Why are IWD2 armors "junk"?

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JT made an interesting comment in the mage spells thread that I wanted to explore, but decided that it'd be better to take it into a different thread, since it had nothing to do with mage spells.


JT said...

I've heard this comment before, but I've never heard anyone say why they think that IWD2's heavy armors or, for that matter, all IWD2 armors are "junk".

I'm very curious about the "why"? And what do you think makes a set of armor "good", aside from the obvious of a nice high AC bonus?

Are people just unhappy that the AC bonuses aren't as high as you'd like? From what I can see, the IWD2 armors are in line with the stats as outlined in the player's handbook.

Please be specific. Details, details, details.

 

I've heard similar comments as well, and they're starting to make me think I might add a level of Monk to my Paladin/Cleric build in HoF (if my WIS bonus exceeds the best heavy armor I can find).

I look forward to the details of this topic as well.

 

Klorox (and everyone else), I'm creating a number of items, armor included, and I'd like to know why people think that the armors are not good and what it would take in peoples' minds to make them "good".

That's why I'd like the details on what's bad and what it'd take to make them good.

 

I think most of it has to do with the max DEX stat. For instance, if you have a character with a DEX of 20:
If he/she wears no armour, you get +5 DEX bonus to AC.
Basic AC = 15

Now consider wearing one of the best heavy armours available in the game - Mithral Field Plate +2 (+10 armour AC, max +2 DEX bonus).
Basic AC = 22

However, there are two things you cannot do in this armour for AC bonuses:
1) Cast Cat's Grace (+1-3 DEX bonus to AC)
2) Cast Mage Armor/Shield/Spirit Armor

So, if your non-armour wearing character has Cat's Grace and Spirit Armor cast upon him/her:
Without Armour - AC = 22-24
With Armour - AC = 22

As you can see, armour can quickly be considered "junk", as your character improves. For example, without armour, the character can further increase DEX, or could pick a Monk level that uses WIS to increase AC.
Unless you have Chain of Drakkas (which is too short a time in normal mode), your AC will usually be lower by wearing armour.

Now, for "decent" armours...
Let us now consider BG2's Armor of Deep Night +4 - potentially (gold!) available from near the beginning (in the Adventurer's Mart) of the game. Although AC is worked out slightly differently, it equates to: +7 AC, +6 max DEX = +13.
And in BG2, the armour gets even better!

So, in IWD2, we really need to see armour that goes beyond +12 (combining armour and DEX bonus) - this seems to be the cap. Preferably getting it reasonably early on too...

 

What DaRock describes is not peculiar to Icewind Dale 2, but pretty standard for the 3rd edition rules. Thus, I would answer the initial post's question differently than DaRock.

The concept of a max dex bonus for certain armors was new to 3e rules. Prior to 3e, a character received both the dex and the armor bonus, regardless of how heavy the armor was. That is no longer the case.

Personally, I think the 3e rules are better. Intuitively, I have no problem understanding the concept that a character clad in a clunky heavy suit of armor would have less of an opportunity to use his dexterity to avoid being struck by enemy blows than a character clad in a suit of supple light armor.

I think the real reason that so many describe the available armor in Icewind Dale 2 as "junk" is something else entirely. Rather, it is an imbalance in the magic armor that the creators put into the game of IWD2. I've run across very few suits of magic armor that aren't leather or studded leather. These magic armors are fine for rogues, but they really don't do much for a melee fighter that you can't otherwise get just by wearing nonmagical heavy armor. I really only have one character out of six in my party who benefit from the magical light armors, so I can't use all these suits of magic leather. The suits Oswald made from the boring beetle shells are still better.

 

Ulfgar writes:

Ulfgar, vis-a-vis the concept of Max DEX Bonus (MDB), I agree with you. It always struck me as strange that a person wearing heavy, stiff plate should be able to be just as dextrous as a person wearing light, flexible leather armor or no armor at all.

I think that part of the problem here is that a lot of people remember the old 2e rules where a character's full DEX could be used to modify your AC, regardless of armor, and I believe that some of these people just cannot help but feel a bit cheated that they just cannot bump their DEX at anytime they want, as much as they can manage, and get a benefit from it, regardless of the armor they're wearing.


According to the Player's Manual, unenchanted full plate is a +8 AC, +1 MDB armor, which would give a +5 full plate a +13 AC, +1 MDB. Then again, +5 armors should be rather rare. That said, the Mithral Plate that Da Rock mentions is the best plate armor in the game, and yet it is only +10 AC, which translates into +2 armor. It's two redeaming features are 1) that it's considered medium armor, thus allowing some classes that only allow medium armor (without taking the heavy armor feat) to wear it without penalty, and 2) that it has a +2 MDB. (In essense, the creators of this armor may have called it "plate armor". But within the game engine/ITM file, it is seen as "chain mail". Hence, the classification as "medium armor" and the +2 MDB.)

