Alright, I've had this idea for about a week. No matter how much I think about it though, I cannot seem to find a way to properly balance this. The idea is basically that armor check penalties are not affected by spells and powers at all. This means that there is a hole in the versatility of spells. As such, I am requesting the following types of spells are created by somebody with more experience with armor:
- Increases ACP (both an individual and an area spell would be best)
- Decreases ACP (to a minimum of -1, should be higher level than increasing)
- Negates ACP
- Sets ACP at high number (I was thinking 10 or higher)
You can think of how this can affect the grimoire ruleset on armors.
Also, optionally, a warlock invocation and psionic powers would be good to have equivalents for, though the warlock invocation would really only be small increases in ACP.
Havvy 05:13, June 15, 2010 (UTC)
- Can you explain how the ACP debuff effects would be useful in combat / in general? I could see some as useful in a semi-permanent AoE to defend a location from skill based stealth (that doesn't matter at mid levels anyway), but that's about it. The ACP reduction is a potentially more useful buff, but I don't see any reason to make it higher than level 1 and to take a point away every CL or 2. Which essentially negates ACP anyway after a while. It's functionally a minor skill boost under default rules that doesn't ever boost you over some level and balance appropriate number, and that's not just that awesome. - TarkisFlux 06:17, June 15, 2010 (UTC)
- Under SRD what you say is true, but under the Races of War (3.5e homebrew) book ACP gets a bit more meaningful. For example, if you raise it high enough, you can cause some serious damage to warriors' ability to fight. Havvy 08:28, June 17, 2010 (UTC)
- Sorry, it was unclear that you intended it with those rules. I saw the note about the grimoire ruleset, but ignored it because I wasn't worried about how this would interact with Ghost's thing.
- Anyway, the big thing is the movement penalty you can stick people with, followed by the ASF dependence on ACP. The rest of it is just minor skill or dex to AC mods, and those are pretty weak. The ASF thing works well in Tome games since non-armors have an ACP and that can be modified but doesn't in non-Tome games unless you happen to have an arcane caster in a suit of armor instead of magicked up for some reason. If you can raise the ACP on non-armors like robes and crap in non-Tome games this retains more use. The movement thing is interesting. If this grows evenly with CL, then you basically wipe the BAB of equal leveled characters if they have full BAB, which might kill their move if they're in really heavy stuff, or go beyond wiping the BAB if they're not full progression, and that probably will hurt their move. Which is maybe worth writing, but should probably port all of the ASF and movement stuff from RoW so that it's not a joke spell to those who don't use those rules. - TarkisFlux 01:43, June 19, 2010 (UTC)