I love the plate armor aesthetic. Its what I associate most with UO. But plate armor is mostly useless here. The Dex loss alone makes it almost unusable save. I have a suggestion for how to improve the use of plate, by pegging Dex loss to strength. Most Pure Dexxers are 100 100 25. Let the threshold be 100 str. At 100 str let there be no Dex loss for plate armor. Should someone attempt to wear plate at a lower str level. For example 90, let there be the full Dex penalty, and let str between 90 to 100 have a gradated amount of dex loss.
I like this idea, but still think there should be SOME penalty - like maybe max dex loss below 90 str, then between 90-95 you lose a certain amount, between 95-99 another amount, and at 100 you sacrifice like 2 dex or something. I, too, associate old school UO with plate armor. There's something about the look that just IS what this game is supposed to be, and I wish it could be viable here.
An "Idea" I had was to add one point to character HP for every Dex lost. So, the 100/100/25 (100 HP) build becomes 100/83/25 (117 HP) with a full plate suit removing 17 dex. This is not era-accurate, only a dream of mine. In any case, it is known that plate armor is pretty worthless currently.
I believe we all like the plate armor look! Back then I used to play in a local Sphere shard were plate was the norm for warriors or paladins (that was how we called the templates, brute dexer or dexer/mage), so that brings me a question was it useful at any point at OSI? When did that change?
Or.. you could remove dex loss altogether like most other servers do. Dexxers already have it tough, ya'll!
It's not just about dex loss. The dex loss could at least be offset in theory if it offered a tangible benefit in damage reduction. I'm pretty sure you could bump the AR values on plate by 50%+ and it MIGHT make it pvm friendly, still unlikely to be used for open world pvp. That said none of the slots other than the chest get hit enough to even consider taking dex loss. The bonus HP sounds like a reasonable consideration but yeah, least Era accurate.
