I floated this suggestion in the daggers/polearm-thread, but to avoid hijacking that thread, I'm making another one.

In short, the suggestion involves combining light and heavy armor into one skill, and changing the way skill affects armor use. Armor suits will still be classed as light or heavy, but will be goverened buy the same skill. The difference between the classes will be determined by the perks and penalties of the armor itself. It never made sense to me that a character can be a Master of Heavy armor, but still completely useless at wearing light armor.

So here it is:

1) Light and Heavy Armor skills are replaced by a single Armor-skill

2) Armor protection is NOT determined by your armor-skill, but by the properties of the armor itself. In general, Heavy armor gives a very high level of protection, light gives a low to moderate amount of protection. Skill does not affect this. (Minor bonuses might still apply)

3) New penalties are introduced once armor is worn. (See point 4 for how the new skill will deal with these penalties) The point is a more realistic depiction as to how armor will limit a character. Armor will ALWAYS give good protection, but the penalties involved might reduce your combat performance drastically unless you are skilled enough to wear armor:

3.1 ) Penalty: Speed attribute. As long as you are wearing armor, your speed will be reduced. The penalty will vary from armor to armor, but in general Heavy armors will have severe penalties, and Light armors will have small/moderate penalties.

3.2) Penalty: Agility attribute: Same as Speed-penalty. Severe penalties for heavy, less severe for light. Also includes fatigue-penalty; fatigue is depleted at a much higher rate while wearing armor.

3.3) Penalty: Stealth-skill is reduced while wearing armor. This penalty should be VERY severe for heavy armors, and small/insignificant for the very lightest armors.

4) How the skill will work.

4.1) Relation to penalties. The idea is that the skills primary function is to reduce the penalties noted above. As the player armor skill increases, the penalties are progressively reduced. (But never eliminated entirely). As the players skill increases, he is able to wear heavier armors, but it will ALWAYS be a tradeoff between speed/agility and armor protection - as it would be in real life. Note: The stealth-penalty will only be reduced by a small amount, contrary to the other 2. Heavy armor will always mean serious limitations for stealth-characters, even at very high skill levels.


5) Examples:

5.1 You start out with a level 1 character, combat-oriented with a low-level armor skill. (Below 10). At this skill level, the penalties you would suffer from wearing steel armor are so severe that it reduces you to a well-armored turtle. This naturally affects both your ability to walk/run, your ability to use your weapon, and your fatigue level. As a result, your combat performance would suffer greatly from wearing this armor, despite the added protection.
However, you are able to wear leather armor, because the penalties are much less severe. As your armor skill increases, the penalties involved are reduced, and you are able to wear progressively heavier armor. After a while, your skill is high enough as to allow you to use steel armor without combat performance suffering noticably.

5.2 You start out with a level 1 character, combat-oriented with a moderate armor skill. (15-20). At this skill level, you are able to wear iron/steel armor without suffering too severe penalties, and your combat performance is still acceptable. As your skill increases, you are able to wear heavier suits, such as orcish/dwemer etc.

5.3 You start out with a level 1 character, stealth-oriented with a low armor skill. You wear leather armor to get some protection, while avoiding the severe penalties of heavier armors. As time progresses, your armor skill increases, and you are able to wear heavier armor suits. However, since the stealth-hit isn't reduced significantly, you still stick with light armors to avoid the stealth penalty, trading protection for stealth.

6) End notes: This system means that armor choice will ALWAYS be a tradeoff between speed/agility/stealth on the one hand, and protection at the other. A consequence of this is that heavy armor will be the "high-end" armor compared to light armor; it will never be possible to achieve the same level of protection using light armor. However, it will never be possible to entirely eliminate the penalties involved with wearing heavy armor either, and this is the balancing bit. With regards to light armor, the penalties involved will continue to be reduced all the way up to skill level 100, so increasing the armor skill will still be important for light armor-characters. To give this more appeal to stealth-characters, the (smaller) stealth penalty for light armor might be reduced at a higher rate once you reach higher levels (75+), and be eliminated by 100.

I do agree that the light/medium/heavy armour skill system is flawed, and I would rather see penalties associated with wearing armour rather than being determined by skill. Essentially, there will still be armour differences, but they are not tied to skill, but rather to the armour itself.

Something like your proposed system basically.

I wonder if Beth has gone the same route this time.

