There Should Be a Greater Penalty for Heavier Armor

Isaiah · May 17, 2016

Black Tortoise said: ↑

Im thinking that Leather Armor should restrict dexterity and anything "agility" related a little more than nothing at all. Chainmail should do this much more than Leather, then Quarter plate more still, Half plate more still, and Full Plate being the most "agility" restricting armor.

Ive been experimenting with different "dex monkey" builds lately, and now am playing a combat-mage. I dont see much incentive to not-wear Leather, at higher level the fizzle chance doesnt really have much of an overall effect. It would make sense if I were faster in cloth, like a martial-monk's robes being less about protection and more about freedom of movement and deception. Leather armor would naturally slow all the movements down somewhat, and restrict freedom of movement much more than cloth robes, though certainly allowing the wearer to be relatively agile.

In SoTA, wearing leather provides considerably more protection than cloth, but at very little cost to a seasoned mage. Its perfectly suited for a spell-heavy battle mage (I dont even use combat styles, just auto attack).

I feel it should shave off a tiny bit of dexterity and agility-based-defensive skills like dodge or evasion, or something of that nature. Cloth should have no negative impact on these attributes and skills. The otherway around is fine with me too - Cloth providing bonuses to defenses, dex, and light-armor defense skills, Leather providing less bonuses, Chainmail providing far less, and up to Heavy plate giving zero. Well, heavy plate should always have some negative impact on agility/swiftness-based game mechanisms.

Either way, my melee-based-caster w/ light armor build should have a bigger incentive to wear cloth - faster, speedier, harder to hit, higher dps, while my mage-heavy-melee'er w/light armor should have less incentive to just wear leather.

Note: I havent worn platemail since like R12 or something, I gravitate towards dex/agility based characters in RPGs.

These things might help with RP as well, or at least the clothing market in the player economy. There should be a reason to take the plate mail off for fishing, or attending an event, or whatever - just an incentive to take off heavier suits of armor when a social situation calls for it, and wear "normal" clothes. Perhaps avatars will someday play poker, and be terrible at it if a platemail helmet is blocking most of the vision and subtle nuances of other player's facial expressions.
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Have you tried that stance that regenerates focus? It increases fizzle rate dramatically as well as slows you down. If you wear leather armor you will have significantly more fizzle. So yeah wear leather, but robes might be the way to go for several reasons for a pure mage. Granted a player could use a focus potion too but things do change. I forsee that possibly the usefulness of the stance and the lower focus coming into play in the long run.

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There Should Be a Greater Penalty for Heavier Armor

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