There may be some truth to this, although I don't think that it covers all of the bad opinions about "junk" armor in IWD2.

The boring beetle armors are pretty much the best heavy armors that you can get until late in the game. And they're certainly some of the best for clerics who are often a bit strength-challenged, compared to normal frontline tanks, and can find that normal full weight heavy armors use up most of their carrying capacity. (BTW, I've wondered if the beetle armors should be reclassified as medium armors, given that they are soooooo light for "heavy" armor.)

So, I suppose that more heavy armors spread throughout the game might help matters some, although we must remember that there's a rather wide gap of "friendly" stores between the Wandering Village and the Underdark. I'm classifying deurgar merchant as an "unrfiendly" merchant, given that most people will tend to eventually attack the deurgar and the merchant will end up going hostile and you'll lose his store. And I'm skipping the monk merchant since he doesn't sell any melee type items (as I recall) and adding most such items would see to go against the proper nature of a store in that location.

I have already had in mind adding a fair number of additional items to Nym's store in the Wandering Village. He's perfect for having so many different items. Tahvo, a barbarian merchant, doesn't seem so likely to be carrying heavy armors, but Nym could arguably have almost anything in his "store".


So, in light of Ulfgar's comment above, let me extend my original question.

Are the armors that do exist OK (for their enchantment level, regardless of their location), but there needs to be more of the higher (i.e. +3 to +5) enchantment armors?

Or do people not like the Max DEX Bonus concept? (There's not much that can be done about this. Oh, I suppose that all armors could be classified as robes, like the Chain of Drakkas is. But that would have a lot of bad side effects, such as removing all armor check penalties and arcane spell failure checks and armor type (heavy, medium, or light) limitations by class. And it's not a change that I'd make.

Or do people simply think that they should be able to get more AC than would seem to be allowed within the DnD guidelines for the various armor types, plus the AC modifiers for +1-+5 level enchantments to those armor. (i.e. an unenchanted full plate is +8 AC, thus +5 full plate is +13; and so on for all of the various other armor types allowed in the game)


Please, share your opinions on this topic. Don't be shy.


EDIT: Now on to a reply to Da Rock.

I suppose that part of the problem comes down to the definition of Armor Class. According to the PHB, Armor Class is defined as " how hard it is for opponents to land a solid, damaging blow on you".

So, using this definition, it may be completely true that you can get a higher AC in the long run by not wearing armor.

FYI, One must remember that you can also use shields to enhence one's AC, although of course, this does come at the expense of using a one handed weapon, rather than a more damaging 2H weapon. (Tradeoffs.)

BTW, let's extend this thread about armor to include shields, since I've read plenty of gripes about how bad the shields are in this game, as well.


Aside from the strict question about armor, there does seem to be a rather appalling imbalance between offense and defense in the 3e system. As your level (and the level of your enemies) increases, so does your BAB. But your base AC doesn't rise in any way. The only way that you increase your AC over time is the acquisition of AC enhancing items, better buffing spells, and increasing one's DEX (or WIS for monks), if your armor will allow you to take advantage of that increase. There seems to be no allowance for any learned skill in defensive skills that would allow you to better evade an enemy's blows.

Anyways, I don't want to go off on a long tangent about this. And if people want to discuss it (a worthy topic of discussion, to be sure), I'd appreciate it if such a discussion was moved to another thread, just as I moved this discussion out of the arcane spells thread. (Thanks.)


I think that one of the things that hurts AC, as well as some other things in this regard, is the 3e limitation against stacking the stat enhancing effects of multiple items. IIRC, only "generic" type AC modifiers can be stacked. So, it you had a couple of items, each giving you a deflection bonus, you could only use the higher of the two. I know that 2e had a different limitation that often ended up giving a similar effect (i.e. certain magical items, such as rings and cloaks, could not be worn in combination with enchanted armors). It might be better from an AC standpoint if all AC enhancing items simply gave the stackable "generic" AC bonus, rather than a non-stackable "deflection" bonus. Just a thought.

To be fair, Rock, remember that in BG2, the nature of game play is such that you can go the the A-mart at any point in the game (except when you're in the underdark). So if you may be low on funds early on and cannot afford the Armor of Deep Night, you could still go back for it later. That would not be the case in IWD2 were a similarly great item added to, say, Gallaway's Trade Depot in Targos. Frankly, if a +4 set of leather were in the Gallaway's inventory, I doubt that you'd be able to afford it at any time in chapter one without using cheat codes to give yourself enough gold. Besides, in BG2, you're starting as roughly a level 7-8 character, whereas in IWD2 you're starting out at level 1. I'm not exactly sure, but without any sort of level cheating, I suspect that you won't make level 7 until the very end of chapter one or, more likely, after you've taken Oswald's first skyship ride (and cannot get back to Targos).


