Mighty Armor? Or "making Strength more useful"

[Prime32]

There's "mighty" rules for composite bows already; why not extend them to armor? Despite what the common images of them might be, figures like Beowulf were known for wearing extra-thick armor that could only be used by people with superhuman strength.

All armor is made with a particular strength rating (that is, each requires a minimum Strength modifier to use with proficiency). If your Strength bonus is lower than the strength rating of the armor, you can’t effectively use it, so you take a -2 penalty to AC. By default armor requires a Strength modifier of +0 or higher to use with proficiency. A suit of armor can be made with a high strength rating to take advantage of an above-average Strength score; this feature allows you to add your Strength bonus to your armor bonus to AC, up to the maximum bonus indicated for the armor. Each point of Strength bonus granted by the armor adds +10% to its cost (before applying enchantments).

Or even this...


Armor can be crafted to provide an AC bonus of any size. However, all armor requires a Strength modifier greater than its AC bonus in order to use proficiently (this applies only to its base AC bonus, and not to any bonus provided by enchantments or special crafting methods).

Str modifier	Penalties
> AC bonus +4	No load, ASF 0%
> AC bonus +2	No load, ASF 5%
> AC bonus	No load, ASF 10%
=< AC bonus	Medium load (+3 max Dex, -3 ACP, -30% speed), ASF 20%
=< AC bonus -2	Heavy load (+1 max Dex, -6 ACP, -30% speed, cannot run), ASF 40%
=< AC bonus -4	Overburdened (lose Dex to AC, -9 ACP, cannot move more than 5ft/round), ASF 80%
=< AC bonus -6	Paralysed

Light, medium and heavy armor proficiency each grant a cumulative +2 bonus to your effective Strength score for determining encumbrance from armor.
Dwarves may use their Constitution modifier in order to determine encumbrance from armor, in place of their Strength modifier.

All characters subtract -10ft from their movement speeds, then add their Strength score (rounded down in 5ft increments). This does not apply to movement modes provided by magic (such as a fly spell), though it would apply while transformed into a form that possesses a new movement mode (such as wild shaping into a bird).

Mighty Glacier [Trait]
Your muscles are so large that they slow you down.
Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus to Strength.
Drawback: You add only half your Strength score to your movement speed.
Normal: A character adds their Strength score to their movement speed.

[zioth]

I like these ideas, though I think they'd have to be tweaked a little. In the first idea, requiring a strength modifier of +0 will prevent a lot of clerics from wearing armor, which I'm not sure is desirable.

The second idea is nice, but the numbers don't seem quite right. A wizard with a strength of 10, Light Armor Proficiency and a Belt of Giant Strength +6 could wear padded armor. This gives the wizard access to enhancement bonuses, which, combined with Bracers of Armor, could seriously boost the wizard's AC. He'd also get access to all the nice non-AC-enhancing armor abilities.

I think you need to address the fact that Bracers of Armor get around this strength rule, and think about what kinds of bonuses you want arcane casters to have access to.

One thing I have absolutely no complaint about is the new system of load - you can move freely in heavy armor if you're strong enough. You need a +10 strength mod to wear full plate without being encumbered, so that's limited to the people who really should be wearing full plate. You should add a size modifier to this -- higher strength requirements if you (and the armor) is larger.

[phaedrusxy]

I think this is a terrible idea, for several reasons. Here are three:

1) Armor already sucks. Handing out even more penalties for wearing it, especially medium and heavy armor, is only going to drive even more characters away from using it.

2) Strength is already a stat that most people who actually care about using medium or heavy armor will likely pump up fairly high. Even then, requiring a strength of 26 just to wear full plate without penalty seems ridiculous.

3) Getting rid of ASF for wizards who run around Polymorphed into high strength forms doesn't seem like a good direction to head towards, even if the impact on the game will actually be trivial.

Sorry if that comes across as rude or too blunt. I don't mean to be. I'm just trying to give objective feedback.

[estradus]

I really like the concept (what can I say I'm a sucker for the Beowulf references), but I'm not really sure on the execution. This sorta makes all armor kinda unusuable if you have low strength; if they have a strength rating of +0 to start then a rogue who relies on dexterity but took strength as a dump stat cant even wear leather effectively. Further, it seems a bit complicated to figure out how ones strength influences each suit of armor.

The current rules, relying on armor proficiency and the physical weight of the armor to be a deterent for those of lesser strength, are kinda in the flavor of the beast we're talking about; but those are so easilly solved... how's this? Another weight catagory above heavy armors. I dont know what to call them, superheavies or something. These armors have high armor bonuses but are initially extremely limiting. However they grow less and less impeding as your strength increases until reaching some sort of maximum or running out of mobility to unimpede.

A hypothetical example, these numbers are drawn off the top of my head and therefor have little grounding in balance yet
super heavy armor, ac bonus: +14, max dex: -5, acp: -14, weight: something high
A player with 10 strength or lower would be effectively imobilized, or at least would have a dexterity penalty to ac that makes them look it. however, with every like 1 or 2 strength bonus they have, the max dex increases by 1 and the acp goes down by 1. At 30 strength they no longer take a penalty, and at higher and higher they can move more and more and start showing off and doing cartwheels or something. When theyre at a penalty to max dex it could apply to everything that uses dex, ruining their initiative and saves as well.

Aside: i liked the strength to move speed idea. That was pretty cool. Should use that with the superheavy armor.

[Jackinthegreen]

I too like the idea of higher strength being able to negate the speed penalties.  A simpler way to do it might be to say:

"If the armor's weight is equal to or less than your maximum light load, you may run as normal at 4x your normal speed.  If the armor's weight is equal to or less than half your light load then you may ignore the armor's tactical speed penalty."  Something like that.  Both of those things only apply to heavy armor, while medium armor could use "weight equal to or less than a light load" to determine tactical speed, and of course light armor has no restrictions.

As far as making "mighty" armor though, I'm not sure on the execution here.  If anyone likes my above idea, maybe have each +1 to AC add some extra weight roughly along the lines of each +1 modifier at http://www.d20srd.org/srd/carryingCapacity.htm?  Now that I look at it, the carrying capacity doubles at every +5 (13's max load is 150, 18's is 300, and 23's is 600), so we might be able to play off that.

[oslecamo]

I'll just reinforce the part where indeed heavier armor already demans extra Str, since you need to have enough carrying capacity for it to don't encumber you.

Anyway, did you by any chance check my Pure Crafting project? It aims as well in making heavier armor more atractive to warriors, altough I went trough the route of making armor actually grant you useful protection, as right now it just seems like everything and their mother ignores armor bonus.

[RobbyPants]

I like the idea here, but I'm not sure I like the implementation. I'd rather see a fix where you just add some extra benefits to people with a high score and proficiency rather than this, but that's my opinion.

One complaint I have about this that I haven't seen is that it can really screw over a heavy armor fighter when it comes to Str penalties/damage/drain. Ray of Enfeeblement just got even better as a debuff. In addition to giving the fighter something like -2 to -3 to hit and damage, you reduce his speed and possibly his AC. Maybe you even paralyze him on a good roll!

I do have a minor correction to what Phaedrus said:

2) Strength is already a stat that most people who actually care about using medium or heavy armor will likely pump up fairly high. Even then, requiring a strength of 26 just to wear full plate without penalty seems ridiculous.

Well, that's the raw Str score needed; however, each armor proficiency type you have gives you a cumulative +2 to your effective Str score for determining this. Still, this sets you up to a natural 20, which is still really high in my opinion. If it were a +2 mod, it wouldn't be so bad. You'd only need a natural 14 with Heavy Armor Proficiency.