Tuesday, 12th June 2012, 22:55 by KoboldLord
Hmm… Back of the envelope brainstorming here.
First, eliminate the -0.8 discount on EV penalty with respect to spell success, so that -1EV is meaningfully different for a starting character than -0EV. Currently you'll hardly ever notice the difference unless you train a buckler at the same time. In exchange, the armor skill reduction to the EV penalty should be made favorable, so that a lightly armored can get a meaningful reduction on the spell success penalty from realistic early- or mid-game investment armor skill. None of this 'eliminate penalties on -2EV ring mail… for only 27 armor skill!' business.
All entries on the same line are approximately interchangeable, like gloves vs. gauntlets or caps vs. wizard hats. No particular reason to keep both, but there are tiles that already exist for most of them, so there's no particular reason not to leave them in.
robes, furs: +0AC, -0EV, no enchantment or corrosion possible
most armor brands possible, including archmagi but not resistance
leather armor, hide armor: +2AC, -1EV, hide armor is usable by anything that can currently use robes
fire, cold, or poison resistance brands only
starts approximately as hard to cast in as ring mail or swamp dragon armour is now
ring mail, scale mail, chain mail: +5AC, -2EV
fire, cold, or poison resistance brands only
starts approximately as hard to cast in as fire dragon armour is now
splint mail, plate armour: +8AC, -5EV
fire, cold, poison, electric, negative energy resistance possible, MR inherent
not feasible to cast in until endgame, and worse defense than rarest endgame armors, but inherent MR makes plate appealing to non-casters until you find rare equipment
The dragon armour chain and crystal plate armour can likewise be tweaked to be generally better than more common armors, but the general idea is that you get a big boost in defense with every level, but you've got to pay for it if you want to overcome the spell success penalty. The idea is that a caster in Lair may want to sink ~8 levels into armor to upgrade to something a little more defensive, or they can stick with robes and hope they don't need it. Investing in armor should be cheaper than extra levels in magic skills to overcome the spell success penalty, and the strongest defenses require some of both.
I don't know if it would be worth the effort it would take to rebalance everything, though. Currently, trash armors have a tiny role in the early game until you find plate, and then they're floor trash that randomly lets enemy orcs be slightly more resilient to your attacks. The presence of useless armors isn't especially elegant or minimalist, but it isn't being actively harmful either. Not like the -0.8 discount on EV for spell success, anyway.