hides

[carbonbasedlifeform]

I was thinking why hides are completely useless as item in itself:
If you are a fighter and you have choice:hide or armour made from hide(not matter what kind) theres no argument for hide
If you are a spellcaster and have choice of hide and armor made from hide you will probably ignore both (and take robe unless with high armour skill you will ALWAYS take armor)
My point is that hides provide relatively less powerfull characteristics than their improved versions.

Some major facts/suggestions i noticed are:

1.Hides are the same weight of armor.(thats at least strange for me because usual armors are made with additional materials(like steel/iron etc)-unless scroll of enchant armor only shifts shape of those scales and skin into armor)

2.Felids(as for only pure animal-based species) should be able to wear them(that would add slight use of hides) because why not:

-they are small and hides should be able to be cut so it would fit em(inability to wearing armor is caused by dense fur and small size i believe)
-they are dependent only on mutations and jewellry(which are both based on luck(RNG) )
-and just compare to other races(Centaurs and Nagas have their special items).Ofcourse Centaurs and Nagas are survivable without bardings so do Felids without hides so why not deleting bardings?Nothing against but just wanted to add some "interesting feature" to that race.Ok exra lives are enough interesting but still maybe 5% of people play felids often(just straight gues)

3. Alternative use: If above idea would eventually fail(or develop-whatever) hides should provide some percentage boost for either:

- power of all spells(not above 30%,because it would make robe of Archmagi obsolete-providing no bonuses of rF+,RN+ etc)
- power of hide colour spells(dragon-fire,steam-fire and ice(?),gold- increased all spells success etc- each could be debated)
- delete any AC boost if not set to negative(or alternatively opposing elementals hurt alot more-for troll leather-all spells and gold drag armor-all melle attacks for example)(as they would only get benefits, the major disadvatage which should make this choice not obvious for spellcasters and competetive with randarts(in lategame).Blame yourself if you wanted to have firestorm at maximum power and got mangled by those pesky executioners.

What ya think?

[Galefury]

I think hides being useful only as materials for proper armors is fine. I would prefer forbidding the wearing of hides to any of your suggestions. And I would prefer leaving hides just the way they are to forbidding the wearing of hides.

[snow]

I agree that hides are rather useless but that's alright. They turn into the best gears with a bit of enchanting.

[One-Eyed Jack]

As it is, the differences in base type for armours are just about always much more important than +/+ 1 AC. So.while the decision, "fire dragon armour is better than plate for this character" is an interesting one, once it is made then "Should I spend an extra ?enchant armour on this hide" is not. So why are there even hides at all? They just add another element of chance to armour generation (in the rareish situation where you have hides but no scrolls). What is the point of this? I'm honestly curious. I'm not going to argue that it meaningfully hurts the game, but it's sort of odd.

(I realize that this is a very minor issue)

[rchandra]

I think it makes for some enjoyable anticipation, like finding good items with ashenzari in the early-mid game.

[xopods]

Hides would be more interesting if they could be turned into more than one thing. Here's a possibility:

Making stuff from hides (and other monster bits reaped from butchered corpses) requires a "scroll of crafting," rather than enchant armor.
Most stuff requires multiple hides: for instance, dragon-skin gloves = 1 hide, dragon-skin boots = 2 hides, dragon-skin cloak = 3 hides, dragon armor = 4 hides, dragon barding = 5 hides
Interface goes: read scroll, choose a stack of hides, then an acquirement-style menu showing you the options for what you can make with the number you've got (and greyed out options showing how many you'd need to get the other stuff), with a cancel option (which, as usual, doesn't consume the scroll if it was already identified, but wastes it if it wasn't).

Then you could also have various other craftables, like turning snapping turtle shells into shields, or monstrousity-tentacle whips.

[KoboldLord]

As it is, the differences in base type for armours are just about always much more important than +/+ 1 AC. So.while the decision, "fire dragon armour is better than plate for this character" is an interesting one, once it is made then "Should I spend an extra ?enchant armour on this hide" is not.