And to be picky, The Armor of the Deep Night was +4 studded armor, so it would be +7 AC, +5 MDB, for a total of +12, not +13. (yes, picky, picky. I was just checking. I thought that the diff might be greater.)

Anyways, why should level ONE characters be able to buy a +4 set of armor in Targos? About the best I'd put in Targos would be +1, maybe, maybe +2. But no way in hell +4. I don't think that you should be seeing +4 armors until the underdark at the earliest, more likely Kuldahar.

So, is this really what it comes down to for you, Rock? You want to see the highest enchantment armors early in the game?

As I understand DnD, there's supposed to be at least a modicum of a relationship between your character's level and the availability of various enchantment levels of items. That is, you shouldn't be expecting to see +2 items until perhaps level 7 or so. But it sounds like you want all that best swag from day one in Targos. isn't that a little greedy of you? If you had all the best stuff from the start, where would the challenge be? Shouldn't you have to earn that good stuff?


As far as having armors that go beyond +12, I think that a very fair case can be made for that, based on the tangential argument about the mismatch between offense (BAB) and defense (AC) that exists in 3e. And it's something very much worth considering.

Da Rock, thanks for your comments. Please don't take my comments as any sort of attack. I'm just trying to spur serious discussion and perhaps being a shade contrarian. Please feel free to respond to my responses.

[ January 27, 2007, 18:53: Message edited by: crucis ]

 

DaRock explained it well. It is very easy to start with max DEX; for comparison the standard 3.x point-buy system (as seen in NWN) charges extra for high stats. You can boost DEX by four almost immediately; in 3.5 they fixed this by heavily nerfing the duration of basic stat booster spells like Cat's Grace. Finally, the IWD armors are mediocre and aren't found until well after the point when you'd want them; if the designers had bothered to pick up a 3.0 DMG they could have included much nicer armors:

Celestial Armor
This bright silver or gold +1 chainmail is so fine and light that it can be worn under normal clothing without revealing its presence. It has a maximum Dexterity bonus of +8, an armor check penalty of -2, and an arcane spell failure chance of 15%. It is considered light armor, and it allows the wearer to fly on command (as the spell) once per day.
Market Price: 25,300 gp

Demon Armor
This plate armor is fashioned to make the wearer appear to be a demon. The helmet is shaped to look like a horned demon head, and its wearer looks out of the open, tooth-filled mouth. This +4 full plate allows the wearer to make claw attacks that deal 1d10 (x2 critical) points of damage, strike as +1 weapons, and afflict the target as if she had been struck by a contagion spell
Market Price: 41,650 gp

Mithral Shirt
This very light chain shirt is made of very fine mithral links. Speed while wearing a mithral shirt is 30 feet for Medium-size creatures, or 20 feet for Small. The armor has an arcane spell failure chance of 10%, a maximum Dexterity bonus of +6, and no armor check penalty. It is still considered light armor. The shirt weighs 10 pounds.
Market Price: 1,100 gp.

(Above text from the 3.0 SRD; I deleted some irrelevant info)

Or they could simply have tossed in a bunch of basic +5 full plate armors: +13 armor total, max dex bonus +1, market price 26 000. Make them out of mithral, max dex bonus jumps to +3 and price increases to 35 000.

There's also a very expensive enchantment that gives SR 19. The added cost varies, but on a +5 armor (like our mithril full plate) it is +75 000 gold. Would make the weak (non-SR) races more viable in HOF.

Modders should maybe bookmark this thread

EDIT reply to crucis: The max dex bonus and stacking rules in DND are fine. The problem is simply in the quality of armors IWD2 provides.

 

I like the fact that they didn't put too powerful armors in IWD2. That makes the ability points distribution more important.
To build a dex-based high-AC character you have to spend a lot of ability points in dex that could have been used for something more useful. As the game is today you can get quite good AC with heavy armor without having to spend any ability points in dex. I think that makes the game quite balanced. Very few make their tanks with high-AC from dex, since that usually means they have to give up some damaging power or HP.
I OTOH usually have High-AC decoys, but to give them that high AC they usually have to give up almost everything else. If just buying a good armor would give the same benefit as spending lots of ability points on dex the heavy armor tanks characters would become overpowered.

 

Mudde, the default IWD2 balance is *way* too far in favor of naked, mage-armored, high-Dex characters.

And Dex isn't otherwise useless; it also increases ranged attack to-hit and Reflex saves.

