Stats & Thoughts About Squishy First Level Characters

Every GM in every game has a challenge: craft a fun story that involves the players and gives them the agency to affect the story's outcome.  Of course, for any story to be interesting, it needs to have stakes for the characters within it.  When you're reading a novel, the character has to have something at risk, be it possessions, a relationship, or her soul.

GMs have one advantage that novelists don't: players are piloting characters and therefore should identify with their characters all the more easily.  Of course, that also means that those same characters also need to have personal stakes in the story.  If the character doesn't have anything to lose or the character can't fail, the player isn't likely to be interested in that character's story for very long.  Players need to feel like their characters are actually in danger.  Just like in the novel, that danger can be for the loss of possessions, the loss of a relationship, or even the loss of a soul.  With an invested character, those story arcs might be the most interesting.  It's equally interesting to see whether or not your character gains what they are seeking rather than losing what they already have.  But where characters are most often in danger is in combat.

There are game mechanics that cover the loss of possessions and, unsurprisingly, even souls.  Relationships can be managed through attitude (at least for relationships with NPCs).  But combat happens most frequently and has the most mechanics attached to it.  We have a challenge rating (CR) system that helps GMs create appropriate encounters for their party.  The goal is to create an encounter that feels appropriately challenging without creating a TPK.

Theoretically, you should average the party's level and then create encounters at that CR plus some depending on how challenging the encounter should be.  Each CR gives a GM a bank of experience to fill out with monsters.  This system generally works well--except with first level characters.

First level characters present two unique challenges in combat and they are both designed around death.  First level characters have low hit point totals.  That makes them easy to kill.  Additionally, first level characters are often piloted by new players.  New players may not know how to optimally keep their character alive (you've all seen the melee mage).  We want first level characters to survive for a couple of reasons as well.  First, we want all players to develop bonds with their characters.  Additionally, we want newer players to enjoy the game.  Dying at first level (and possibly during your first adventure) is not a good way to accomplish that.  Adventures that kill new players are not well received.

So, it's easy to kill a first level character.  There are some ways to mitigate this risk of course.  Armor is the most obvious.  Let's look at the statistical chances that a character with a +2 bonus to AC gets hit by monsters from CR 1/8 to CR 4.  Given my recent musings on armor, we will look at characters without armor and characters wearing studded leather or scale mail, which is about the best armor bonus a first level character can afford.  If you have other ideas about good armor choices, the math is pretty obvious, just adjust the percentages to whatever armor class you are interested in studying.  ACs 12, 15, and 17 seem most relevant here:

Monster		No Armor	Studded Leather	Scale Mail
CR	Attack Bonus	AC 12	AC 15	AC 17
½	1	50%	35%	25%
1	2	55%	40%	30%
2	4	65%	50%	40%
3	6	75%	60%	50%
4	8	85%	70%	60%

Characters might have some assurance of safety when fighting mooks, but boss monsters have an excellent chance of landing a hit (as they should).  But, the danger with first level characters is that we are dealing with very little wiggle room.  If the monster hits the character, especially if that monster is a boss monster, that character may go down.

Below are tables covering the recommended high, medium (average of high and low), and low damage for a monster at five CR levels.  Results of taking a hit are given both numerically and color-coded based on the results for that character.  Remember, these are the results for taking damage from one hit only.  Multiple hits by a monster with multiple attacks or over the course of multiple rounds will produce far more damaging results.

Hit points by Constitution bonus and class.  Click for larger copy.
Green stands for living characters.  Yellow stands for unconscious characters.  Orange characters with the lower CON score for that bonus are dead; characters with the higher CON score are unconscious.  Red characters are dead.

Hit points by Constitution bonus and class.  Click for larger copy.
Green stands for living characters.  Yellow stands for unconscious characters.  Orange characters with the lower CON score for that bonus are dead; characters with the higher CON score are unconscious.  Red characters are dead.