Once you've made a choice, the fact that you can't retroactively change that choice once you start to experience the consequences does not make that choice uninteresting. Choosing to make fire dragon armor vs. just grabbing the best of whatever spawns is an interesting choice, and if you choose to make fire dragon armor then tributing your next several enchant armor scrolls to it is part of the consequences of that choice.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Not to mention, the existence of hides allows you to butcher stuff to make armor. Think of their purpose as serving as a bit of a limited crafting system. I doubt the devs would allow you to butcher a dragon and directly get armor as a result.

[KoboldLord]

The difference between 8 and 9 isn't 9, it's 1.

In the end, it's usually higher than 1. There's a one-scroll tax to make the dragon armour in the first place, but if you choose plate armour instead you usually have several such armours to choose from, some of which are likely to be more than +0. The number of scrolls you tribute to the dragon hide in order to use it is generally going to be higher until you have enough scroll drops to max out everything regardless.

[KoboldLord]

Pay attention, I didn't say the difference between 9 and 10.

(probably someone other than you will tell me to be less cryptic so I'll explain: I'm saying that changing the number of scrolls required for a +8 fire dragon armour from 9 to 8 is not going to have a big effect on the investment required for it, and certainly not as big an effect as a change from 9 to 0.)

You should probably skip straight to the part where you write something clear next time. It works better.

I'm afraid I don't see how your comment is relevant now, though.

[One-Eyed Jack]

Not to mention, the existence of hides allows you to butcher stuff to make armor. Think of their purpose as serving as a bit of a limited crafting system. I doubt the devs would allow you to butcher a dragon and directly get armor as a result.

a.) Why does crawl need a half-assed, one-instance crafting system?
b.) How is getting a -1 fire dragon armour meaningfully different than getting a +0 fire dragon hide other than the rare game in which a dragon hide spawns when you don't have a scroll for it?

Once you've made a choice, the fact that you can't retroactively change that choice once you start to experience the consequences does not make that choice uninteresting. Choosing to make fire dragon armor vs. just grabbing the best of whatever spawns is an interesting choice, and if you choose to make fire dragon armor then tributing your next several enchant armor scrolls to it is part of the consequences of that choice.

Yes, "Do I want to save my ?enchant armour for a dragon armour" is an interesting choice. It's also one that still would exist if hides didn't.

[KoboldLord]

Yes, "Do I want to save my ?enchant armour for a dragon armour" is an interesting choice. It's also one that still would exist if hides didn't.

In the early game, you're probably saving at least some of those scrolls for the future. You're not going to burn them on your splint mail even if it would reduce an average of a half hit point of damage per attack, because you are very likely to find something better very soon. By mid-game, you're almost certain to have found a few hides and a few plate armours, but since you're very unlikely to find the most top-end desirable armors you have some incentive to settle on whatever you do find.

Dragon armour is good, but it does have some drawbacks too. Because enchanting a hide burns up a scroll, it is at least one point of AC behind where it might otherwise have been, but it may well be more points behind than that because you are likely to find a plate mail that is +2 or +3 if you look. A 1-point swing in AC might be ignorable, but a 4-point swing might push you over to that branded plate armour.

Yes, you could certainly represent the same thing by having dragons drop dragon armour, and special-casing this generation to always produce -1 uncursed dragon armour rather than the variety of enchantments you normally get, but having dragons drop immediately wearable armor is aesthetically displeasing and it isn't like calling the armor that you have to special-case anyway a 'hide' creates any disadvantage from a gameplay perspective. Flavor is a good thing. It is undesirable to cost gameplay to have flavor, but there's no reason to remove flavor if there's no cost in gameplay for keeping it.

If you're in the unusual game situation where you don't have any enchant armour scrolls, well then I guess the existence of hides is a really important factor in your choice after all, isn't it?

