Help me convince my players to wear heavy armor.

[Space Coyote]

Help me convince my players (and myself) to make characters that wear heavy armor.

After playing D&D 3rd edition since it first came out, I've noticed that most of my players (and myself) dont make characters that wear heavy armour or play classes that could wear heavy armor. Heavy armour (and medium to a point) is just too limiting:

-Reduced movement.
-skill penalties through armor check penalty.
-skill/ability prohibition (cannot use certain class abilities, skills or feats with armor).**
-heavy weight
-run speed is reduced in Heavy armor.
-Arcane Spell failure.**
-Some classes cannot even wear armor (Monks and Druids)**
-Armor bonus does not apply to touch and/or incorporeal attacks.
-The time it takes to don/takeoff the armor.
-Cannot hide the fact that you are *wearin* armor.
-Some spells/special attacks have bonuses against armor.


**These entries represent limitations on multiclassing as well. For example, a Fighter that relies on heavy armor is greatly restricted from multi-classing to other classes because the armor restricts so many abilities from other classes.

Even that the *ability* to wear heavy armour is not enough to make that option appealing. For example, no one ever goes, "Ooooo, I'm going to play a Fighter or Paladin, because I can wear heavy armour!" Now, people may suggest that heavy armors are for characters with low dex, so they use the armor for AC. However, my players just build characters around not having to *rely* on heavy armor (monks with good dex, Rangers/Rogues with good dex, spellcasters with defensive spells like Mage Armor).

Heavy armor on its own is just not enough to get my players to want to make a character that uses/relies on heavy armor. For example, I was playing a 4th level Fighter/1st level Cleric (with 12 Dex) and started by wearing Full plate as protection. When my party found +2 Breastplate, I decided that it would be better to wear that. My AC would be 1 lower, however I could benefit from the potions of Cats Grace that I had found, breastplate weighs less (therefore carry more loot), has less penalty and I could move faster (house rule, see next).

I use a house rule called "Armor Check". If your character is at the recieving end of a critical attack, you can make an armor check (DC 20) using your unmodified, base armor bonus for wearing physical armor. If this check succeeds, the attack is a normal attack instead of a critical. Also, my houserule is that Medium armor will not reduce speed.

However, this is not enough to entice my players to make characters that use heavy armor. What can I do to make my players want to wear Heavy armor? I really want to see a "traditional" fully armored, sword and shield type of character in my games AND I would like to make a character like that myself. But as it stands now, wearing heavy armor is WAY too limiting.

Some house rules I am thinking of adding are:
-Using my Armor Check house rule, Medium armors gain +1 to the check and Heavy armors gain +4.***
-Heavy armor grants Damage Reduction of 2/-. This will stack with DR from other sources of */- types***
-Skills that cannot be used when movement is reduced when wearing armor, will be changed so that they *can* be used, but at double the Armor check penalty.

(***These bonuses only apply to armor that is "considered" the corresponding class. For example, Mithral heavy armor that is considered "medium" armor, uses the medium class bonus, and therefore would not gain the Armor Check bonus or the DR.)

Any feedback or suggestions?

 

[Ilium]

Attack them with invisible opponents. Don't be vindictive about it, but cook up a plotline that will have them facing invisible opponents several times.

Everybody will be denied their Dex bonus to AC, except sufficiently high-level rogues.

If you still want to use a house rule, allow your Armor Check rule to negate sneak attack as well, and throw rogues at the party.

They'll be wrapping themselves in trash cans in no time.

 

[Ltheb Silverfrond]

It depends on the level/power level of your game.
If you run a game with a moderate to High magic level, Players will almost never get in heavy armor, because mathematically, the lighter armors or Bracers of Armor provide better overall bonuses.
Also, it may be a flavor issue. Legolas rules, right? And he never wears full plate, Right? Therefore, Anything that rules doesn't wear full plate! ('Tis true, dex and finnese fighters have a lot of style)
Running a lower level game with a lower overall magic amount may get them to pick heavier armors over lighter ones. Since they won't have an easy way of increasing their AC vs the increasing Attack bonus of their foes, heavy armor will be a necessity. (Or they take expertise, which is good too, but isn't perfect)
Like the previous poster said, throw a range of encounters at the players. Try to have encounters where the players themselves are surprised. (Rarely in dungeon crawls will this happen, but with assassins...)
Or, you could try having a really cool villain in full plate and a large steel shield. Make 'em memorable, and tough as nails to hit. (Enchanted Armor and Shield, Expertise Feat, etc) That might do the trick.

 

[Space Coyote]

Thanks for the feedback, however, as I stated

to make characters that wear heavy armor

I am looking for a way to convince players to use heavy armor, before creating the characters. So things like throwing invisible opponents at them would not really help, since the characters would have already been made

Also, I dont want to make wearing armor more desirable by making other options *less* desirable. For example, since we usually do play high magic campaigns, I dont want to suddenly drop the amount of magic/treasure making non-armor options less attractive to play.

