Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General D&D Armor - How It Should Work

I love the idea of combining armored elements, and layering in general. Like interchanging the shirts and tunics with gauntlets and grieves and whatnot. I don't know how they could do it to keep with the same sort of loadout vibe, but maybe instead of classes of armor being the whole deal, it should be like lightly armored, heavily armored as opposed to light armor or heavy armor, if that makes sense. With the idea that the character has like two style loadouts, adventure wear and full battle wear. The later would be the stuff that you don when you know what's coming, and perhaps it could be attached to the short rest as way to keep it systemically interesting? But the idea of just rolling in heavy ass armor the entire time cause your class/build allows you to push heavy seems kinda fanciful even for the fantasy game hehe. Anyhow, I like the direction and the trade offs. I think perhaps part of the original idea behind the system had more to do with recognizing what the enemy was wearing, so you'd know how to direct damage against it. Basically the inverse of seeing what weapon they're brandishing, but because armor is harder to make out in a visual at quick glance, than a brief spoken description say "the Orc is wearing full plate mail!" or "the bandits are in leathers" or floating number etc that's maybe that's why they made the way they did? Who knows, but it does seem like one of those things that holds over from early days.

I thought the Angkeg plate in BG1 was a cool concept, because it conveyed what is probably the most important aspect, which is weight. Like the reason they made armor from cloth and leather or wood or bamboo or whatever (all rigid) was because the material was more abundant, relatively cheaper to acquire, and easier to carry on the long haul. Stuff like that just doesn't seem to play very well into the D&D computer game scheme though. I think the systems here have been sort of weird from the outset, cause it was based more on like an Errol Flynn swashbuckling flicks or like a Hollywood knights in technicolor understanding of arms and armor. Dress up armor basically, more than the real thing. For me, as much as the mechanics of armor progress, I'm always more interested in the aesthetic progression. Again I mean in the computer game context, where I'd maybe take a hit somewhere in some respect, just cause it looks good haha. I wish there a bit more of that baked in to armor of whatever type or class, where we don't just see the one version, and an enchanted re-color of it, but have some real variety on offer for different styles. But also where there is enough style going on, that you don't really have to sacrifice that to get something that just works well enough that you're not constantly getting bloodied. I don't like right now how we don't have any real choices in the initial loadout. Not even the basic spread, but just our class spiffy version. It could be so much deeper, where the player really has to put some thought into what they want to buy and where they want to put the focus stylewise. Anyhow, I like the ideas. Keep em coming!