[TwilightPhoenix]

a.) Why does crawl need a half-assed, one-instance crafting system?

Why not? It's flavorful as Koboldlord explain and, who knows, maybe it'll be expanded at a future date. I mean, for a long time, stabbing was a one-instance, half-assed close combat move, but we didn't remove it. Instead, polearms have reaching now and there's plans for axes, maces, whips, staves, and long blades.

b.) How is getting a -1 fire dragon armour meaningfully different than getting a +0 fire dragon hide other than the rare game in which a dragon hide spawns when you don't have a scroll for it?

The hide itself is significantly less useful than a -1 whatever armor. In the instance where you don't have enchant armor scrolls, having dragons and trolls drop armor directly would be far more beneficial than them dropping hides, and not necessarily in a good way since everyone except Felids, Draconians, and Octopodes can wear them unlike plate mail. It also means that you don't have to save some scrolls in case you do find that whatever hide you want and can just fully enchant your current armor in the mean time (excluding artefacts) because turning that -1 into a +0 incredibly less significant than turning that hide into an armor. It'd become a no brainer to fully enchant decent/good pieces of armor, such as boots of running, as there wouldn't be any "Hey, I need to save at least one of these in case I find a hide I want."

Of course, not every player is going to burn their scrolls right away on the decent/good armor they find early if hides are removed, but the potential for less interesting decisions is there for almost no gain in return.

[Bim]

I love the way it works at the moment, and my only real problem is animal skin (being completely useless) and other such useless items that have no real reason for being (such as gloves and gauntlets).

However, I do think a (non-grindy) crafting system would be really good, rather than just kill trolls -> drop hide -> troll armour. A crafting system would also allow for it to be xp based, which would add another meaningful choice.

[smock]

Crafting seems like something that might be might be best for god abilities, if at all. That way those who like grinding can choose the grinding god.

[cerebovssquire]

Crawl isn't minecraft and shouldn't try to become minecraft either, the strengths of the game (especially with an ASCII interface that doesn't allow a crafting system like the rather well-done one in minecraft) are in strategical and tactical combat.

And when will people stop bringing up the "people can choose grinding only if they like" argument? It's getting old.

Why not? It's flavorful

Because the game's interface and current focus don't support it. Go play some other game if you want this. Feature creep is the last thing a roguelike needs.

[KoboldLord]

And when will people stop bringing up the "people can choose grinding only if they like" argument? It's getting old.

I believe smock was being sarcastic. If he was seriously arguing that there should be a crafting god, he wouldn't have conflated crafting and grinding as if they were necessarily the same thing. He was saying something more along the lines of "If we must have crafting, can we put it in a god ghetto so it doesn't taint *my* game?"

Because the game's interface and current focus don't support it. Go play some other game if you want this. Feature creep is the last thing a roguelike needs.

Except it isn't feature creep, because keeping hides around is the status quo. We need a reason to change the status quo, because doing so is work, and if the devteam feels like doing work they can do it on something that they consider either important or interesting instead of this. If we didn't have hides, there'd be no good reason to add them, but since we already have hides, there needs to be a good reason to take them out and there isn't.

[cerebovssquire]

The current situation is all right, but various proposals in this thread (tentacled monstrosity whips, etc.) are feature creep. I don't care about the status quo because it barely has any impact on gameplay or enjoyment, but I don't want every second monster or even every rare monster to have a special purpose. There seem to be people who want to remove hides (which is OK with me but I couldn't care less) and people who want to not only keep hides but make the system more complex and/or add more items (which is horrible).

I believe smock was being sarcastic. If he was seriously arguing that there should be a crafting god, he wouldn't have conflated crafting and grinding as if they were necessarily the same thing. He was saying something more along the lines of "If we must have crafting, can we put it in a god ghetto so it doesn't taint *my* game?"

