Converting AD&D Armor

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<div class='cover-header'>Converting AD&D Armor</div>

<div class='cover-footer'>Optional Rules for Using AD&D<br>Armor in the 5th Edition system</div>

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# Converting AD&D Armor

##### Unofficial Optional Rules

**Development:** J.L. V'Tar
<br>**Cover Art:** Unknown
<br>(If you know whose art that is, <a href="https://twitter.com/PariahSilver" target="new">please tell me</a>)

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# Converting AD&D Armor
My love for RPGs, and D&D in particular, extends quite happily to every edition they've produced. I always tend to play the most recent edition, but I still love and find resources within each of the previous editions. I even have a couple OD&D products, though I'm not old enough to have played the game back then.

One of the things that I enjoy doing is converting things from one edition to another. It's just something I do for fun, but sometimes it provides a really great resource for use in the current edition. Or, as in the case here, it's just something that I thought worked out way better than anticipated.

It started when I was looking at the stats for armor in AD&D 2nd Edition. This was the edition I first played, and grew up with, and I still have great fondness for the unforgiving fun of its expected gameplay cycle. So I went back through my books (as I often do) and decided to play around with the armor values. I ended up with something that actually works in 5th Edition, which I thought was fun.

Here I'll go through my process, with some additional explanation thrown in. I do this partly to make this more interesting for system-nerds like myself, and partly to fill out the document so it doesn't feel like a pamphlet.

### AD&D Armor Types
One of the fun things about AD&D was that its layout didn't make any sense! Yay!

To start with, armor is listed on its own separate table listing cost and weight. This table has absolutely nothing to do with the protective value of any armor (that's on an entirely different table on an entirely different page of the book). Oh well! If we look at the table, we see an alphabetized list of all the armor available in the game.

This list includes helmets, but that's an entire other topic about which I have a lot of opinions and I won't go into here.

What's important is that it gives us a lot to work with. Most  <br> 
___
of these types of armor exist in 5th Edition, but some don't. Every edition of D&D seems to update the types of available armor, for one reason or another.

##### AD&D Armor Details
|| Type | Cost | Weight ||
|:-:|:---|---:|---:|:-:|
|| Banded mail | 200 gp | 35 lb. ||
|| Brigandine | 120 gp | 35 lb. ||
|| Bronze plate mail | 400 gp | 45 lb. ||
|| Chain mail | 75 gp | 40 lb. ||
|| Field plate | 2,000 gp | 60 lb. ||
|| Full plate | 4,000-10,000 gp | 70 lb. ||
|| Helmet | — | — ||
||  Great helm | 30 gp | 10 lb. ||
||  Basinet | 8 gp | 5 lb. ||
|| Hide | 15 gp | 30 lb. ||
|| Leather | 5 gp | 15 lb. ||
|| Padded | 4 gp | 10 lb. ||
|| Plate mail | 600 gp | 50 lb. ||
|| Ring mail | 100 gp | 30 lb. ||
|| Scale mail | 120 gp | 40 lb. ||
|| Shield | — | — ||
||  Body | 10 gp | 15 lb. ||
||  Buckler | 1 gp | 3 lb. ||
||  Medium | 7 gp | 10 lb. ||
||  Small | 3 gp | 5 lb. ||
|| Splint mail | 80 gp | 40 lb. ||
|| Studded leather | 20 gp | 25 lb. ||

##### Where Did AC Come From?
Fun fact time! Do you know why it's called Armor Class? It's a weird term, isn't it? These days we'd likely say "Defense," or just flat-out have a stat called "Armor." In fact, most modern games tend to have exactly that.

The reason D&D uses the term Armor Class is from the old wargaming stuff that Gygax and Arneson originally played with. The idea is that wearing leather, chainmail, or plate are fundamentally different experiences, even beyond how much protection they might provide. For example, chainmail is super great at protecting against slashing weapons, but not as much so against pure blunt force.

So what they did was determine that each type of armor is a particular "Class," meaning that has specific

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advantages and disadvantages. For example if you're wearing chainmail you might improve your AC by 2 against a slashing weapon, or reduce it by 2 against a bludgeoning weapon, but the Class is still the same. That's why, for example, if you're wearing leather armor and a magical effect improves your AC by 3, you're still subject to the benefits and drawbacks of leather armor, even though your AC value is technically the same as chainmail.

Older gamers who actually played those editions might have a better explanation. This is just what I get from reading those old books and hearing stories from back in the day.

