Mundane armor sucks!

Rewarding players in-game is something I routinely screw up. In my misguided early years of DMing (like 2 years ago) I wanted my 5e game to be hardcore and so I dolled out treasure at a slow drip. The irony that my PCs could fly well before they had a magic sword was completely lost on me. See every game implies a rate of treasure acquisition by the players, but effing none of them spells it out.

Jimmy has a push-over for a GM

Us poor GMs are stuck here doing maths to figure out how much gold/xp to give players to allow them to level up at a satisfying rate. And I'm not talking about planning out their story arc from level 1-20 and fine-tuning the rewards to match satisfying beats. I'm talking about figuring out a ball-park general range of treasure to put in a given encounter/dungeon.

Once you figure that out, you also should split that value between cash, interesting items, and useful items. The last category is probably navigational items (keys, a grappling hook, a canoe), magical items (+1 sword, boots of climbing, circlet of fire), or both (potion of walk on water). In a low magic setting, or low-level play I have a terrible time coming up with magic items that don't seem lame. Mundane items are often things you buy with your starting copper pieces and never revisit again.

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So let's look at armor in RPGs. I'm going to be considering armor from the point of view of the GLOG system I'm currently playing (now that I think of it, I don't use the GLOG's AC values...Anyway, high AC is harder to hit!), but we'll start big enough for any system. Armor is there to keep you from dying. This fictional purpose is typically tied to one of two mechanical effects; reduce your chance to get hit or reduce damage taken. Usually, it does one or the other, but any mechanical system that comes into effect when PCs might die is an opportunity for armor to do its job. I use this nice Death and Dismemberment system.  When one of my PCs reaches 0hp they compare their negative damage to the table to see if they die. This system can be affected by armor just as the earlier rolls and armor will still be right in line doing its "keep you alive" thing. Why not?

Let's define the typical armor types. The AC numbers are obviously different based on your game. I Use roll under attack stat, which is around 10-15 depending on your level, minus AC.

Armor	AC	Absorption	Death	Inventory
cloth	0	0	0	0
leather	1	0	0	1
chain	3	0	0	3
plate	5	0	0	5

So that's about the most boring table I can imagine. But that's just what armor is in most games. 5e, it's a don't-get-hit number and they even have damage absorption, resistances, and death saves already in that game!

Anyway, if you're a working DM, then this is probably where you start. You can start to introduce new pieces with absorption and death save effects to make armor more interesting and treasure something other than +1 swords and gold pieces.

So I have three mechanisms armor can impact, four if you include inventory. Let's make some interesting pieces for your low-level game.

Consecrated Curiass

armor class: as plate, damage adsorption: 0, death save +2, inventory: as plate

rusted breastplate pulled from a holy font. angelic chimes ring when armor is struck.

There, pretty basic. Not an interesting choice though. Better plate is a no brainer. What if you already have plate?

Fool's Padded Harness

armor class: as cloth, damage adsorption: 4 from blunt weapons, 0 from others, death save +0, inventory: as plate

a fool in the court of a mad king needs all the padding he can get.

Nighting Gale's Cloak

armor class: as leather, damage adsorption: 2,  death save +0, inventory: 1

the dead of night is hardly the place to be caught unawares.

Mythril

armor class: chain, damage adsorption: 0,  death save +4, inventory: 1

It's better to be lucky than good, they say. Poor chap I pulled this off must've been neither.

Cast Iron

armor class: plate, damage adsorption: 0,  death save 0, inventory: 7

The slave gladiators of Kust train night and day to heft their heavy plates of iron into the arena. A herniated disk is a small price to pay for protection.

Hmm. Some of those I like! Anyway, that took about 2 minutes to come up with. Once all the playing pieces are pulled out in front of you, it's pretty simple.

What's interesting is that there are situations where some pieces are better than others. That is what leads to interesting choices and hopefully leads your PCs to think about where they're headed and gear appropriately.

We'll see if it works out.

Also, writing this has sparked a few ideas. I'll come back to this soon. What if plate didn't make you harder to hit at all? What if it was just protection against damage? Now my fighter has a tough choice. What if leather didn't provide armor, but allowed you to use your dex as armor? My high dex PCs might have an easy choice, but how about my wizard? Hmmm.