Full plate question.

[Ugotfaced]

So, All I've ever been told as a warrior is 'get into full plate as fast as you can'. Ok, so as fast as I can meaning, when I can wear a set that I like? Or when I have enough armor ranks to wear it with no penalties? I'd really like to buy a set of full plate now, and reduce the damage I take due to weapons low AVD's against it. But I also heard wearing armor you're not trained enough to wear lowers your DS.. Can anyone help me with this please?

[Androidpk]

I started wearing plate as soon as I mastered berserk.

[Ugotfaced]

Ok, what level was that? how many ranks away from actually being able to wear plate were you?

[Durgrimst]

I started wearing it at 40 I think at 3x, so I still had penalties, but wasn't bad.

[grenthor]

wear it as soon as you have enough ranks to get your rt low enough for your comfort. i've worn it when i was still undertrained but i was alright with the 8 second rt except for certain times and for those i'd drop back down to hauberk.

[Androidpk]

Ok, what level was that? how many ranks away from actually being able to wear plate were you?

Around level 25 or so? About 100 ranks of armor.

[Latrinsorm]

Full plate requires 140 ranks to fully* train down physical penalties, where fully* indicates that further training will reduce the base action penalty as described here (http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Armor_Use#Overtraining_Benefits).

Metal breastplate requires 80, which is the same number as hauberk. In general, I very strongly recommend going with MBP until you can get into full plate. In your case, however, it sounds like you're in MBP and feel the AvD decrease to full plate will provide a significant decrease in damage - this suggests that there are other problems with your defense. If you wish to elaborate, perhaps we can assist you with them.

[Androidpk]

I had no problems with any penalties at 100 ranks while using berserk. As long as you're mastered I say go for it.

[Archigeek]

It depends some on what you are hunting. Full plate's penalty vs the Standard Maneuver Roll is substantial, and can only be partially trained away with a gigantic number of armor training ranks. If you aren't hunting something that maneuvers a lot, (and I don't mean CMANs but things like roa-ter burrows), then I would not go out and hunt in full plate that you aren't trained for.

The problem with lesser armors such as mbp is that there just aren't a lot of nice sets of mbp available, where there are a lot of nice sets of full plate out there. You'll be able to find good full plate more easily than you can find good mbp.

One other advantage of full plate that hasn't been mentioned yet is encumberance penalty reduction. You can reduce the penalty the most when wearing the armor with the largest potential weight reduction, ie: full plate.

As for fully trained, the RT penalty is fully trained away at 130 ranks, though most people have no RT penalty at an earlier point due to stat bonuses. 140 ranks is still considered "fully trained" by most people though. Additionally, you can reduce the armor penalty by 4% for every 50 ranks over 130 ranks.

[Androidpk]

You would be fine in a grimswarm camp, that much I can say.