Pumping up the armour: Pro's and Con's

So, a general consensus is that armor is rather bad in mordheim. Some solve this with lowering the price: I however think the price is good, and feels right fluff wise.

So many have discussed the fix to give all armour +1. This would make the following:

Light Armour – 5+ Armour Save – 20gc
Heavy Armour – 4+ Armour Save – 50 gc
Gromril – 3+ Armour Save – 150 gc

I see many pros to this idea:

• 
  First of it makes armour better, and more worth the price (duh)
  It makes weapons like DHW more attractive, and neccesary
  Shield + Armour is as attractive as DW
  Handguns, and other Armour piercing weapons gets more important.
  

The major con to the whole thing is that games might become slower later since more will survive, though, later on when more armour comes, many heroes might have strongman and DHW, with 2A, so it might kind of even out anyways.

What are your thoughts?

Not a terrible idea. Alternatively you could change the strength/armor save chart to start giving penalties at strength 5 instead of strength 4.

I like this.
I was trying to come up with something to make armor attractive for when I start my first campaign.
I came up with something along the lines of:
Light Armor (6+) 15gc
Medium Armor (5+) 30gc
Heavy Armor (4+) 50gc (maybe 60gc?)
Gromril (3+) 150gc

Not much different but it still includes a 6+ so you can get a cheap 5+ with light armor and shield but you sacrifice a weapon, or you can pay a little more and still use both arms.

-CC

How about, for fluff:

Hardened leathers (+6) 13gc (may be combined with shield, may n
ot be sold)

Breast plate (5+) 20 gc

Full plate (4+) 50 gc

Gromril full plate (3+) 150 gc

I changed the names, mainly to give a clearer view of what the actual armour would look like, and why it would provide the save it does. "Light Armour" doesn't say much what type of armour it is right?
The "Medium" still feels slightly heavy priced for 5+ in your suggestion

My group plays with STR 5 = -1 armor save.

And

Shields adding +1 save in melee combat.

We're taking baby steps. So far we just added an additional +1 bonus to shields in melee. Preliminary results indicate that shields are becoming more popular, and dual-wielding, while probably still more popular than the shield option, is no longer the default choice. Certainly armor itself is becoming more popular as a consequence. After all, with this change light armor and a shield, for 25 gc, gives a 4+ save in melee.

The biggest “Con” I could provide to your Armor changes is, it really puts your Non-Armor wearing Warbands, I.E. Undead, to a major disadvantage. Only the Vampire, Necromancer, and Dregs can wear armor. The Undead player will no longer be competitive. This could also affect other Warbands with members who can’t use Armor, relying on toughness or luck to survive a hit.



I like to suggest playing Amazons in Campaigns with increased Armor Ratings. Yes, I know Amazons are not “official”, but neither are the Armor Rating increases. Just for fun.



Good Luck, and have fun.

We have played four campaigns with even cheaper beefed-up armour than suggested above and undead won two of them - so that seems to be no problem . The vampire becomes a really scary tank and leveled-up dregs with armour are nothing to sneeze at. Most players never give henchmen more than basic armour because of the cost anyway, so the undead have only a slight disadvantage there.

Increasing the str limiton armour saves is a bad idea to me, as it will make Blackpowder weapons even less effective, somehing that allready is a concern to us shootylovers. I do like the idea of adding saves to armour though. Tough leathers 6+, cannot be sold. Light armour 5+, heavy armour and ithilmar armour 4+, grom armour 3+. Shield then? Id still say +1, not a +2 bonus, as that would make it a little too good a combo with armour and shield. A +1 AS to an already imrpoved AS is good enough, IMO. Light armour + shield = 4+ save, that is good enough. Grom Armour + Shield = 2+ save, with no movepenalty. Dwarves will be really hard to take down

Opheliate wrote:

Increasing the str limiton armour saves is a bad idea to me, as it will make Blackpowder weapons even less effective, somehing that allready is a concern to us shootylovers.

It does make crossbows less effective also though as they lose their armour save modifier meaning that blackpowder weapons still get some edge. One problem that I had with this though was elven bows that apparently get a bonus -1 armour save modifier even though they are S3 which seemed odd when Strength armour save modifiers start at S5. I toyed with this idea for our campaign but eventually dropped it. I've discussed what we do in previous threads so I feel too lazy to repeat myself here (or find that thread).