And he's wearing... what, TWO shields??

[Amberlee]

Nono.. Recodes first..
Always recodes first

[Rhaegar]

Just throwing out the AC-thingie idea here...

How about introducing armour skills in light, medium and heavy, at various levels for various guilds.

Example of how it would work.

Skills:
light armour - superior master (90)
medium armour - superior craftsman (60)
heavy armour - superior layman (30)

Armour base AC: light - 30, medium - 40, heavy - 50

Actual AC when worn by player with above skills: light - 27, medium - 24, heavy - 15

This is the example of simple skill = effectiveness in %. It would make various guilds seek out different armours, leading to more variety and not the same equipment being awesome for everyone. It would reflect not as much the quality of the armour, but player's ability to utilise it to its fullest, knowing its weak points, how to move in it etc.

The problem would be in actually assigning armours their respective type, going through every single piece of armour on gen and setting it manually would be a pain I assume, but maybe calculating it automatically from item weight or something could be a solution (with possible manual override, to make magical feather-light platemails of the type "heavy").

For monks, they could perhaps get the "toughening" skill or "iron shirt technique", that would give them more natural AC, without need to wear armours.

Just sayin'.

[Draugor]

I'd much rather see monks getting a good dodge special or the AC thing, and make the AC thing based on gstat, the longer you have trained the better you have become at hardening your skin etc

[Rhaegar]

Some extra defense would be nice for them, but it's a bit hard for me to comprehend since with my old char I used to be a monk since adventurer to rising hero (which took me about 2 years irl back then) and I never used armours. My good friend Belegorn also didn't use armours as a monk, and he was of legend size. Actually, it was him who told me that monks work better without armours
I think Ceres also wasn't using armours.

But Genesis has changed quite a bit since that time so I'm not sure how feasible it would be to do that now.

[Creed]

I personally don't think that monks should be able to completely step out of the EQ race..
It would be come too easy for them, not really needing anything.
Many of them are big enough as it is, no need to make it any easier for them. :p

[Rhaegar]

I never said it was easy. Although not having to worry about EQ at all had a nice vibe to it (zen like = monk like). The downside was that I had to pick my grind spots and fights carefully, as fighting multiple opponents wasn't a viable tactic. What I did was go against enemies who are few in number but bigger in size. Grinding giants and guardsmen in Kabal, then moving to shadow elves in Holm and the like.
You can get a pretty decent progress rate by travelling around the realms and killing stuff that's 3-4 levels higher than you.

[Draugor]

I personally don't think that monks should be able to completely step out of the EQ race..
It would be come too easy for them, not really needing anything.
Many of them are big enough as it is, no need to make it any easier for them. :p

Actually, make more gloves type of things, claws etc (imbuable! FFS!) And make fighting with towershields or something equally HUGE on yer hands kill yer unarmed skill and make us have a dodge or something instead, we should realyl make armourclasses

[Cherek]

I personally don't think that monks should be able to completely step out of the EQ race..
It would be come too easy for them, not really needing anything.
Many of them are big enough as it is, no need to make it any easier for them. :p

In general I think it would be neat if we had more guilds that doesnt need to participate in the EQ race. I was never a big fan of that race so I think its good with options for those who dont enjoy it, or dont like having to settle for whatever the big ones leave behind.

Ogres is a good example since they use weapons and armours in a very different way, and I would not say they have it easier than those who need to gather the usual EQ. And monks have their system for "using" weapons too, which is a pretty good system. Similar to EQ-hunting but not quite.

I think it would be cool if monks did not use armours or weapons but had to rely only on their martial arts skills. I am not gonna reveal how the monks work but I assume most people who read here know about the system they use for offensive power, it could be a similar defensive system, used to replace the lost AC from not being able to use armours. In theory anyway.

[Draugor]

What offensive power?
For a monk to be able to produce any sort of damage you need to be huge, have zeh magic gloves and max your karma out

The two shields are awesome for tanking tho, I however have a hard time seeing any sort of martial artist wearing to big ass towershields while fighting, and doing it effectively Armourclasses plx! No armours for monks

[Cherek]

What offensive power?
For a monk to be able to produce any sort of damage you need to be huge, have zeh magic gloves and max your karma out

The two shields are awesome for tanking tho, I however have a hard time seeing any sort of martial artist wearing to big ass towershields while fighting, and doing it effectively Armourclasses plx! No armours for monks

Well thats what I meant, that you could have a karma-similar system that adds AC as you "charge it up" somehow. RP-wise maybe you're learning to ignore your pain or, like someone already said, harden your skin or something, or dodging. But we already have alot of dodge and parry guilds, would be cool with something else.