FYI, no matter what armor you wear, Dex below 10 will *penalize* your AC, at least in normal DND rules.

 

Ranged attack aren't that good and the throwing weapons probably gains more from the added damage from a higher strength score. Characters that relies on ranged attacks don't usually need the high AC as much as melee-chars, making dex not as useful as it could be.
Missing reflex saves usually don't kill your tank and making them usually damages him a bit too. Also the loss of -4 in that save can easily be used by having more ability points for con (more HP), or for cha to paladins. Even wis is better for tanks than dex (over 12) since it gives bonuses to the invalueble will save.
Giving a character 10 or 12 dex isn't a big loss of ability points for a non-min-maxer, and even if you min-max you don't loose too many ability points in that. 18 or 20 dex means some other potentially better stats will suffer.

 

JT writes:

I agree that the second half of this statement may have some truth to it. But once again, we have a person who bitches about the poor quality of IWD2 armors without explaining WHY they're poor... which is the entire point of this thread. How can a modder make better armors unless he knows why the existing ones are poor... unless of course the existing ones are only "poor" due to their location within the game rather than actually being of poor quality.

I've actually given some thought to "Celestial Armor", although an MDB of +8 is simply impossible. It'd either have to be the +6 of leather armor, or classified as a robe (like the chain of drakkas is) and have no MDB at all.

Sounds interesting, except why would a character who has the wherewithal to buy or "earn" a +4 set of full plate want to limit himself to +1 claw attacks when it's more than likely that he already owns at least a +3 weapon of his choice? I suppose that the contagion spell effect sounds nice, but from what I've read of that spell, it seems a bit too slow acting to be of all that much use in the IWD2 environment.

Again, this one sounds interesting, although I'm not sure how much it differs from the Celestial Chain in how it could be modded into IWD2. I suppose that Celestial Chain could be a no MDB item, while a Mithral Shirt could be easily emulated by cloning leather armor.


JT, don't get me wrong. What you've posted here is definitely good stuff. But lets remember that when it comes to modding new armors, for the basic stats of Max DEX Bonus, Armor Check penalty, and Arcane Spell Failure, we're stuck with emulating the existing 6 (?) armor types of Leather, Studded, Hide, Chain, Half-plate, and Full-Plate. (And robes, if you want to include them as a potential "armor type" as well.)

The only armor stats that we have any real control over is AC and weight. Oh, we can trick the armor with skill penalties to make the rogue skills see ACP as being a little different than what's hard-coded. What I mean by that is, say that I want to make an armor that has an ACP of -4, but my only cloning choices are Hide at -3 ACP and Chain at -5 ACP. What I can (and have) do is take Hide at -3 ACP, then apply a -1 penalty all of the rogue skills that would be affected by ACP and have modifiable opcodes in the game. It's a workaround that's better than nothing.

Regarding stacking rules, it was merely a thought.

The problem with your second statement is, once again, a complain about quality without DEFINING what you mean by the statement. "Quality" is too vague a term for the purposes of this discussion.

That said, I do believe that the context that you are implying about "quality" isn't about AC, per se, so much as you think that the armors and the effects they were created with simply are not "good", useful, powerful, interesting, etc. It doesn't sound like you have that big a problem with the actual AC values, except perhaps regarding the comparative availability of higher enchantment armors relative to their location in the game. That is, a +2 armor that is sold in Kuldahar seem rather wimpy, whereas the same +2 armor sold in the Wandering Village might seem much more valuable and, hence, "good".

Hmmm....

More to ponder.

JT, this was something a topic that I went into even more detail about in my previous long post, but ended up chopping out, for fear of taking the thread off-topic.

I think that part of the problem is that in the 3e system, the increase of a character's level increases his ability to score damaging hits, but that same experience does nothing to improve that same character's ability to avoid taking damaging hits. That seems to be a big flaw in the DnD combat system, to me. It seems that experience should be teaching not just offensive skills, but defensive ones as well. And in DnD technical terms, that should probably translate into gaining AC bonuses as you increase in level. Perhaps warrior classes should gain +1 AC every 3rd level whereas mages only gain +1 AC every 5th or 6th level. (Don't be picky about the numbers, it was only an off the cuff example.)

The way it is now, an unarmored, effectively naked level 20 fighter has the same AC as an unarmored, effectively naked level 1 fighter. And that just doesn't seem right. The level 20 fighter should be vastly more skilled than the level 1 fighter and it seems that he should be able to evade many, many of the level 1 fighter's blows, even if he chooses not to counterattack.

However, the way DnD is constructed, there really seems to be no difference defensively betweeen the L1 and L20 fighters.


