"Weight of your armor encumbers your movement"

[Pete Mack]

It's only a problem early in the game when your mana is low. At that point, wearing very heavy armor is probably a mistake anyway, as it is likely to slow you down.

I don't see much reason to get rid of the penalty; it makes better sense to adjust some armors to be lighter if necessary.

[NeoWizard]

Does it affect fail rates for spells?

I think I notice in some of my games, the ones in which I bothered to look, the fail rate increased by one or 2%. But I think its only when you are low level, meaning INT is below 10/40 or 10/30! Might have been changed in later versions.

[Marble Dice]

It's only a problem early in the game when your mana is low. At that point, wearing very heavy armor is probably a mistake anyway, as it is likely to slow you down.

I don't see much reason to get rid of the penalty; it makes better sense to adjust some armors to be lighter if necessary.

I tend to agree with this - the mana penalty is small and linear, and it has never impacted my gear decision one way or another. Any armor with a deal-breaking mana penalty is already unusable due to carry weight and speed penalties.

[buzzkill]

It might be nice if you received a warning before wearing armour that will severely encumber you (loss of more than 1/2 of your mana). I was just clearing a small vault on DL51 when I put on a heavy suit of armour that took my mana from 24/24 to 0/0. Although I took it off immediately, a short time later I was unable to phase away when the mystic summoned gravity hounds.

[Marble Dice]

It might be nice if you received a warning before wearing armour that will severely encumber you (loss of more than 1/2 of your mana). I was just clearing a small vault on DL51 when I put on a heavy suit of armour that took my mana from 24/24 to 0/0. Although I took it off immediately, a short time later I was unable to phase away when the mystic summoned gravity hounds.

Maybe it would make sense to color max mana yellow when encumbered, similar to how drained stats are displayed?

[Derakon]

His point is that equipping armor can drain your mana without warning. which could lead to death. Something that says "Equipping this will reduce your max mana to X. Are you sure you want to equip it?" could prevent this. So could making certain you're safe before changing equipment, though.

[buzzkill]

So could making certain you're safe before changing equipment, though.

I agree totally. It was an odd situation. I had sold my old suit of artifact armour to buy a stat potion from the BM. I wasn't wearing any armour at all when the suit I had recently found pseudoed as {excellent}. I just wanted to free up a slot in my pack so I put it on. I did manage to escape with a staff of teleportation.

[PowerDiver]

It might be nice if you received a warning before wearing armour that will severely encumber you (loss of more than 1/2 of your mana). I was just clearing a small vault on DL51 when I put on a heavy suit of armour that took my mana from 24/24 to 0/0. Although I took it off immediately, a short time later I was unable to phase away when the mystic summoned gravity hounds.

IMO the problem is that putting on the armor and then removing it is not a no-op. <insert arguments about "adders should add">

[Malak Darkhunter]

I think there is a real question about balance, at the begining levels then sure a mage is not likely to don heavier armor due to low mana. To me though, it seems like at the ending levels, when every class gets maxed out on abilities, ie..strength, then it seems that even the mage can wear practicaly any armor he chooses, or any weapon for that matter. If you look at some end game builds for mages, they are equipped like warriors, and can be pretty devestating in melee. My question is, where does this leave the warrior? All he gets that distinguishes him from mage type classes is a few more hit points and strength, by end game. IMO- there should be armor only wearable by warrior classes, I don't quite find it justifiable to play a warrior, when mages are wielding The Great Axe of Eonwe and wearing the mithral plate mail of celeborn, along with the small shield of thorin.

[miyazaki]

I think there is a real question about balance, at the begining levels then sure a mage is not likely to don heavier armor due to low mana. To me though, it seems like at the ending levels, when every class gets maxed out on abilities, ie..strength, then it seems that even the mage can wear practicaly any armor he chooses, or any weapon for that matter. If you look at some end game builds for mages, they are equipped like warriors, and can be pretty devestating in melee. My question is, where does this leave the warrior? All he gets that distinguishes him from mage type classes is a few more hit points and strength, by end game. IMO- there should be armor only wearable by warrior classes, I don't quite find it justifiable to play a warrior, when mages are wielding The Great Axe of Eonwe and wearing the mithral plate mail of celeborn, along with the small shield of thorin.

Well, warriors get an extra two blows compared to a mage. It is often said on this site that warriors start strong and finish weak, while mages start weak and finish strong. Personally, I don't have any complaints about all the classes wearing the same kit at the end of the game. The path they take to get there is definitely different.

[Derakon]

I don't support enforcing class-specific gear. It's one of the things that always cheesed me off about games like Diablo 2, since it meant that there's a ton of droppable items that are unusable for your class. Unless you're suggesting that mage-specific armor just never be generated if you're playing as a warrior...which strikes me as incredibly hackish.

It's fine to tailor gear to specific playstyles, but if a warrior really wants to wear armor that increases INT and WIS, or a mage wants to increase STR and DEX, I say let 'im.

[Magnate]

I think there is a real question about balance, at the begining levels then sure a mage is not likely to don heavier armor due to low mana. To me though, it seems like at the ending levels, when every class gets maxed out on abilities, ie..strength, then it seems that even the mage can wear practicaly any armor he chooses, or any weapon for that matter. If you look at some end game builds for mages, they are equipped like warriors, and can be pretty devestating in melee. My question is, where does this leave the warrior? All he gets that distinguishes him from mage type classes is a few more hit points and strength, by end game. IMO- there should be armor only wearable by warrior classes, I don't quite find it justifiable to play a warrior, when mages are wielding The Great Axe of Eonwe and wearing the mithral plate mail of celeborn, along with the small shield of thorin.

Leaving aside the irritating ubiquity of Thorin, I think the problem is that heavy armour is not good enough. IMO the AC scale should be at least twice the length it is now - i.e. Adamantite Plate should have base AC 80 rather than 40. I haven't tested this, but knowing the combat formulae I suspect this would make a useful difference in combat without being unbalancing. It might actually encourage younger characters to wear heavy armour, though I guess low-AC ego armour will almost always be chosen over non-ego high-AC armour.

This is a slightly different issue to your point about mages ending up looking like warriors. I don't think anything will solve that until stat gain and clev are re-examined.

[ewert]

Hmm, maybe a 1.5x increase in base armor. I have not checked the exact armor mechanics lately, but I definitely do see an advantage in shooting for high AC, even for ranged attacking characters (phase door can be damn risky sometimes, so sometimes it's safer to just duke it out head to head and take the hits). I remember thinking armor was quite useless for a very very long time. Now I feel that one just needs quite a lot of it but it really pays off. So yeah, maybe a 1.5x increase for starters to test it out?

I found the +50 armor defender artifact on my current mage char as my first artifact after a Paur*. I was like OMG, I love the new artifacts.

[PowerDiver]

Here's a dissenting view. Heavy armor is fine for knights with squires and horses. It makes no sense for an adventurer on foot. I'd love to see everything heavier than leather scale removed from the game, except DSM and mithril chain which should be lighter than leather scale.

[ewert]

I think you are thinking of full plate mail type of armor, which is pretty nuts for walking humans in real life. Yeah they were sitting ducks if thrown down their horses. Then again these are fantasy people that have superhuman strengths. But plenty of footed soldiers used breastplates of different kinds, and saying "breastplates" didn't mean they were unarmored elsewhere, there were chainmail / studded leather elsewhere often, it is just that the armor type was often referred to by the "best" part. FULL plate though, yeah, pretty much horses required for anything and even then not so long fighting ability ...