So I player an archer / mage sort - conjuration for bound bow and summons to keep stuff off of me, illusion for crowd control and stealth enhancement.

One problem I have is that my armor skill falls behind my other skills dramatically. Since I'm not a melee character, I don't get hit a lot, and thus my armor skill rarely raises. Then, when I do get hit, I take a lot more damage because my armor skill is low. It almost feels like I'm lugging this stuff around for no reason.


That may make sense to some of you, I'm sure I'll hear some arguments that it's the way it should be. But really, why should getting hit raise your armor skill?

I think their whole system for armor needs a revamp. For one, armor should not get much more protective from skill advance, at least not to the extreme it does in Skyrim. It's made of what it's made of, no matter how long you wear armor it doesn't really get stronger. What does wearing armor do then? Well, for one you'd probably get better at moving in it, getting used to the weight and whatever limitations it puts on your movement. So, they could have armor skill raise just by running around with it on. But this would kind of be like athletics 2.0. What if they just removed armor skills? An unpopular idea I'd bet, but to me it'd make a lot of sense. Assuming they'd be open to some perks being "general" and not tied to a particular sklll in future TES games, they could easily have movement in armor be improved via perks.

Just throwing ideas out really. It's not an unmanageable problem yet, but I really don't want to end up finding a mudcrab and just letting it whack me while I idle just to raise the skill. Of course, I'll probably end up doing just that since they're not realistically going to change the way it works in Skyrim post release. But in the future, it'd be nice if they did something different.

This is going to be my reply from now on:

Creation Kit

You know, Real Mages don't wear armor......

The idea behind it is as you get skilled you are better able to use the armor to deflect blows and absorb damage. Kind of like when a fighter learns to roll with the punches.

However, the skill should go up when you avoid an attack too. However, how would the game calculate that and then differentiate between that and when the enemy just misses?

Now, you may not want to hear this, but what you can do is go find a mudcrab (are there rats in this game?) and stand there and let them play with you for a while. You could cast Healing spells over and over while this is going on. But, soon your armor skill would be up to snuff.

Yeah. They're just called Skeevers now.

Well, I could already just console command my armor skill up. But it'd feel kind of like cheating.

I wish alteration were a better option, but I just can't justify spending so much magicka for a temporary and inferior version of armor. And it costs a lot of perks just to buff the armor spells to give less than half the reduction of what's possible via actual armor. I guess eventually there's the 80% reduction spell, but that's even more magicka and a shorter duration.

Also can't enchant things with armor value anymore, right? It'd be a waste of enchants maybe if you could, but somehow it'd be more appealing than alteration to me.

You could always raise it via trainer.

I agree, it makes very little sense. Steel is steel is steel, no matter how much you get hit. Actually, the more you get hit, the worse you should be, logically.

I had the same problem, I spend money on trainers for armor skill, its the only way to keep it competative if you are a ranged character, but want to be able to survive taking a hit now and then.

I don't understand why they decided to leave in awkward, passively leveled skills while removing straightforward, actively leveled skills. Armor skills are one of the few I will argue ought to be cut. Just give armor set values (modified via skills such as smithing) and implement active defensive skills (blocking, dodging, etc).

Easy. If an enemy attempts to attack you, it is registered as an attempt. The AI would of told the game engine it made an attack, so it be easy to flag it.
If it hits x amount of experience towards armor skill*
if it misses y amount of experience towards armor skill*

You should get more x than y. However y should be different between light and heavy. Since Light is designed to allow easy movement, hence dodgeing, heavy is not.

*based on what you wear

It actually is not that hard to do if you choose to allow game engine to do that.
I really dislike the advice of finding mudcrabs to beef up your skill, when a player should be rewarded for learning to strife and dodge attacks.
Yes it works, but it's hardly in character for a player to go down to a river to find crabs to scratch up your armor for an hour.

If you hardly get hit, why does your armor skill even matter?

It's not so much learning how to move in the armor, in Skyrim, as it is learning how to take blows against it without simply being crushed inside your metal shell.

@Phoss: What you're talking about has more to do with the lack of repairs being needed than anything else.

I agree the armor skills are kind of dumb, especially on Master when trying to level it by getting hit is only going to get you dead (on level appropriate creatures at any rate, ignoring the mudcrab theory).

Use trainers man, costs some coin, but if you play well money isn't that hard to get at low levels.

I actually didn't like the armor skill in Morrowind or Oblivion either. It was worse with those games, since your health was very much tied to how many times you were hit. I'm glad they changed that at least.

