My character dresses up for the fancy ball!

What armor can you wear in a ball gown?

maybe advantage on some charisma checks, depending on the context?
other than that i dunno what there is to add

Flat bonuses or penalties to CHA depending on how well they dress, taking into account materials, styles, vogue, and the name attached to the clothes.

Also the skirts are huge and poofy, so you can conceal conceivably any weapon provided it can be tied to your leg or doesn't clang on the floor. You can also likely carry any weapon provided it's passed off as decoration; it's not unexpected for nobles and officers to carry light swords.

I'm with that on everything but vogue. Generally speaking, an adventurer probably carries enough gold to get namebrand clothing of a cities best tailor, so it shouldn't be too difficult to obtain, and just trusting a professional to coordinate your outfit would probably be enough, even if the characters themselves don't know anything about fashion. So long as the tailor goes over any pertinent information, they should be fine.

I think it'd be better to go with a less-floofy skirt, or at least separable petticoats. I don't know if you've ever tried walking in petticoats, but that's a lot of extra weight you're carrying in a very awkward way.

Breastplates, pauldrons, and gauntlets, basically. Maybe greaves, but again, not with a floofy skirt.

My experience with petticoats is more or less limited to Halloween costumes, so someone on /cgl/ might be a better source.

Basic, common sense shit really. Fancy clothes are made to look fancy, not for mobility. Some negative modifiers to significant movement of any kind, such as running and attacking.
As for bonuses? Depends on if the clothes or jewelry are enchanted.

I would say a small bonus to cha based checks would also be in order. You are in your sunday best after all. As long as you aren't the guy sweating buckets in the corner, looking your best would probably help a tiny bit with diplomacy and such.

Why don't you mention your character's gender, OP?

I make them roll History(Int) to see if they manage to pick up court etiquette and traditions and Perform(Cha) checks to see if they can dance properly.
They may gain a temporary proficiency bonus in Preform(Cha) dance if they roll a Perception check(Wis) and have at least 16 Dex being able to imitate the moves instantly.

Basically everyone but the fighter who has Int or Cha as a dumpstat can dance just fine with wizards, bards, sorcerrers and rogues fitting right in.

D-Does it matter?

Well, in many settings it mightn't be social acceptable for a man to wear that particular kind of formal wear. That would have different mechanical effects vis-a-vis any social systems than it would on a woman.

It can reduce the penalty on same-sex seduction checks.

Roll Style to pull it off well. Disguise too, if you're cross-dressing.

Clothing doesn't have a Natural Penalty, so no penalty to secondary abilities.

Correction, regular clothing doesn't. But regular clothing isn't made to be fashionable, rather its made to be functional.

I would say that wearing something out of the norm for your character by such a margin would incur a slight penalty to movement. But thats about it.

Ball gowns don't have any penalty listed, so I was going off that.

>How do you handle this mechanically in your system?

The corselet, which both men and women wore, is actually hard and durable enough to take a knife stab. Aside from that, there's enough magical ways in the setting to make clothing more protective. It won't be as good as real armor, but i doubt there's gonna be anything other than decorative sword or concealed daggers at the ball.

Depends on the system i guess, but i'd home rule it that unless you are a noble or used to being at parties like that, wearing a gown or heels i would say would limit you slightly.

Like, have you ever tried to walk in heels without practice? its not easy by any means. While the rules themselves don't state any limitation, the dm would be within his right to give one to people if they have no prior acclimation to it.

>Depends on the system i guess
I was talking about Anima: Beyond Fantasy, which is the only system I know of to have a Style skill.

Giving a penalty to people who don't have skill at acting in silly dresses sounds perfectly reasonable, though. Maybe make a Style Module to remove the penalties.

-10, 10 DP to remove?