As you can see, the options for killing first level characters are absurdly high--especially if the GM chooses to make something a CR 2 encounter or higher.  So, how do we deal with this?  I see four possible options: 1) do nothing & let them die, 2) stick with CR 1/2 and CR 1 encounters until the characters reach second level, 3) the magical insurance policy, or 4) accelerated XP progression to fourth level.

Do Nothing, Let Them Die

One of the best ways that GMs can build trust with players is to roll openly.  Obviously, some rolls have to be secret.  But, more often than not, you want your players to see what you roll.  This builds trust and it appeals to those that believe that the dices' randomness is one of the things that makes the game fun.  The argument goes: if the dice command the result, who are we to dispute it?  And, if you are rolling in front of your players, you are pretty much locked into results commanded by the dice.  Open rolling appeals to me, but against a CR 2-4 monster open rolling can be an invitation for character death.  So, I want to keep rolling in public, but, again, I don't want my characters to die before they have an opportunity to really enjoy being their character.

Use Only CR 1/2 & CR 1 Encounters

One way to avoid early level character death is to stick with encounters at the CR 1/2 and CR 1 levels.  The upside here is that first level characters are unlikely to die.  The downside is that these encounters can get very repetitive very, very quickly.  You will also require a lot of them.  Assuming a 4-person party, a CR 1/2 encounter grants each PC 50 XP.  A CR 1 encounter grants each PC 100 XP.  At medium track experience, it will take 20 CR 1 encounters to move the party to level 2.  It takes 40 CR 1/2 encounters.  If you're mixing between the two, it will take 14 of each before characters reach level two.  Now, I'm all for creativity in storytelling, but this seems like a lot of encounters.  You can only disable the weak trap and fight the goblins so many times.  This approach is safe, but it takes a very long time before you have recourse to more variety.

The Magic Insurance Policy

Many GMs like to give the PCs access to some form of resurrection as an insurance policy.  Scrolls of raise dead, resurrection, or true resurrection are the most common.   I have two main concerns with this approach.  First of all, if I'm going to throw such an item at low-level PCs, I want them to either actually need it or be so afraid that they'll actually need it that it has real plot ramifications.  A throwaway scroll does little to advance the plot.

More to the point though, the magical insurance policy is more insurance theater than actual insurance.  Let's review the scroll rules for Pathfinder.  A PC can automatically use a scroll if the PC: 1) casts that type of magic; 2) has the spell on his or her class list (making #1 somewhat redundant); AND 3) has a sufficient ability score to cast the spell/spell level.

Huzzah!  Our party's cleric can use the scroll.  If the PC meets the requirements above but can't cast spells of the requisite level, she must make a caster level check where the DC is the scroll's caster level +1.  This isn't actually too bad...a first level character can cast raise dead 80% of the time, resurrection 70% of the time, and true resurrection 60% of the time.  So, with a caster that operates off of the cleric's spell list, you've got a pretty good chance of bringing someone back from the dead.  Without a cleric or an oracle, you're going to have several Use Magic Item checks at a DC 20+.

If you want to give your PCs this option, it does work.  I suggest ignoring it for the purposes of wealth by level as the raise dead scroll costs 7,250 gp and a true resurrection scroll costs 32,650 gp.  Other GMs might try to avoid this by requiring the PCs to find a high level spellcaster that will raise the dead character, but only in exchange for some aid rendered by the PCs.  Seems like a plan, but remember that the goal is to get the players to identify with their characters.  This quest might get the surviving PCs to identify with their characters, but what is the dead character to do?  You could let the player pilot an NPC, but this doesn't further the goal of getting the player into inhabiting his character (though it might go a long way to getting a player into the idea of a longer-term game).

Expedited XP Progression

So, what's a GM to do?  You don't want to inject a vastly outside of tier item into your campaign.  You don't want to possibly arbitrarily kill your PCs' characters.  Finally, you do want to have some varied and interesting encounters.  My solution is to use an expedited XP progression.  Some GMs just start their players at 2nd level or start them with 2nd level hit points (but no other abilities until the characters attain sufficient experience).