Armor isn't that bad in Skyrim in my opinion, but it could use a reworking. The perk to make Heavy Armor weightless is, I think, absurd and goes against roleplay. The range of armor ratings should not vary as widely with the character's skill (as the OP says). Also some of the best looking armor is unfortunately lower level armor - higher level armor tends too look a little weird, I think.

this is one of those issues im very split on. on the one hand i like the Skyrim system because it lets me get away with wearing scale endgame since the high end armors look way to anime/WoW like. on the other hand i much prefer fallout system because the actualy type of armor really mattered. i dont care how good you are at "wearing" a certain type of armor. if its not designed to resist something its not going to resist it period. my t-shirt will never deflect bullets no matter how long i wear it and it certainly isnt going to get better if i have someone start shooting BBs at me. the idea that armor gets better at protecting is is nonsensical. you might get better at moving around in it but thats about it. as i said earlier though its something i can live with until someone makes less gawdy looking high end armors. after that i will definitely lower how much skill has an effect on armor rating.

So don't play on master. It's all about choices.

Did you come up with that useless answer on your own or seek outside help?

I don't have a problem with Master difficulty, I ENJOY the challenge. However on that difficulty those armor skills are pointless because you cannot raise them legitimately. That speaks to a flaw with the skills, to me.

I am a defender of that unpopular idea, let's remove armor skills.

Armor can be made much more meaningful by adding different penalties and advantages. There are so many other skills in play, someone at level 1 getting into a Daedric armor wouldn't give an unfair advantage at all, except for rats maybe. And what about a threshold system for armor and blocking.

Also for the opened slots, heavy armor can be replaced with a medical skill. And light armor can be replaced with a dexterity one.

I would probably tinker with:

1.) Armor has a high basic damage reduction

2.) Armor slows you down and hinders your actions

3.) Armor skill goes up from every "attempted hit", with light armor giving more XP for a dodge and heavy armor giving more XP for being hit, and slightly with every action you make while wearing it.

4.) Armor skill reduces the penalties to your speed

End result: armor would offer a lot of protection to anybody who puts it on, but only somebody who is actually skilled with it would be able to operate well, and fighting in a suit of armor you aren't familiar with would result in swinging slower, blocking weaker, casting more inaccurately, whatever. So you'll block the damage but you won't be efficient at doing much else.

Not a bad system but light armor shouldn't really make things much more difficult.

IMO at least they could combine the armor skills into just "armor" and the perk tree could give a variety of options to fit different player's needs.

I agree with vtastek that armors should have more diverse stats rather than being lumped into categories. Protection, weight, flexibility could be the stats. Some armor would be protective but not very flexible, some protective and flexible but heavy, etc. The high tier armors could offer extremes to any of those - Daedric for example could have super high protection but with very low flexibility - and some would just be well balanced. The armor perks could involve increased mobility with heavy and/or rigid armor types for the tank sort of characters, as well as stuff along the lines of wind-walker for those who want to remain as mobile as possible while still getting some protection via light and/or flexible armor. Currently, heavy and light armors are barely noticeable in their differences. The increased cost of stamina for running isn't even worth getting the perk for for heavy. Maybe I'm biased as a non-melee though, since I don't have to spend stam on special attacks as well.

Also IMO damage reduction shouldn't be a %. In plate style armors, a skeever attack should do no damage to you at all. Currently it doesn't really have diminishing returns, just a cap, which seems a bit off. For example with 100 armor from 4 pieces(+100 hidden), you'll get 24% damage reduction, with 200, 36%, with 300, 48%. The increase doesn't slow, just stops abruptly at the cap of I believe 80%.

Armor skills are both against logic and the philosophy of new system which makes players more and more unique by developing because perks are trying to level the balance. We can really handle a bit complexity about our armor choices if the balance was in armors itself.

I think smithing can be re-arranged from getting best armor to more specializing in your armor choice. Every armor type deserves its separate path.

Light armor and unarmored players would benefit from a dexterity type skill. All my agile characters are mourning.

This simply isn't true, though. If you look at armor historically, people were trained not just in weapons, but in how to effectively use armor. Such as how to move to deflect a blade away from unarmored areas or joints in the armor, or how to shift to take an incoming blow in a thick or reinforced section of the armor. Armor doesn't just passively protect when the other guy is trying to aim for joints, weak points and exposed areas.

I've been dealing with the same issue with ranged characters and armor as well. Not sure if it should be different, though.

As for the armor rating rising with armor skill level, think of it this way:

As you learn more how to maneuver in combat while wearing armor, you learn better ways to take damage and absorb blows. An expert with heavy armor will know how to position to prevent damage to himself and the armor more than someone who rarely straps on anything more than a cloak. :shrug:

I just want the skill to be renamed to a combat maneuver skill then. That would add more options that would fall under a combat maneuver skill but not an armor skill.

If it is a special move that would get the best absorption/deflection then I would like to see a chance base system where the best deflection happens by a small chance first then happens more often with my skill increase. But the max protection must be a fixed number since its physical limits can not change.

And it would still best fall under a combat maneuver skill.

And people have been saying that robes are useless...

Well if you are not on the front line, you don't have much use for armor anyway.


I fail to see the problem here.