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<div class='footnote'>CONVERTING AD&D ARMOR</div>

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### AD&D Armor Values
Once you know what type of armor you're wearing, and whether or not you're wielding a shield, you can find out what your AC is. This comes in the form of a slightly-annoying list of every combination of armor and shield that can grant you an AC of a particular value.

Although the presentation is a little messy and leaves something to be desired, the essence of it is pretty simple. If you're wearing leather armor, you have an AC of 8, and wielding a shield improves your AC by 1. Since a shield always improves your AC by 1, we can simply assume that a shield grants a +1 bonus to AC.

##### AD&D Armor Class Ratings
|| Type |   | AC Rating ||
|:-:|:---|:-:|:---|:-:|
|| None || 10 ||
|| Shield only || 9 ||
|| Leather or padded armor || 8 ||
|| Leather or padded armor + shield, studded leather, or ring mail armor || 7<br>  ||
|| Studded leather or ring mail + shield, brigandine, scale mail, or hide armor || 6<br>  ||
|| Scale mail or hide + shield, chain mail || 5 ||
|| Chain mail + shield, splint mail, banded mail, bronze plate mail || 4<br>  ||
|| Splint mail, banded mail, or bronze plate mail + shield, plate mail || 3<br>  ||
|| Plate mail + shield, field plate || 2 ||
|| Field plate armor + shield, full plate || 1 ||
|| Full plate armor + shield || 0 ||

Going with that idea, it's very easy to determine the AC value of each type of armor. Basically, just ignore anything that says " + shield" and you've got a list that details the specific AC value of each type of armor.

## Converting to 5th Ed.
So with all of this, it's very easy to convert things to 5th edition. I applied the following steps.

### 1. Convert the Numbers
This isn't hard to do; just determine how far away the AC value is from 10 and apply that in a positive direction instead of negative. So if leather in AD&D is -2 to your AC, that means in 5E we'd use +2, making it a 12.

Repeat this process for every type of armor, and we've got a good start. Scale becomes AC 14, splint is AC 16, field plate is AC 18, and so on. Easy peazy!

### 2. Determine Armor Category
Before 3rd edition, there was no armor category. If you knew how to wear armor, you could pretty much wear any suit of armor you found (barring specific restrictions, like druids). Still, it's not too much trouble to group these types.

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> ##### Descending AC Values
> At this point, many greater minds than mine have gone into why old-school D&D uses descending AC values. I won't be spending any time on it. Suffice to say, if you weren't already aware; AC 10 is for a naked person standing in a field, and the better your armor is the lower your AC value. It's not a joke to say that -10 is the best AC you could possibly have.

It's easy to start with leather as light armor and full plate as heavy armor. Somewhere around the middle, scale mail is probably medium. But where do we cut off in between? Personally, I cut off light armor at ring mail, and medium armor at splint mail.

These choices are fairly arbitary, but to me hide feels like a good start to medium armor because it's good enough to grant protection but bulky enough to limit your movement a bit. And in my mind, banded mail is the perfect place to begin categorizing as heavy armor, because it's the point at which armor literally becomes formed of metal plates wrapped around the wearer.

### 3. Apply category limitations
This is probably the easiest, because we just do the same thing that 5th Edition already does. Light armor lets you add your Dexterity modifier, medium armor lets you add it up to a maximum of +2, and heavy armor ignores your Dexterity entirely (even a penalty, yay!).

### 4. Adjust for flavor
Technically, once you've completed step 3, you're effectively done. For me though, I wanted to tweak it just a little more. Specifically, light armor felt just a tiny bit too high for me. On the one hand, the weakest light armor is a +2 jump in AC, and the best light armor with a max Dexterity is almost as good as the heaviest armor there is.

An easy fix for this is to just reduce each light armor by 1. Voila! Now the weakest armor is an AC increase of 1, and the best light armor with a maximum Dexterity modifier provides an AC of 17. This syncs nicely with the max AC value of 18 for the toughest medium armor, and the AC value of 19 for the heaviest of the heavy.

#### Shield Values
"But Julia," you might ask, "what about shields? In 5th Edition they grant a +2 bonus." And you would be correct! Unfortunately this would provide a bit of a numbers problem. In 5th Edition, plate armor and a heavy shield can give you a whopping AC of 20, which is pretty fantastic. But if you use that math with this armor, full plate with a shield would grant you an AC of 21. This isn't game-breaking, but it is a bit of a goose in terms of keeping things in balance for poor DMs.