Even if it is sarcastic: any argument that is along the lines of "but X is optional" is nonsensical, whether it's related to feature creepish crafting or tedious grinding. If this is what he thinks I don't see any reason to just say "keep out crafting" because that point of view makes a lot more sense for Crawl than "keep it out of my games".

[One-Eyed Jack]

Dragon armour is good, but it does have some drawbacks too. Because enchanting a hide burns up a scroll, it is at least one point of AC behind where it might otherwise have been, but it may well be more points behind than that because you are likely to find a plate mail that is +2 or +3 if you look. A 1-point swing in AC might be ignorable, but a 4-point swing might push you over to that branded plate armour.

I've already argued that the one-point swing in enchantment AC is almost never significant enough to affect a decision on which base armour-type to use. You can always wear the plate until you have enough ?armour to get the fire dragon armour to be better anyway. GDR, EV, resistances, and casting penalties are more important than a couple of points of enchantment AC in most cases, and biasing the latter very slightly against crafted armours doesn't make a meaningful difference most of the time.

Yes, you could certainly represent the same thing by having dragons drop dragon armour, and special-casing this generation to always produce -1 uncursed dragon armour rather than the variety of enchantments you normally get, but having dragons drop immediately wearable armor is aesthetically displeasing and it isn't like calling the armor that you have to special-case anyway a 'hide' creates any disadvantage from a gameplay perspective. Flavor is a good thing. It is undesirable to cost gameplay to have flavor, but there's no reason to remove flavor if there's no cost in gameplay for keeping it.

So keep calling it a hide and make it have the same base stats as fire dragon armour and -1 enchantment? Wouldn't it make more sense for the general strength of the armour to be based on the properties of the material and not the shape of it? Does it make any sense that a scroll of enchant armour, which in every other case makes armour slightly stronger by adding a magical enchantment, in this case makes it significantly better by changing it completely and also adds magical properties to it? How is that flavourful and not inconsistent?

If you're in the unusual game situation where you don't have any enchant armour scrolls, well then I guess the existence of hides is a really important factor in your choice after all, isn't it?

No, because if you don't have any ?armour then there's no decision to be made on what to spend ?armour on.

[KoboldLord]

I disagree with this - if there isn't a good reason to add something then there isn't one to keep it either, from a strict design perspective at least, and the game would be a cleaner, better game without it. HD and MD, for example.

I didn't really expect you to bring up the Great Dwarven Streamlining Project, but okay. Removing hill dwarves and later mountain dwarves let the remaining melee-biased species broaden their niche. Hill orcs and minotaurs play better now that they got merged with the old dwarf species. In spite of the debate over the issue, the change did better the game in ways that were easily predictable beforehand.

I haven't heard any compelling reasons, or for that matter even any trivial reasons, for removing hides.

[galehar]

The reason we have hides in crawl is obviously a nethack heritage. However, they work fine as is and I don't see any improvement to the game by removing them. Discussing this further feels like a a waste of time to me.

[Deimos]

The only thing I dislike about hides is that the game is giving you the option to wear something that is useless at every conceivable stage of the game. If you are fine with giving hides no purpose, then the least the game could do is not give you the option to wear them.

[Bim]

It's the one part of crawl design that makes me cry inside: let's have something that is non-intuitive/confusing just to stick to our guns.

Hides are confusing (and therefore should be gotten rid of) because they are exactly the same as robes, along with gauntlets/gloves and most helmets. For an unspoiled player, it seems logical that there MUST be a difference of some sort. This is compounded with hides always being un-enchanted and all classes start with robes. This means that there is absolutely no reason to pick them up and places them firmly within floor clutter - something we desperately need less of.

I really don't agree with the argument that this is too much work, the dev team regularly get rid of items, and nothing would need rebalancing/putting in it's place. If it really is that much work, I'm sure I could find time to do it?

[Patashu]

It's the one part of crawl design that makes me cry inside: let's have something that is non-intuitive/confusing just to stick to our guns.

