The Tavern

The Ring/Scale/Chain/Plate armors provide 5/6/8/10 base AC and have 7/10/15/18 encumbrance ratings.

There is virtually no perceptible difference between 5 and 6 base AC armors, but the difference in encumbrance between Ring and Scale is two-fold, after taking the square, which is strange.

The tiles and names for Scale and Chain mails are similar enough to make me keep forgetting which has better AC.

By definition, mail = armor of chained rings, so it's hard to understand why some mails would be called ring mails and others would be called chain mails.

What we could have instead of current scale and chain mails:
Scale Mail, 7 base AC, -11 encumbrance rating, 31% GDR.

Remove Scale mail.

Replace with snail mail.

If you decide to remove one type, it should be ring mail. If you look it up on Wikipedia ... no one knows if it ever has existed. It's something that they said in the first edition of D&D and everyone just followed the leader ever after. You could then rejigger the stats on the others to spread out the gaps if you want.

I should add that just playing, I still have no understanding of what encumbrance IS or how it works. Maybe there's a spoiler/wiki file I can read, but just in gameplay, it's not like with a shield where you see you need a certain skill level to end all penalties; you get more skill than the encumbrance but your spell chances still suck.

Ring mail in game fills a very useful role, whether or not it ever actually existed in real life. Of course, scale mail could take its place, which handily fixes the problem of chain mail and scale mail being too similar (I almost never use chain because it just seems like the ac vs evp isn't worth it, while plate has enough AC to make up for it, while scale mail has a low enough EVP that it's sometimes worth using over ring mail).

Encumbrance works the way most skills in crawl want to work. That is to say, it works like you'd expect in relation to strength and skill, but never goes away, therefore it's always meaningful. Unlike weapon base delay, or shield penalties.

EDIT: I think this was supposed to be moved with the rest of the off topic stuff. Let's all pretend it was.

Bring back studded leather armour and splint mail!

Really, ring vs scale feels like an actual choice, in that they affect spell casting success rates very differently, especially early to mid game.

I can't imagine a time I would use chain instead of plate when the chain didn't have better enchantment or ego.

jejorda2 wrote:Really, ring vs scale feels like an actual choice, in that they affect spell casting success rates very differently

Yes, due to how encumbrance works, wearing scale mail is like putting on two ring mails, even though the difference is 1 base AC, or 20% of ring mail's 5 base AC.

I think adding some other armors like studded leather could make sense... but especially, perhaps, lamellar armor. My impression (not an expert!) is that Japanese-style lamellar armor should be tougher than leather, have higher encumbrance, BUT not block magic because it isn't metal. And I think that is a big gap looking to be filled, because right now my impression is a mage goes running around in his skivvies until he kills a dragon and enchants the scales - unless he gets a good weapon and just says screw it and puts on some platemail and starts training melee attacks.

Chicken wrote:I think adding some other armors like studded leather could make sense... but especially, perhaps, lamellar armor. My impression (not an expert!) is that Japanese-style lamellar armor should be tougher than leather, have higher encumbrance, BUT not block magic because it isn't metal. And I think that is a big gap looking to be filled, because right now my impression is a mage goes running around in his skivvies until he kills a dragon and enchants the scales - unless he gets a good weapon and just says screw it and puts on some platemail and starts training melee attacks.

Nowhere in crawl does anything imply that the reason it is harder to cast spells in some body armor's than it is in others is because they are made of metal (in fact some of the hardest to cast in armors are non metal)

In crawl it is all about an armor's encumberance

I was mulling over this in my head, and now I think that ring, scale and chainmail all have some redundancy with each other. If I'm playing a melee background, I use the strongest armour available until I find spells that aid my survivability more than the armour does. Usually that means switching down to ring/scale/chain briefly while I get my spell success up. Otherwise, the lighter armours are just bad versions of plate.

If I start as a caster and plan to use armour, I stick to ring as long as possible because the piddly defense boost of splint isn't worth the chance of spell failure. I make exceptions if I have a hole in my resistances that I need to fill, but that usually just means switching to dragon armour (which I would eventually do anyway). If splint gave more AC and GDR, or it had less encumbrance, I would use it a lot more often.

Maybe all of that is just a matter of preference. Maybe the armours need to be tweaked a bit.

Suggestions:
-Rename ring mail to chain mail
-Remove current chainmail
-Rename scale mail to plated mail or scale armour. Increase encumbrance to 11 and boost AC/GDR enough to make it attractive to early casters.