Bath: +1 Appearance
Grooming: +1 Appearance
Laundry: +1 Appearance
Fancy Duds (Rent): +2 Appearance (Does not stack with Laundry. 5x to purchase.) (Homebrew)

"Appearance: Each time you make a Charisma-based skill check targeting another character, you gain a +1 bonus with your check per point that your Appearance bonus exceeds the target’s Appearance bonus." (Fantasy Craft, pg. 153)

I dunno anima's system to well, but i'll assume thats reasonable.

Like i said, there are no real rules for it, but its easy to assume some.

-10 is equivalent to to hardened or studded leather; -15 is chainmail or a breastplate; -20 half plate; -25 scale; etc.

>he goes into cute crossdressing boys thread and posts ugly men

why do people do this?

Then yeah that sounds perfectly reasonable. You can easily shed hardened or studded leather, but chainmail, or half plate, etc, get harder as they go.

So yeah, thats pretty accurate, i'd say.

One variant to this i would like to mention though, is the use of a strength check to flex off your clothes. Cuz there's nothing manlier than just shredding your clothes through sheer strength.

>high heels with straps
Could be useful for training maids in femininity.

Might be worth noting that -5 is things like an armoured longcoat.

>Strength Check to flex off clothes
I'd handle that as some sort of unarmed break attempt, which Anima does have rules for.

Spectacular. Gotta have something for the times your players try to be manly as fuck.

Player agency and all that. It doesn't really benefit them to flex off a shirt, but the idea of it would be enough to make it a fun RP thing. Some players just like doing wacky shit like that, even if it doesn't really help them.

What is your goal at the ball?

You'd just have to set the Fortitude (resistance to breaking) to something reasonable. Padded armour and fur armour and shit are Fort 10, so a ball gown would probably be 5 or so, lower if it's made out of something really flimsy.

Although, if they're normal clothes, you probably wouldn't even have to roll breakage. Maybe the Feats of Strength skill.

>implying a thread with 2 pictures has an established image tradition

>Wearing something out of the norm for your character

So if my character was constantly in ball-gowns and other "high-society" garb, there'd be no penalty?

If we're still talking Anima, I'd say spend a few DP on a Style Module that represents you being used to doing things like athletics and combat in your fancy ball gown and you're good to go.

I don't give them any bonuses. Dressing up is to be expected. If they DIDN'T dress up, chances are they'd get kicked out of the ball. No "penalties." They get their AC from their armor. If they aren't wearing their armor because they wanted to look fancy, then they get a lower AC. To call that a penalty, would be looking at it too relatively.

Though if a player really went out of their way to be the hippest cat in town, then I'd have NPCs comment on it, boosting relations with others. I wouldn't represent this as a CHA modifier or advantage, but my being more liked by who you're talking to, I'd lower the DC for CHA interactions with them.

... I should really start playing anima.

RAW there's no penalty for doing all that shit in ball gowns, because clothing doesn't carry any sort of Natural Penalty like armour does, but it makes sense for poofy stuff to cause problems.

+1 circumstance bonus.
Silk armor or battle Bikini. Pretty much that's the only thing you could hide under formal gowns. For the most part though not a problem as most of the characters invested at least a few skill points in unarmed combat, and the bard who didn't has a speciality in mandolin in her armed combat skill.

Silk armor?

>rented clothing
For any suitably-fancy ball gown, it's gotta be tailored to fit and you've gotta be sewn into it. Renting is not really an option.

Lots of high heels have straps. They're just there to make 'em cuter, for the most part.

However, high heels with locking straps are a thing. That might be what you want.

>penalties
You mean bonuses right

>They're just there to make 'em cuter, for the most part.
I thought they were for stability?

If you wanna be manly, just toss one of the girl characters over your shoulder when she has trouble getting out of her dress.

In theory, but generally if you're wearing high heels, you're not doing something where stability is important. Unless you work at American Apparel or something, I guess.

It was normally a way to siphon cash out of us, but one of my DM's required us to spend money for cost of living type stuff (food, kibble, etc.) We could spend more than was required to live a higher lifestyle and this would bring bonuses on Diplomacy and other social skills. A lot of times we would take advantage of this when meeting with court nobles and demigods, which happened frighteningly often - and dropping 2000 gold on a fancy outfit was well worth it to get a +4 bonus while chatting with the god of Destruction.