Personally, I like to modify the medium XP table.  I allow characters to attain second level at 1,300 XP (as per the fast XP track), third level at the 4,000 XP mark, and fourth level at 9,000 XP.  Characters obtain XP slightly more quickly, but are back on track by fourth level (and the ratios between levels are constant--just wider).  I stick with normal wealth by level since things are all going to even out at the end of the day anyway.

Level \ XP Track	Fast	Modified	Medium	Slow
2	1,300	1,300	2,000	3,000
3	3,300	4,000	5,000	7,500
4	6,000	9,000	9,000	14,000

Does this solve the squishy first level character issue?  Honestly, no.  It doesn't.  Rather, it attempts to mitigate the amount of time characters will spend at first level so that strategies like sticking to CR 1/2 and 1 (and occasionally 2) encounters don't get old.  Then, you've got more space for encounters with second level characters.

It's not perfect, but it works for me.  Is there some power creep?  Honestly, a bit.  But, it's early on when characters are excited about finding a masterwork dagger anyway.  By sticking with the regular wealth by encounter and level tables you go a long way to mitigate things.

Of course, characters may die later on.  But, once players know and identify with their characters, they'll want to take the time and effort to raise their fallen friend.  And the player whose character has died will be ready to do just about anything to get him raised from the dead!

Agree of disagree with my thoughts?  Tell everyone about it in the comments below!

PFS Character Intro: Khygar the Dwarf

Khygar is my first character for Pathfinder Society.  I tend to try and play characters that are very different than I am.  I lead a bookish type life, so it's no surprise that I go for the rogues and the warriors in my PFS characters.  That said, I've recently rolled up an Erastilian warpriest (still working on a background) and a halfling arcanist who is a refugee on Golarion from a colony on the Elemental Plane of Air.  He worked with airships, but he crashed into a rift that left him stranded on Golarion in the Prime Material.  But, more on Bertie Higgins later.  Until then, here's Khygar of Rolgrimmdur!

Khygar's Background:
Khygar originally hails from Rolgrimmdur, where all young dwarves are raised on warfare. While he was competent with the traditional dwarven axe, his true love was the warhammer. Though some other students at first whipsered that it was because his mother was from Taggoret far to the south, he quickly disabused them with wallops to the face.

After obtaining his majority, Khygar signed on with Rolgrimmdur's famed mercenary legions to save money for building a hold of his own within Rolgrimmdur. He was sent with a small company to Janderhoff, in Varisia.
There he learned that perhaps there was something to his classmates' former teasing, he developed an eye for gems and particularly enjoyed working with the gemcutters and those setting stones in weapons and other items during his free time.

A decade later, Khygar has grown bored. He longs to see more of the world and to put his warhammer to use in righting wrongs, rather than manning the battlements of those few places where order already reigns. His term of service recently ended and he has recently left Janderhoff first for Absalom and then to see more of the world.

Khygar is a somewhat naive lad.  Coming from dwarven communal society, Khygar's first instinct is to trust those around him unless they overtly show themselves to be hostile.  Khygar loves strong drink and is a pleasant drunk--until his tendency to play pranks upon his drinking companions comes out!

Khygar gets along with most people--his openness to new ideas (another reason he wanted to leave the clan-bound society of the dwarves to see the world) makes him particularly easy to deal with.

But, once roused his anger is mighty and he swings his hammer to smite those who would harm him or his friends.  Despite this, Khygar has only fought against those he considers evil.  He has never had to strike out against a morally ambiguous foe.  He has a tendency to see the world in black and white.  Dispite this, he believes in the innate goodness of all and is also usually quick to forgive.

GenCon Recap: Thursday, August 14

The Sagamore Ballroom, where all the Pathfinder Society
games take place.

