What's the deal?

Remove all ads!

My first time playing a Paladin... what's with the armor? Looks like she's wearing a Madonna cone bra, sheesh. Oh, and I really wish that when she did the Pally quest thing and became a member of the Radient Heart that she could have busted Anomen's chops about getting in before he did. The snotty bastage!

 

I have never played a female paladin so I have never seen the 'body fitting' armour in effect.

 

Let's face it, the primary consumer is the hormone crazed, male teen. Although BG2 is not as bad as that jiggly Dark Alliance....

It would be great to just smack Anomen down, but then I guess you would turn into a father figure for him.

 

More & more women are playing computer games. I can only judge by the games I play but on the few forums to which I belong a lot of women post. ie: this one. I would like more realistic armor for my "ladies".

 

I can agree with you Nakia but if you look at ancient civilisations some female warriors wore very little or nothing at all like the ancient Celts from Ireland and Scotland even some of the middle eastern cultures had this. If you can find any online pictures of the Warrior Queen 'Maeve of Connact' you will see what I mean. However I am not saying that this excuses armour that completely covers male characters (head to toe) becomes a short leather skirt and bra for female characters.

Lets hope that graphic designers grown up and realise that realistic armour is not going to make a female character less 'feminine'. Even female designers are guilty of this and my guess is that the publishing companies think more 'relistic armour' will cost a game is commercial appeal.

 

Jaheria doesn't look like that when you giver her full plate mail...if you gal's really don't like it, you could mess around in ShadowKeeper under the 'Aperance' tab until you find an invantory sprite that you like.

 

Maybe the graphic is different on an Elf as opposed to a human. Never said I didn't like it though, it may not look very realistic but it sure seems like you could put somebody's eye out with it. I'll just think of it as an extra... umm... set of weapons.

 

Half-elves/elves and humans use different avatars, yeah.

Keep in mind that magical armor conforms to the size and shape of the wearer. This is why Korgan and Minsc can use the same set of magical armor, so armor form-fitting to a female figure as opposed to a male one is not a big stretch. It would not turn full body armor into "a short leather skirt and bra" but it would certainly change. Regular armor does not have the same abilities.

This is not to say that they aren't catering to, as T2Bruno so eloquently states, "hormone crazed, male teens" or that it's anywhere near realistic.

 

Given that Korgan and Minsc CAN wear the same suit of non-magical armour I think we can safely discard this nice feat of reasoning and just say that the game designers thought it would be less fun if you had to find or resmith armour to specifically fit a character.

 

I was speaking from a rules/PnP standpoint using BG2 characters as an example. Feel free to substitute 'dwarf' and 'human.'

 

Yeah, I remember those wacky PnP rules and always thought them quite funny as well.

I don't know how they have changed things for the current rules but the old rules had race sized magical armour that was able to magically adjust for small differences i.e. halfling A could wear halfling B's magical armour but a dwarf or human couldn't. It certainly would not have been able to morph from normal looking plate mail into a bronze bikini.

If you are going to bother with armour sizes then you should really have the armour being sized by the wearer's size (height and girth) and not by race. Of course then we are basically saying that the character has to have his armour made specifically for him/her or find armour and bring it to an armour smith to be resized (if that would even be possible).

I guess it just depends on how much reality you are willing to ignore when playing a game. Personally, I would rather concern myself with other things than worry about whether or not a character should be able to wear a given suit of armour.

 

In the earlier editions (look in the original DM's Guide) magic armor came in human, elf, dwarf, and halfling/gnome sizes. One of the advantages of half-elves was they could wear human and elf armor. Only 5% of magic armor could even fit a halfling -- mine always ended up wearing bracers and rings.

Strangely, there was no difference between male and female armor.

 

Beren, that article is hilarious. Thanx so much for sharing!