Hides are confusing (and therefore should be gotten rid of) because they are exactly the same as robes, along with gauntlets/gloves and most helmets. For an unspoiled player, it seems logical that there MUST be a difference of some sort. This is compounded with hides always being un-enchanted and all classes start with robes. This means that there is absolutely no reason to pick them up and places them firmly within floor clutter - something we desperately need less of.

I really don't agree with the argument that this is too much work, the dev team regularly get rid of items, and nothing would need rebalancing/putting in it's place. If it really is that much work, I'm sure I could find time to do it?

I don't know about other hides, but a gold dragon hide (for example) gives you rF+, rC+ and rPois+.

[TwilightPhoenix]

I don't see what's so confusing about the description flat out saying "Enchant this, get armor."

[Bim]

Sorry, I really meant animal hide (or is it skin)! And other useless junk.
Hides such as troll hide and dragon hide I definitely believe should stay, and having to find and use an enchant armour isn't always trivial if you don't think ahead.

[galehar]

Sorry, I really meant animal hide (or is it skin)! And other useless junk.

I believe the main role of the animal skin is for the berserker's starting gear. You wouldn't expect those guys to come to the dungeon wearing robes, do you?
Also, artefact animal skin are kinda fun.

[DuxOrbis]

I suggest removing plain animal skins altogether and instead make several more interesting skins of butcherable monsters to enchant. Why should Dragons and Trolls have all the fun?

Wolf Hide-
Stealth bonus. (Dex or Ev bonus?)

Polar Bear/Grizzly Bear Pelt-
Armour slot berzerk for free amulet. If you prove your worth and kill a bear and magically endow it's pelt should you not gain it's powers? Polar Bear may also have (rC+)?

Sheep skin-
(rC+) seems natural on a wooly new outfit.

Turtle Shell Mail- Moderate weight but medium AC and a bit of SH to compensate.

Phoenix Garb-
(probably need to gen outside of Zig...) for (rF+)or (rF++), possibly evocable flight, or controlled flight at least. Make figuring out you need to butcher their corpses rewarding for the unspoiled.

Alligator Hide- Evocable burst of speed that costs food? Decent AC. Perhaps some bonus to speed in water. Tempted to give it a bite attack (magic!)but perhaps that would interact weirdly with helmet slots.

There has to be plenty of other possible hides to consider that would make light, medium and heavy "natural" armours totally cool and flavorful and well balanced. Do I have any support?

[tcjsavannah]

I suggest removing plain animal skins altogether and instead make several more interesting skins of butcherable monsters to enchant. Why should Dragons and Trolls have all the fun?

Turtle Shell Mail- Moderate weight but medium AC and a bit of SH to compensate.

I support this only if it comes with free pizzas every second dungeon level.

[jejorda2]

I didn't realize before this thread that dragon hides granted resists- I mistakenly thought only dragon armours did.

To make animal skins useful:
What if you could wear multiple animal skins in the body armour slot at once? You don't have to enchant them or craft anything, you just pile them on. If you're wearing an animal skin and you use W to wear another one, you don't take the first one off. Instead, you wear Two Animal Skins or A Pile of Seven Animal Skins. Use a formula based on wearing N skins to determine AC and EV penalty:
AC = 1+N
EV= -N/2

This means wearing one is slightly worse than a robe, with a -0.5 EV penalty instead of 0.
Wearing leather or ring mail has the same AC and EV as wearing more skins, but the skins weigh more.
Scale mail has -3 EV, while wearing 5 skins has -2.5 EV, but the AC is the same.
Stacks of skins continue to have a slight advantage over heavier armours as you pile on more:
Plate mail is 10AC, -6 EV; 9 skins is 10AC and -4.5 EV. 12 Skins is 13AC and -6 EV. The skins weigh more.

Dragon armours outclass skins, just like they outclass regular armour.