My GenCon started like so many other early morning events--I realized that I was running late.  I needed to get Khygar, my first Pathfinder Society character to level three so that he'd be in tier for the Pathfinder Society Special that evening.  He was one level short, and I needed one more session to raise him to third level.  Unfortunately, I had tickets for a new GenCon player orientation-type thing and was slotted to play a session of the Demonworld RPG (which I never got to do and wish that I'd had the opportunity to try it out).  Fortunately, I was able to pick up some generic tickets and make my way to the Sagamore Ballroom for my first PFS session of the Con!

I ended up at a table with the Venture Captain of Norfolk, which is right around the corner from DC.  Joe was an amazing GM.  He ran us through The Confirmation (#5-08, levels 1-2), which is designed to simulate a final test for an aspiring Pathfinder.  Khygar is my first Pathfinder character.  He's a Dwarven fighter with the foehammer archetype, which basically means he likes to hit things with his hammer quite a bit.  One of these days I'll get around to posting his backstory--I'm pretty pleased with how he turned out.

Anyway, Joe assumed the role of GM that narrated our party's journey around Kortos.  In the party were Ferdy, Gerdy, and Herdy; gnomish triplets that spoke with Swedish accents and rode war dogs.  They are a bard, druid, and summoner and were played by a father-son-uncle team.  It was an absolute blast to go through the island's dungeons with them.  Our adventure concluded successfully.  Khygar picked up some well-deserved loot and qualified for level 3.

After the PFS game, I headed over to Paizo's Adventure Path Q&A panel.  This was my first seminar of the Con and I learned something important: they don't come anywhere close to selling out.  I'd have been much better served by just showing up at the event without.  I'm not sure why people would pass on an opportunity to have live interaction with the three guys that develop Paizo's leading product line.

Every game you play earns
a single token.  You can use
two tokens to roll the dice
 for a special GenCon boon.
Get a 20 on your roll, and
you get free Paizo products!

On top of getting good Q&A time, they also announced the Adventure Path that will launch next August.  It's called Hell's Rebels.  The PCs get to take on roles in Kintargo in Cheliax, where a quiet rebellion against the throne has been underway for some time.  It's going to feature a lot of devils, remain mostly in one place and offer lots of urban encounter/roleplaying opportunities.  All in all, it sounds like a great event.  They don't appear to be giving us an opportunity to take down Queen Abrogail Thrune, but instead to strike a major blow to Cheliax's territorial integrity.  But, don't take my word for it--the guys from the Know Direction podcast recorded the whole thing.  I ended up asking a question, so you can hear my voice on tape--can you guess which one is me??

After that, I had to book it over to the Westin for a session on using HeroLab.  GenCon is huge!  If you have events on opposite sides of the Con, you could be walking the equivalent of seven or eight blocks to get from one to another.

HeroLab character sheet for one of my
PFS chacters, Averitt.  He's a Taldan
rogue and a huge dick to anybody
not from the crumbling empire.

If you aren't already using HeroLab to manage your characters, you should be.  Honestly, it is hands down the best character generation software out there.  The session was on basic programming using HeroLab.  I like to write my own content, and it was fantastic to learn some of the tips and tricks to make that work more rationally.  I'm especially pleased for the option to put all my stuff in its own tab at the beginning page, so I can keep track of what I've written as opposed to what's traditional RAW content.

Best tip of the seminar: if you have an idea of what you want to do, take a look at the coding content for an attribute that does something similar.  You can copy that content and then drop it into your own custom content.

I slipped out after the first hour of the session.  I enjoyed it, but it was already 2:00p.m. and I needed something to eat.  After stopping at one of the ubiquitous food trucks for an Italian sub, I wandered back to the Con.

Insider tip: Plan you Con so that you have off peak meal times.  Lines can get atrocious during normal lunch and dinner hours.  By scheduling your meals early or late, you can walk straight up somewhere for a meal without having to waste half an hour in line.

Back at the Con, I wanted to check out Paizo's booth at the Exhibit Hall.  Unfortunately, the line was out the door and around the corner.  People were saying it was over an hour's wait.  So, I decided my time would be better used just wandering the Exhibit Hall.  I'll do another host that does nothing but talk about the Exhibit Hall, but for now, let's just say that it's massive.