Having said all this, I'm not sure that even if classes gained some AC every level or every few levels that it would seriously change the relative balance between armored and unarmored characters in IWD2.


It would seem to me that one way to address the issue of "naked, mage-armored, high-Dex characters" would be to have enemy spellcasters cast Dispel Magic spells more often. The one thing that an magically protected melee character has to fear is having his arcane protections dispelled. It would certainly put a serious kink in the users of "naked, mage-armored, high-Dex characters" tactics if the game's spellcasters made more profuse use of Dispel Magic spells, particularly at the start of battles to reduce the impact of so much pre-battle buffing. It would certainly make battles more challenging for those of us who already know where all of the big battles take place and who we're fighting, if we weren't able to totally buff up our party going into every big battle. Or more accurately, we could still buff our parties, but there'd be no guarantee that the buffing spells would end up flushed down the proverbial toilet by a couple of enemy spellcasters dispelling all those buffs.

 

This topic is exactly why I like the "Armor and Shields provide damage resistance" component of the IWD2 Ease of Use mod.

From the ReadMe:

======================================

This changes the game so that a piece of equipment that provides an armor
bonus of +X also provides +X damage resistance. Why? This is for those of
you who dislike 3E's continual use of "armor class" despite the fact that
plate mail makes you (as a unit) easier to hit but harder to damage. This
is also for those who are used to more "complicated" or "realistic" combat
systems that make a more concerted distinction between dodging and damage
resistance.

However, the real reasons for this is are as follows:
(1) Heavy armor still stinks in IWD2 and there is no real reason to use
it. It is almost always better to have an 18 DEX and Studded Leather than
to go out for Chain Mail or Splint Mail. In addition, most of the magical
armor in the game is leather. This provides an incentive to find and use
heavy armor.
(2) BAB goes up as you gain levels but AC does not. A random monster
(like a Yuan-Ti Abomination in Chult) might be a 13th level fighter with
14 STR (say). As a result, it can hit an AC of 34 without rolling a
natural twenty. When was the last time you had an AC of 34? Didn't think
so. Basically, everyone hits you all the time. This makes the game
degenerate: mirror image, blur and blink become all-powerful, as do
stoneskin (or damage resistance in general) and things that take damage
for you (summoned monsters). The replay value of IWD2 is severely
lessened by the fact that combat is so boring in that regard.

Note that this change affects both your paty *and* all enemies. In
addition, enemies that have "innate" armor bonuses (e.g., the Guardian
Dragon has an innate AC of 35) have that transformed into innate damage
resistance (e.g., the Guardian will now have 25 damage res). Again, I think
this only makes sense: a dragon is easy to hit but hard to hurt.

This will NOT show up in the item descriptions, but the items will grant a
damage reduction bonus equal to their armor bonus. Note also that this will
NOT affect any armor you buy from Ribald Barterman (via my Merchant mod).

======================================

 

Acrux, I was giving some thought to that very concept, but I'd sort of offhandedly dismissed it because of the description of Armor Class saying "how hard it is for opponents to land a solid, damaging blow on you". Perhaps I should reconsider.

I suppose that an alternative would be to try to come up with a fair system of giving permanent AC bonuses every few levels, with the definition of "few" varying by class. But this REALLY gets off topic, vis-a-vis armor (and shields).

I do think that I'll investigate how the EoU mod implemented that damage resistance change and think about it.

EDIT: Ok, I've investigated how the EoU implemented adding all that DR to all the armors and it's clearly a pain. WW apparantly manually edited each and every armor ITM file in the game to add the resistances. And unfortunately, that makes that modification potentially incompatible with any other mod that adds armor items.

[ January 28, 2007, 02:27: Message edited by: crucis ]

 

From a DM's perspective, anything that should be regularly wading to melee combat should be shooting for an AC that is roughly 13 points higher then the NPC or Monster's challenge rating. Hence a fighter with 15 levels should have an AC of 28 to prevent it from being too easily hit in combat. Even the average 15th level NPC fighter by terms of DMG has an AC of 28 (+1 Dex, +2 full plate, +2 heavy shield, amulet of natural armor +2, ring of protection +1). IWD2's problem is armor class rather then it's armors specifically. Heavy armor is specifically designed for users who have low Dex, so the likes of Cat's Grace, bracers of Dexterity and the like really don't have a lot of purpose for a heavy armor user.

