Heyo!

We are currently in the middle of some fairly major combat overhauls, as many of you may have noticed from the recent increase in bug fixes and tweaks. There will be quite a few changes coming over the next couple of months, so I want to take a moment to discuss one of the areas that will see the most changes.

Armor skills in DragonRealms are woefully underdeveloped. Training armor skills will reduce hinderance to a guild-based mininum, and most players will reach that minimum between 40-120 ranks, depending on guild and type of armor. While armor ranks past that point have some value in terms of the protection of the armor, in the grand scheme of things those extra armor ranks really don't have a huge impact when compared to the value of active defenses like parry, shield, or evasion. In addition, the current hinderance model can make the game far more difficult for new players than it really should be.

The way armor ranks are applied will be undergoing drastic changes.


IMPORTANT: This is just a forewarning of what is coming so you can plan accordingly. It is not live yet and is subject to change at any time.


(1) Hinderance due to shields will no longer penalize evasion. Instead, the shield hinderance penalty will be applied to the shield skill itself. Shields have an existing penalty based on the weight of the shield and other factors that will be removed in favor of just using shield hinderance.


(2) The skill needed for minimum hinderance will no longer be static. The higher your evasion skill, the more armor skill you will need in order to minimize your hinderance. While you will never need to keep your armor skill even with (let alone ahead of) your evasion, the more you let it trail the more likely it is you will begin to become hindered by the armor. This insures that the armor skill is always relevant.


(3) Minimum hinderance values will be reset to be based on armor skillset placement (primary, secondary, tertiary) rather than guild. In all but one case, this will mean either no change or a slight improvement. In the one exception, one guild will be seeing a very slight increase in the minimum hinderance on heavy plate, but it is very unlikely this will even be noticeable in tandem with some other changes we are working on (ie removal of shield hinderance from evasion penalties, some changes to burden penalties, etc). Overall, most guilds should find that they are less hindered overall as long as they can keep their armor skill up with their main combat skills.


(4) When an attack does get past your front-line defenses (evasion, parry, shield), it will be contested against armor skill to determine the final protection factor of the armor. This means that keeping armor at or above the level of what you are hunting will have some tangible benefits by making your armor play a more vital role if a blow gets through your other defenses. Letting your armor skill fall too far behind the rest of your combat skills will result in the armor providing minimal protection.


The main thing to note is that armor will no longer be a skill where you can just get x ranks and have all you really need. You will need to continue training armor if you wish to maintain peak effectiveness in combat. In addition, there will be some tangible benefits for having armor skill higher than your normal combat skills (and conversely, some drawbacks to not keeping it up), which should help paladins immensely.


- GM Dartenian


If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right. - Henry Ford