People who do disagree with this idea will disagree for the same reasons that they object to merging weapons skills or any other skills. In reality the skills that you would learn to operate efficiently in a heavy suit of armour are not the same as the skills required to operate effectively in light armour. Therefore a master in one would not be a master in the other. Same goes for something like Long Blade/Short Blade. In Morrowind, someone who was an expert at wielding a dagger would not be an expert at wielding a claymore. In Oblivion, since the skills were merged and only Blades exists, the master of the knives would also be the master of long swords.

Furthermore you'll find most people are pining for the return of the Unarmored skill, which gives defence bonuses to the character if they are wearing no armour. The Unarmored skill does not fit your model.

NO. XD

I disagree entirely. Heavy and light armour are completely different things. The skills required to wear either are completely different as well.

Its not just that one is heavier than the other. It’s about potential movement inside the armour and how to take hits in the armour.
In real life someone who is used to wearing light armour could not become efficient in heavy armour without being completely re-trained and visa-versa.

I strongly disagree with anything that detracts from realism in a TES game or attempts to simplify it. So no, keep the two armour skills and maybe add back the medium armour skills (although I'd probably argue against that one).

EDIT: Saying all that I do agree with you in part, that penalties for armour should be dependent on the armour itself (obviously negated by higher skills). This would give you a trade off between speed and agility against your skill and the armour potection. Maybe there would be a reason for once to wear fur armour over leather. But it should still be light and heavy armour.

I want light/medium/heavy skills, or no armor skills at all.

They should remove the armour skills. Penalties for wearing armour should be based on the characters attributes.

Why would skill not enter into it at all? Wearing armour effectively is a skilful activity. You need to understand how to move in your armour and how that relates to your fighting and how each blow can be deflected most efficiently.

This is true. To refine what I said then, penalties and a heavy/light skill system which decreases (but does not negate) the penalties as you get more skilled.

I still don't think it's significant enough to be implemented in the game-world, even if there is some degree of skill involved realistically. There is NOTHING, I repeat, NOTHING that you can do with an armour skill except die less fast or be slowed down less. If anything, make armour skill controlled by strength, agility, endurance or some other attribute or mixture thereof. Doesn't need a whole skill devoted to it.

I like how the penalties for wearing armour are made less severe as you level up instead of just improving the protection it gives, but I don't see the point of merging armour skills. First of all, it would make the armour skill a no brainer as a major skill. Only pure mages would not choose it. I understand that realism is important, but so is balancing skills. "one size fits all" skills should generally be avoided, and every skill should be made useful in some way.

Instead I'd like to see the existing light/heavy armour skills remaining, and changing how they work. The skill in wearing these armours shouldn't affect the protection you get from them, or maybe affect it just a bit. Also the penalties for wearing heavy armour should never be completely eliminated, even at mastery level. For light armour, only the lower magic effectiveness should still be there at master level.

Also, make higher level armour like orcish, ebony and daedric armour have higher penalties than iron and steel so you need higher armour level to wear higher level armour effectively.

yes plz

I love it.

if I wear plate armor and get hit with a sword it should protect me like any other guy, but if I'm a "noob" at it I should get tired/fall over/make noise ...etc


yes yes YES, dude that's an awesome idea.

make all skills more realistic/cool instead of lame 100 point skills.

Full plate isn't that hard to wear. Sure it's exhausting to run, jump and fight for extended periods of time but if you're in good health then wearing plate armour shouldn't be any problem, even for a "noob".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm11yAXeegg&feature=related

I like your ideas for how the armor system will work, but I disagree that the armor skills should be merged.

I think that your system of drawbacks reducing over time is pretty spot on, but there's no reason why light/medium/heavy couldn't still be split up. It doesn't make sense for someone skilled in light armor to also be a master of heavy armor, they are so different.

Besides, eliminating skills is not going to get you many fans. We want to be able to specialize our characters, and having every character (except unarmored characters) have the armor skill just doesn't feel very individual.

So I voted for option 2. Yes, but with changes. I would like your system, minus the merging of skills. It is unnecessary.

He cheated by removing certain peices of armor from the back of his legs... otherwise I dont think hed be doing cartwheels and be all that mobile.

The basic idea behind merging the skills was that there will always be a definite number of skills, and by merging 2 similar ones you free up a "slot" that can be used for a different skill. Could be unarmored, could be polearm. I agree that ideally, there should be plenty of skills, but I think realistically the number of skills will be kept at the number they are now, at least not expanded that much. To make room for new skills, you may have to eliminate some old ones.

