Armor Type Ideas

So we currently have three (ish) types of armor: soft, chain, and plate. This covers a wide variety of cases and we already are struggling to get the balance right between the three (soft armor is generally held to be superior in most cases, with the possible and transient exception of Atavus' arcanite plate).

However, I think it would be interesting to include other in-between options for armor. two possibilities are ring mail (leather armor reinforced with a metal secondary material, between soft and chain) and scale mail (metal armor with a leather secondary material, would lie between chain armor and plate). Alternate names for the same armors could be studded/reinforced leather, and coat of plates.

As you noted, we haven't even balanced the three we've got. Would anyone even use these two types?

I like the additional options.

I think the difficulty is that armor is so heavy, you're not going to carry around multiple different types and switch them on and off depending on what enemy you're facing, like you might with cloaks/rings.

And unfortunately since every quest has you facing enemies with all different types of weapons, there's not really any advantage to choosing one over the other that I can see...

I agree with both of your points. This idea would really be just to add a little additional gradation in armor classes - who knows, something between leather and chain might be really nice!

Re: Capristo's point in particular: One way to think about (resolve? change? idk) the "changing armors" situation could be through a combination of different dungeon environments, and different player stats. Current PCs have a specialty (i.e. some PCs are born needing less XP to level up arm/leg strength than agaility/dexterity, and vice versa). Someone with much higher mobility than strength would, naturally, want to favor a lighter type of armor that doesn't impede them as much. This could further be tweaked by having certain dungeon environments favor lighter (slow, heavy hitters) or heavier (lots of fast, weak attacks) armors. Thus if an agility-centered character wanted to do a dungeon full of bats, he might do well to wear ring (or chain) mail instead of simple leathers.

Just a thought/option.

Thinking about it, though, *if* this sort of addition is ever to be implemented, it might be best to do it *concurrently* with armor balancing. Additional armors will require additional balancing - both for the new armors, to make sure they fit the curve, and for the old armors, to make sure they don't become obsolete.

Armor balance is such a big issue (which probably ought to encompass shields as well!) that I doubt anything definitive could be done for the next release.

Hum, I had an idea now that we've got crafting in-game. It'll be more of a stop-gap measure (it still doesn't address balancing) but it might be worth considering, to give plate mail a use if nothing else.

Building on Izzy's two material armours, how about a way to combine two "standard" armours for a hybrid one? One is used as the base, while the other is essentially scrapped for materials. For example, with a leather armour and a troll hide armour, one could end up with either:

1. A leather padded troll hide armour

In which the leather armour is scrapped, and adds a fraction of its weight and defense to the troll hide armour, becoming better than both, or:

2. A troll hide padded leather armour

In which the troll hide armour is scrapped and adds to the leather armour, which, while offering worse defense than the first option, also doesn't come with the stiffness of the troll hide armour and is still better than the original leather armour.

In similar vein we could end up with the likes of:

Steel plated leather armour
Adamantine-linked mithril chainmail
Ruby studded dragon-hide gauntlets

So on and so forth. Artifacts will naturally be exempt, which might tempt some players to forgo some named items in favour of such heavier equipment, preventing everyone ending up with the same end-game items.

Thoughts?

This is a great way to make use of the crafting subsystem. Just code a secondary material to armour and it's pretty much done.