After a few hours wandering the exhibit hall, it was time to run up to CVS and pick up a couple of Diet Cherry Cokes and snacks for that evening's Pathfinder Special.

The Hall is huge.  This picture, taken on the panorama setting on my phone, distorts things.  But there are almost 1,000 people playing the same scenario in this shot.

The Pathfinder Special was something else.  Okay, number one, it is HUGE!  I thought that there were a lot of people at the morning session.  This is like that, except everyone is playing the exact same scenario: The Paths We Choose.  The Paths We Choose was designed to wind down the factions that were being retired and to get the new factions for Season 6 started.  Factions are a way for PFS characters to identify with larger goals in the meta-campaign PFS is designed around.  I ended up at a table with five gamers who all knew each other.  4 of our characters were from the Osirion faction, one from the Silver Crusade, and Khygar, from the Grand Lodge faction.  Fortunately, The Paths We Choose selects up to three mini-adventures based on the PCs' factions, so we had just the right number.

Without spoiling the plot, it was fun.  And by the end, we knew which factions were being retired.  Thankfully, not the Grand Lodge (shocker!).  Unfortunately, my second character, Averitt, was of the Taldan faction, which did get the axe.  He'll be returning as a member of the Sovereign Court.

After the PFS Special, it was midnight.  I slipped over to Scotty's Brewhouse for a drink.  Scotty's is the official PF bar in Indy during GenCon and I wanted to check it out.  At that hour, things have pretty much quieted down.  Doing a bar solo was pretty lonely at my first GenCon.  This was definitely one of the times that I'd have liked to have had my friends with me.  After a couple of drinks, I caught a taxi back to my place and got ready to get up and do it all over again!

Like or hate con recaps?  Leave a comment below!

Product Review: Iron & Ale

Iron & Ale is a card-based drinking game for at least four players.  It's made by Table Forged LLC, who appear to be a lot of fun to drink with on their promotional videos.  I picked up a copy at GenCon as an impulse buy and we decided to try playing it after we finished up our game of Settlers of Catan on Friday night.  We had four at the table, ready to try this strange new experience.

In Iron & Ale, each player assumes the role of a particular dwarven lord who is out to accumulate honor.  At the end of the game, the dwarven lord with the most honor wins.  The game ends when you run out of mining cards or mead hall challenges (we'll deal with what those are later).  Your dwarven lord also gives you certain special things that only apply to you.

Namik Inronhand was one of our dwarven lords.
He's kind of a copycat.

Each player then takes a turn that's divided into two phases.  First, you go mining, cause mining is what dwarves do, right?  When mining, each dwarf flips over two mining cards.  Mining cards come in two varieties: ore and monsters.  If you draw ore, you get some honor.  It's just that easy!  Monster cards have a number.  You have to roll higher than that number on a six-sided die to get the honor for defeating the monster.  Failure requires you to drink the number of drinks on the card.

 

After spending some time mining, every dwarf lord wants to go and spend some time in the mead hall, quaffing and enjoying his day.  The next stage of Iron & Ale requires dwarven lords to participate in table challenges to earn more honor.  A player flips over a Mead hall challenge and issues the challenge to another lord (or occasionally to the entire table).  These can be as banal as a race to finish your drink to as unexpected as challenge another player to slap you in the face as hard as they can.

Mead hall challenges were a lot of fun, but our
drunk selves lost track of them pretty quickly.
Seeing a couple try wrestling each other from behind
was hilarious though!

We didn't finish our game of Iron & Ale, and it fell apart pretty quickly.  None of us really wanted to track our honor.  In fact, the mining phase of the turn broke down pretty quickly and was ignored after we'd gone around the table about twice.  The mead hall cards made it for about another two rounds before we lost interest.  In the games' makers' defense, we started playing already drunk.  But, I don't know how long the game would have held our attention anyway.  It seemed like the only monsters we ever drew were the skeletons, which made them feel repetitive.  The mead hall challenges were well received by all and we enjoyed the challenges.  I had a good time, but I'm not sure that I'll play Iron & Ale again.  If I do, we will probably just pull out the Mead hall cards.

