penalties heavy armor already has), you need to be aware that you're changing the game balance.
I'm strongly, strongly against a penalty system for full and half plates. However, I am for making them more rare.
[facepalms]
This was mostly a style thing, not a Super Realism RP thing.
Like I said, halfplate with a general +1 Ac bonus, or splint wÃth +2 would achieve the same 8 AC, keeping the game balanced, while keeping the look of more light, flexible armor better for exploring.
Just making it rare without another way to get 8AC off armour would overpower Barbarians and Rangers compared to Clerics and Fighters.
Rare platemail/half plate for the win.
I wish it was more common.
I am sorry, but I find it ridiculous I am finding all these banded mails, which weigh 40lbs or, which is 10 pounds less than any half plate or full plate. Why didn't the smith use the 10 extra pounds of iron to make the half/full plate?
It seems foolish to me that everytime I find a splint mail, I have to say, "Who wants it!" everyone, in the group, doesn't want it because they already have one. This yells to me common.
I also wish to point out that the loot power in this setting is 3 times more powerful than what it had been in the underdark. Why the hell didn't these people who had to enchant this armor spend their gold on enchanting these items on full plate? It's not like they weren't stupid or anything, just, perhaps a bit unreasonable?\
Half plate and full plate more common, perhaps on the higher end quests, but certainly more available. I find it ridiculous, as crimson pointed out, that I find all this banded mail or splint, and no one had the decency to make it a half plate or a full plate.
*slaps hand on forehead and sighs*
The day I actually create a fighter that I'm going to stick with, people decide they don't like full-plate anymore.
I do not understand the vast amount of dislike for fullplate, though some seems to stem from posters that have not tried to play fighters yet, I'm certainly not interested in seeing Improved Expertise on the character sheet for every PC I look up.
Masochists, the lot of you.
Edit,
I can also safely say there will never be penalties for simply wearing the best armor available given the already incredible challenge our server presents to the average player.
Penalties are just not fun.
I play a halfling fighter and I also miss the Full Plate, but I think it really adds to challenge and survival feeling. Makes it having one something more meaningful.
I just find it odd that people find so much loot in quests that they can't sell, and end up leaving them on the ground around the server. My character was almost completely equipped with starting gear found on the ground.
But think that might be intentional. Loot is not too powerful and newcomers can hold on their own with that gear.
Quote from: Thomas_Not_very_wise;88664I wish it was more common.
I am sorry, but I find it ridiculous I am finding all these banded mails, which weigh 40lbs or, which is 10 pounds less than any half plate or full plate. Why didn't the smith use the 10 extra pounds of iron to make the half/full plate?
It seems foolish to me that everytime I find a splint mail, I have to say, "Who wants it!" everyone, in the group, doesn't want it because they already have one. This yells to me common.
I also wish to point out that the loot power in this setting is 3 times more powerful than what it had been in the underdark. Why the hell didn't these people who had to enchant this armor spend their gold on enchanting these items on full plate? It's not like they weren't stupid or anything, just, perhaps a bit unreasonable?\
Half plate and full plate more common, perhaps on the higher end quests, but certainly more available. I find it ridiculous, as crimson pointed out, that I find all this banded mail or splint, and no one had the decency to make it a half plate or a full plate.
I personally think you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you Thomas, if your going to cry that because splint mail shouldn't wash up/be crafted without full plates being available, I'd rather see all those splints removed entirely for the sake of this "realism" you seek.
As for "encouraging dex builds" I think thats silly, in case you hadn't noticed the most abundant foes at present are immune to sneak attacks and critical hits. Dex builds hit for ~pathetic~ amounts and can still be reasonably easily hit, not only that but a lot of them have very poor hit points!
Would like to see decent armor readily available for the right price. Including 1/2 and full plate.
It's already difficult and expensive to man a front line, why make it even more difficult by crippling armor reliant classes AC? Hell, we basicly lost tower sheilds, due to the fixed weight, restricting those classes to mostly AC5-6 armor, shit that's 3-4 points of AC lower then they should be. Going to be a shortage of anyone able to decently hold a line. OR a glut of imp exp fighters.
Though I did not approve of the late UD economy, what with all the dozens of full plates floating around for less than 1k, the current situation is the complete opposite and is most likely to result in what pyth and Sherry both have already said.
A point in between Abundance and None would be lovely.
A Stydgian solider selling sets of Halfplate for 1500 and full for 2000+ would seem about right.
Full and half plate (heavy armors) in this setting don't make much sense to me without some kind of negative incurred like Jayde had noted. Whether that be a movement penalty (character move rate reduced 10-15%, fatigued in certain areas, etc) or something else. That promotes the "feel" of an island where metal rusts, is overly hot and cumbersome, etc...