>god of destruction
>likes fancy dresses

Was he a crossdressing shota?

Who doesn't love fancy dresses?

Unfortunately no - then he would have been a perfect match for my halfling sorcerer.

>it's not gay if you use Polymorph first

>Not enchanting your dress to BE your armor so you have an excuse to be wearing it all the time

Good luck getting stains out of enchanted satin.

I can't imagine stain-resistance is *that* expensive of a bonus considering a normal prestidigitation can handle it.

From personal experience, I really have to wonder if a cantrip is powerful enough to get a blood stain out of satin.

Cantrips or if it's fresh, cold club soda. Or, as long as it's not your own blood just leave it - you will be the talk of the party. No need to worry about unwanted grabass when you can say, "See what happened to the last guy who pinched me?"

...unless you're the kind of person who would be into people who are into bloodstains.

>just leave it
That would look terrible. A blotchy dark brown patch on pretty much anything but a red or brown solid-color dress?

Sometimes you want to use Diplomacy.

Sometimes you want to use Intimidate.

The trick is knowing which one.

Yeah, but whenever you don't want to intimidate someone, your nice fancy dress is ruined.

If you don't want combat penalties, go for military chic. Nice fancy uniform. It's still not going to be protective but at the very least you should be reasonably able to move in it. Of course, this only works for characters who have actually been in some sort of army. Otherwise they'll just look like posers.

"Exotic" characters who are of a race that lives far away can also try get away with their "native garb". Like if you're some sort of savannah lion man you can dress yourself up in an antelope skin and slap some beads and feathers and paint on there, then just tell everyone that that's what fancy people wear where you come from.

Some classes might have other options, too. Religious types can swoosh in with some plain humble-looking robes and a holy symbol, while wizards and sorcerers and other magic types can just pimp themselves up weirdo embroidered star robes and spiderweb bustiers and deer skulls on their head and basically anything they like so long as it looks like it could have some arcane significance, as far as the plebs can tell.

Basically anything can do, really, so long as it looks like effort was put in, and you can really own it.

>Religious types can swoosh in with some plain humble-looking robes and a holy symbol
Depends on your religion there, buddy.

In my setting, all religions are based on Catholicism, wowing the plebeians with gold, flash and Latin to hide their lack of substance.

>antelope skin
>embroidered star robes and deer skulls
That might not be a good idea if the goal is to blend in. High society is not particularly forgiving of that type of thing.

Especially since it seems like those are the types of characters who'd be the least worried about being in non-combat garb. Arcane spellcasters and druids don't really wear armor anyway and barbarians have Unarmored Defense.

They could wear armor polished to a shine and covered in gilding and other decoration.

These sort of situations really exist to dick over the fighter and/or paladin, as though they already didn't have a hundred things to worry about to begin with. Same with "confiscate ye weapons before the king!"

Well, if it makes you feel better, the wizard doesn't have her spellbook and the rogue's probably the one hurt most by hindered mobility.

>wizard doesn't have her spellbook

Put it in a bag, doofus.

Evening bags are tiny. You're lucky to cram a phone and a couple tampons in there. You couldn't even get a Bag of Holding in there.

Make it a Minor Bag of Holding.

If 5e, it would also dicks over anybody that uses a component pouch as opposed to a focus. Although there is something funny about the wizard tripping and spilling dead crickets, chips of stone, and other weirdo spell component jazz all over the table and having to explain themselves.

My 3.5 sorcerer had Eschew Components, Still spell, Silent spell, and a mouse familiar (super-easy to conceal). He *always* had all his toys, and just for this reason (that and the inevitable, "via DM ex Machina you are all captured, stripped, and stuffed into separate jail cells lol").

>not stainproofing your enchanted burando

to answer OP's question, I would agree with