Two out of five stars.

Table post-Iron & Ale bliss.

Statistical Musings on Armor in a d20 System

Today, I decided to do a little bit of musing over how armor choices affect a character in a d20 system, specifically Pathfinder.  Before we get to heavy into the numbers, I want to make a few comments about the statistics that underlie any d20 game.  Most obviously, you are rolling 20-sided dice.  With 20 possible options, you have a 5% chance of any particular one showing up.  Since PCs all start with armor class 10, they have a 55% chance of being hit by an attack before any bonuses they or their assailant may have are factored in.

A CR 1 creature should be doing 6 points of damage a round (5 is low attack damage and 7 is high attack damage).  It should also be adding +1 to its hits per round, but I'm going to ignore that to make the math easier.  6 points of damage per round with a 50% hit chance (60% actually with the bonus) works out to 3 points of damage per round.  Before CON bonuses are added in, that means a level one PC with d4 or d6 hit points can survive one hit, a creature with d8 hit points can survive two, and a creature with d10 or d12 can survive three.  Assume at least a CON bonus of +1 and the d6 and d12 creatures move up to two hits and four hits, respectively.

But, increased armor significantly changes this equation.  By taking a high DEX score or picking up armor and shields, characters can significantly increase their chances to avoid damage.  But, both DEX and armor have tradeoffs.  In the case of DEX, you are placing higher scores (for die-rolling character creation) or more points (for point-buy systems) that requires you to forego scores in other abilities.  With armor, characters are limiting their maximum dexterity bonus and taking penalties on several skills checks.

Under a rational system, PCs with lower hit dice for their class would be the ones investing most heavily in armor.  The characters that are the easiest to kill have the most rationale to make hitting them harder.  Of course, a rational system wouldn't care much about game balance and we have a system where the classes with lower hit points per level are actually forbidden from wearing armor.

I've done a very (emphasis on very) basic analysis of the armors listed in the Core Rulebook.  Following the order in which they are listed, I plugged the armor bonus, maximum Dexterity bonus, and armor check penalty for each CRB armor into an Excel spreadsheet.  I then added trendlines and R-squared values for each attribute:

So, what do we notice?  First of all, the R-squared values are high.  That means that the trendline drawn for the series of points does a good job of predicting what the actual value of any given item will be.  (Note: This analysis basically assumes we are using padded armor as '1' leather as '2,' studded leather as '3,' and so on.  That basically tracks increased armor bonuses, but you could reorder the armors with the same bonuses and get slightly different R-squared values).  The R-square values range from a low of 87% for maximum dexterity bonus to a high of 98% for armor bonus.  Basically, this is a good way for us to see that our designers have done a good job balancing armor's effectiveness for avoiding attacks with providing limitations to dexterity and to skills checks.

But, they haven't completely removed any differences, otherwise the lines would be perfectly smooth and the R-squared values would always equal 100%.  The other important thing that we notice is that although the R-squared for the armor bonus is almost completely explained by its level, we have a lot more variation on maximum Dexterity and armor check penalties.  That differentiation means that there's room for optimization.

To figure out the optimal values, I did a very simple analysis.  If the armor check or maximum Dexterity bonus for the specific type of armor was above the trendline, it got one point.  I'd redone the armor check penalties as absolute values (so an armor check of '1' on the chart means a -1 penalty), so those armors received a point if they were below the trendline.  If the two were evenly matched, the armor received no points.  If the trendline was above the armor bonus or the maximum dexterity bonus, the armor received -1 point.  If the trendline was below the armor check penalty, it received a -1.  Here's what I came up with:

	Armor Trendline	Dex Trendline	Penalty Trendline	Trendline Totals
Light Armor
Padded	-1	1	0	0
Leather	-1	1	1	1
Studded Leather	1	1	1	3
Chain shirt	1	-1	0	0
Medium Armor
Hide	-1	0	-1	-2
Scale Mail	1	-1	-1	-1
Chainmail	1	1	-1	1
Breastplate	-1	1	1	1
Heavy Armor
Splint Mail	1	-1	-1	-1
Banded Mail	1	1	1	3
Half-plate	-1	-1	-1	-3
Full plate	1	1	1	3

Note: I went by exact values, so even the tiniest difference between the trendline and the actual
value resulted in a '1' or a '-1.'  That said, some of them very actually really close to each other.
Another analysis that discounts these minute differences may find that some armors aren't as
far from optimal as discussed here.

