Suggestion for [frog]composband - Animated Armor

[emulord]

See title.

Basically a tanky version of the death-sword. You can wield weapons/shields like a normal humanoid, but improve armor slots by absorbing them.

Possible growth pattern:
Robe 1-5 -> Soft Leather armor 6-10 -> Hard Leather armor 11-15 -> Leather Scale Mail 16-20 -> Chain Mail 21-25 -> Augmented Chain Mail 26-30 -> Partial Plate Mail 31-35 -> Full Plate Mail 36-40 -> Mithril Plate Mail 41-45 -> Adamantine Plate Mail 46-50

Want to avoid becoming a DSM, because inherent resists + absorption system would be too powerful.
Could be fun because there are more armors to absorb than weapons and it sucks having to sell so many {ego} armors as a death sword / ring.

[Sideways]

That's an interesting idea. Not a completely new one, but I've never seen an actual detailed plan for a player armor before.

I'm not entirely sure about allowing player armor to equip weapons, though. The existing living armor monsters don't use weapons, they just crush the player (of course, the existing living armor monsters also never move, so they're obviously not a perfect template). More importantly, I suspect it would be very difficult to prevent weapon-wielding armor from becoming completely overpowered while still keeping its armor-absorbing ability sufficiently powerful to be interesting. Death-swords have everything they need in a single slot. If player armor had that, and more AC and probably HP (because it's armor and tanky, after all), and a normal weapon slot, that's a lot to balance out in other ways. (Low speed, low number of blows and low device skill would be thematic, and perhaps enough to balance things, but it would also mean slow play and long battles.)

I don't mean player armor has to automatically be 1-slot like death swords and rings are, but I have misgivings about the weapon slot. I can see the boot slot (to explain how the armor is moving about), and perhaps some others.

Gwarl may feel differently

(For clarity: don't look for playable armor monsters in the next release of Frog. If they get added in Frog [which I can't promise] it will be later. And I'm open to a case for the weapon slot.)

[Arjen]

We do need a counterpart of the death sword and ring. But i agree on the weapon wielding part. Maybe an innate "Crush" attack like the monsterclass golem instead of a weapon slot, which grows bigger as the armour gets heavier.

I agree on the DSM part, you can't just turn into dragon scales if you are just a mundane armour.