Regarding the realism/significance of it, during my years of service I've worn body armor of different sizes and weights. I always found that new soldiers had difficulty adapting to the weight and "bulkiness" of the armor at first, finding it more difficult to hit targets, find decent cover and move about. As time progressed, they became more used to wearing the armor, made some slight modifications of the equipment to make it more comfy, and eventually they became ALMOST as nimble and efficient as they were without the armor. Those used to the very light armor we used at first (basically a very small plate carrier) had an easier time getting used to the heavier ones that covered the entire torso. That's the basic idea, although we're talking about very different types of armor, there should be some similarities.

I like your idea about how the skill should function very much, however merging them does not seem like a good idea. It's much more fun to have specialization than not and i think it is more realistic that being adept at wearing heavy armour is not the same as being good with light armour. Although I do disagree that increasing skill should not increase the effectivness of armour at all. As a master of heavy armour would certainly know which pieces of armour are stronger and how to move within the armour to minimize the force of a blow better than someone who put it on for the first time, however this should not be a major increase. I also would like it if they brought back an unarmoured skill. The effect of increasing this skill would just be a much larger increase in defense than any of the armoured skills and maybe adding abilities such as being able to dodge an enemy attack or counter and disarm them. It seems to me that a true master of unarmoured combat would know many stances and techniques for dodging or absorbing attacks, as a note though I think that wearing armour (even the lightest) should be much more effective all but the highest levels of unarmoured.

Screw being a definite number of skills. It's so utterly boring to keep the skill set at a set number, especially an even one, ala Oblivion. And besides that, Oblivion's small skill set was only as small and even as it was as to not overly confuse the crowd they were mainly serving Oblivion to: the casual gamers. If Beth wasn't concerned about them, we would have had Morrowind's skill set with some changes.



That is true, but full plate armor (not including whatever else the person may be wearing underneath, like chainmail or a heavy leather) isn't the same as modern body armor. For one, it can get a lot heavier depending on all the gear the person would have on his armor, and depending on how the actual armor parts of armor are attached to him, can be extremely hard to move in effectively and at a decent pace. And this isn't even getting into how you use that armor to defend yourself compared to other types of armor.

With heavy plate armor, for instance, you might throw up your hand, which is fully covered with your metal gauntlet, to directly block your opponents slash and you wouldn't be harmed. But if someone was using chainmail or something else that sort of meneuveur might be more detrimental than it is useful, so instead of blocking straight on, you use the thickness and protection you have to grab the sharpened part of the blade (The part thats about to come down on you[and do note that most swords are not sharp all the way down, at least in my experience, and hands are put directly on blades a lot more than what fantasy games would make you think]) and push it out of the way.

Now yes, obviously ideas you get out of using one type of armor could be applied easily to another type of armor, but I think this shouldn't be accounted for by consolidating the skills, but giving the PC an interweaving armor bonus determined by your skills in each armor type and your attributes. So that way if you are a master of heavy armor and you decide to downgrade to medium armor, then you would have that armor bonus that fortifies (or just plain increases, depending on whats would be more balanced) your skill in medium armor a considerable amount. And as you raise your skill in medium armor, the bonus you would gain from that would be distributed between the other armor skills.

Also, it should be noted that unarmored is NOT an armor skill. It is actually a dodge skill that, in Morrowind, lacked proper animations. And in Oblivion's simplification, the skill got consolidated into acrobatics. And it is only the fact that dodging in Oblivion was hard to control easily and swiftly that made it bar useless. But its relation to the armor skills (it is another way of defending yourself) should, if we were to follow my model, have a small bonus to light armor, as in light armor you would be able to make a lot of the same dodging moves that you would without it on.

They need to have an unarmored skill built in their somewhere, maybe instead of an "armor" skill, make a defense skill. defense raises every time you take damage. Then have heavy armor effectiveness based upon strength and light armor based upon agility.

i think that there is two ways you can change the armour system (in my eyes)

1. keep light and heavy, but make them so they have totally different advantages. having both armour styles exactly the same at lvl 100 is stuuupid.

2. taking away armour skills, and combing the attributes with existing skills like having endurance dictate how heavy the armour you can wear , or speed affecting how fast you move in a certain weight armour (speed:weight ratio)

i would definitely prefer the second option, as it would feel as if my characters armour was an extension of his skill set and play style, not just a specific choice that i chose at the begining of the game.

