Every now and then a situation comes up that is quite specific but
points out some interesting parts of a rule system. I hope to talk
about one such situation that came up for one of my groups a long
time ago. This situation in particular has to do with armour types
and some of the details that result from the way they are generally
handled. In particular, I will focus on D&D 5th
edition but the general issues also occur in other systems I've seen
(especially D&D inspired systems). I will also state the solution
rule that worked for this group (thinking of suits of armour as
layers of protection and creating rules to partially wear armour).
The Situation
The party found themselves in the desert. The Dungeon Master ruled
that medium and heavy armour had disadvantage because of the extreme
heat but light armour was fine. The fighter wore heavy armour and
used a glaive. Naturally, he wanted to wear light armour in that
situation.
Expense vs Effectiveness
In D&D 5th edition and just about every other system I
can think of off the top of my head, heavy armour is the most
expensive. That seems to make logical sense when you think about it.
It's expensive because it has the best protection. Except that in D&D
5th edition, that is only true for plate armour. Given a
sufficient DEX score, the AC (armour class) of a character wearing
light armour can equal the armour class of plate but have to use
their DEX score (usually these feed into other parts of the character
like stealth). DEX is useful for other combat related things such as
saving against quite a few spells and stealth. There are other
penalties with medium and heavy armour compared to light armour.
Travelling in extremely hot climates and being stealthy are both
harder in medium and heavy armour.
The Player's Solution
The fighter, being a fairly smart guy, asked if he could wear the
under padding as light armour. The Dungeon Master allowed it (same
stats as studded leather) and he went happily along on his way.
However, I want to stress how powerful that feature is. Being able to
switch from heavy armour to light armour for no additional cost gave
heavy and medium armour versatility for the characters who wore it.
Since it cost more as well, it worked just fine. At that point the
fighter could have easy bought some light armour but never even
thought about until that point. However, you could argue that the
price of heavy and medium armour is already high enough to consider
it a non-issue from a balance perspective. I'd also argue it
generally makes sense since light armour still has to be quite thick
to provide protection.
Later with the same group, he was able to successfully argue into
being allowed to wear his full plate like half plate. It wasn't such
a problem from an AC (armour class) perspective because it actually
lowered the character's AC. He was, however, able to put on partial
armour faster than the full suit. For this reason, everyone agreed it
was fair.
Other Solutions
In these kinds of cases, making any armour provide penalties in
extremely hot climates would work out well. If it bothered the
Dungeon Master that both armours would provide the same AC, they
could just give different players different AC's.
Layers of Protection Rule
Consider allowed medium and heavy armour to be thought of as layers
of protection. Light armour padding (AC 12 + DEX) is present under
all medium armour except hide. Some more expensive suits can be worn
partially to decrease the time to don them but for lower AC (splint
gets AC 14 + max DEX +2 and plate can be worn as half plate).
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