So I'm getting kinda tired of the way that Dexterity is outright a better choice for Fighters than Strength, and seeing heavy armour being downright worse than maxing out Dexterity. Dex gives Initiative, important saving throws against attacks, maxing out with studded leather gives a base AC of 17 compared to 18 for plate, whilst boosting Stealth rolls rather than imposing disadvantage, works for ranged attacks as well as finesse and is better with dual wield (whatever you think of it).
The AC is of course nonsense. I don't care how fast you are, it's not just a tiny bit better to be clad in plate armour, it's massively better. A man wearing full plate is a living tank, practically immune to most handheld melee weapons (in the real world). I'm tired of feeling like knights in armour are barely more protected than a quick guy in leather.
My main ideas behind making heavy armour more effective are as follows (I am probably going to choose one, not all):
Physical damage reduction, a little like getting Heavy Armor Master's damage reduction for free. Unfortunately by the time there's plate armour, this is probably a little weak
Simply creating better and better non-magical armor, e.g. Full Plate is AC18, Milanese Plate is AC20, Masterforge Plate is AC22, with suitably high strength requirements as you go up. Seems like a bit of a cop out though.
Considering Adamantine armour to be non-magical (as adamantine weapons are) and making it readily available for the right price, thereby giving heavily armoured characters critical hit immunity
Currently I'm mostly thinking of taking the Adamantine Armour route.
I agree with your sentiment and I like your idea of the free Heavy Armor master damage reduction. However, rather than a flat 3 I would set it equal to the PCs proficiency bonus so it scales better.
One other thought is to rein back dexterity benefits a bit. For example, you could keep the attack modifier the same but cap the damage modifier to 2.
Armor and AC need to be revamped in general, but 6e is so long away.
I pretty much agree...all medium and heavy based armors need to give damage reduction. I would not start making armor types with too much of an AC boost, you need to factor class skills/spells/abilities and whatnot that boost AC...if you starting making AC go to high...you will run into 25+ AC people way to fast and early in the game.
What I would like to do is something like:
lowering all the values of armor AC in the game, over all armor and physical AC goes way down. this allows for far better game, skill and item progression.
shields start at +1 ac, then scale from there based on type, material and size.
starting AC calculations based upon your dex would be lower...now leaving much more room for more light armor types and quality variations to scale more.
adding in more amor types to fill in the ac value gaps, a couple light examples, Leather, Hardened Leather, Hardened Studded Leather, Hardened Studded and Ringed Leather...Leather and Chain (medium), Leather and Plate (medium)...etc etc.
light armor dex bonuses to AC would work the same. Medium hybrids a lower DR with the lowered dex modifiers. Heavy, does not skyrocket in AC, but instead gets much higher damage resistance.
So, a cheap normal quality medium armor (with my lower values), such as, a Chainmail Shirt would be 12-13ish AC with a standard medium armor dex modifier, plus 1-2 DR, a Full Double Riveted Chainmail Long Coat (heavy) would have 14-15 AC and like 3-4 DR, based on forging quality. Plate and Chainmail types (now heavy) would start with 15-16 AC and 4-8 DR based on quality. Normal quality Full Plate types would start around 17 AC, but the DR to compensate is 6-10 DR. Now even with basic Spiked Plate, with 17 AC, you would have 6 DR, which could half most rolled physical damage from levels 4-8 imo. If you scale this now, in higher quality Plate, 18-19 AC with 8-10 DR... over time that is a lot of physical damage absorbed...even at level 18 that would still be viable. Cost wise a higher quality Full Plate would be like 10-20k gold, and forging wise it be after level 13 in theory, so the DR scaling would not be op imo.
I would then remove padded armor all together, and add in different types and qualities of Gambesons into the game. This would add small amounts of DR to a character, regardless of wearing armor or not and also "can" add very small amounts to elemental DR. Then based on quality and price, you can gain +1-3 AC (now a pure caster could wear a Long Coat without any armor proficiencies or penalties, this now functions like a + to ac item vs armor). Being an owner of 3 Gambesons...I think this is really fair.
So a Fighter with 2000gp to spend after a few jobs, could get,
Standard Double Riveted Chainmail Long Coat 14 AC - 3 DR
Padded Gambeson +1 AC - 2 DR against Fire and Cold elements.
Standard +1 AC Shield (assuming bought with a starter pack at level one).
So that would be 16 ac, 3 physical DR and 2 elemental DR. I would think this would be at level 4ish...so pretty cool stats if you ask me!
In general I like the 5e armour options but some benefits to offset the stealth disadvantage for Strength based characters would be nice.
I prefer the idea of physical damage reduction out of the gate, but not the same as the HAM feat. Maybe -1 for medium armour and -2 for heavy, and you could still tack on the feat if you really want...
I would be pretty partial to having Damage Reduction (DR) be set equal to Str, but inversed to Dex based armor increases. So Light Armor would be Base+Dex with no DR(Unless Negative Str), Medium Armor would be Base+Dex(Max.2) and DR=Str(Max.2), and Heavy Armor would be Base(Unless Negative Dex) and DR=Str. I'm still a little hesitant with having an effective damage reduction of up to 10 with resistance (or more with Belt of Giants).