No. There needs to be some changes, but not like the ones the OP describes.

Fighting in leather is probably very different from fighting in full plate armor! To be fair, even plate armor allowed a great amount of flexibility. Nonetheless, I feel that there should remain the three armored + unarmored styles as seen in TESIII.

Perhaps the introduction of damage types would help flesh out the system (blunt, pierce, slashing damage, and a combo of two or three of these). Some weapons are made for thrusting attacks (daggers), while others are primarily chopping (slashing) instruments (swords, for example), while others are a bit of blunt and slash (axes).

Chainmail is good against slashing damage, but doesn't have the rigidity to protect the body from crushing blows; chainmail can also be penetrated with thrusting attacks. Hardened leather is pretty good against all three types, but doesn't really excel in protection of any particular type(s). Full plate is strong against slashing and crushing blows, but is still a bit weak against piercing attacks that can slip through the joints in armor.

As for unarmored - body strength training can increase resistance to impacts (when subject to frequent blunt impacts, the body will causes bones to thicken, thus reducing the likelihood of a similar force causing a bone to break), but I think the primary mechanism for unarmored should be evasion: not getting hit in the first place!

For any dev reading this: get your hands on the 2 hour "Fight Science" program (National Geographic). Very cool stuff. Or watch it on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X1VoThpngk&NR=1&feature=fvwp It's like Mythbusters, but for combat!

I do agree with all of this, but I'm just not seeing beth expanding the skill set enough to make room for this. I would definitely be more interested in 2 different skills for heavy and light armor with some mutual benefits between them, but I'm fairly certain the number of skills won't expand, so there we are....

Fighting with a two-handed sword is quite different from using a single-handed sword, yet blade covers both of these. Not to mention daggers and knives. With the way of the world and development of TES games, the set of skills will in the end be a result of compromise. I think we just have to accept this as a fact. The question is where those compromises are more likely to succeed.

Regarding skill increase; this probably also need a remake. I would like a model like athetics, where skill increase is gained by performing actions while wearing armor, not just getting hit. Running with armor should count, swinging a weapon and connecting with the target should definitely count. With different modifiers for each action, you could make the skill increase at a very slow rate while running, and at a quicker pace when you strike an opponent with a weapon while wearing armor. (With armor taking a penalty on fatigue, running over extended periods of time with armor should eliminate itself as a way to quickly increase skill anyway) Obviously, balancing would be required to make sure that the skill didn't increase at a ridiculously high rate, but that's just a matter of fine-tuning the modifiers. The idea that the only way to increase armor-skills is to get hit is ridiculous and need to be abandoned.

By that logic we could remove all skills because you can do nothing with blade skill except kill faster with a blade.



Not entirely true. It's true there will be a definite number of skills once the game gets to us but Bethesda could add or remove as many as they wish before releasing it. No two of the last three games has had the same skill set and at no time has anyone from Bethesda said that 21 was the magic number never to be changed again.


As for the unarmored skill I think it is nothing more than dodging because lets face it, doesn't matter how skilled you are at fighting without armor, a direct hit with a sword is going to have about the same effect every time and the only thing that will reduce damage is not getting hit.

That's true. And the changes in numbers since TES II have all been reductions, correct me if I'm mistaken...

I have two suggestions:

• Completely remove armor skills, as it is a bad choice for any skill to rise only when you are repeatedly bashed. Thus only your attributes determine your effectiveness when you wear different armors.
  
• You have a single armor skill, and it defines your effectiveness with different armors like this:

Each armor type can have a minimum effect, a maximum effect and a nominal armor skill needed for average usefulness, so in general the more common armors require less skill for their usage, and the more exotic armors would require more skill for their usage.

if you have exactly the nominal skill needed for the armor, then it would have the average effect on your defense, and if you are more skillful that that, then its effectiveness raises toward its maximum effectiveness.

On the other hand if you have less skill than the nominal level for the armor, then its effectiveness would lower toward its minimum value.

I dont know how this skill is advanced, maybe by the amount of tine you wear armors during your fights, or maybe in the level-up sessions.

Read my previous posts on this page. The idea is to change the way that these skills increases, as to get away from the idea that one can only increase by getting hit. There are specific suggestions about this in the thread.