In the wake of Balak’s final major round of combat system updates, Is there any chance of the panoply of the holy city getting tweaked?

[Sleepy and Bored]

Its stats just seem at odds with its lore/description. For example its described as this hefty full plate armor yet its actual armor value is only 40 which is 15 points lower than a simple leather jerkin and yes it has the additional focus and ward but something like the conquerors breastplate has the same ward and focus while also having more armor. I bring up the conquerors breastplate because both are masterpieces of their respective smiths, one in the modern day of Savarra and the other the ancient past and normally that would work for me as a justification for the modern piece being in terms of defensive stat it better than the ancient one. However in this case the ancient armor should be superior since it was made before so much knowledge, both magical and technological, was lost in the wake of the godswar(I acknowledge that in terms of enchantments on it its magically much better since its able to mend itself aka the sunder immunity). All this being said i think the thing that confuses me most is why it has so much holy resist when it was made for combat against the wraiths and their minions. Correct me if im wrong but i was under the impression that holy/white magic in Savarra was like divine spellcasting in dnd/pf in that it comes from a connection to a deity(the seven in this case) so the wraiths and their minions would not be able to utilize it thus the armor would not be expected to come up against holy magics.



I know this may seem nit-picky and fair it probably is but legendary items with really cool lore not really living up to the hype has always been a pet peeve of mine in games. Now im not saying they should go crazy and give it bonkers stats but some tweaks like bumping the armor up to the 60-70 range and swapping the blight and holy resistances or maybe dividing the 40 holy resistance it has into other elements since the description talks about how it was made to take whatever punishment the wraiths might throw at it. For example, giving it 10 blight, storm, fire and ice which would add to the original 40 holy res and giving it a weakness to holy and keeping the pheromone weakness as well. Alternatively changing the description from full plate to something like frodo’s mithril shirt would make the original 40 armor value make more sense(that is make it chain mail or some other type of armor). Personally, I’d much prefer changing the stats rather than the description but both work to combat the narrative dissonance imo.

 

[Sacremas]

Putting aside what you can learn in the Convocation of Mirrors potentially (and let's use a spoiler tag if anyone wants to debate the consequences of that)... the Blood Knight demon general of Kasyrra can use Charge Weapon and Jade Flame, both of which deal Holy damage. She is among the extremely few enemies actually able to do so however. But it at least means that perhaps energies are just energies after all.

 

[zagzig]

Balance-wise, they probably won't buff the armour because it's powerful already. Solid all-around defences, immunity to sunder. boosts to initiative and evasion, and it's not heavy so any class can use it without an initiative penalty. You could bump its armour while taking other things away to compensate, but I don't know if there's much incentive to do that, considering it's already powerful and filling a niche.

There is the question of whether the assigned stats fit the lore, which is interesting. It's a pretty common trope that light is vulnerable to dark, so in-universe the blight weakness may not be intentional, but just an inherent quality of the holy magics they were using to enchant the armour in the Holy City. There's also no distinction between 'White' and 'Black' magic in the codex, so there's nothing stopping a wraithtouched or demon from casting Jade Flame.

Another thing I considered is that the armour failed. Maybe the people involved just weren't that good at designing armour for purpose.

As for the armour value, I think of Iron Man in Infinity War. His regenerating nanobot armour ended up compromising the structural integrity and he got stabbed. The immune to sundering effect (in-universe) may be what makes the plate armour not as effective as you'd expect. And there's of course the out-of-universe reason that it's an intentional trade-off between having high armour or having medium armour but you can't be fucked up by a common status effect.

 

[Sleepy and Bored]

You both bring up good points and i agree that the armor is quite strong as is but i suppose my gripe is that its strengths do not align with its lore as neatly as i would like. I also agree that simply buffing it would result in it being overturned and as such any tweaks such as the ones i suggested would also mean toning other aspects of its stats down like the evasion and/or initiative. And doing this would make it less unique from other armors of its type(though i would say that it being a heavy armor without the heavy tag is unique enough as it).

One thing though, i dont remember it being stated that the armor failed in its intended purpose but rather the person it was made for perished before being able to use it.

 

[zagzig]

"This is the Panoply of the Holy City, one of the most recent artifacts to come into my care! It was the last piece of armor created by the Belharan mage-smiths during the war, but unfortunately it never saw use on the battlefield. The knight to whom it was assigned was killed when a Wraith-touched sorcerer obliterated the fortress he commanded, before he ever wore the blessed armor to battle.

True, guess I misremembered. It could be more generally applied to say that the Belhar failed though. Belhar lost, so maybe they weren't on the cutting edge of designing armour to defeat wraiths or wraith-touched with.