An AC arms race gets really brutal, really fast so I wouldn't recommend the second one, honestly. DR is a good idea but I do like the last one the best. Adding other benefits to heavy armor seems like the way to go for better balance. Nullifying critical hits is an easy one since there are already rules for that. I wonder if adding things like advantage on saves vs. grapple or prone wouldn't be appropriate as well. If you're really wanting to boost heavy armor, maybe even consider resistance against non-magical piercing damage. That wouldn't be far-fetched at all for someone in plate armor.
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So I'm getting kinda tired of the way that Dexterity is outright a better choice for Fighters than Strength, and seeing heavy armour being downright worse than maxing out Dexterity. Dex gives Initiative, important saving throws against attacks, maxing out with studded leather gives a base AC of 17 compared to 18 for plate, whilst boosting Stealth rolls rather than imposing disadvantage, works for ranged attacks as well as finesse and is better with dual wield (whatever you think of it).
The AC is of course nonsense. I don't care how fast you are, it's not just a tiny bit better to be clad in plate armour, it's massively better. A man wearing full plate is a living tank, practically immune to most handheld melee weapons (in the real world). I'm tired of feeling like knights in armour are barely more protected than a quick guy in leather.
My main ideas behind making heavy armour more effective are as follows (I am probably going to choose one, not all):
Currently I'm mostly thinking of taking the Adamantine Armour route.
I agree with your sentiment and I like your idea of the free Heavy Armor master damage reduction. However, rather than a flat 3 I would set it equal to the PCs proficiency bonus so it scales better.
One other thought is to rein back dexterity benefits a bit. For example, you could keep the attack modifier the same but cap the damage modifier to 2.
Armor and AC need to be revamped in general, but 6e is so long away.
I pretty much agree...all medium and heavy based armors need to give damage reduction. I would not start making armor types with too much of an AC boost, you need to factor class skills/spells/abilities and whatnot that boost AC...if you starting making AC go to high...you will run into 25+ AC people way to fast and early in the game.
What I would like to do is something like:
So, a cheap normal quality medium armor (with my lower values), such as, a Chainmail Shirt would be 12-13ish AC with a standard medium armor dex modifier, plus 1-2 DR, a Full Double Riveted Chainmail Long Coat (heavy) would have 14-15 AC and like 3-4 DR, based on forging quality. Plate and Chainmail types (now heavy) would start with 15-16 AC and 4-8 DR based on quality. Normal quality Full Plate types would start around 17 AC, but the DR to compensate is 6-10 DR. Now even with basic Spiked Plate, with 17 AC, you would have 6 DR, which could half most rolled physical damage from levels 4-8 imo. If you scale this now, in higher quality Plate, 18-19 AC with 8-10 DR... over time that is a lot of physical damage absorbed...even at level 18 that would still be viable. Cost wise a higher quality Full Plate would be like 10-20k gold, and forging wise it be after level 13 in theory, so the DR scaling would not be op imo.
I would then remove padded armor all together, and add in different types and qualities of Gambesons into the game. This would add small amounts of DR to a character, regardless of wearing armor or not and also "can" add very small amounts to elemental DR. Then based on quality and price, you can gain +1-3 AC (now a pure caster could wear a Long Coat without any armor proficiencies or penalties, this now functions like a + to ac item vs armor). Being an owner of 3 Gambesons...I think this is really fair.
So a Fighter with 2000gp to spend after a few jobs, could get,
So that would be 16 ac, 3 physical DR and 2 elemental DR. I would think this would be at level 4ish...so pretty cool stats if you ask me!
I mean the above is a start LOL...
In general I like the 5e armour options but some benefits to offset the stealth disadvantage for Strength based characters would be nice.
I prefer the idea of physical damage reduction out of the gate, but not the same as the HAM feat. Maybe -1 for medium armour and -2 for heavy, and you could still tack on the feat if you really want...
I would be pretty partial to having Damage Reduction (DR) be set equal to Str, but inversed to Dex based armor increases. So Light Armor would be Base+Dex with no DR(Unless Negative Str), Medium Armor would be Base+Dex(Max.2) and DR=Str(Max.2), and Heavy Armor would be Base(Unless Negative Dex) and DR=Str. I'm still a little hesitant with having an effective damage reduction of up to 10 with resistance (or more with Belt of Giants).
An AC arms race gets really brutal, really fast so I wouldn't recommend the second one, honestly. DR is a good idea but I do like the last one the best. Adding other benefits to heavy armor seems like the way to go for better balance. Nullifying critical hits is an easy one since there are already rules for that. I wonder if adding things like advantage on saves vs. grapple or prone wouldn't be appropriate as well. If you're really wanting to boost heavy armor, maybe even consider resistance against non-magical piercing damage. That wouldn't be far-fetched at all for someone in plate armor.