However IWD2 implementation of AC "sux". It has five different types of Armor, Deflection, Dex, Armor, Shield and "generic" (which hardly anything falls into) which makes it next to impossible to generate high AC without tapping into the Monk's high "generic" armor rating. The most typical way for non-armor wearers of generating armor, natural armor, is nonexistent in IWD2. This forces a paladin or fighter to rely on armor which IWD2 does fine, shields (which magical ones are rarely found in the game), deflection (which are fine). Those dual-wielding or two handing it are particularly hurt by the lack of natural armor since they can't pick up that +2 to AC and end up languishing in the low 20s in terms of AC. Medium armor is much worse then heavy armor in IWD2, with +2 chainmail being the best I found, providing a maximun AC of 19, making barbarians particularly weak.

Table top there are far more then 5 types of armor bonuses, several of them easy to obtain (such as armor, deflection, divine, dodge, enhancement, insight, luck, natural armor, profane, sacred, shield and size). It really shouldn't be too hard for a PC level 15 Paladin to achieve an AC of 30. My issue has always been the lack of ways to generate a high armor class.

 

Suffering, let me start by saying that your above post is excellent, interesting, and informative.

Thanks for the contribution.

From the looks of that 15th level fighter, the only thing that's missing would be that amulet of natural armor. That said, a lot of people tend to play tanks with two handed weapons and forego shields. That +2 large shield would give another +4 AC, at the expense of a 2H weapon in favor of a 1H weapon and the extra AC, so I suppose that players have only themselves to blame when they choose 2H weapons over the extra AC of a shield.

Moving on...

I think that the only example of "natural armor" is from the barkskin spell, although I doubt that it's classified as "natural armor.

And frankly, I'm not sure that there are all that many sets of +3 plate, let alone chain mail. That's certainly a correctable descrepancy.

I think that the use of "generic" AC bonuses which *is* stackable, is the catch-all to cover all of those other bonus types.

I looked in the txt file that contains all IWD2 items and I could only find 4 items that gave a generic armor bonus, 2 normal mode items and their 2 HOF counterparts. OTOH, there were around 40+ items that give a deflection bonus. (I didn't inspect these 40+ items, just used a search on the item file and came up with total of 48 instances of the word deflection, but a handful didn't seem to be part of any item description.)

So I suppose that one way to alleviate this would be to include more items that give generic AC bonuses. Perhaps even examine some of the current deflection AC bonus items to see if it might be justifiable to convert them to (stackable) generic AC bonuses.

And it probably wouldn't hurt to add some higher enchantment armors later in the game and push back the mid level (+2/+3) enchantment armors a bit earlier in the game, so that players will have some access to some better armors a smidge earlier.

One issue is that the nature of the plot and the places that you visit isn't exactly conducive to providing good places to buy high AC heavy armors. That is, are you really going to be finding good ol' Tahvo selling +2 plate in the Wandering Village? I kinda doubt it. (Luckily, Nym is there and there's no reason that that ol' scoundrel couldn't have pretty much anything to sell.)

I just want to revistit a statement you made in your first paragraph.

I think that one could argue that both are a problem. Insufficient AC is a problem. But I think that one could argue that even within the 3e paradigm as implemented by IWD2, there is a considerable lack of useful and interesting armors in the game, at least until you meet the armor merchant in the Underdark.


Anyways, thanks for the illuminating post, Ilmater's Suffering!

 

I agree with Mudde. My fighter usually has 20str, 20con, 14dex. IMHO, the best way to defense for a fighter is to attack. If a fighter had both high AC and high DMG, it would be quite imblanced.

 

I'm not so sure that I agree with some of the points you make, Mudde. I don't think that it's the lack of high end heavy armors that makes stat point distribution important, but the facts that you only have 16 stat points to distribute, and the fact that Max DEX Bonus tends to have a serious impact on how a character balances STR vs. DEX (as well as the other stats).

And the fact is that low DEX heavy tanks just about entirely depend on armor and shields for the vast bulk of the AC, so it's not exactly unexpected that people who play heavy tanks would like to be able to get some really good armors to protect their greatsword/halberd/greataxe wielding death machines. On the flip side, it's not unexpected that nimble rogues, and archers, and other light armor, DEX dependent warriors would like to have access to some good, high end light armors.

I'm not exactly sure that it's "imbalanced" for all warriors, whether STR based or DEX based, to have a desire to have access to increasingly protective armors throught the course of the game.

Besides, I'm not going to look at uber-high AC decoys as any sort of counter wieght in a balance oof STR vs DEX warriors. I tend to view these decoys as a sort of farcical rules twisting to turn the game and the rules against itself.

I don't think that it's unreasonable or unbalanced to expect that in a game where there's lots of +3 and +4, and more than a few +5 weapons, that there should be rather more than a mere smattering of +2 armors. THAT seems to be what is unbalanced... at least to me.

But thanks for the contribution, regardless. There's nothing wrong with a contrarian view on this topic.

 

Wow! A Millions posts since my first one here!

