So currently nearing the end of elder brocket deer, and to this point I've used a multi suit comprising of a plate cuirass, lamellar balaclava, leather sleeves, and chain greaves. Lately I've been having a heck of a time moving light and brig armors with this setup, but granted I'm within 10% or so of the hard cap. I'm currently lightly hindered, but I'm wondering how viable this suit will be as I start approaching 300+. Will I eventually need to swap armors to actually move them? As it is now, I love not having to worry about it, not losing any time swapping and taking full advantage of our skillset perks.

I highly suggest wearing all 4 at the same time. We've got the perk for it, and prime pools, take advantage. Below is the armor list I use at the moment, and have outfitted a few up and coming squire types with it for great effect all around. If you need a smith and can't find one local, chase me down (my AIM's in my profile).

All of your armor:

some insulated heavy ruazin wool pants sealed with protective wax
a damite heavy plate fauld
some lumium lamellar gloves
a triple-reinforced vardite pavise shield
some lumium lamellar vambraces
a damite heavy breastplate
a heavy damite backplate
a lumium chain balaclava

But considering all the armor and shields you are wearing or carrying, you are currently lightly (4/14) hindered and your stealth is moderately (7/14) hindered.

Samsaren

I believe swapping greaves is still the quickest way to mind lock individual armors, but I also find it a lot more efficient, especially in 3.x, to simply wear all armors at the same time.

All of your armor:

a pockmarked copper chain aventail (chain, neck)
a pair of thick goggles with a shark-cartilage frame (bone, eyes)
an enameled lamellar cap embellished with tiny dragons (brig, head)
a dull steel field plate (plate, body)
a triple-reinforced vardite pavise shield
some scratched copper plate sleeves (plate, arms)

After about 30 minutes in combat...

Shield Usage: 1036 33% rapt (30/34)
Light Armor: 900 06% considering (6/34)
Chain Armor: 933 36% pondering (7/34)
Brigandine: 950 80% pondering (7/34)
Plate Armor: 1008 65% mind lock (34/34)
Defending: 992 31% very focused (21/34)

Unless you're technically underhunting, they usually all eventually lock or get close enough that you won't deal with significant gaps in skill after exp drain. And that's using the tiniest accessories available.

Armor's the smallest skill set in the game at 6 skills; even though only 3 of its skills truly matter, you have to eek out everything you can get to compete with everyone else and their 10+++ skill primary skill sets in terms of TDPs (assuming that's your thing).

>... store-bought...

Eww... Store-bought. There are a few paladins who will forge a good basic set of armor for you at little to no cost or for a small task.

I'll also plug the Ilithi militia surplus trader shop. It's usually stocked with very inexpensive forged starter gear.

Feel free to contact me over IM if you need some help (AIM: theonlywarbie).

>>Reaver1: Any advice on a store-bought multi-suit?

You can now search Elanthipedia for armor with certain stats. (Choose rare = no to limit the search to standard store-bought items.)

http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/Special:RunQuery/ArmorQuery

---

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall rank!

Vote for DragonRealms on Top MUD Sites: http://www.topmudsites.com/vote-DragonRealms.html

Ya know, Warbie made a good point about the Armor skill set and TDPs. Why don't paladins get slightly more TDPs per skill rank in Armor skills to compensate? We do have to work harder for the same number of TDPs as it stands right now compared to other guilds. I have learned over and again that the paladin guild is not for the impatient! lol

Huh? I'm getting called out and Idunno why. Might make for a funny conflicts thread, though. I think those still exist, anyway... Haven't read any funny ones in ages.

>Man, I'd love to explain why, but I'm sure Warb and Nray would just tell me I was being a bully.

>Do I have permission to post? Am I being a bully right now?!

This isn't about you, not sure why you keep trying to make it about you instead of the topic at hand.

#passiveagressivePoorMe

Decided I wasn't being helpful. Deleted my posts. Maybe I should have read Lennon's first, but whatever. I sure am a terrible person. And no one has answered the initial question of why paladins can't get more TDPs for armor. Might want to do that, because I can't, I don't dare post here any more.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=moSFlvxnbgk

---

I'm a badger, I be badgerin'

>http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=moSFlvxnbgk

So tempted to post the NSFW version, but I thought my post might get pulled.

I hope that's not still the case. Times have changed. So much. I mean, I never expected barbs and thieves would have access to magic skills (post rune changes) or that the magic skill set would be about as large as the survival skill set.

Relatively speaking, training is so easy now that most people I know have a pretty even distribution across all primary skills they choose to train, whether trained passively or actively. Also, interestingly, primary, secondary and tertiary skills seem to match up quite well, rank for rank, across different guilds. This is mostly anecdotal and speculative, of course. Interested to know the real numbers, though.

Now... I'm not saying I'd love to have more skills for the sake of TDPs. More useful armor skills would certainly be nice, though. I love the defending skill, for instance, but there can only be one defending skill.

Armor Mastery as a skill makes a whole lot of sense when one considers that underneath of leather armor is cloth padding, and underneath of chain armor (in most real-world cases) is leather, and underneath plate there is generally chain.

Wear one type of armor and you're essentially learning a bit about all types of armor.

>I wasn't here when 'defending' became a skill. My understanding is that it took the place of 'muli-opponent', correct?

I also like that defending governs bonus stance points based on skill set placement (point per 50 for primaries, per 60 for secondaries and per 70 for tertiaries). It's way better than bonus points based somewhat arbitrarily on guild (like armor hindrance) and circle.

>If so, why not an 'armor mastery' skill along the lines of 'melee mastery' and 'missile mastery'?

I love this idea. The only obstacle I can see is it might be tough to balance the exp for such a skill if it were learned passively like other armors unless armor exp awarded goes down for multi-armor setups to make it a little more like training weapons.

Armor mastery would actually be really great for armor tertiary guilds. It may not seem like it, but armor ranks play a big role in combat now. One warmie comes to mind who pretty much has to wear brigandine over chain in CvC despite it being a relatively poor armor option for warmies. He has to wear brig because of a ~400 rank skill discrepancy between heavy armors and lighter armors.

I'd really love it if mastery skills were part of a feat system that awarded slots based on skill set placement, like the defending-stance point relationship, that could be used to add properties when using the things they govern. For example, you could add bonus stun chance when using SB, LB or 2HB, or you could add bonus crit damage to small edged weapons to make them more effective against heavy armor. You could use a missile feat slot to bonus thrown accuracy, reduce crit miss chance, etc. Armor mastery feats, might allow us to add crit chance reduction when wearing full plate or reduce the duration of naphtha flames on light armor, shield slam with arm-worn shields, balance bonus in a specific armor, etc.

I wish magic worked that way, too; in other words, that feat slots were something separate from spell slots awarded through primary magic skill based on skill set. I think it adds a more clear and tangible benefit to these these skills than just "helps with spell casting" or "helps with back training," which doesn't sound terribly exciting from a player perspective.

You're right. It makes sense you'd have to train multiple armors to best train armor mastery like weapons and weapon mastery. What I mean is if the fact that all armors can be trained at once is an issue, then adding another armor skill one can "passively" train by just standing in combat might not be desirable. If that's the case, I wouldn't mind going back to more active forms of training like greave swapping in order to have an armor mastery skill that does something.

My defensive combat maneuvers idea might combine well with this- its active, anyway.