Ramblings about an infant armor mechanic

[Grotesque]

All this "lets make the chain mail as viable as plate mail" is illogical.

Plate mail is practically the best defense you can get and thats that.

 

Chain mail is pretty useless against arrows but good against slashes (not great because there's still some energy transfer from sword impact) and would be pretty useless against estocs and rapiers -thrust damage. mail is useless against energy transfer weapons as mauls and flails.

 

Plate mail should be great against thrusts and slashes and arrows too and not so great against energy transfer weapons, especially warhammers that were designed to pierce plate.

 

Orcs wanting to look kool in raw hide armour? Then they deserve to go extinct if they did not realize by now that plate gives the best protection

 

So logically, plate would be always a better protection than mail or leather. What the player should do is to choose between tradeoffs between these armour tiers, and these tradeoffs should be dictated by the skill mechanics.

 

Any class should be able to wear ANY kind of armour and use ANY weapon. And that should be written in stone.

thats what a real RPG is all about

The problem should be how your character is efficient with that armour and weapon, and how efficient the character is also governed by skills and stats I choose to invest in.

 

Why not having a thief wearing a cuirass and chain hood?

Or a wizard in full plate wielding a hallebarde? Does his hands have to be free to cast a spell?

So in a sense, all the talk about armor is pretty useless and out of context as long as the other mechanics are not in place.

Tradeoff: metal is very hard to imbue with magic

 

I know what people will say, that the majority will never choose those kind of builds because they are not practical, but the flavor in an RPG is how to bring an exotic build to be practical, and sometimes those are the most practical in the game.

 

Wearing plate all over should suck the stamina out of you, so long fights would be a problem for a warrior in full plate because he would be tired much quicker and become less effective at killing. And full plate could have a very high cost and be rare.

 

What would be great to have in the game is the localized damage mechanic (head neck torso gut limbs) and an overlapping armour system where I can equip a cuirass over a hauberk or chain over a gambeson, metal helmet over chain hood etc

 

Armour tiers and progression could depend on

- manufacturer : certain degrees of craftsmanship - weight reduction

- innovation: angled surfaces, accessories for better joint protection

 

- materials - the ability to sustain damage until repairing and ease/cost of repair, maintenance

- armour age - more often and higher cost of maintenance for older in service pieces of armour

- any other ideas please insert

 

so, combining all those variables and making quality plate prohibitive and designing a skill system also around the armour tiers in the game, easily chain armour could be better than some plate armour, and innovative new FULL plate armours made from desest materials would be greatly sought after (and expensive like in reality ) by players and equipping all the characters with such valued armour would be impossible.

 

What I would love to have is armours like in Fallout that they just did that, protect you and not giving you bonuses to speech or protect you from poison or making you a better haggler. I know this will be a fantasy game but what I would like to see is at least some logical armour bonuses.

Edited October 31, 2012 by Grotesque

[Grotesque]

Please delete this thread as I posted it elsewhere