Crucis, as for that Armour of the Deep Night +4, I got the stats when I installed Icewind Gate 2 ages ago. These were the stats given. You right that it should be +5 DEX bonus, but the creator set it as leather, not studded leather.

And I don't want the highest enchanted armour early in the the game (maybe HoF!) - I just find too many good armours are found/bought late in the game. It makes it a bit of a waste for those who won't go on into HoF mode.

This was your own quote - this is the sort of thing I meant!

Compare this with:

Once you have reached the Wandering Village, most, if not all of your characters should be wielding +2 weapons (and better if you went through the higher levels of the Battle Square) - so it seems obvious that people like Nym and Tahvo should be selling at least one +2 armour.

I apologise if I got hung up about the max DEX bonus thing, but my first post was about the examination of numbers - which is essentially what many facets of the game's rules eventually lead to, when we do all this "compare characters", "what is the best weapon/spell", etc...
...stuff.

There are two ways to even it out:
1) Reduce the AC boosting by spells - in 3.5e (I don't have 3.0 rules), Shield only gives +4 armour bonus, and there is no Spirit Armour;
2) Create better armours - what this discussion has been potentially about.

I am currently working on a mod that implements 3.5e spells (Emotion: Hope is Bard only - that should annoy the casual powergamer!), including new ones. Shield has been set to +4 AC, although Spirit Armour remains.
In regards to armour, the AC bonuses from spell casting have not been discussed as thoroughly - this is, after all, part of why ALL armours are weak in comparison!

The question is, do we want better "average" AC (option 2) or worse (option 1)?
I think Ilmater's Suffering pointed out that it should be option 1, as the "DM's" AC can be reached. But this just doesn't cut it in HoF mode, where an AC of 46 is required to prevent the goblins hitting you with all but critical hits (so 36 should be a decent average value)! It then jumps to 51+ for the orcs in Chapter 1...

The best light armours are Nasty Bits and Black Dragon Scale, which are both essentially a +4 leather armour. So where are the +4 heavy armours?
Air Genesi Gail Armor is a +3 armour, but it doesn't go higher than that.
I feel that +5 armours should be implemented - as there are +5 weapons. A +5 Full plate would give a +13 armour bonus, with +1 DEX bonus. I would be more than happy with this!
It is only 2 higher than my original value of 12 - but as I said, it is about the numbers.

As for Shields, I have the EoU component that includes "Forgotten Armour and Shields". There are a couple of Shields that provide +6 AC bonus - I think this is enough.

One thing that screws the whole thing up - Spells!
With them (we include the attack spells here), the game becomes easy (e.g. the period between Fireball and Delayed Blast Fireball) - without them, the available armour makes the game far more of a challenge!
After all, it has long since been discussed that Sorcerers are arguably the best class. Once they get DBFB, what is need for a tank? We'd rather cast Animate Dead, than let our "low" AC fighters get injured...


(on previewing my post, I found that I couldn't type "on" in words, but typed "no" (bnous?), so I am not exactly awake! Please be gentle with replies, because my brain is 10mph slower than my hands at the moment - anything I said I will probably disagree with in an hour's time!)

 

I think the problem differs for HoF and normal mode, since the styles of play are so different for the two.

For HoF mode, it's mainly with the number of enemies and the damage they do. Compare two characters, one of which (A) requires that the enemies roll 16-20 to hit, while the other (B) requires a natural 20. A is getting hit 5 times as often as B. This is a much bigger deal in HoF mode than in normal for two reasons: First, the exp given in HoF is designed such that your party's levels will quickly reach a point where you are swarmed by incoming enemies, so you are getting hit much more frequently regardless of AC unless they need a natural 20 and you decrease their luck. If these are an arcane casters, there is a linear relationship between this value and how often you have to replenish Mirror Image. A can easily lose all his mirror images before you can pull Chaos off and move him safely into the back lines, whereas B is probably safe even if completely surrounded. Second, the difference in what happens to a character when he has been hit differs substantially for the two modes. The same difference in number of hits taken for A and B exists for normal mode, but we have so far considered only how often the characters are hit. Now consider the damage the enemies deal. If the enemies are using 3x crit weapons, then A would need roughly twice as much hp as B in order to survive the same number of hits. This is not true of normal mode, where Stoneskin will absorb most of the damage from the non-crit hits, leaving the hp required for A and B to be not as substantially different.

