Used: Armor Suggestion

This idea stems from something Elhanan mentioned... and it's a thought I had (and even bioware when they went on from NWN to develop Dragonage):

Big heavy armor does not necessarily protect in a realist fashion in D&D. It grants higher AC, but that's it. Realistically, a rogue in leather armor is just as "protected" as the fighter decked out in full plate with a tower shield... both can have the same AC. And especially on Aenea where we can achieve ability scores far greater than in the default NWN game... the dex monkey will ultimately be far better off. The AC cap for full plate is realtively low.

What bioware did with armor in dragonage is more realistic. Armor doesn't make you "harder to hit" necessarily... it's primary function is to reduce the damge you take. In D&D, your rogue in leather armor and fighter in full plate both get wacked with a mace. There's NO difference in damage. In the dragonage engine, the rogue in leather armor will take more damage than the warrior in plate armor because those big metal plates mitigate a good bit of that damage smacking into you.

So... how can D&D armor be tweaked to be more realistic like that?

Thought about resistance... but it's a rather static property. -/5 slashing resist will block the first five points regardless. Not quite balanced there, and if there was any degree of separation from medium and heavy armors... giving medium -/5 and heavy -/10 would be far too unbalanced.

So... Damage Immunity property. Even at 50%.... a creature hits you for 5 points of damage, half of that will still get through, so you can still get your arse killed by that goblin intent on eating your eyes out...

It can actually be a bit more realistic with the NWN engine than in the dragonage engine as you can differentiate damage types (don't recall if dragon age separated bashing damage from piercing and slashing damage).

Chain mail and chain shirts really woudln't offer much protection against getting bashed with a mace, nor offer as much protection vs being poked (there's just soooo many 'holes' for the arrowheads to catchin and go through). But a suit of scale mail would offer more bashing protection... not quite as much flex as with chain, not as rigid as full plate... each armor type would have it's pros and cons BEYOND the ACX base + ACX from dex considerations.

Now, adding the property via the item template would increase the cost substantially.... mundane fullplate already sells for a good amount. Adding even 5% immunity to one damage type nearly doubles the price. So... why not add it as a temp property when equipped? (suggesting when equipped so to allay the problems I've found inherent with quarter staves and their bonus TWF property... you rest, it goes byebye until server reset). Being a temp property rather than a permenant item property would also allow those with voucher armors of the relevant AC type benefit without losing out on voucher value.

I would suggest that the immunities only be granted to medium and heavier type armors... Medium receiving 5% immunity to relevant immunities, heavy 10%, with AC8 fullplate being the granddaddy of them all at 25%. Light armors I think should be left out because while the AC is effectively capped for them as well, the cap is very high, even for the high-ability-score environment of Aenea.... and really, padded armor is NOT going to mitigate much of any damage... the "benefit" of it is the few points of AC to represent the minor difficulty of that swordblow to actually get past the material to draw blood.

The damage immunity is a very powerful property, but it's also balanced in that it mitigates a percentage of damage... not a flat amount.

Even with just 5% slashing immunity, you wouldn't actually mitigate any damage points unless the blow you took did 20+ physical slashing damage... and even then out of that 20, only 1 point would be mitigated.

Full plate, at 25% would only mitigate 1 point of damage per 4 dealt. ... which comes out to 2 points of damage mitigated from a blow from a plain longsword with a *max* damage roll.... on average, figure 3 to 6 damage with a longsword... 1 point.

To get a full view of the reality of that.... even at 25% immunity to say, piercing damage, a cheap 600gp archer's belt provides MORE of a bonus, flat out blocking 5 points of damage no matter what. The immunity property only grows more powerful than the resistance property when the damage dealt is in a very high range (for 25%, you'd have to dish out over 20 points of physical damage to see a difference... doable, but very few NPCs actually punch out that much... Gron and Nemesis really consistently do that range, and that's with their enhancement bonus weapons).

Powerful? Yes. Overpowered? IMO no. It would make full plate armor viable IMO, especially in the later epic levels. That "full tilt roaring eat your brains out" knight in full plate is actually less protected than that skulky wimp thief with the dagger and no shield because the thief's AC can be significantly higher... upwards of 10+ more AC.

Another benefit of applying it as a temp property... NPCs in armor will receive the benefit as well... and there's no need to edit each and every single armor, and update each and every instance of those armors in every shop and NPC

So the script would be something like;
On equip item into Armour Slot,
Check item base AC (not sure this is doable),
If AC is 4-5 add 5% immunity, temp item property (if not already there)
If AC is 6-7 add 10% immunity, temp item property (if not already there)
If AC is 8 add 25% immunity, temp item property (if not already there)

On Un-Equip from armour slot ?... do nothing as it is a temp property shopkeepers etc don't factor it into cost/sale/purchase price...