At the same time front liners can't be crippled by low AC. Somone has to have it in battle to allow the support characters to function or the fighter just spends all his cash on trying to heal himself and ends up loosing. I think the workaround to meet both would be fighter class specific armors that are island specific workarounds (flavorful armor), lower AC, of differing materials, that have broad + bonuses or even flat out +1 or +2 enhancements.
Due to mechanics of parrying (which isn’t as good as it was meant to be) most dex builds are only good on a one-on-one basis and suck against the 4 or 5 on one that happens in the majority of the preset quests. Sure a good dex build is fun and can fight well in an arena but he gets pwned if he has more than two opponents. A good fighter tank is still the best front man against large numbers hands down (barring a min/max barbarian). Limiting heavy armor takes all the zing out of the already rather boring fighter class IMO.
My vote is for heavy armor, (and the penalties heavy armor already has is quite enough).
I am going to turn around and say flat-out yes plain AC 8 Full plate. Lots of it. More of it. Everywhere.
Why the turn around? Goblin Assassins.
Quote from: MisterPAIN;90526I am going to turn around and say flat-out yes plain AC 8 Full plate. Lots of it. More of it. Everywhere.
Why the turn around? Goblin Assassins.
lol2phailless
To expand on that, goblin assassins actually have incredibly poor ab, it's like +8 or so when flanking, sure they hit hard, nothing a barkskin and pfe spell/charge/potion (really easy to get) won't keep you protected from 70% of the time even in chainmail.
I've seen +10 from the initial death attack of stunning forever. They can't always been seen either, so randomly popping a potion just to walk around and explore for a consumable thin environment isn't very likely. Lately I haven't seen any drops of barkskin period unless in a run to kill some troglodytes.
Quote from: MisterPAIN;90588I've seen +10 from the initial death attack of stunning forever. They can't always been seen either, so randomly popping a potion just to walk around and explore for a consumable thin environment isn't very likely. Lately I haven't seen any drops of barkskin period unless in a run to kill some troglodytes.
Um we're consumable thin environment?
(http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/2548/lolconsumablesuj5.jpg)
If you think this ones bad you should see Krunto or caddies pack, point being consumables are not hard to pull together in this setting!
Good God. How do you people do it? I'm lucky to keep my invisibility potions.
Quote from: Goblin Butcher;90593Um we're consumable thin environment?
(http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/2548/lolconsumablesuj5.jpg)
If you think this ones bad you should see Krunto or caddies pack, point being consumables are not hard to pull together in this setting!
Powergamer. >_>
My stance stands. Keep fullplate/halfplate rare.
This game isn't meant to be easy, if it were meant to be easy, we wouldn't lose all our equipment/gold when we die and 1/3 of our xp. If it were meant to be easy there wouldn't be nightrisers and werewolves surrounding the Ziggurat at night. Consumables are indeed easy to come across. You can buy them from players, you can do quests to get them (Just make sure there's some decent RP reason for you to go slaughter the troglodytes, rather than just mindless violence). Full plate and Half Plate are rather difficult to make, and require a lot more materials to make compared to Banded Mail. I'll open up my 3.5 PHB and take alook at what is required:
-A DC of 10+AC of armor.
-It costs 1/3 the base price to create the armor.
So here is the costs of making each suit of armor:
Padded: 1 gold
Leather: 3 gold
Studded Leather: 8 gold
Chain Shirt: 33 gold
Hide: 5 gold
Scale Mail: 16 gold
Chainmail: 50 gold
Breastplate: 66 gold
Splint Mail: 66 gold
Banded Mail: 83 gold
Half Plate: 200 gold
Full Plate: 500 gold
Notice how much half and full plate costs to make? This is because there is qutie a bit more materials required, more leather required, more materials are lost in the process of making it, more fuel is required because it takes longer to make, so on and so forth. The fact is that most smiths aren't going to spend two hundred or five hundred gold getting the materials to make a suit of half or full plate that someone may or may not buy. I think though, that if you were to get a DM's help, you could probably go to METAL THINGS in Gobsquat, you could have a nice conversation with that goblin, and discuss the possibility of him crafting you a nice suit of full plate. He has a forge, he is a smith, he does want to make gold, just a thought, everyone. Most shop owners don't hang up suits of full plate on display unless they have some very good security, after all, full plate is worth a lot (standard price: 1500 gold in 3.5 PHB, 1650 for masterworked full plate), and is worth more than a hosue (a house, if you look in the DMG, costs 1000 gold).