Sunday 23 August 2015

Rules Corner: Layers of Protection

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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