The Tavern

If there are only going to be two heavy melee races, why are their armor aptitudes so lackluster?

For instance, Deep elves, the masters of spellcasting, are at +4 for it. Naga, being sneaky and without feet, get +5 to stealth. Obviously, you can't directly compare those aptitudes, they represent vastly different things. Another defensive aptitude, dodging, has it's zenith at +4 with spriggans.

Yet a quick look at armour aptitudes show that most races are outright bad at wearing armour, with few exceptions. The supposed goto for heavy melee, minotaurs, can't wear helmets (important mainly for the abilities, resistances and stat boosts you'll be missing, rather than the actual AC, but nonmagic characters have to depend entirely on their items to provide those), and the next best, HO, boasts only a disappointing +1, the same as kenku, who are definitely a hybrid race.

Is there a reason overall armor aptitudes are so low, or is having high armour aptitudes more gamebreaking than other aptitudes?

As an addendum, shield aptitudes tend to also be low, with the best available at +1.

You can still wear hats.
And the difference between hats and helmets is 1 lousy AC IIRC, so it's no big deal.

I don't see a problem here. You can grab a Naga with -2 Armour aptitude and poorly shaped body and still go successfully the heavy armour route and enter Zot spellless with about ~60 AC if you want.

Please review this thread, I believe you'll get a lot out of it.

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3810

Something to keep in mind is that you can max out armour and shields a lot easier than you used to. Armour especially was difficult to train to 27 in the days of victory dancing. Nowadays it's easier for everyone, so I'd argue high apts aren't as important. 0 and +1 are both good, and +2 is better.