How much Armour skill is needed?

[Mackerel]

The game now nicely tells you how much Shield skill I need to overcome my shield penalty. That's nice, it saves me always having to look it up on the wiki with every different character.

But it does not tell me how much Armour skill I need to overcome my Armour penalty.

Is there a place to look that up somewhere?

I'm currently running a level 18 Kobold wizard, wearing Troll armour. I've raised the Armour skill to 5.8. Is that enough? I can't tell, other than by the tedious method of taking the armour off, pressing z* to look at failure rates, putting the armour back on, and pressing z* to compare failure rates. Just writing down the unarmoured failure rate is not sufficient to compare, because casting success also improves with other factors: so spell success rate a couple levels ago isn't a good thing to compare against.

[duvessa]

The amount of armour skill required to overcome armour penalties* is always 45.

*other than the dodging penalty, which is unaffected by armour skill

[Mackerel]

So no one ever reaches it, since 27 is the max skill possible?

[Shard1697]

Yes. The reason you train armor skill is not really to eliminate penalties, but to get more AC(especially with heavier armors). I like to have at least 10 in each of armor/dodging/fighting by end of lair as a melee character. But if you're using quite light armor you might not want much unless you have a ton in everything else(making everything else really expensive).

[Sprucery]

In case this is not clear: you gain a point of extra AC when you train 22/[base AC of all of your armour] levels of Armour skill. So if you only have that troll leather armour, you gain one point of AC at 5.5, 11, 16.5 etc. But if you have a cloak and boots as well, you gain a point of AC at 11/3, 22/3, 11 etc.

When you stop training Armour, it is best to do so right after you gained a point of AC.

[MainiacJoe]

Yes. The reason you train armor skill is not really to eliminate penalties, but to get more AC(especially with heavier armors).

It took me a long time to figure this out. Adjusted EV Penalty is more strongly affected by strength than by Armour skill. The base AEVP is 0.4 * (body_armour_EVP)^2. You divide this by (strength + 3) so increasing strength decreases this directly. You also multiply it by (1 - Armour_Skill / 45) which is a much weaker effect. So 27 STR has the effect of multiplying base AEVP by 0.0333, whereas 27 Armour has the effect of multiplying base AEVP by 0.4.

[Mackerel]

I appreciate all this information. Thank you.

I'm really trying to be "an effective caster, with the highest possible AC, because casters do get hit."

I see that better armour skill means better AC. Good to know.

I see that better STR means better Evasion to overcome the armour EV penalty. Good to know.

But where I experience the problem most acutely is in casting. Fireball is 10% failure wearing a robe, 25% failure wearing leather. Eventually I want to be able to cast Tornado reliably. I'd like to do that with better armour than just a robe. Because casters do sometimes get hit.

What I think I've gleaned is, to help overcome the casting penalty from wearing armour, raise spellcasting, raise int, and raise spell schools. But raising armour skill won't help with this. Is that correct?

[MainiacJoe]

What I think I've gleaned is, to help overcome the casting penalty from wearing armour, raise spellcasting, raise int, and raise spell schools. But raising armour skill won't help with this. Is that correct?

Think of spell schools and wizardry primarily, and also INT and Spellcasting, as affecting your spell success in a robe. Then STR, and to a much lesser extent Armour, reduces your spell success penalty from armour.

[Sandman25]

I use wizard mode to check such things, it is the easiest and most reliable method.

[nago]

I appreciate all this information. Thank you.

I'm really trying to be "an effective caster, with the highest possible AC, because casters do get hit."

I see that better armour skill means better AC. Good to know.

I see that better STR means better Evasion to overcome the armour EV penalty. Good to know.

But where I experience the problem most acutely is in casting. Fireball is 10% failure wearing a robe, 25% failure wearing leather. Eventually I want to be able to cast Tornado reliably. I'd like to do that with better armour than just a robe. Because casters do sometimes get hit.

What I think I've gleaned is, to help overcome the casting penalty from wearing armour, raise spellcasting, raise int, and raise spell schools. But raising armour skill won't help with this. Is that correct?

Two general advice:
A) if you wanna to cast lv5+ spells, especially conjuration, stay in light armour. While plate casting is doable, dodging + light armor + eventually ozo armor is most of time better and easier.
B) you usually don't want to cast spells higher than 6 because they're strong enough to win easily game and the highest one usually aren't worth the enormous experience required. In extended you have infinite experience so this isn't as much true

[tasonir]

While this advice is much less detailed than all of the advice above, for the purposes of a kobold "caster" (careful with that term) in troll leather armor, the amount of armor skill you need is probably pretty close to 0. Troll leather is not heavy at all, and the spellcasting penalties are insignificant. You should probably pick up ~3-5 armor skill later on just to get a point of ac, but that's just because the armor skill will be so cheap later on. It isn't a significant skill for your character if you intend to stay in troll leather armor all game.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

If you are casting spells that have meaningful spell power curves (most conjurations and hexes I guess) then I'd recommend looking for a robe of the archmagi and then ditching the troll leather.