Thank you for rephrasing my first post in a somewhat less clear and definitive way, File200.

I love ringmail, and often enough prefer it over scale. Enough with the merging/removing already.

Actually, nobody wants to remove ringmail (except Chicken who just has a semantic issue with it.)

That's good! But regarding the proposed merge, there have also been times when scale was more useful than chain.

can we have Berder make a video about wheter ring mail actually existed?

that or demonstrating the possibility of casting magic in plate.

adozu wrote:demonstrating the possibility of casting magic in plate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_ekugPKqFw

Ontopic: I agree with removing scale mail, since I can never remember how it ranks on the list of armors. I think it's still mixed up with splint mail (RIP) in my head.

I don't think he was in plate...

Siegurt wrote:Nowhere in crawl does anything imply that the reason it is harder to cast spells in some body armor's than it is in others is because they are made of metal (in fact some of the hardest to cast in armors are non metal)

In crawl it is all about an armor's encumberance

A character of mine was loving his crystal plate mail... HUGE encumbrance, didn't seem to have much effect on magic. My impression was that dragon mail is also less magic-busting than conventional armor of the same encumbrance. Am I wrong?

(In terms of development, I wish the effect of armor on magic was more predictable - like, a number that gives you a sense of how much it will affect it. This is important for shop purchases etc.)

Chicken wrote:
Siegurt wrote:A character of mine was loving his crystal plate mail... HUGE encumbrance, didn't seem to have much effect on magic. My impression was that dragon mail is also less magic-busting than conventional armor of the same encumbrance. Am I wrong?

(In terms of development, I wish the effect of armor on magic was more predictable - like, a number that gives you a sense of how much it will affect it. This is important for shop purchases etc.)

The spellcasting penalty is determined entirely by the encumbrance rating. Since crystal plate armour and gold dragon armour are tied for the highest encumbrance rating, they both give more of a spellcasting penalty than plate (or any other armour).

The difference that you are thinking of is that usually (with the exception of GDA vs CPM) dragon armour has a higher AC than non-dragon armour with the same encumbrance rating

There is a single number which determines how much an armor will impact your EV and your spellcasting - encumbrance. Something with 11 encumbrance will hurt your spellcasting more than something with 4. Having more strength or armor skill will reduce the penalties from encumbrance. Finally it can be a bit hard to ballpark in your mind how much your spellcasting success will fall with heavier armor because the scale is exponential, so heavier armors will hurt you a bit more than the gap between 4 and 11 may imply. Go somewhere safe with no monsters and try on the armors to check the results, then decide what is better.

The penalty increases quadratically with encumbrance rating, not exponentially. The formula for AEVP, which is the penalty to accuracy and spellcasting, and is also subtracted from your EV (separate from the dodging penalty which is totally different), is [(2/5) * er^2 / (str+3)] * [45 - armour_skill]/45.

duvessa wrote:The penalty increases quadratically with encumbrance rating, not exponentially. The formula for AEVP, which is the penalty to accuracy and spellcasting, and is also subtracted from your EV (separate from the dodging penalty which is totally different), is [(2/5) * er^2 / (str+3)] * [45 - armour_skill]/45.

It's been some time since I've been in a math class, but isn't quadratic just a specific type of exponential, ie, an exponential function of order 2? x^2 + 3 is quadratic, and exponential? If I'm misusing the term let me know, but that's what I thought it was...

http://www.purplemath.com/modules/expofcns.htm

tasonir wrote:
duvessa wrote:The penalty increases quadratically with encumbrance rating, not exponentially. The formula for AEVP, which is the penalty to accuracy and spellcasting, and is also subtracted from your EV (separate from the dodging penalty which is totally different), is [(2/5) * er^2 / (str+3)] * [45 - armour_skill]/45.

It's been some time since I've been in a math class, but isn't quadratic just a specific type of exponential, ie, an exponential function of order 2? x^2 + 3 is quadratic, and exponential? If I'm misusing the term let me know, but that's what I thought it was...

In exponential growth, the variable is in the exponent, not the base: e.g. 2^x is exponential.

x^2 + 3 exhibits polynomial growth, not exponential growth.

Much appreciated. Apparently I'm not doing enough math these days...

The Tavern

merge Scale and Chain mails

merge Scale and Chain mails

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