Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback We wanna look cool!

Oh dear, that shiney +2 fullplate looks like how the presenter of queer eye for a stright guy would imagine it. The thing is armor needs to look functional because it needs to be functional, I imagine a rogue armor to be black leather with bracers and a hooded cloak. A breast plate plate is tempered steel plates with hinged shoulders not.....well looking like a 19th century french chandelier landed on your head during a whos got the dumbest armor competition.

Armor gets hit with swords, maces, arrows....You are not going to spend 18 hours a day polishing the bloody thing unless your intent is to blind the enemy while he is laughing his arse off. You cannot move your arms with ginormic pauldrons, you need at least one shoulder with complete freedom of movement to direct or draw a weapon.

Appreciate the clarification, I apologize as it appears we were talking passed each other and that was very much my fault. Yeah, I don't know much about Games Workshop. I kind of dig the feudal Catholicism meets high technology juxtaposition because isn't just a gimmick but actually surprisingly well executed. I think some of the terms like Omnissiah are rather clever, but I have never read the little books, played the game, or spoken to anyone who has done either. My knowledge of it is the result of purely accidental contact on the internet during conversations not too dissimilar to this.

Despite the history of when the Arthurian legend should have been set in, it became a phenomena as a result of Malory penning it in 1469. It was explosive at that time. There were numerous spinoff narratives about individual characters, there were multiple endings depending upon the country where it was published, individual nobles would commission their own fan fic based on it, and of course every aspiring painter for a couple centuries was depicting various scenes and characters. . .So I am very comfortable overlooking the achromatic depictions because while they don't reflect the history of the story, they are inseparable from the story's history.

And like I said, I won't argue that the armor is accurate and certainly not that it is objectively good, it was created for a specific affect. Medieval armor doesn't appear to modern eyes as substantial as it is. They were trying to make something that conveyed what it felt like to be and face a knight in full plate in the period. That is something art does very well, and I tend to think it succeeded in that. Granted I was just a little, little kid when I saw the movie so my bias runs deep, but I know the impact it made on me. And watching the film without subtitles as a boy in Japan, Hidetaka Miyazaki (who has spoken often about how positively captivated he was by the imagery and I can only wonder what he was thinking about watching it without dialogue) would lend itself to an experience which stayed with him for life and ultimately inspired him to pursue artistic expression and heavily informed his Dark Souls series. All of which is to arrive at why I am as accepting as I am of the stuff. Sometimes art is more expressive than accurate and providing it is clear which it is attempting, I am capable of all sorts of forgiveness.

So you're telling me that back in the ye olden days you couldn't just drop in to your friendly neighborhood blacksmith and pick and choose from a plethora of off the shelf plate armors?
Consider my view of medieval europe shattered. My day is ruined and my disappointment is immeasurable!

I think we're roughly on the same page. It's all-too easy to miss meanings or whole sentences in large bodies of text, I do it all the time.

Good of you to apologise nonetheless - consider yourself bought a virtual drink.

It makes me wonder, thinking of this in the context of a D&D fantasy world. If it's SO expensive and difficult to make a suit of full plate armor, but apparently not very difficult at all to enchant some lesser armor, which will then be just as protective as the full plate, why would anyone ever make full plate anymore? If +1 Splint Mail is cheaper and easier to produce than Full Plate, why ever make Full Plate? Why ever wear Full Plate?

That is why even now most people who use armor often prefer to wear splint armor (brigandine/lamellar type) instead of the full plate - it is more affordable, faster constructed, less pretentious.

On the other hand, for the prestige and the looks - nothing beats the full plate. But if you are an adventurer, you are always mindful of your Maserati or Porshe full plate, and recieve both the positive and negative consequences (looks and admiration vs cost and jealosy of criminals).

No... don't go there... this is not a magic system made with internal realism/consistency in mind.

I presume that Full Plate is in this case tied to some social status?
You know ... to show peasants that they dont wanna start mess with your wallet.

On Josh Sawyer's BG3 stream, he mentioned that when working on Neverwinter Nights 2, Wizard of the Coast had very strict guidelines as to how the aesthetics of the armor and clothing needed to be. Essentially, they had to follow the D&D 3.5e armor design guidelines, etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same for Larian. Which means expect lots of big pauldrons on heavy armor (see Paladin with plate from the 5e Handbook).

In BG1 and BG2 you couldn't combine magical armor with other magical rings or amulets or cloaks that gave a bonus to your armor class. So there was actually an incentive to wear full plate without enchantments in the Baldur's Gate games, (or any non magical armor for that matter), if it meant you could also sport a ring that gave +3 to your armor class. I can't recall if this was an AD&D 2e thing, but it was a nice solution for the games since the DM determines what kind of rewards are given anyway.

ps. the lack of cloaks and capes and such is notable. I haven't found any in game. Many of the coolest looks involve these, obviously.

Because while you can enchant splint mail to be as protective as a full plate, you can also enchant full plate to be even better?

No, just to be more sparkly and with bigger pauldrons.

May the gods have mercy on their rotten souls.

Both of these are reasonable answers.

I found myself favoring the style of Medium Armor so much that I always select the feat for it, no matter what class I'm playing. The robes leave much to be desired though.

I am not sure that it has not been mentioned before...
but I wanted to draw attention to the fact that medieval plate armour was often mirror polished. The polish could cost more than the armor itself as modern polishing compounds were not available and it was very time consuming. The bright sunlight reflected from the armours was supposed to indicate a visual similarity of knightly class and angels. While the pauldrons seen here are absurd, the polish is not. There were less shiny armours, too. I remember Tobias Capwell making a suit of blued, almost pitch black englisch armour based on original pieces. Make it shiny, make it etched with gilded symbols, do whatever you want but make it so that it works as armour. Decoration that does not change material thickness or shape does not hamper combat effectiveness, giant Spikes and unnecessary pieces add weight and hamper movement.
A notable side effect of very fancy armour is an added armour class of a very different kind. If you can afford armour the price of a house, you are a very valuable captive. Don't kill a nobleman, exchange him for a fortune.
I always disliked Oblivions leveled items because it would make poor bandits wear ebony armor. You don't hide in dark and moist ruins waiting for a caravan to steel a few thousand Draken when your could trade your armor for a house and lots to spare.

I think my favorite armor design out of all the RPG games so far had been the Witcher 3.
Some people might find it boring, but to me it was a perfect blend of low fantasy/badass armor.


epecially the Ursine armor


Nilfgaardian guardsamn if we talk heavy plate
[img] https://static.gosunoob.com/img/1/2015/06/nilfgaardian-guardsman-heavy-armor-set.jpg [/img]

TW2 and 3 had OUTSTANDING armor design in general, as I already said.

P.S. Still a bit bitter that superior tier 3 ursine armor never became an in-game model.

I like most of the Witcher armor, but god the Griffon set looks BAD.

I wouldn't even say it's BAD. It would probably outshine A LOT of shitty armors in other games. DOS had dozens of armors that were far worse, for one, and the infamous paladin armor posted few pages ago is order of magnitude uglier.

It's just a poor fit for a Witcher. And not even the ONLY example in the game, at that.