I just want to get my leather armor to not look like pajamas.
Last edited by Emili; 12-10-2010 at 08:35 AM.
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True, but to be fair the typical WARFIGHTER wears somewhere around 60-80 pounds of gear while on patrol:
Weapon
Flak
Kevlar
Ammunition
Water source
Assault pack
First aid kit
Why? You don't want to be shot in clothing, and we don't have squires anymore... well unless you count Privates...
For the same reason the average WARRIOR, at least the ones who could afford it, usually some type of medium armor, like chainmail.
Why? You don't want to be stabbed in clothing.
Not that I'm disputing your statement, just pointing out there is a huge difference in why and what athletes wear compared to what a warrior wore. It would be super impractical to play basketball or soccer in chainmail (you would probably hurt yourself if the game ran long enough!) and it would be equally impractical to engage in melee with an opponent wearing any type of armor, when you are not.
Careful about delving into armor and logic when it comes to D&D. Because in D&D, armor is about "not getting hit" rather than its real life purpose of "mitigating damage."
Oddly enough, having everybody run around in monk outfits makes plenty of sense using real world logic if the goal is not getting hit. But since D&D rules don't allow (for the most part) armor to serve its real-world function of mitigating damage, heavy armor pretty much loses its purpose.
This is one area where I think D&D 4th edition actually made a vast improvement over 3.5: while it still kept to the logic that AC = not getting hit, they adjusted the rules to make both light and heavy armor attractive options using that logic. Light armor does this by placing NO limit on your dexterity bonus to armor class (and letting you use your Int bonus instead, if that happens to be higher). Heavy armor does this by granting SIGNIFICANTLY better AC bonuses than light that scale with level, but doesn't allow Dex bonuses at all. Number-wise, it's kind of mind-boggling how well balanced it is. The WoTC 4e character optimization boards have been known to fall into a frenzy over an AC difference of 1 or 2 as being OMG BR0k3n!!!
And yes, 4e still has chainmail bikinis
Point taken, but just to clarify a bit AC is about EFFECTIVE hits not just not getting hit, for example:
Bob the Fighter's AC Breakdown:
10
6 armor
2 dex
AC: 18
Touch AC: 12
Flatfooted: 16
Ok so an opponent needs to score a 19 or higher to hit Bob and deal damage, but not to to simply hit him. To HIT him all that opponent needs to do is roll higher than his TOUCH ac (this is the figure used for touch based spells and effects such as shocking grasp). Flat-footed is used when he is in a situation other than being helpless in which he loses his dex bonus, I.E. being suprised.
So ideally the DM running the game would not play out combat like this:
DM: Ok Bob the kobold swings his club at you. *rolls a total of 15* He misses.
It would be better described like this:
DM: Ok Bob the kobold swings his club at you. *rolls a total of 15* His club bounces harmlessly off of your armor.
This both properly communicates that the kobold DID in fact make contact (by beating Bob's touch AC) but did no damage, as well as makes the combat a little more descriptive.
I think the ideal situation would be using AC and a small amount of static DR provided by the armor (similar to if you are wearing adamantine armor) then you could still provide an advantage to monks because they get DEX and WIS mod, rogues - they get higher dex mod than heavy armor as they are using light and a small amount of DR, and fighters - they get more DR
Anyway this is a bit of a derail, so I apologize in advance, but I see alot of people confuse from time to time that their are multiple AC values in PnP 3.5e.