Game is balanced in such a way that Light and Heavy armour are equally viable choices

>Game is balanced in such a way that Light and Heavy armour are equally viable choices
>Heavy armour still costs thirty times more
Not good for balance!
There's little reason to do this. I get that it's supposed to be realistic - but in a realistic world, heavy armour would be the correct choice 99% of the time. Why not just scale up the cost of high-end light armour as well?

Knights were the rich, upper class. So they are the punching bag of almost everyone.

Some see them as the jocks and bullies of their highschool and thus ridicule them and make them weak compared to mages.

Some see them as the opressors, ruling elite and ridicule them when compared to the brave lower class heroes. (Rogues and archers.)

Some see them as symbol of eurocentric opressive views and ridicule them compare to savages and tribal (orcs and barbarians).

This is not always done on purpose but the disdain for knights in our culture is definitely a thing and it influences a lot of choices done by game designers involved something as knightly looking as heavy armor. If you ever see a guy in heavy armor in a movie or comic, odds are he's gonna be a goof. If he turns out to be a badass, he's probably the villain. The protagonist is always some sort of underdog or magic user.

His question was system agnostic. Your answer wasn't.

>The protagonist is always some sort of underdog or magic user.
Except that's exactly wrong, unless you're talking about a setting where EVERYONE is magical, like Harry Potter.
Magic is almost always a shortcut to power, a tool used by the corrupt and evil. The heroes almost never have magic, or at elast aren't primarily magic users, unless it's some "power of love" shit or capeshit superpowers (which again are basically settings where everyone important is "magical" or superhuman in a narrative sense).

The alternative is to put options in the game which are never viable and serve only as "trap options" for players who don't autistically study how to min-max the system. I'm not sure that's really a better thing for your game. I'd argue it's worse actually.

If you count 'fate' as magic, then protagonists are always almost magical. Most of them are 'chosen', should've died in childhood and didn't. Get saved by sheer coincidence most of times. But I'll give you that its a stretch. Perhaps most accurate would say that most protagonist are underdogs who, for no personal merit, happen to be really good at fighting, unlike knights who were usually really good at fighting because their life was about all things that emulate war: Training, hunting and tourneys, and then war itself.

But when 'trained from childhood to war' applies to something exotic like spartans, they are portrayed as uber killing machines that reduce rows of men to a bloody pulp with ease and fight naked (despite spartans having armor like any normal hoplite).However, when you have a 'elite' class trained for warfare from childhood and well equipped, they are often incompetent thin cans, and their armor can be pierced by a throwing knife. Or for some bizarre reason they move sluggishly slow.

Even people with a decent amount of research in medieval shit like GRR Martin are guilty of being entirely clueless about how effective knights where on armor. (Looking at you, Bronn fighting scene).

If you think something is bad, like you seem to do, ignore it. You don't like D&D, so don't give it the merit of being THE system and just answer questions system agnostically when no system in presented. Otherwise you are preaching for the god you want to see cast down.

Actually it is.

Light armors expect you to have a high dex or dodge bonus the armor merely adds to this.

Heavy armor has a low dodge bonus but makes up for it with apparatus defense letting you focus on being able to either soak up more damage or deal more damage by having better con or strength rather than dex.

On the end it balances out depending on your goals

This is why abstract wealth systems are superior.

Sure, there's a lot of animosity towards knights, but I don't think it goes so far as to affect the game balance - role-playing games, after all, sprang up from war-gamery that was hardly ideologically loaded in such a way.

I thought the scene with Ser Vardis and Bronn was decent, what with the knight having to use a borrowed greatsword in one hand and succumbing only when his foe stabs him in the armpit.

So both can be viable choices - but why, then, do you have to be rich to afford the second choice?

4e made plate armor so cheap that everyone could have it from level 1 for balance's sake.

Everyone shat on 4e for doing this.

Why?

Because no good deed goes unpunished.

>Magic is almost always a shortcut to power, a tool used by the corrupt and evil.
In 1932, sure. Then D&D happened, everybody played a wizard, then everybody played some kind of fighter-wizard hybrid, and magic was just another tool - except that it was cooler and more flexible than any other tool.

THAT was hardly why people shat on 4e, and you know it. It;s because nobody wanted to play World of Warcraft with pencil and dice.

DND does not represent literary mythology or even most real-world mythology. Hell, you won't even see it in most videogames with a story more complex than "HURRDURR KILL EVERYTHING POWER-FANTASY!"

In the books, Ser Vardis is wearing his own equipament, IIRC, and the fight takes place in a garden. Bronn is quick to move over roots and arounds statues, which tires the knight to the point Bronn can knock a statue over him and then finish him off when he's pinned under it's weight. What a knight would usually do in such cases is to stand their ground until bronn attacked, and then trying to finish him with a counter, since Bronn was unarmored. Counter options are plenty and deadly vs unarmored foes. Countering armored foes lethally is much harder and thus one has to be more offensive to get them off balance. But chasing a lighter opponent is silly. I was 'decent', but not good or great. And the show butchered it as much as it butchered the two other fights I was really eager to see...That being the red viper vs the mountain, which in the book is described awesomely and made me look at spear fighting as badass, which i usually didn't. And then butchering Ser Arthur Dwayne making him some twink with 2 swords. I will never understand hollywood fetish for 2 swords. It's harder to train for stage combat than a big blade or single blade, and in reality it doesn't work. it's stupid.

Well, I could counter-argue that by saying Metal Gear was full of supernatural shit... but except for edgelord anti-hero Raiden... yeah, it was always in the hands of the bad guys.