So, I simply use the AD&D shield value of +1, as mentioned earlier. This grants you the same potential max AC, so that problem is solved! However I can also understand that a measly +1 for a shield can feel a bit underwhelming, so I decided to complicate things just a tad.

<div class='footnote'>CONVERTING AD&D ARMOR</div>

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##### Armor and Shields
|| Item | Cost |   | Armor Class (AC) | Strength | Stealth | Weight |   |
|:-:|:---|---:|:-:|:---|:---|:---|---:|---:|
|| *Light Armor* |
||  Padded             | 4 gp              || 11 + Dex modifier            | —         | —             | 10 lb. |
||  Leather            | 5 gp              || 11 + Dex modifier            | —         | —             | 15 lb. |
||  Studded leather    | 20 gp             || 12 + Dex modifier            | —         | Disadvantage  | 25 lb. |
||  Ring mail          | 100 gp            || 12 + Dex modifier            | —         | —             | 30 lb. |
|| *Medium Armor* |
||  Hide               | 15 gp             || 14 + Dex modifier (max 2)    | —         | Disadvantage  | 30 lb. |
||  Brigandine         | 120 gp            || 14 + Dex modifier (max 2)    | —         | —             | 35 lb. |
||  Scale mail         | 120 gp            || 14 + Dex modifier (max 2)    | —         | —             | 40 lb. |
||  Chain mail         | 75 gp             || 15 + Dex modifier (max 2)    | Str 14    | Disadvantage  | 40 lb. |
||  Splint mail        | 80 gp             || 16 + Dex modifier (max 2)    | Str 14    | Disadvantage  | 40 lb. |
|| *Heavy Armor* |
||  Banded mail        | 200 gp            || 16                           | Str 15    | Disadvantage  | 35 lb. |
||  Bronze plate mail  | 400 gp            || 16                           | Str 16    | Disadvantage  | 45 lb. |
||  Plate mail         | 600 gp            || 17                           | Str 15    | Disadvantage  | 50 lb. |
||  Field plate        | 2,000 gp          || 18                           | Str 16    | Disadvantage  | 60 lb. |
||  Full plate         | 4,000 - 10,000 gp || 19                           | Str 15    | Disadvantage  | 70 lb. |
|| *Shields* |
||  Buckler            | 1 gp              || +1                           | —         | —             | 3 lb.  |
||  Light shield       | 3 gp              || +1                           | —         | —             | 5 lb.  |
||  Heavy shield       | 7 gp              || +1                           | —         | Disadvantage  | 10 lb. |
||  Great shield       | 10 gp             || +1                           | Str 15    | Disadvantage  | 15 lb. |

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Enter different shield types! Or, more specifically, re-enter different shield types from earlier editions of the game. Since we're converting from 2nd Edition, I looked at various iterations of shields from back then and came up with these special rules. Similar to rules for special weapons, these apply to specific items only.

***Buckler.*** This small, circular shield is strapped to your arm and does not require the use of your hand. You may dual-wield weapons while wielding a buckler, but if you make an attack with your secondary weapon you lose the buckler's bonus to AC until the start of your next turn.

***Heavy Shield.*** This large shield blocks as much of your body as possible, imposing disadvantage on ranged weapon attacks made against you if you can see the attacker.

***Great Shield.*** Built to cover as much of you as physically possible, this shield imposes disadvantage on ranged weapon attacks made against you if you can see the attacker. Additionally, you may use a bonus action on your turn to take half cover behind the shield, or use an action to take three-quarters cover behind the shield.

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#### Strength and Sealth
The last step is to determine things like encumbrance and bulky noise-making. This is entirely arbitrary, and a judgment call per each type of armor. I personally just applied Stealth disadvantage to all heavy armor, and sprinkled it throughout light and medium armor to create some differences.

## Finished Product
As you can see, there you have a complete armor table, built from the types of armor found in AD&D 2nd Edition. This isn't functionally all that different from what we know in 5E, but I think it can provide some unique flavor, and it's what I now use in my campaigns.

Personally I also made a few other choices: for instance I dropped brigandine and bronze plate because they felt redundant, and I tweaked a few costs for better power progression, but I don't think that's strictly neessary..

If you like this, then I hope you have a lot of fun with it!

<div class='footnote'>CONVERTING AD&D ARMOR</div>
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