Based on this analysis, studded leather is the optimal light armor.  Chainmail or a breastplate is the optimal medium armor and banded mail or full plate is the optimal heavy armor.  We also see that all light armor gives more benefits than it takes in penalties but that medium and heavy armors are mixed bags.  I found this particularly interesting, because these are NOT my usual armor choices.  In fact, I almost always purchase leather for characters that need high Dexterity and scale mail for characters that will wear medium armor.  I generally don't run PCs that wear heavy armor, but I'd suspect that I'd lean more towards splint mail, a less than optimal choice, if I did.

That's because in my mind, the penalties to Dexterity and to armor checks far outweigh the benefits of better armor.  Once you control for the differences in these things, studded leather becomes as useful as full plate.  Of course, this method only considers whether or not something is different from the trendline.  If I considred how far things moved from the trendline, I might end up with different results (but not very different.  The high R-squared values mean that few actual numbers differ much from the trendlines anyway).

Of course, people like to play characters that can have high dexterity scores for ranged attacks and for general roguishness.  I then ran the checks again, but this time, I doubled and tripled the weight for the Dexterity score trendline.  Zeros stayed the same, but positives and negatives counted twice as much:

	2x Dex-Char Trendline Totals	3x Dex-Char Trendline Totals
Light Armor
Padded	1	2
Leather	2	3
Studded Leather	4	5
Chain shirt	-1	-2
Medium Armor
Hide	-2	-2
Scale Mail	-2	-3
Chainmail	2	3
Breastplate	2	3
Heavy Armor
Splint Mail	-2	-3
Banded Mail	4	5
Half-plate	-4	-5
Full plate	4	5

Yet again, studded leather is the clear winner.  Now, I'm not an optimizer in character creation.  But, no one wants to pick up gear that's intentionally bad.  This might explain my reticence about using medium armor.  The juice doesn't isn't worth the squeeze.  However, this does explain why the power gamers I ended up playing with on Friday night at GenCon were so confused that my fighter wasn't wearing heavy armor.  Now that I've seen how the numbers stack up, Khygar just might make the jump.  (Actually, if he puts on heavy armor, he likely won't be making any jumps, but that's another matter!)

Now that we know that studded leather is the optimal armor choice, let's take a look at what it does for armor choices across various class hit die groups.  Studded leather adds 3 to a character's armor bonus, making the default 13 before other bonuses and penalties are added in.  Against the average CR 1 creature, you've moved from a 60% chance of being hit to a 45% chance of being hit.  Of course, heavy armor makes more sense for warriors, so we can figure an at least +2 dexterity bonus for our level one character, reducing her chance to be hit down to 35% or even 30% for a rogue.  Using the average damage of 6 and a 30% chance to hit, we get 1.8 damage per round.  That's two hits and still alive for the d4 group, 3 hits and still alive for the d6 group, 4 for the d8 group and the d10 group and 5 for the d12 group.  Constitution bonuses will only increase these numbers.

Anyway, hope that you liked it.  Let me know your thoughts.  Also, if anyone wants to run other numbers, I'm happy to post those or links to them.  It would be interesting to look at how masterwork armor changes the equation on things as well as how adding enchantment moves the relative values between the three variables.

Like these types of considerations of RPGs and stats?  Consider how first level characters die so easily and remember that armor is important!  Leave a comment below!

EDIT: Changed some of the percentages because I forgot that AC 10 has a 55% chance to be hit.  Doop!