Talk:Races of War (3.5e Sourcebook)/Equipment

Prices

I question whether the editing in of prices is a good idea. Instead I'd rather have the armors rebalanced to provide roughly the same benefit (either from AC and other stats, or from abilities granted) and give them all roughly the same price per class. That, or leave price off entirely. As it is, anything above 14,999 gp doesn't make sense (so the Demon Armor price is way out there). Surgo 18:20, January 15, 2010 (UTC)

I agree, it's a bit dodgy. But the problem is that without prices, the armors cannot be used in a game. As a temporary solution I started editing in the prices of the existing armors, but those higher priced ones definitely need adjustment. -- Iferius 18:23, January 15, 2010 (UTC)

Maybe we can both start working on armor rebalancing then, and give a price-per-class when that's partially done? Surgo 18:28, January 15, 2010 (UTC)

So then our goal would be to create three categories of armors, wherein all the light/medium/heavy armors are equivalent in power and price? That's a bit ambitious, but I like it! -- Iferius 18:33, January 15, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah. I mean, price is easy (obviously). Power is harder. We have to balance AC and other stats with the benefits granted. Where to start, where to start...to start, I think we need to find a "perfect armor" for each class. Surgo 18:38, January 15, 2010 (UTC)

The three additional categories of armor emerge pretty naturally. You've got the normal armors, which are in the PHB. These should be affordable by level 3 at the latest. Then you've got the exotic armors which are made of strange things like mithril, adamantium, spider silk, and dragon scales. Finally you have the fantastic armors which are by necessity magical in nature: blocks of ice that don't melt, force shields, armors possessed by outsiders, and so forth. Catharz Godfoot 19:31, March 16, 2010 (UTC)

Balancing Armor

Very well. The perfect armor should be the popular choice thus far if we do not want to change the essence of the game. The chain shirt, the breastplate and the full plate armor should be our balance points. Non-armors don't need a classwide price I think. What should we do with the common notion of rare and common materials? i.e., what do we do with mithril and adamantium? -- Iferius 18:55, January 15, 2010 (UTC)

I have worked on light armors for a bit. What do you think about this? -- Iferius 19:28, January 15, 2010 (UTC)

(note: edit conflict, I haven't seen the new changes) I don't know that I'd worry about class-wide pricing, as that sounds like it might have serious / irresolvable multi-classing issues. What I would do is just price them based on the minimum level you wanted to see them come into the game, rather like the heavy armors are priced now. As for rare materials, I think that the old paradigm of them costing more doesn't really apply in the default RoW setting, but those setting assumptions are a lot more fantastic than most people are used to (or may even want) and handwave a lot of costs. So rather than trying to force more fantastic armors and materials down people's throats I think the fluff could be backed off on a bit. So mithral armor isn't all mithral, it's just mithral in some of the joints or whatever. And so on. - TarkisFlux 19:48, January 15, 2010 (UTC)

Class-wide is "light, medium, heavy" not "base class". Surgo 21:58, January 15, 2010 (UTC)

Also, Iferius, I didn't mean the most perfect non-RoW armor. I meant the perfect RoW armor. So dragonscale suit / mechanus armor, mithril, etc. Surgo 21:59, January 15, 2010 (UTC)

As for your implementations, I don't like "reduce this number by X" all that much. I think it should hand out an actual ability rather than making the base stats of the armor less sucky. Also, the "bind someone in a grapple" needs to define what kind of check that is (other than that it's a really neat ability). Surgo 22:01, January 15, 2010 (UTC)

That makes lots more sense. Thanks for pointing out that my brain is still off Surgo ;-) - TarkisFlux 23:19, January 15, 2010 (UTC)

Look up Use Rope in the SRD. Normally, you can tie up a character (assumed helpless) in a minute. The great part is that you get a +10 bonus on the Use Rope check when it is compared to his Escape Artist check. Also, I agree the chain shirt stuff is not all that great, but it's the best I could think of for such a mundane piece of armor. -- Iferius 00:05, January 16, 2010 (UTC)

Alternate Completed List

MisterSinister completed these over on TGD a while back. They don't include costs, but since it looks like you're filling in gaps while you're at it I thought I'd point you to some inspiration (note, he's already given permission for them to be uploaded here if you wanted to just steal them whole cloth, he just never did it himself). - TarkisFlux 00:25, January 16, 2010 (UTC)

What's next

Now that we're done adding abilities, we need to tier the armors in each class -- show what's on top and what's on bottom due to their combination of bonuses, penalties, and abilities, and then bring the guys on the bottom up. Let's start with the lights. Surgo 00:51, January 20, 2010 (UTC)

My thought exactly. First of all: is skill rank investment a greater investment than 15 BAB? -- Iferius 09:33, January 20, 2010 (UTC)

I don't think so. You'd pick up armor that matches your skills anyway. Surgo 13:48, January 20, 2010 (UTC)

What about monks?

This makes armor great. If I want to play a monk (or an equivalent), and don't want armor, I now have a bigger drawback. Is it possible to have a "unarmored" armor? that gives you bonuses?

