I was thinking about a change to the way greatrobes work, because for all non-warrior classes they are -always- better than whatever armour class they are actually allowed. Not only does this leave little for forgers to offer non-warriors (who are usually forgers themselves), it means that only three armour types are ever used in lusternia - great robes, plate, and full plate.

Instead, what if enchanting great robes didn't add any inherent protection to them, but instead allowed you to wear them over your existing armour, and allowed them to be proofed (I don't know if unenchanted robes can be proofed already). So you might have 40/40 chainmail on, but you can wear enchanted robes over the top to gain influence power and elemental proofing without losing that 40/40 resistance.

The protection offered by leather, chain and scale armour sets might need a little boosting, but now the differences between armour available to each class becomes significant. For instance, Magi are supposed to be less physically protected than Druids, I imagine given their more powerful offensive spells, but this is completely irrelevant when everyone wears robes. Likewise, Guardians are supposed to be much more physically protected than Wiccans and Druids, but again this is a pointless distinction because robes are so prevalent.

I believe this solution will not undermine the profits of tailors/enchanters much at all, because armour has next to no influence value, and it (hopefully) can't be proofed, so robes are still an important piece of equipment for a prepared character. It does however allow forgers to use half their skillset again, and means the armour restrictions for each archetype have a purpose. Combined with the arrival of Bards who will want much more customized regular clothing for performances and so on, I don't think this is a bad thing for tailors at all.

All armor would have to have the same stats as robes, because that's how it's balanced... which would make it pointless.

Anyone who has purchased greatrobes based on their armour stats will absolutely lose it if this was ever put in. A decent idea, but it has a lot of hurdles to jump.

Yes x 10

I hope taht if this is not changed, that atleast some bard skills arn't useable with greatrobes.. as the help files imply (sniffle) assuming that bards have those skills that decrease damage like it says.

Druids less offensive then Mages? Heh

As a modification on the initial idea, maybe enchanted great robes could add a slight bonus to resistance, say +10/+10, if the proofs alone aren't good enough. Not sure.

And please, please let's not turn this thread into "my class is so much weaker than yours!"

No no no no no no no no. Mages, guardians and druids have enough troubles now, and this would give an additional bonus to warriors.

Which they are -supposed- to have. If the effect of all armour needs to be scaled down along with the damage of weapons, it can be.

But different archetypes should have different armours available to them.

What about splendor?

They would have additional damage protection, and the influencing boost.

But they'd still either be a damn crappy trans skill, or give knights a huge advantage.

Isn't that all they do now?

... not at all. They're an excellent trans skill, though I beleive that knights' best armor without transing forging is still better.

Wouldn't this make warrior Vs. warrior fighting frustrating, as you would have somewhere around 80% base resistance to each others damage?

...eh? Don't they only give increased damage protection and influence power over regular robes? What else do they do?


And now I'm doubly confused... how did you figure that?


The idea is, if you're a mage, you only get the very poor protection from robes. If you're a druid or wiccan, you can wear leather armour for protection, and then put robes over them for additional elemental proofings and a slight protection boost. If you're a guardian, you can wear leather, scale or chainmail armour for protection, and then put robes over them for additional elemental proofings and the slight boost.

If you're a warrior, you could wear any type of forged armour, then put the great robes over the top for influencing and the slight boost. I don't think the addition of two elemental proofings would be -that- significant for warriors.

Obviously damage would have to be looked at and the contribution of armour perhaps lessened slightly, but the point is that the armour system would no longer be broken. Also, both tradeskills would be able to appeal to all archetypes. Trans tailors would be able to enchant their splendour robes so they fit over armour, giving slightly more of a protection boost than regular robes.

Eh, I guess you do have a point, but we're talking about a good item vs something that gives a tiny relief to getting horribly screwed with armor.


I can see knights that are trans forging and wearing robes (or even splendor if they trans tailoring first and switched) being near immortal.

I definitely agree armour contribution and warriors in particular would need to be adjusted slightly if this were implemented. That's not too bad, but the main benefit is that classes who are meant to have poor armour, have poor armour, and both tailoring and forging markets are expanded.

Edit: By 'armour contribution', I mean that the actual percentage of damage that all armour subtracts.

So, for instance, imagine 100/100 plate armour currently reduces damage by 50%, and 50/50 chainmail armour currently reduces damage by 25%. This could be changed so that the values are halved - plate armour reduces damage by 25%, and the chainmail reduces damage by 12.5%. The difference between the two is still there, but both the difference and the reduction itself is not as large. Then all damage values would simply be decreased slightly to match.

That is one of the problems I have with armour at the moment - knights have a huge reduction from their armour, so much so that it is difficult to balance actual damage values because the effect on warrior and non-warrior classes is so dramatically different. Rather than have everyone exactly the same, and then warriors uberprotected behind massive health, I'd prefer that different armours weren't that different in protection, but there was a gradual scale throughout all the archetypes.

The simple solution is to just follow logic and say, how the hell do you wear full plate and robes over teh top without getting tangled and falling over in a heap.

So you could only wear Robes in addition to armour that was lower than plate.

Which would make Nihilists/Celestines tankier then warriors with Chain+(great/splendor)robes Vs. field/full plate.