more ac per enchantment on heavy armors

[headcrab0803]

Hello, so what I recently learned from crawl is that every enchant level on a piece of armor gives you 1 ac each therefore making a +1 cloak and a +1 crystal plate same in terms of extra ac. This game mechanic often makes players to drop their EA scrolls into any auxslot armor as soon as they ID the scroll since a. using the scroll on any piece of armor gives you the same value and b. while body armors can be easily replaced into a better one according to the character's skills and aptitudes, 'superior' auxslot armors are harder to find(or meaningless) and therefore most of the times a +2 cloak gives more long-term benefit than a +2 ring mail where the character can simply grab a plate or a dragon armor(when possible) and train couple more levels of skills.

While I am not against a better decision existing in crawl, the armor enchant system seems like it gives less choices to make compared to how crawl's weapon enchantment works. When you have some spare EW scrolls, you can either decide to enchant your current crappy weapon to gain some survivability that you need , or you can wait for your ultimate bad-ass weapon so that you can enchant your dream weapon and gain more value out of the scroll since youll be using your badass weapon until zot. This interesting strategic decision making doesnt really happen for armor enchanting because you get 1ac anyway and you're less likely to dispose your auxslot armor for a better one.

So, my idea is this: we give more bonus ac per enchantment for heavier armors
why? because this will encourage some people to actually wait for a heavier armors to appear so that they can enchant it to endgame worthy gear and gain better value out of EA scrolls instead of just throwing them to auxslot armors without thinking. In terms of numbers, I am not sure but I think it should be high enough so that people can actually think about reserving their scrolls. For concerns of heavy armors being OP in extended runs because they gain so many ac from enchantments, I think that we can tweak the enchantment limit of these armors.

Thanks for reading my possibly horrible idea.

[duvessa]

Hello, so what I recently learned from crawl is that every enchant level on a piece of armor gives you 1 ac each therefore making a +1 cloak and a +1 crystal plate same in terms of extra ac. This game mechanic often makes players to drop their EA scrolls into any auxslot armor as soon as they ID the scroll since a. using the scroll on any piece of armor gives you the same value and b. while body armors can be easily replaced into a better one according to the character's skills and aptitudes, 'superior' auxslot armors are harder to find(or meaningless) and therefore most of the times a +2 cloak gives more long-term benefit than a +2 ring mail where the character can simply grab a plate or a dragon armor(when possible) and train couple more levels of skills.

While I am not against a better decision existing in crawl, the armor enchant system seems like it gives less choices to make compared to how crawl's weapon enchantment works.

This is all relatively sensible

So, my idea is this: we give more bonus ac per enchantment for heavier armors

This, however, is like treating a leg wound by putting ointment on your elbow

Plate armour is way heavier than ring mail, is ring mail currently more worth enchanting than plate armour? The problem you identify is with non-body armour compared to body armour, not light armour compared to heavy armour.

[headcrab0803]

yes I don't know why but I forgot to talk about one thing that even the lightest body armors should give more ac per enchantment than auxslot armors

[Sjohara]

Well, for very light armor, it's a usually a non-issue regardless, because +2 robes and leather armor are trivial to find. The biggest part of the problem, if there is one, is that one of the advantages of heavy armor--the high enchantment cap--tends to be irrelevant, since you usually won't have enough scrolls to max out a +3 plate armor or a dragon hide after the obligatory aux armor enchantment.

But preserving the balance between light and heavy armor and the balance between player AC and monster damage is more important than making enchant armor scrolls slightly more interesting, so a change probably isn't warranted.

[Hurkyl]

While I am not against a better decision existing in crawl, the armor enchant system seems like it gives less choices to make compared to how crawl's weapon enchantment works.

You're putting the blame on the wrong thing: it's the mechanic "AC really helps you survive" (or at least the perception thereof) that pushes people to spending their EA scrolls early rather than saving them for better gear. And in regards to EW, diminishing returns pushes you to enchant a decent weapon early too: there are usually enough of them that what you're trading off is "do I stick with this +2 weapon now so I can have a +8 one later, or do I have a +5 weapon now and settle for +7 later?"

Incidentally, I always find a branded cloak shortly after enchanting a plain one, or find a +1 helmet just after I enchanted a +0 one, or other similar things.

[Brannock]

It might be better to just have a higher chance of getting a bonus enchant from using a ?EA on heavier armor rather than making enchantment work differently for heavy armor than it does for other types of armor.

So you might decide to get a +1 on your cloak, or get +1 on your scale mail with a X% chance of getting another +1. Plate would have higher X, ring would have lower X. This also alleviates the issue with high enchantment cap often not being meaningful for very heavy armor because you very often won't ever have enough scrolls to hit that cap.

that one of the advantages of heavy armor--the high enchantment cap--tends to be irrelevant, since you usually won't have enough scrolls to max out a +3 plate armor or a dragon hide after the obligatory aux armor enchantment. .

[damiac]

But... heavy armor (meaning high base AC armor) is already really really good. Why make it better? You already want the highest base AC armor your STR and spellcasting can reasonably support.

I do kind of see your overall point, but I don't think this solution adds much to the game.

[zardo]

as suggested, there's an obvious tradeoff to using enchants on auxillary armor early and it's that you are *plenty* likely to discard any given slot for a better item. good people tend to do it anyway because a few instantaneous points AC is worth a lot early and less later

[Bloax]

You aren't very likely to find a good pair of gloves or boots, and in 0.15 you might as well enchant your cloak too - since preservation isn't mandatory.

[Patashu]

Plus if you find an ego aux more often than not it's already +1/+2.