This sounds like a really good idea to me, the only thing I can see being a possible problem is trying to figure out exactly what type of armour is being worn, the AC doesn't really cover that- its more of an appearance and description thing.....

But I fully see where this is coming from, my no/light armour dex builds have much higher AC then my full plate non-dex build.... and my monk/druid could likely stand naked and be better "protected" then my full plate paladine.... which just seems wrong.

Oh, dudes, this is totally awesome!

Is there no way to use something similar to the EDR feats.
Split the armour out as Rusty states but make it 1 or 2 or 3 DR, which would stack later with any added via the upgrade system

Just a different thought

sounds nice though

RustyDios wrote:So the script would be something like;
On equip item into Armour Slot,
Check item base AC (not sure this is doable),

GetItemACValue(object oItem)

Light armors:
AC1 padded armor
AC2 leather armor
AC3 hide/studded leather

No damage immunity bonus for light armors... or MAYBE 5% slash for hide/studded leather (leather is actually quite tough and durable... think about this... many modern day firefighter helmets are still made of hardened leather)

Medium armors:
AC4 chain shirt/scale mail
AC5 Chainmail/breastplate

Here it's tricky... chainmail wouldn't likely protect against bashing type damage like a breastplate would... but a breastplate isn't a full-body covering. Scale... well, it is more rigid than chain, but it's still somewhat flexible... 5% slash these.

Heavy armors:
AC6 Banded Mail/Spint Mail

10% slash, 5% bash for AC6. Maybe 5% pierce...

AC7 Half Plate

25% slash, 10% bash, 5% pierce. Not quite full plate, still some areas left exposed

AC8 Full Plate

The granddaddy of them all, 25% slash, 25% bash, 10% pierce.


**edit: For the medium armors, may be able to if the armor is "chain" or "scale"... by checking the name of the item for "chain" in it's name, or checking it's tag against a list... which would also have to be modified for every voucher item and every new base armor of the medium type added into the game after that point.... that would be a bit more involved process which might be worth the hassle.

Belarric wrote:Is there no way to use something similar to the EDR feats.
Split the armour out as Rusty states but make it 1 or 2 or 3 DR, which would stack later with any added via the upgrade system

Just a different thought

sounds nice though

EDR is pretty much damage resistance, just to all physical damage, not a specific type. Also, it stacks with itself, but only in successive feats. EDR1 from a temp item bonus, and EDR1 from level up still nets you only the benefits of EDR1, not EDR2. These are very nice epic feats though which I think should still be purchased via leveling up. Same reason I suggested immunity over resistance... at low levels, the property would be extremely OP, and it would lose value at higher levels (where the benefit I think is more greatly needed to put the plate wearers on par with the dex monkeys). Immunity, it has some benefit at lower levels, but it increases without becoming OP at epic levels where damages can haul up into double-digit range.

I like this idea. I'll see what I can do with it.

Next module update I'll be testing this out with the following immunities:

AC 1 (padded armor): 5% bludgeoning
AC 2 (leather armor): 5% piercing
AC 3 (studded leather / hide armor): 5% slashing
AC 4 (chain shirt / scale mail): 10% slashing
AC 5 (chainmail / breastplate): 5% piercing, 10% slashing
AC 6 (banded mail / splint mail): 5% bludgeoning, 5% piercing, 10% slashing
AC 7 (half plate armor): 10% bludgeoning, 10% piercing, 25% slashing
AC 8 (full plate armor): 10% bludgeoning, 25% piercing, 25% slashing

Can't use base AC value to differentiate the AC 4, 5, and 6 armor types, so those will get same benefit by AC value. Not going to bother trying to check tags/names/etc. just for that...it's possible, but too labor and CPU intensive for the minor change.

Now, why the values I'm going with?

AC 1: padded armor provides...padding
AC 2: leather is hard to poke holes in
AC 3: hide armor (and studded leather) more resistant to slashing, but may have more gaps for pokey weapons
AC 4: chain shirt / scale mail: good against slashing, not much else
AC 5: chainmail / breastplate: same as previous, but slightly better protection
AC 6: banded / splint: tough stuff
AC 7: hard to slash though, kind of hard to bash/poke through
AC 8: hard to slash through, poke through, and kind of hard to bash through

There's a reliable method for checking the base AC of an armor item in the sample code using the unidentified item base cost: http://www.nwnlexicon.com/index.php/GetItemACValue (second example).

EDIT: Oops, I just realized you meant the subtypes of AC 4,5,6. Ignore.

Logged in last night with a character using heavy armour and it showed the temp stats

Nice

So, does this then remove the AC value from the base armor and replace it with the damage immunities? Or, is Plate AC 8 AND slash/pierce/blunt as above?

I can't login to check myself because my NWN installation is borked and needs re-installation

Additional.

Your Plate AC 8 stays AC 8 + temporary effects.