Troll Lord Games

While I like the EV system in C&C in general, one of the things that I miss from AD&D is the varying effect that armor encumbrance had on movement. It didn't matter how strong you were - if you wore certain armors your base move of 12 was reduced to 9 or 6. This often played into armor selection, especially if the majority of a party was fast-moving. Also, the fact that magical armor moved you "up" one speed class was a real benefit, and made even +1 armor more worthwhile than might otherwise have been the case.

So, I made a new EV (and GP) progression for the base AC's, designed to greatly increase the EV penalties of armor. Actually, the "progression" is a simple formula of EV = AC x2. With these EV's, there should be a real break around AC +4 or +5 where movement starts to be effected, obviously much more so at the highest AC's. Likewise, magical armor (half EV) is a real boon.

A possible additional use of this system is to remove the AC type limits in classes like the ranger, barbarian, and bard, and simply mandate that they have to be unencumbered to use certain skills.

I'm sure that this option won't appeal to everyone, but I thought I would share the idea just in case there were others with similar interests. Comments and advice welcome!

Cheers,

Christopher

AC--EV--GP

1---2----10----Padded

2---4----20----Leather

3---6----40----Studded Leather

4---8----80----Mail Shirt

5---10--160---Mail Coat

6---12--320---Full Mail

7---14--640---Breastplate and Mail

8---16--1280--Plate and Mail

10--20--5120--Full Plate

Actually... Strength may well have been supposed to play a part in AD&D as to the encumbrance incurred from wearing armour and movement. However, aside from the comment "Strength penalties or bonuses will modify these guidelines." on page 102 of the PHB, nothing further was explained. It's anagolous to the comment in the DMG that "The dexterity rating includes the following physical characteristics: hand-eye coordination, agility, reflex speed, precision, balance, and actual speed of movement in running", which also received no further exposition.

Your idea seems workable, though.
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It is a joyful thing indeed to hold intimate converse with a man after ones own heart, chatting without reserve about things of interest or the fleeting topics of the world; but such, alas, are few and far between.

Yoshida Kenko (1283-1350)

Yes, I liked finding little comments like that after years of playing ... it always started a furious flipping of pages as I tried to figure out if we had been missing some vital element of play! The DMG, for instance, states in one place that magic armor is half weight and ups one movement type, and in another that it is weightless and doesn't impede movement at all - I think campaigns often differed by what contradictory bit the DM happened to read first!
Cheers

We dont worry about encumbrance too much. However, Ive grouped armours into 3 categories: light, medium and heavy. Each category has a base movement rate:

Heavy armour= 10ft move

Medium armour= 20 ft move

light armour= 30ft move

Works for us.

Magical armour weighs one category less.

Craig