It turns out that the AC that a heavily armored character can achieve isn't that pitiful.
10 base (generic)
4 DG racial bonus (generic)
10 Mithral Field Plate +2 (armor)
2 dex (dex)
5 Ghost Armor (deflection)
4 Large Shield +2 (shield)
5 Barkskin (generic)
5 Expertise (generic)
5 Brazen Bands (generic)
2 Warchant of the Sith (generic)
1 Dodge (generic)
4 Haste (generic)
1 Fire Dance Talisman (generic)
4 Tenser's Transformation (generic)
-----
62 total

Not too embarrassing. Of course, this is obviously not a typical heavy armor wearer, since he's using Tenser's Transformation. The Tenser's dex bonus is more or less wasted, since he needs 13 base dex to take Dodge, and Tenser gives 2d4 dex. He's also usually better off taking Chain of Drakkas or using Shield to take advantage of the Tenser dex bonus and getting better AC, but the option of using the heavy armor is there. If he forgoes Dodge, then he can free up a pretty substantial amount of dex for something else--which is probably less useful than AC, actually.

For normal mode is because of evocation spells. The only direct damage spell you have that can hit your own party, is worth using, and doesn't use reflex save--and hence can't be evaded--is Horrid Wilting. It's nice that you can get 3-4 more hp per level on that tank because you only took 13 dex instead of 20, but having 3-4 more hp isn't going to save you when your sorcerer, cleric, and/or wizard start throwing spells at your frontline; having evasion and high reflex save is. It's nice to have someone with 20 str instead of 14, but you are actually losing damage if he's pulling your melee cleric over for quick heals every round and/or if your sorcerer has to miss half the enemies with his fireball to avoid hitting the tank. If the character is going to have high dex anyway, then he falls into the range of being better off with Spirit Armor than heavy armor, as Da Rock explained in the first reply.

 

Da Rock, I'll be kind, considering you are apparantly only half awake.

No prob.

My point about Tahvo not selling +2 plate was that I didn't feel that such a hunting village's general merchant would be likely to care about selling plate armor in the first place. OTOH, it would seem entirely appropriate for good ol' Tahvo to be selling +2 armors that are in keeping with the flavor of his village.

OTOH, that scoundrel Nym is much more of a travelling fence ... I mean, merchant and seems far more likely to be willing to have things in his inventory that might not be interesting to a hunting village, but might be quite interesting to our little band of heroes.

That was my point. Aside from trying to shift the mid-level armors a little earlier in the game to make room for higher level armors later in the game, we should still pay attention to placing items in stores where they make sense to the merchant's local environment.


Beyond that, I don't think that there's much difference between you and I here. I'm not so sure that we have to start nerfing the AC enhancing spells, since they help the armored and unarmored alike.

I think that shifting the mid-level enchantment armors' availablity earlier in the game and adding some more powerful armors later in the game, as well as looking into the same thing with shields would probably get the job done.

I also think that it would help to add in some more new armors merely to add in some more variety to the game. As I've written, I'm working on a mod of which one part is new items of all types. And I've already created a few sets of armors.

Oh, BTW, I've also converted a handful of IWD1 items to include as well. What the heck. We have all these items in these games that have long histories and have exchanged hands many times over the ages. Why shouldn't some of the IWD1 items show up in some of the stores we visit? And speaking of IWD1 items and armor, one of the IWD1 armors that I've already completed is the Black Swan Armor, which I intend to put into Nym's store.

I'm going to have to re-look at my conversion of the Black Swan Armor because I think that I may have understated its proper AC by one.

Anyways, here are the stats for the Black Swan Armor as the ITM file exists as this very moment.

It's a set of lightweight half-plate, thus the setting of "medium armor". It was cloned off of "chain mail", hence the +2 MDB, etc.

I think that the original IWD1 version was +2 plate, which is why I'm thinking that the Armor Bonus is 1 too low.

I've also created an HOF version where the AC is +10, the resistances are set to 10/-, and the CHA bonus is +3. (Keep in mind, if I find that I need to bump up the NM version's AC to +9, the HOF version's AC follows to +11.)

Aside from the philosophical question about re-using an IWD1 item and knowing that I currently intent on putting it in Nym's store, how does this set of armor look to you people?


Here's another set of armor that I've created from scratch. It's called "Dandy's Plate".

It's a +1 breastplate that's only usable by charismatic, heroic types (hence the stat requirements). And will be available in a new store in Targos.

(Side note: The Druid limitation is related to the 3.5e limitation that druids cannot wear metal armor and I've written a fragment of mod code that will go into all the appropriate (i.e. metal) armors in the game and make them unusable to druids. But this would not include "natural" armors, like the beetle armor, or leather or hide armors or ankheg (yes, ankheg plate) or umber hulk plate. )

I think that this is an interesting new armor. Oh, it uses a BAM from BG2 (maybe it's even a hold ever from the BG1 expansion) that's a golden breastplate/half-plate armor.


Enough for now. Please any comments, pro or con, on these two armors would be greatly appreciated.