Maybe piles of skins would stay interesting if you could enchant each skin to +2, like you can now, but skins don't give GDR. That way you could get incredibly high AC later on with huge piles of skins and huge piles of enchant scrolls.

I don't know if there should be a hard limit on the number of skins that can be worn, or if the EV penalty eventually gets high enough to dissuade piling more on. Skins are rare before Lair. If we use another formula for EV, like ((N+1)/4)^2, then piles of skins beat regular armour until the AC matches plate, when plate mail has -6EV and 9 skins have -6.3 EV. After that, regular armour is better: crystal plate has -8 EV and 12 skins have -12.3 EV. Twenty skins give 21AC, or 61 AC if you find forty scrolls of enchant armour, but your EV penalty is -28 with the second formula.

It might make trolls too good if they can have heavy armour like AC before finding a dragon, but trolls are already superb in the early game and it doesn't hurt anything.

I don't know what to do about piles of randart animal skins. They don't seem to be very common, so maybe all the properties should stack. Or maybe only the last one worn gets to grant resists and evocations.

[galehar]

I didn't realize before this thread that dragon hides granted resists- I mistakenly thought only dragon armours did.

It's a "recent" change.

[DuxOrbis]

I suggest removing plain animal skins altogether and instead make several more interesting skins of butcherable monsters to enchant. Why should Dragons and Trolls have all the fun?

Turtle Shell Mail- Moderate weight but medium AC and a bit of SH to compensate.

I support this only if it comes with free pizzas every second dungeon level.

Turtle power dude.

[DuxOrbis]

And what's more while Draconian's get a new 'Earth' draconian out of grey Draconians, we could get a wider variety of Dragon Armor niches.

Quicksilver gives running. Make it happen. QDA erry day.

Shadow gives... partial rTorment? Necromancy boost?

Iron gives extra AC... maybe an Earth boost? Something to make it more interesting than vanilla defense. Some slight damage shaving?

The rare randart animal skin is interesting, but animal skins are pretty boring and pointless, they don't need to be made from cutting up sheep, that's so useless it's not even worth the flavor. I want crazy magical animal hides. THAT would be worth the flavor.

[DuxOrbis]

Randart animal skins are not any more interesting than randart robes, the only difference is weight and you probably didn't even know about that because why would you care?

Who are you replying to? Actually I did know the weight difference, I care to know that because I'd like to be informed on the subject, and it's unavoidable minutia I've seen actually playing the game. so. I don't know what you're getting at really. I agree with you totally, aside from tiles which have some cool looking randart sprites for both, the difference is just adding floor trash of a second kind of robe that looks vaguely more melee oriented.

I like the idea of getting rid of them and building a mid range 'natural armor from hides' just like dragon hides, these would be less about good AC/GDR with minimal EV penalty, and more about rarer, slightly costlier (perhaps making them rare drops on the animals, tweaked to their frequency) alternatives to mundane armors. You get the chance of having resistances or other tangible skill or ability bonuses themed off of those monsters that drop hides, but they don't occupy the same high defense only + possible ego bracket of the medium mundane armors, so those will still be optimal for the heavier fighters, while hide armors could be medium casters or medium brawlers/hybrids. It is totally imperfect and would need to see tweaking, but it could be really fun and flavorful to extend magical armors beyond trolls and dragons, I was surprised at first when I learned Trolls could be skinned for magical regeneration and hoped after learning about the dragon armors that I would be surprised by more armors in this vein, I was disappointed.

[Galefury]

I think the current set of armors is difficult to add to without introducing a lot of overlap.

Currently you have the choice between regular armor and dragon armor. Regular armor will often have a random ego property or be a randart. Dragon armor has much better base stats, but the additional properties are fixed (no egos, artifacts are very rare), and you are very likely to be able to make the one you want from a hide. Both of these sets are fairly crowded (not much overlap, but no space to squeeze in new stuff either), but at least well distinguished from each other. I think this is good, and because of this I think introducing an additional category would be bad. Further overcrowding the two current categories would also be bad.