This was covered by the Tome Monk class. It doesn't wear armor, but it gets a substantial armor bonus to AC and all its pretty awesome class features. That said, you are correct in that it doesn't gain these armor bonuses, but given it's awesomeness they probably won't be missing them terribly. If you're not that class, then that's kinda your loss. - TG Cid 17:27, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Just like to call BS

There are many good reasons to use armors other than the ones mentioned. Combinations of Max Dex, ACP, weight, price, and metal content are all good reasons to choose different armors, not to say these are the only reasons. --Quey 21:25, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Just looked over this stuff some more. These armors look like BS. You're linking skills to completely random and unrelated abilities. Sleight of Hand to perform forced march? Move silently to be immune to poison? What the hell is all this crap? The explanations aren't any better. Metal is meant to be shaped in many different ways; that's what makes it so useful! Yeah, I get dragon scales being used for one thing and shells for another, but metals are meant to be shaped. It doesn't matter that LotR used mithril one way, mithril is a metal that has many applications. Any blacksmith would realize this. A strong, light metal? Why NOT use it for plates? It hurts like hell to be clubbed in chain armor (and, by the way, one of the players in my group used mithril chain LAST WEEK). To me, it seems all these armors are trying to be class features. I bet you could take every armor here and make a class or prestige class out of it. Everything here is just completely broken in terms of balance, rules, and consistency. None of this belongs in any 3.5 campaign. An 1800gp force shield is a prime example: underpriced, not in line with existing rules for force, and it goes against every prevailing conception of Force in the game. Force is not a material. It is an effect generated by a spell or magic item. The FAQ goes into great detail on this. I just can't emphasize enough how far all of this goes from being a part of a 3.5 game. It doesn't mesh in any way whatsoever.--Quey 21:46, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Metal content? Why would you ever choose an armor based on metal content? When would that rule ever matter at all? Anyway, while the armors may be the weakest part of Races of War, your hyperbole is not helping your case. It meshes with 3.5 perfectly well -- if force has not been used in that way before, who the hell cares? Surgo 22:05, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Ever heard of Druids? Prohibited from wearing metal armor. The spell Heat Metal might also be a reason to avoid it. We discussed the rest of this in chat, but I'll write a bit more for the benefit of others visiting this page. My prime complaint is that skills give abilities completely unrelated to their purpose. Diplomacy gives a deflection bonus, Move Silently gives poison immunity, and for 750gp and ranks in Survival, you can Wildshape like a druid. That leads me to my next point: nonmagical items granting magical abilities. That Wildshape is a good example. Wearing armor gives you a supernatural class ability? What? Even if the skill made sense, why do supernatural abilities come from relatively low skill levels? Finally, about that force, it's not that it hasn't been used that way, it's being changed into something else entirely, which would be fine as it's own variant rule (force is now a material for making armor), but as it stands, it just doesn't work.--Quey 23:39, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Skill ranks are just a way of ensuring that things are level appropriate without specifically giving things at character level X (so that anyone and everyone could utilize an item) or BAB +Y, where only martial classes might benefit, for instance. It is a way of offering level appropriate abilities to a certain category of characters, and not to others. It more adaptable than saying 'only rogues can wear Z,' and such lists are at odds with further homebrew. The skills are, in that sense, the tie in to 3.5e, an internal constant that allows these to link to aspects of the game. -- Jota 00:48, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I've seen a system (which I prefer) that does scale with character level. And I don't have a problem with scaling by ranks per se, but when the skill is completely unrelated to the abilities granted, it makes no sense. How does a silent sneaky person suddenly have the ability to snort, inject, and guzzle oil of taggit or other poisons when they don some armor? If you want to grant a certain category of abilities to a certain group, why not at least make the skill roughly correspond to the ability granted? Make poison immunity linked to Craft(poison), Heal, or even Survival? Why not make Tumble instead of Diplomacy give a deflection bonus? Now I'm still on the fence if there is a problem to be solved here, perhaps leaning toward the cause of making some classes more versatile. But in the end, this seems like a kludge at best. If classes are the problem, make variant classes; people have made many nice ones. But packaging random class features in nonmagical wearables that are often supernatural, spell-like, or just magic item effects doesn't make sense in game. Why is an intimidating man in scale mail immune to fist fights, while the same man without the armor or a non-intimidating liar in scale mail is not? If you can yank an extra move action out of 20gp worth of cords and *immunity* to cold from 30 gp of winter clothes, why is magic special and supernatural? Why is there even a mundane category? Why?--Quey 02:01, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I think you are getting a little too caught up in realism or verisimilitude. Like with the hairdryer, for instance, where if it wasn't magic there was no acceptable mundane explanation for energy conversion in absence of electrical to heat energy. As for why a particular skill and not another, perhaps because Craft (Poison) isn't the kind of thing anyone would bother to invest ranks in. Sometimes the guys who get Diplomacy don't also get Tumble, but they are the ones the armor was intended for. Sometimes a modicum of suspension of belief is more valuable than all the mechanical exposition in the world. I don't mean to devalue verisimilitude, and indeed I am inclined to favor it, but sometimes game balance and fun are of greater worth than the inevitable spiral into 'fighters can't have nice things.' -- Jota 02:33, 7 August 2012 (UTC)