Obviously D&D is not all of fantasy, and I would never claim it is.. But it had a huge impact on the kind of people who write fantasy novels and design fantasy vidya. The wizard-as-villain hasn't been the dominant trope since at least the 1980s. Are you familiar with the term, "elf opera"?

That's a classic misunderstanding of why the people that dislike 4e dislike it. People are quick to say "You complain about imbalance but you hate 4e for being balanced." When the truth is...People hate for 4e for the things they did for the sake of balance, not for the results.

It's like a dictator killing everyone that's unemployed to end unemployment, and then when people complain it wasn't very humane to do so, he acts indignant that people hate having zero unemployment, because he gave them exactly that and they still unhappy.

Even that's only christianity. Druids and their practice are in celtic myth, with skill at prophecy and curse-weaving being wielded even by great heroes like Cuchulainn. In norse myth you weren't anybody without a magic weapon, and Odin sacrificed himself for nine days and nights for great wisdom and magic runes.

You seem to ignore the OP's question. If it balances out, why do you have plate costing 50X the price of leather. Simple economics would indicate that everyone would use leather. And if, as you say, different characters benefit from different armors, then you've effectively created a situation where certain character builds are disadvantaged in terms of money while gaining little-to-nothing for it.

The real problem is one of money in games. The difference in price between plate and leather for a starting character can be character defining. Choosing plate represents a massive commitment, so the benefit should be likewise massive. But the same price difference for a highly experienced character is meaningless, so if those benefits have carried through, that particular build type is now at a heavy advantage.

It's from trying to squeeze balance and realism/sim into the game at the same time. Do you price for realism and then build the mechanical representation around that or do you mechanically represent and balance the armors and then set price based on that benefit?

Light armor is only equally viable if you have good Dex.

Because youre paying for the armor to do more work than the lighter and cheaper option. You rely on it more to increase your protection.

I'm obviously speaking in DnD terms here but it applies to most other systems too. Where the heavier armor literally does more than the light armor.

This. Fuck why does everyone who makes this argument seem to forget dex adds to AC?

Im pretty sure Vardis used Arryn sword, not sure about armor, and Cait noticed that it was unwise to make him use weapon he is not accustomed to. Also when Bronn started his thing, Lysa started rushing Vardis, and good knight he was, he has to listen his Lady.

It's more work to produce it, materials typically cost more, and it is harder to get the fit right when adapting a suit to a new owner.

Hrm...I'll confess those details had slipped from memory. They do make the scene a significantly better because at least there's some foreshadowing and explains why a sellsword would be a knight, considering they were both experienced warriors.

That's even worse! Then your character has to pay more for a thing that's even more necessary for his character type. Sadistic design that gimps him completely.

Because the light armor relies on having inherent skill, while the heavy armor works even if you've got the dexterity of a boiled potato.

Have you considered that by not getting the dex required to use light armor effectively, he gets to have more strength or some other benefit, while the light armor guy needs to invest more in a stat.

Basically that's what it comes down to. Do you invest stat points or money into your armor. Even with random stats, you still won't have to worry about that stat with your upgrades if you choose to spend enough money on armor instead.

>Some see them as the jocks and bullies of their highschool and thus ridicule them and make them weak compared to mages.
Veeky Forums in a nutshell

Well, I guess you're right.

The truth is because that heavy armor is more expensive in most games, it tends to take almost no time at all to achieve that amount of wealth and be able to afford it. People like to have multiple character options, and playing as the fast and nimble fighting characters that doesn't wear heavy armor is appealing to some people. Besides, OP didn't really give an example and I honestly can't think of any games where light armor is literally just as good as heavy armor while the light armor is also cheaper.

In which case, as some Anons have suggested, you can abstract the wealth system, have high quality light armors that scale as heavy armors do, or have the "good" heavy armor be super damn expensive or really encumbering to make up for it. Or you could just tell the players to suck it up and actually use good armor.

Don't play D&D if you want an armor system that makes any sense.

Because it stopped being something your character could aspire towards and made most other armour on the way obsolete as a result.

Likewise in 4E a fucking wizard could have more or at least equal AC as a plate fighter as the wizard got to add their intelligence to AC for some bizarre reason.

It's pretty dull when every class is basically the same isn't it...

This whole situation is a case where low levels are typically about getting and being able to use the best mundane gear while later levels become about class features, magic and magic items.

Typically at level 1 it is not that all your class features are weak. It is typically that you don't have them. At the same time some characters start the game with the ability to use better gear.

at later levels in a lot of systems, if you don't have flight, dimension hopping and divination or what ever it is in your game, you just can't play.

Because video game logic. Tempered plate should increase your protection period, not be 'balanced' against a leather jacket. If you can't wear good armor that should be a drawback and a sign that you should keep away from the front line, not a trait of your 'build'.

>read OP
In what game?
The only games I know of where heavy armor and lighter armors are equally viable have lighter armors carry a price that is not simply gold, but some other resource to buttress them.
You still pay a cost, it's just not in money.

As opposed to when they got mage armour and shield at first level? That is +8 AC right there. I am not disagreeing about 4e having limited variety. I am just curious why the ac thing?

>insert rebuttal

Because DEX is usually a god stat and it's assumed you'll have it high anyway

But you don't actually do anything to clarify any misunderstanding, so your entire comment is pointless.

Veeky Forums is for feeling smugly superior to the plebs. It is not for discussion, argumentation, or any actual interaction with anyone. (You) harvesting exists so that folks can bask in the attention of what they view as their lessers, not because they actually care what they're saying.

Basically, fuck nu-Veeky Forums, but this type of shit is 90% of the board now, so fuck you as well for being surprised by it.