Heavier body armour should generate less frequently early

[Siegurt]

So I find that for some builds, having heavy body armour early is a large increase to surviving, and I feel like it shows up far too consistently in the very early dungeon, I feel like I'm likely to get out of D:3 with at least chain, sometimes plate, and occasionally worst case I end up with scale, and I almost always find at least one upgrade from my starting armour on D1.

I think it would make more sense if heavier body armour was rarer, if plate was as rare as say great swords or great axes, and chain was as common as say, scimitars and morningstars.
(This logically puts scale in the "long sword/war axe" rarity which seems about right, as fighters start with long swords and scale) I think finding ring/scale on D1-D3 as a decent upgrade and having that for a while would make finding that first heavier armour feel more satisfying, since you're likely to stay in plate the whole game (possiby upgrading to Ego plate or some rarer armour later)

I also feel like early melee users could certainly stand the nerf, and the weaker melee starts are the ones that can't use body armour in any case, so wouldn't be nerfed by this.

[bel]

Some numbers on the rarity of heavy armours, using objstat. On D:1-D:3, you are likely to find (in numbers, on average):

Scale: 0.15, 0.21, 0.41
Chain: 0.17, 0.22, 0.37
Plate: 0.07, 0.07, 0.08

If we interpret the numbers as probabilities (will not be too far from the truth, assuming we discard the cases where you find two plate armours on the same level and so on), we get the probability of leaving D:3 with

Scale: 1 - (1 - 0.15)*(1 - 0.21)*(1 - 0.41) = 60%
Chain: 1 - (1 - 0.17)*(1 - 0.22)*(1 - 0.37) = 60%
Plate: 1 - (1 - 0.07)*(1 - 0.07)*(1 - 0.08) = 20%

[chequers]

I agree for variety, rather than specifically changing game balance. Most melee characters want to immediately put on plate, while changing that is difficult, it would be easier to at least make them have to progress through scale & chain in a typical game. This would be a nerf, but I'm not sure how much of one.

Example ratios to illustrate what I mean (little thought put into the balance). By depth X, the likelihood of your best armour being ring:scale:chain:plate:
1: 90:5:2:1
5: 40:30:20:10
11: 10:20:30:40

[duvessa]

How many characters progress through club, mace, flail, morningstar, dire flail, great mace?
For comparison, body armour is robe/animal skin, leather, ring, scale, chain, plate, [dragon/crystal]. This is a lot of items. It's already rare to find plate before ring, scale, or chain, and I often have to progress through two or three other armours before I reach plate. I don't think making plate rarer would improve variety - smaller weapons are noticeably different from bigger weapons due to delay differences, but armours all play the same, your character is just better with higher AC.
It's also already fairly common to wear chain mail throughout Lair and Orc because it generated with good enchantment while only +0 plate generated.

[Siegurt]

I should clarify that i am specifically looking at the pre-temple generation, and that my motivation is not that it will generate substantially different game play for those levels, but rather that finding equipment upgrades can feel like a reward that you persisted for, particularly for new players.