[DuxOrbis]

I think the current set of armors is difficult to add to without introducing a lot of overlap.

Currently you have the choice between regular armor and dragon armor. Regular armor will often have a random ego property or be a randart. Dragon armor has much better base stats, but the additional properties are fixed (no egos, artifacts are very rare), and you are very likely to be able to make the one you want from a hide. Both of these sets are fairly crowded (not much overlap, but no space to squeeze in new stuff either), but at least well distinguished from each other. I think this is good, and because of this I think introducing an additional category would be bad. Further overcrowding the two current categories would also be bad.

Sadly I really have to agree. Without removing what we have right now we can't add more, even new things make sense or are fun. So I suppose the only question that remains is, are we happy with the variety and balance of everything? How can it be better? Can we make something better that won't require rebuilding from the ground up? Is it better to start over and make a better system from the ground up rather than stagnate?

Crawl is a really fun game, and the variety it has is marred in part by the restriction of player choice to fit a role, it makes sense, choose what that player can use and will get the most defense/resists/ego benefit given your opposition. This leaves islands of hybridity with no distinct advantage. Too heavy for casters and light users, too light for people that just need the biggest heaviest armor they can wear. Maybe it's that middle ground that needs to be either removed and replaced by different armor options or revamped to give them some kind of edge that doesn't seem to be apparent for the majority, if any playstyles.

I could totally be wrong though, it sounds like most people think some armor is underused or not worth it in the scheme of armor choice. But are there any hybrids that go into this range of medium armors for the whole game, or does it eventually just become stepping stone armor for heavy armors? If so is that good?

[bobross419]

Even if a particular item is considered to be a "sub-optimal noob trap" I'm not sure what the problem it is with leaving it in the game. While the specific calculations might not be obvious, just looking at AC and the EV penalty aren't that hard to figure out.

[Galefury]

This leaves islands of hybridity with no distinct advantage. Too heavy for casters and light users, too light for people that just need the biggest heaviest armor they can wear. Maybe it's that middle ground that needs to be either removed and replaced by different armor options or revamped to give them some kind of edge that doesn't seem to be apparent for the majority, if any playstyles.

The problem with these armors is that casting in medium armor takes a lot of exp. A lot of exp only starts to get available in the midgame, when fire and ice dragons also start appearing. So the niche early medium armors would fit just doesn't exist in the early game. Going for the extremes is better early on, and later on better kinds of medium armor are available. This means the regular medium armors just suck unless they have great ego or artifact properties. As I have said multiple times I think this is perfectly fine. 90+% of the weapon base types you find are useless (for actually hitting enemies), because they just don't correspond to the weapon skill you have trained and the level you have trained it to. For armors the ratio of interesting base types is quite a bit higher.

[smock]

And what's more while Draconian's get a new 'Earth' draconian out of grey Draconians, we could get a wider variety of Dragon Armor niches.

Quicksilver gives running. Make it happen. QDA erry day.

Shadow gives... partial rTorment? Necromancy boost?

Iron gives extra AC... maybe an Earth boost? Something to make it more interesting than vanilla defense. Some slight damage shaving?

The rare randart animal skin is interesting, but animal skins are pretty boring and pointless, they don't need to be made from cutting up sheep, that's so useless it's not even worth the flavor. I want crazy magical animal hides. THAT would be worth the flavor.

QDA could give -CAST. Armours that benefit non-spellcasters but not casters might be interesting. In particular, they could confer great AC without much EV loss and still be balanced.

[DuxOrbis]

I like that mister smock. Quicksilver dragons are rare/dangerous enough to give a cool reward for, and getting lucky skinning it, I think. The idea is that more armors aren't necessarily a problem, but hides make an interesting solution to spawning items, they spawn only on monsters, or so rarely on the floor that the monster is where you'd more likely see it. something about a million sheep skins lying unused everywhere is just weird thing to me.