Armour class and basic looting, Part 2

As announced, here is a short one about prices and quality. There are 6 areas that can be covered for armour: head, torso, two arms and two legs (see also part 1). Basic assumptions are all about items of good quality (3 items of good quality light armor is AC 6, etc.). I'd go for 3 kinds of quality in this:

• poor quality (pq)
• good quality (gq, being standard)
• excellent quality (eq, might be tailored, for example)

Poor quality:

This is off the shelf material or shoddy craftmanship (or both). It's generally cheaper, but you nead 2 areas covered, instead of one, to achieve the effects of good quality. It doesn't protect that well and most of the time it's not that comfortable. So, for example, some off the shelf leather trousers do the job (two legs, two areas vovered, counts as one item of good quality). Basically, when using poor quality, you need to cover the whole body with one category of armour to get the full effect of an AC (6 items).

Good Quality:

The standard. Military armour is often like that. They may be stacked. A chainmail coif (medium armour) and a medium armour helmet count as one piece heavy armour. A nice effect of this is, that armour will not only be used more consciously, but also be a little bit more realistic (without being to complex, I hope).

Excellent quality:

Often very expensive, mostly tailored. Any negative effect on encumbrance or movement is halved. Magic armour is always excellent quality.

Prices

This is going to be a little bit more expensive and starting equipment will most of the time only consist of the most basic protection available. But this being part of the game, it's no disadvantage. On the contrary, this is about looting stuff and enhancing the meaning of "normal" equipment on lower levels.

Some classic looting (Paul Jamin, Le Brenn
et sa part de butin, 1893, public domain)

The following prices are more guidelines than anything else. Local shops might be cheaper or more expensive (as the DM sees fit). And there is always the possibility for characters to go for the basic materials themselves (a nice opportunity to let them hunt for pelts or something like that) and drive down the costs. But this is how I'd do it:

Light Armour

• poor quality: 10 gp per protected area
• good quality: 30 gp per protected area
• excellent quality: 60 gp per protected area

Medium Armour

• poor quality: 90 gp per protected area
• good quality: 130 gp per protected area
• excellent quality: 200 gp per protected area

Heavy Armour

• poor quality: 300 gp per protected area
• good quality: 400 gp per protected area
• excellent quality: 600 gp per protected area

For armour with magic properties the prices are multiplied with:

10 x (Ac bonus + number of special abilities)

Have fun looting stuff!

Again, I hope it isn't too complex. Next up are some ideas about abilities and magic items. After that I should return to weapon mastery, I guess (totally chickened out to do that, but it needs to be done...).