I'm looking for simple house rules to update the armor *itself*, without altering the way we play campaigns overall.

 

[Crothian]

Why do you want characters to wear heavy armor? It doersn't suprise me that few characters do. PCs are adventurers and skirmishers. Movement and skills are many times much more important then armor.

 

[Nellisir]

Why do you want characters to wear heavy armor? It doersn't suprise me that few characters do. PCs are adventurers and skirmishers. Movement and skills are many times much more important then armor.

I'm with the OP, here. Mostly. Heavy armor is just cool, except when you have to wear it.

I nixed the movement penalty in my game. It just seemed like an extra handicap, and a bookkeeping hassle to boot (and yes, I gave small characters 30 foot movement also). No one's objected, D&D as we know it hasn't ended, and now both fighters are in plate.

 

[Ilium]

Thanks for the feedback, however, as I stated

I am looking for a way to convince players to use heavy armor, before creating the characters. So things like throwing invisible opponents at them would not really help, since the characters would have already been made

Also, I dont want to make wearing armor more desirable by making other options *less* desirable. For example, since we usually do play high magic campaigns, I dont want to suddenly drop the amount of magic/treasure making non-armor options less attractive to play.

I'm looking for simple house rules to update the armor *itself*, without altering the way we play campaigns overall.

I see. In that case, I think my original suggestion of allowing the the Armor Check to negate other kinds of special damage (like sneak attack, etc.) would be good. It's basically like the Fortification enhancement for free, but it works better the heavier your armor is (which makes sense).

 

[Spatzimaus]

If you run a game with a moderate to High magic level, Players will almost never get in heavy armor, because mathematically, the lighter armors or Bracers of Armor provide better overall bonuses.

This is true until you reach a certain threshold; Bracers of Armor have an effective cap, in that they don't exist beyond +8, while a good +5 suit of platemail can give much more AC than that, assuming your DEX isn't really high. But more importantly, armors can carry the more "exotic" enchantments.

To me, there are several additional culprits:
1> AC is AC, regardless of how you acquired it, so outside of those exotic enchantments, the benefit of the armor isn't anything you can't get through other means.
2> Physical armors can be bypassed by a variety of incorporeal attacks, while the mage armor-like force armors stop more.
3> Magical armors and weapons require their own Feat, while bracers of armor use the Wondrous feat practically everyone seems to get.
4> There's all sorts of extra drawbacks to armor (don/doff time, can't sleep in it, it's not exactly easy to hide its presence, some spells have extra effects vs. metal armors) that nothing else has to put up with. Okay, it might be realistic, but it's not at all balanced.

The simple solution we used at first was to give physical armors a little extra Hardness (1 point for medium armor or large shields, 2 for heavy armors); it acts like DR/-, but also reduces elemental damage. Sure, two or three points off a 35-point Fireball might not sound like much, but it really adds up over time.
As a more long-term solution, we added a Material system; all weapons and armor get a series of extra bonuses, depending on their primary material. Weapon-vs-armor effectively cancels out, so the only balance issue is when a class doesn't use these but regularly faces classes that do. (That is, Monks.)

Also, one possible change you could make is to give a bonus to Concentration based on the negative of the Armor Check Penalty; the more restrictive an armor is, the less likely you are to notice small impacts.

 

[ValhallaGH]

II nixed the movement penalty in my game. It just seemed like an extra handicap, and a bookkeeping hassle to boot (and yes, I gave small characters 30 foot movement also). No one's objected, D&D as we know it hasn't ended, and now both fighters are in plate.

Given the details you've shared, this would probably have the same effect in your games.

 

[Space Coyote]

Why do you want characters to wear heavy armor?

Because I would like to see characters wearing heavy armor. As Nellisir stated, "Heavy armor is just cool".

Seriously though. There are a LOT of fantasy books, artwork, illustrations, posters, statues, figurines, etc, etc that depict heroic fantasy figures (e.g. knights, paladins, warriors), wearing heavy armor, like plate mail or full plate.

I was going through my metal figurines recently and found a bunch of armored figured. Steretypical knights wtih full plate armor, helmets, surcoats, sword and shield. I thought, "How come no one ever plays these types?"

My friend just started a campaign using Gestalt characters (summary: go up in the abilities of 2 classes at the same time). I was thinking of making a character based on these figures. After checking out the combination of classes, I found it EXTREMELY limiting. If I wanted to play a knight in armor, my options for a Gestalt combination is really limited: Paladin, Cleric or Fighter. Anything else would be hampered by the armor either due to class abilities (evasion, fast movement), skill use (hide, tumbling) or spellcasting (bard, sorcrer, wizard).

Then I discussed this with my players and they agreed that no one wants to play heavy armor characters. No one wants to use armor for AC and lose out on so much more.

I just figured that there *must* be a game mechanic to make players want to play a heavy armor character; to play the "Knight in shining armor". The way it is now, armor in D&D3.5 is just WAY too limiting.