[Crawl-ref-discuss] Armour skill

[Lemuel P. <lem...@gm...>]

So my current character on Akrasiac has a nice randart scale mail I'd
like to continue wearing. BUT, my Armour skill has just reached 9. So
I can no longer increase Armour, and instead will be spending skill
points on Dodging and Stealth, from which I get no benefit.

This is not OK.

So:

1. It should always be possible to train Armour when wearing heavy armor.
2. you should never train Stealth and Dodging when wearing heavy armor.

I personally thought the b026 system for Armour was fine. But there
are other approaches we could take. The absolute bottom line, IMO, is
that it be possible to train Armour all the way to 27 when wearing
scale mail or ring mail or chain mail or whatever. No other skill has
a hard cap imposed below 27. Why should Armour be different?

As for training Dodging and Stealth while wearing heavy armor, this is
usually just a waste of skill points. it's supposed to help people
switch from heavy to light armor, but it seems silly to me to
specially design the skill system around this playstyle. If you want
to switch from heavy to light armor, it's very easy to do -- just take
off your heavy armor and put on a light one!

Can someone at least explain to me the game-balance argument for the
current system vs. the b026 system? Does anyone really think heavy
armor was overpowered before?

Lemuel