pintoyac

At the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious, I would love the initial types to remain viable. Please, no silly +1 modifiers. I liked the 'Quality Longsword' etc. from IWD. Besides quality of craftmanship, make material a factor? I.e. if my barbarian starts out wearing elf-hide armour, he might later be able to upgrade/replace it with troll-hide armour which has some self-repairing qualities (or whatever, just making up silly examples). It's still visually and functionally a hide armour. In this case I suggest a bonus of some type, as the character is already profficient in fighting when wearing this armor, maybe not improving it per se, but rather the character knows the limits of the armor and how to use its strengths or weaknesses to his advantage. If a character wasn't trained to fight with a certain kind of armor, maybe he should receive a penalty for the first x fights until he is comfortable wearing it?

First' I'd suggest making a list of categories of the same material, therefore giving the sense of improved protection/quality to a same type of armor. Let's say you have a Bear Leather Armor, sounds nice, right? What about a Griffon leather Armor? Sounds much better! You could create a list of materials/metals that change the stats for each item. Otherwise, you could also add a description, like Iron Plated Leather Armor, Reinforced Scale Mail or something of the sorts.Even Blessed Mail could fit with your lore I assume, wherever there are meddling deities, there are enchanted/blessed items. As someone mentioned before, cultural armor would be important, as different cultures figh in different ways, say a culture that upholds honor, would probably reinforce the front of the armor and leave the backside exposed, giving it no consideration, while a "sneaky" culture, would do the opposite. If you are planning on doing different protection for different body parts, then that could help with what I stated before, additionally, as a player you might reinforce your armor on certain parts, depending on how you fight. Something else that I would like to add, although probably not many people will like it - how come every store owner has my *exact* size of armor? If we're talking about a ravaged world, armor should be something expensive that you either craft yourself, or is tailored to your size.